Book 4 Progress Report

Okay, the first draft of Origins: The Reich (aka book 4) is complete.

I honestly expected to be at this point a month ago, but the historical flashback sequences wound up being a lot more difficult to write than I expected. With World War II there is just so much history that the story needed to adhere to. With Egypt, Rome and the Reformation eras there was relatively little written about specific events. I could get away with filling in the blanks to fit my narrative, but writing about WWII is a whole new ballgame.

The history is recent enough that many readers actually lived it, and accredited media outlets documented events in extreme detail. Reading my way through all the research material took time, but I found the real challenge was maintaining the character of my story (Hastelloy and the gang pulling the strings for their own reasons) rather than just giving a boring history documentary. That was my main issue with Ken Follett’s novel “Winter of the World” which was based in the same era. He was so busy telling history that his story suffered. I was determined to not let that be my fate with writing book 4 in the Origins series.

There was actually an added level of fun and satisfaction with writing this one. Have you ever finished a book, put it down, and said to yourself ‘I could have done better than that’? Well this was my chance to put my writing where my mouth was when I finished “Winter of the World’ and uttered those exact words to my wife. There is still a lot of changes and improvements to make, but based on the first draft it is looking very likely that I am a man of my word.

I will conclude by saying this last month has taken a very heavy mental toll on me. Diving deep into the psyche of Hitler and his closest advisers, the Third Reich, the Holocaust, the Hunger Plan against the Soviets was profoundly disturbing. Evil is the only word I have to describe it. I have spent a solid month with a profound evil that was inflicted upon the world, and scary as it may sound, was actually planned to be far worse had the Nazis gotten their way.

Far too often in the media we hear someone likened to Hitler or the Nazis for dramatic effect I suppose. I’m sure I’ve done it, but I never will again. Anyone who does that has not done their homework on the subject.