Babel Clash

I’m often asked what’s my favorite book.  I don’t have one.  I like many books for many reasons.

But ask me what has been the best experience of my writing career and I’ve got only one answer.

Hands down: creating and scripting FTL Newsfeed for the Sci-Fi Channel.

With the Repairman Jack series approaching its 15th volume, I get asked about this a lot.  I’m probably not the best person to ask, because I did not want to start a series at the time I wrote The Tomb.

Some background: After The Keep I started a new novel that stalled.  One night I had this frustration dream about being trapped on a rooftop and chased by something.  No matter what I did I couldn’t kill it.  I woke up in a sweat and knew I had to use that. But it wouldn’t fit in the current book, so I started fresh.

I had to come up with a character who could survive that scene, but for the hell of it I decided to turn all the cliches for an action hero on their collective heads.  I wanted the anti-Jason Bourne.   No special forces training - he’s not a former Ranger or SEAL - no history with the CIA or any government agency, no black ops skills, no training of any kind.  Everything he knows is self taught or learned on the street.

Okay.  Then I took it a step further and made him an anarchistic urban mercenary with no identity.  He has no SSN and has never paid taxes.  He can’t call up old buddies in the government to run a set of prints or a license plate for him.  He’s on his own, on a wire, with no safety net.

When I finished The Tomb I knew I had a series character on my hands, but I didn’t want to do a series.  I had my next 2 novels written out in my head.  So I left him bleeding to death at the end of the book.

But he wouldn’t die.  The Tomb never went out of print and readers bugged me for years for a sequel.  Finally, 14 years later, I gave it to them.  He’s since taken over my writing career.

How to create an iconic series hero? Start by smashing all the icons.