Bill Powers
My daughter and I have had a few travel-related “events” that I could spin into mystery stories. We were returning from North Carolina to New Jersey, and the plane experienced a rapid depressurization, causing the pilot to make an emergency descent and landing. On a trip from New Jersey to Omaha on a late-night flight, we all heard a loud bang that woke and startled us. We had lost an engine forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in Cleveland. Fortunately, the gate at Cleveland airport where we deplaned was next to the bar. I’m guessing it was one of the best nights in their history. On an Amtrak trip from Washington DC to New Jersey, we made a planned stop in Baltimore. The train stayed there for nearly an hour. Dogs and police boarded the train, and then we were all told to get off the train. There had been a bomb threat. Each of these events worked out well, but it would be easy to envision an alternative ending…
Once when I was working in the pharmaceutical industry, a group of us had to make a last-minute trip to Puerto Rico to visit a manufacturing site. Our plane left Newark at 7:30 am. About two hours into the flight, the pilot announced that we were making an emergency landing in the Bahamas. He promised to give us more information later. It appeared to be a routine flight. When we landed, there was a lot of activity in the luggage bay of the plane. The pilot finally told us what was going on. There was a dog show in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and several show dogs were in the plane's cargo bay. Also traveling in the hold were some parrots who managed to get the dogs all riled up. The dogs moving around in the cargo bay made the plane hard to control. The solution to the dilemma? They brought the two parrots up into the first-class cabin for the remainder of the flight, and off we went to San Juan.
When we landed and deplaned, as we all walked out the front of the plane, we were bid adieu by the pilot and two of the weirdest parrots I had ever seen. Imagine Johnny Depp as a big green parrot! And when my team got to our hotel, of course, the dog show was there! There has to be a mystery in there somewhere!
I also like to play “what-if” with more ordinary events. The book I am currently working on started when I watched a History Channel show on how the United States and Allies were planning on their post-war victory over Germany and Japan as early as 1942 – at the very beginning of the war. I thought that Germany and Japan were most likely doing the same and had post-war plans for what to do with the United States. In The Lost Codicil, Nicholas Harding and his friend Don Marshall go on an adventure looking for The Lost Codicil, but is it what they think it is?
Another story I was thinking of was what if Germany and Japan had taken a very different direction in the 1930s and avoided war with the United States. What would the U.S. look like without World War II? Would the Great Depression have ended when it did? Would the U.S. still become a Superpower?
These are some of the things that I think about in creating a storyline for a book. Fiction is often just a slight twist of fact.
Once when I was working in the pharmaceutical industry, a group of us had to make a last-minute trip to Puerto Rico to visit a manufacturing site. Our plane left Newark at 7:30 am. About two hours into the flight, the pilot announced that we were making an emergency landing in the Bahamas. He promised to give us more information later. It appeared to be a routine flight. When we landed, there was a lot of activity in the luggage bay of the plane. The pilot finally told us what was going on. There was a dog show in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and several show dogs were in the plane's cargo bay. Also traveling in the hold were some parrots who managed to get the dogs all riled up. The dogs moving around in the cargo bay made the plane hard to control. The solution to the dilemma? They brought the two parrots up into the first-class cabin for the remainder of the flight, and off we went to San Juan.
When we landed and deplaned, as we all walked out the front of the plane, we were bid adieu by the pilot and two of the weirdest parrots I had ever seen. Imagine Johnny Depp as a big green parrot! And when my team got to our hotel, of course, the dog show was there! There has to be a mystery in there somewhere!
I also like to play “what-if” with more ordinary events. The book I am currently working on started when I watched a History Channel show on how the United States and Allies were planning on their post-war victory over Germany and Japan as early as 1942 – at the very beginning of the war. I thought that Germany and Japan were most likely doing the same and had post-war plans for what to do with the United States. In The Lost Codicil, Nicholas Harding and his friend Don Marshall go on an adventure looking for The Lost Codicil, but is it what they think it is?
Another story I was thinking of was what if Germany and Japan had taken a very different direction in the 1930s and avoided war with the United States. What would the U.S. look like without World War II? Would the Great Depression have ended when it did? Would the U.S. still become a Superpower?
These are some of the things that I think about in creating a storyline for a book. Fiction is often just a slight twist of fact.
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