Blood Ocean Primer (2 of 3): Setting and Characters

Interview at This Is Horror Blood Ocean Primer (3 of 3): Why I Wr...

Blood Ocean Primer (2 of 3): Setting and Characters

As promised, here is your second primer for Blood Ocean. If you haven't read the first one, which discusses the Pali Boys, you can find it here.
Why set this in the Pacific Ocean? Why not the Atlantic or Mediterranean? The answer to that lies with the plague. The very nature of the plague is that only people with O Neg blood survive. It just so happens that more Asians have Oneg blood than most other races, so it seemed a good choice to place the setting aboard a floating city in the Pacific Ocean. Also, since I've traveled extensively throughout Asia, I could write about many of the peoples and their microcosmic cultures with a sense of understanding.

Link to BookHere's what I used in my initial pitch:

SETTING: Nami No Toshi.Definition. City on the Waves (Japanese). Created by survivors of the Oneg plague off the coast of California. At the core of NNT is the Freedom Ship. Initially idealized by American President Richard Nixon, this ten story floating city, four times the size of the Queen Mary, was created by the Mitsubishi Corporation to support natural disasters. NNT was quickly overrun by those attempting to escape the violence and the gangs operating in the aftermath of the plague. Little is left to identify it as it once was. Now, more than a thousand ships, submarines and barges have been attached to NNT. The original ship is governed like a Japanese corporation (called Corpers), but all other areas and places aboard the other vessels have set their own governments and ways to survive. Other places are usually aligned by economics, and or ethnicity. They include, but are not limited to:

Corpers – The remnants of the Mitsubishi Corporation who live in the Freedom Ship. They have a dirigible that can travel from the city to shore. They also have computers and other sophisticated machinery, powered by nuclear reactor.Saru No Kyuden (Japanese) – Monkey House (run by the Corpers).Boxers (Chinese) – Fists of Righteous Harmony, or Boxers (from the Rebellion of 1898).Taeyang-ui Sallam (Korean) – People of the Sun. Sky Winkers – Satellite Worshippers. Scientists from all walks of life who are actually recording information blinked from a pair of satellites. Water Dogs - Those who choose to live beneath the city. They control the water, and everything outside the Corpers fish bins. If you fall in, you are ransomed. If your family can't pay, you are bait for the bigger fish. They trade in trash, fuel, and anything of value. If it floats or sinks, they eventually get it.Mga Taos (Filipino) – The People are monkey worshipers. Most of the time they just follow monkey-backs around. He-Shes - Multi-ethnic group of cross-dressersVitamin-Vs -The crew of a disabled Russian sub who spend their days distilling vodkaLos Tiburones (Spanish) – The Sharks. The drug dealers of the city.The Real People – Multi-ethnic (non-Asian) group of North Americans.Pali Boys (Hawaiian) - Young men who live on the edge, and do the most dangerous things as homage to their warrior ancestors and King Kamehameha's defeat of the enemy armies at Pali Point, Hawaii.

One of the things I love about books like these are the various and myriad characters. Anyone who has read Velvet Dogma will know this, especially with the Day Eaters and the Ack Acks. Maybe it comes from Watching and loving Warriors as a kid. Or maybe it's all the other books I grew up reading, such as Robert Adams' Horseclans books or any of the Conan books (Yes, I said Conan), or any number of Fantasy books filled with interesting groups and characters. These sorts of creations provide depth to the world building.