The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. Terry Pratchett
The planes overhead nearly filled the overcast afternoon Wisconsin sky. They were period pieces, aviation… I thought to write icons, but struggled to feel how it fit. So I looked it up.
“Objects worthy of veneration.”
That’s exactly what they were. They were aircraft - some copies, some restorations - originally flown by the Allies (primarily American) during World War Two. These were examples of machines into which brave men (and more than a few women) climbed, to fight the battles in foreign heavens that ultimately led to a freer, more just world.
And, the aircraft sounded great. Throaty piston engines - in-line water cooled or air-cooled radial - to have there be fifty such thoroughbreds airborne was to tremble the Earth and rattle the windows. It was awe-inspiring. It was riveting.
It was twenty years ago this week.
I read the local newspaper the day after this performance, part of the annual Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture gathering, sitting in my friend John’s pop-up trailer at an RV park in Oshkosh. A short article described an airplane accident. Unbeknownst to us in the crowd, a P-51 Mustang that was supposed to be part of the airshow had crashed off airport grounds. Sadly, the sole occupant - the pilot - was killed.
What if…?
These were the early days of my “career” as a fiction writer. The tragic demise of an airshow pilot became…a mystery. If, under similar circumstances, the pilot’s true identity became an issue, if a bored and abused sheriff’s deputy seized on it as a way to heal some wounds of her own.
What if…?
None of the current tools of the trade were present - laptop, notebook… Fortunately, John had sticky-notes. And, I started writing. And writing.
I wrote most of that night, and much of the two-day trip home. I wrote far into the night that we spent on the road. I sat at my computer and translated the notes into a narrative. The words just poured out.
It took nearly a year to tell myself the story. Two writer friends helped me hone the interplay between the characters. Four friends read a very rough draft and were kind, though often blunt. A work friend arranged for me to spend four hours in an Army Blackhawk helicopter simulator. Over time, it became a novel, the first that publisher Wild Child released.
My first novel.
It all began on an overcast afternoon in muggy Oshkosh, as we experienced EAA AirVenture ‘05.