How I decided on
WWII novels
I grew up watching all the WWII movies I could find on TV
on our old black and white, we never had a color TV. The TV shows Combat (1962 – 67), 12 O’clock High (1964 – 67), and The Rat Patrol (1966 – 68) were a weekly staple. Some of my
relatives served during WWII. My mom had a box of various brass, patches and
stripes that I examined endlessly. I memorized the navy’s ranks, both enlisted
and officers. She had been in the Coast Guard from 1944-46. She gave me a copy
of the navy’s nearly 600 page training manual published in 1944, called The Bluejackets’ Manual – 1944, Twelfth Edition.
I actually read the entire thing! I still have it in my book collection. The inside
of the front cover is inscribed by mom in her beautiful cursive:
Oct. 20, 1944
Billet 614 Co. 272
U.S.C.G. Training
Palm Beach, Florida
U.S.S. Biltmore
(The Biltmore
Hotel was used by the Coast Guard for SPARS training in 1943 & 44)
Below her inscription, I printed in my 8th
grade hand:
Ronald Munsterman
JE-1-4810
1215 E. 36th Street
K.C. Missouri
In the 5th grade, through the Scholastic Books
program at school, I bought Robb White’s excellent Up Periscope, which was later made into a movie starring James Garner.
A couple of years ago, I bought another copy of it and read it all over again.
Great story.
I once saved my weekly allowance (35 cents!) long enough
to buy a toy kit that included an army helmet and a Thompson .45 submachine gun
(caps) complete with a charging handle. I think I shot up every car in the
neighborhood (Armour Blvd. and Forest Ave., Kansas City, MO.)
So, yes, I was fascinated by everything to do with WWII.
How I picked Sgt.
Tom Dunn as my main character
In the fall of 2003, when I was working on coming up with
an idea for a novel, I already knew it would be set in WWII. That was never a
question. At first, I considered making the main character a member of the OSS
(Office of Strategic Services), who would, after the war, become a member of
the newly formed CIA. I discarded that idea pretty fast because I wasn’t that
interested in writing a “spy” book. The very next idea took roots and stuck. A
soldier. Not an officer – there are lots of books on officers. A sergeant. Hm,
a Ranger! A Ranger who went on secret missions! A whole squad of them. As for
the sergeant, he became our beloved Tom Dunn.
I began searching for a plot. I watched an episode on the
History channel that introduced me to the Horten Brothers, the brilliant German
aeronautical engineers. They had developed a jet plane and were working on a
bomber that would have the range to reach the United States. In the span of
about ten seconds I had the plot for Operation
Devil’s Fire: the Nazis had a jet bomber and an atomic bomb.
I started writing the book in January, 2004. However,
because I was an undisciplined writer I made sporadic progress. I wrote exactly
2,569 words in 6 days. Yay me! Then I went 2 months without writing at all. This
became my pattern. I stopped writing the book on May 8, 2005, a year and 2
months later and was only 38% done. Not very earth shattering.
Why Operation
Devil's Fire was NOT the first novel I finished writing
My wife came up with an idea for a modern day thriller
(about a serial killer), which I really liked and fleshed out by early June,
2005, a month later. This was why I had stopped working on ODF. I finished the first draft of that book, called Border Gap, on February 3, 2006, just
under 8 months later. The difference? I made myself stick to a daily word count
of 600 (about 2 book pages) that I had to hit. If I missed it, I had to make it
sometime before the writing week (Sunday – Saturday) was over. My average daily
word count was 676 over that period. I had learned writing discipline! By the
way, at the time, I was working 50 hours a week and traveling back and forth to
Chicago for another 9 hours a week.
The pain of trying
to find an agent
From late April, 2006 through March, 2007 I sent 70 query
letters to agents for Border Gap. A
query letter is one page and briefly introduces you and the book for which you’re
asking representation. You specifically ask the agent if you may send them a
partial manuscript (about 50 pages). I received exactly one request for the
partial. The rest were either rejections or I received no answer whatsoever
from the agent. Grr.
I sent the partial on and hoped. The agency in question
was a husband-wife team. My hopes were eventually dashed when they wrote back
declining further interest. However, they had both read it and they finished
their rejection email to me with:
“We agree that you
have good, strong talent. Keep writing. Keep polishing your work. Best of luck.”
Well, okay, cool. Something’s not quite right with my
writing, but it shows promise.
Holy crap!
I knew I had a choice: I could be angry with them for
rejecting my masterpiece, or I could take to heart what they’d said. So I
re-read the opening pages of my manuscript. It had been perhaps a month since I
last did that. I finished the first page, which introduced the victim, a young
woman. It was great! Then I got to the exciting part of the opening where the
killer strikes for the first time. My eyeballs practically popped out of my head.
In the paragraph describing the killing, I had started 6 (six!) consecutive sentences
with the word “He.” Palm plant. Holy crap! How did I miss that? Now I
saw what they saw. Raw, but unpolished, talent.
Back to Operation Devil’s Fire
While working on all the damn query letters, I started
writing on ODF again. From May 29,
2006 through October 7, 2006 (132 days, 4 ½ months) I wrote an average of 675 words
a day, almost identical to my work on Border
Gap! By the way, both books were in the 100,000 word range. My discipline
was holding up. I had written 2/3 of the book in 25% of the time it had taken
for the first 1/3.
From January 2, 2007 to October 19, 2007, I sent out 50 query
letters and, again, received exactly one request for the partial manuscript. I
heard back from the agent the very next day. “I'm afraid this didn't come
across as something that would work for us commercially.”
Well, hell. Now what?
Three years.
Two novels.
And nothing to show for it.
Then comes another idea from my brilliant wife. Which led
us directly to 9 Sgt. Dunn novels, with number 10 in the works.
Thanks for stopping by.
