Launch Day!

by Jamie Freveletti

 

I am pleased to announce that the book I wrote for the Estate of Robert Ludlum is on sale today! Several people have asked me what it was like writing a continuation of a series begun by a legendary writer such as Robert Ludlum and I can say this: Scary, fun, difficult and engrossing, but the things that I thought would be difficult weren't and the scary aspect just had to be ignored or nothing would get done.

I was and remain a huge fan of Robert Ludlum, of course. His The Bourne Identity is just about a perfect premise for a novel; you've been shot, have lost your memory, and are learning bit by bit about who you are and the signs are pointing in an ugly direction.

I had to think long and hard about what Ludlum would like as I wrote. His books contained international plot lines, non stop action and nasty players in the world arena. They often dealt with government gone awry. The Covert One series is about a group of covert operators accountable only to the President of the United States and deployed by him when matters get deep and ugly.

The main character, Jon Smith, is a military man, microbiologist and a member of the United States Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. (USAMRIID actually exists and a strain of anthrax there was suspected to have been used in the mailings from 2001). He's the perfect Ludlum character because he's upstanding, competent and willing to do what it takes. While he's not as dark as Bourne, he's just as deadly.

I learned that I was chosen to write the next in the series while I attended a mystery conference called Bouchercon. My own debut novel, Running From The Devil had just won a Barry award for best first novel and after the ceremony I met with the representatives of the Estate in the hotel bar. I remember sitting in the Hyatt and thinking what a wonderful, and slightly surreal, day I was having. Later that evening I was charged up and started writing. I realized that I wanted Jon Smith in trouble from the moment that he opened his eyes and I wanted the trouble to just keep coming. He's in a hotel that's under attack by terrorists. The first line is this:

Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith opened his eyes to see a shadowy figure standing at the foot of his hotel room bed pointing a gun at him.
 

The terrorists are swarming through the hotel, where leading scientists and doctors from around the world are attending a meeting of the World Health Organization. The attackers have a hidden agenda. While the hotel is under attack, Oman Dattar, a strongman who is held in a prison nearby while being tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, escapes.

Dattar hates the United States and holds it responsible for his arrest and extradition and he also hates Britain, because that country has agreed to imprison him. He acquires a deadly weapon that kills silently, quickly, and once deployed cannot be contained, and he begins to carry out his plan of revenge. Smith and the other members of Covert One will have to use all of their skills to stop him.

I had a blast writing this novel, and I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

 

 







Writing Hero Protagonists in a World of Damaged Souls

by Jamie Freveletti

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about writing the damaged protagonist, and promised to discuss writing a hero. Writing heroes, especially in the current climate where damaged protagonists are the norm, can be tough. Currently, even protagonists that were initially written as heroes have been altered in later incarnations to be damaged.

For example, in Ludlum’s novel, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne was actually a good guy working for an undercover CIA operation and charged with finding “Carlos” the international assassin. He spent most of the novel concerned that he may be an assassin, and is relieved to finally learn that he was not.

Fast forward twenty years to the movies starring Matt Damon and the Jason Bourne character is altered to be the assassin, not the hero, and he spends his time learning the horrific truth. The movie goes through quite a few twists to show that Bourne was brainwashed into being the bad player.

Why are damaged protagonists in vogue? As I blogged earlier, I think it’s because the damaged individual gives the writer a built in conflict between the character and the demons he or she faces. In a novel, conflict is king. Without it, you got nothin.’ Additionally, damaged characters can engage in a lot of edgy behavior and the reader will buy it a whole lot quicker than if the character was presented without emotional baggage.

So what does this mean for writing heroes? A lot. It means that you need to present someone as inherently decent who does the right thing in the face of bad actors, and you need to make that courage ring true. People love to root for heroes, but they need to be portrayed as believable as well. This presents a challenge for the writer, because a lot of behavior that might be interesting to write about with regard to the damaged character is off limits to the hero. The hero can't step off the line of good, needs to treat others with respect, and yet still be multi-dimensional enough to keep the readers turning pages.

I write a female hero, and it feels right for me. She doesn't cringe from danger, doesn't wait for the men to save her-she saves the men- and she deals with them on an equal basis. This last bit of information is key when writing a female hero, because she needs to make the final decisions and propel the action forward. If she defers to the men she's not the hero, she's a supporting character.

The better known writers have FBI agents, detectives, cops, ex-Secret Service agents and former military written by Rollins, Baldacci, Grafton and Child. All of these writers get it when it comes to writing heroes. Their protagonists are the kind of people you’d want in your corner or shoulder to shoulder with you in that bar when the guy with the pool cue is aiming at your head. There’s something reassuring about a man or woman character that you can depend on to outwit evil, and who has never felt the need to wallow in it. Perhaps they’re coming back into fashion, or maybe never went out of fashion, but they’re fun to write and even better to read.

I'd love to hear about your favorite hero protagonist-book or movie!