LAUNCHING BLACK EAGLES FROM A C-5M IN FLIGHT

In Black Eagle Force - Eye of the Storm, Buck and I came up with a procedure to launch our Black Eagle VTOLs out of a C-5M Super Galaxy in flight. 12,000 feet @ 250 knots. Below is an excerpt from Chapt. 14 when Mike "Cowboy" Hermann experiences his first launch.


The cargo ramp was open on the giant bird as the last of the Black Eagles made ready to launch. Mike Hermann was at the controls of Black Eagle Four on his first actual launch and he tried to maintain an air of confidence. Weapons Systems Operator Glenn "Bug" Haug had just returned from sick leave and was still a little sore from his run in with the Mexican APC. He smiled as he heard Mike's breathing rate start to increase when they eased out of the cargo bay.
"Easy son. It's just like the simulator… except if you screw the pooch, we die," Glenn said dryly.
"I'll try to keep that in mind."
"Okay, here we go," Glenn said.
As the bird floated off the ramp into Mama Bird's turbulence, Mike couldn't help yelling,
"Holy Cow!!"
The ride smoothed out as he pushed the nose over and descended below the huge black craft.
"See, told you. Just like the sim," chuckled Glenn.

In our sequel, Black Eagle Force - Sacred Mountain (currently being written) Mike gets to make his first docking recovery in flight. None of the Black Eagle Force had docked in flight before except in the simulator. It's a trip!
Ken Farmer - co-author
http://www.blackeagleforce.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Eagle-Force/145501815492119
Be a fan of Black Eagle Force on FaceBook.

Wrapping up Chapter Three

Ken and I continue our collaboation on the second installment in the Black Eagle Force series. Sometimes, we are amused at the ability to finish of each other's sentences or paragraphs. After working together for several years, our writing styles are very similar. Friday, I was nearing completion of a sequence where our hero Mike "Cowboy" Hermann and his new weapons system officer Maria "Double D" Sanchez were approaching an ambush site to pick up the lone survivor.

"His airspeed nudged 450 knots as the line of destroyed vehicles came clearly into view. Maria was sure Mike was going to make a high speed pass over the site."

I noted the time to get out of the house and get to work wast fast upon me. As usual, I saved the file on my computer and emailed the updates to Ken and left for work. When I got there, Ken was at his desk and had merged the files from work done at our repective homes. He had added the line "She was wrong." to the last line I had written - exactly the same words I had planned. Spooky, but nice. We then went over the combined text, line by line, and polished the narrative and punched up the dialogue. We feel we get a better product when we edit our stuff together and can discuss dialogue verbally. Often we'll try five or six different lines aloud to see which retort has the right "ring" for the situation. Spoken dialogue is far different than most  author's written prose. It is far more fragmented, shorter and usually doesn't include the names of the person addressed unless the situation is a conference room and a task is being assigned.

We have years of screenwriting experience and it helps when making the jump to novels. But the two venues are very different in form and intent. Novels must paint an eidectic picture the reader can create. Film provides the visual of the "who", "when" and "where". The screenplay provides the "what" they said and did.   We took a 670 page single spaced novel and condensed it to 120 page double spaced screenplay.

But that is another story... until next time.

Black Eagle Force

  EXCERPT from Black Eagle Force, Chapt. 15     


Vasilli had a good laser bore sight on the crippled black craft swaying under the sixty foot wide white parachute. His radar range indicated 1,200 meters. He would close to 1,000 meters to make the easy kill.
       Inside the M200/A Black Eagle, a bruised and battered Jill McElheney looked over her left shoulder at the silver MiG-29 leveling off at her altitude. The thick trail of smoke from the port engine left a ragged line pointing at the seasoned pilot who had bested her. At least I got a piece of him, she thought as she tried to console herself. She began to pray aloud,
      "Our Father, who art in Heaven…" 


www.blackeagleforce.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Eagle-Force/145501815492119?ref=ts

Creating Believable Characters

My writing partner, Buck Stienke and I wrote over 25 screen and teleplays before we wrote our first novel, Black Eagle Force. We had just finished doing a screenplay adaptation of John Eastman's wonderful novel, Verdict! In Search of a Crime and we decided, "What the heck, let's write our own novel." Our experience in writing dialogue for screen/teleplays served us in good stead. As a professional actor/writer/director for over 38 years, I had a good grasp of what believable dialogue sounded like. Buck wrote much of the action scenes, especially the aerial combat sequences (Buck is a grad of the Air Force Academy, eight years as a fighter pilot and twenty-five years as a pilot for Delta) I focused on much of the dialogue, even though neither category was exclusive.
As acting coaches and screen writing coaches, we hammer home to our students the fact that people don't talk the way they write. They rarely use complete sentences, (that drives MW grammar check nuts), they interrupt each other and often don't finish what they are saying. If you don't write dialogue the way people (characters) talk, you commit the cardinal sin of  eliminating the "suspension of disbelief". In fiction, we know it isn't real, but the suspension of disbelief convinces us that it is, thereby pulling us into the story. You never tell the story to the reader, you bring the reader into the story. The reader will feel like they know the characters and therefore relate to them. Who is telling the story? The author(s)? No, the characters  are telling the story. - Ken Farmer co-author of Black Eagle Force. www.blackeagleforce.com
Check out our FaceBook Fan page and become a fan of Black Eagle Force.  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Eagle-Force/145501815492119

Black Eagle Force - Eye of the Storm to be published by Tate Publishing later this summer.