UPDATE - Iron Falls: The Enemy Within

I'm not going to reveal the cover just yet, though there are subtle clues present on my blog title and on my own website. But, the closer we get to the publishing date I'll let you all know. As to what the story's about, here's a clue: Random attacks against authorities occur throughout southern Africa, from Cohara Bassa to the safety zones in South Africa. Thrust into it all are two men; one the son of a Marine Corps general, and the other an uncle who is part of a movement to restore Afrikaner supremacy over a nation nearing confederation into a continental union. Both are manipulated by those behind the scenes, on a direct path to Iron Falls. November, 2100. Shock waves follow in the announced intentions of South Africa becoming incorporated into a neighboring continental union. Amid a media frenzy and general panic, as the country has managed to gain more displaced persons due to never recovering from the Third World War, the Afrikaner Freedom Front is determined to put a stop to this, and sends Emilio Heerdan out to test the resilience of emergency services throughout South Africa and neighboring Mozambique. Sergeant First Class Gene Bukowski, a U.S. Army Special Warfare operator, and his team are uprooted from a mission in Mali when Heerdan's group kidnap the daughter of the United Nations Energy Secretary. Yet his mission proves more dangerous than his team can handle. Bukowski is therefore forced to seek aid against the Afrikaner's sinister plot. Aid that comes at a steep price. It has a little of everything, and a lot of action.   I would also like to add however that the story isn't for the faint of heart, as I have some real racist and revengeful characters as some of the support cast. Please note that their views are not my views. More once I know more.

Characterisations

I'm a few pages from finishing The Second Ship, first of a three-book Rho Agenda series by Richard Phillips, and thought it be a good time to talk about characters. People often ask me what I write about, to which I have two available answers. The first is that I answer that I write primarily science fiction, and that my current project is a mixture of military science fiction and a techno-thriller that follows on from Iron Falls. Then, if their eyes don't glaze over, I say that I'd like to think that I write about people and their experiences.

That's write, people. A good story isn't about the setting and the writer's ability to plot a good story, though they definitely help. It's about the people that live within the settings and are part of the plot (and, in a pretty good story, such as my friend's Black Donald, actually drive the plot forward). After all, some of the most popular shows on television and in the movies are the ones where the characters are individuals that we - as the reader or audience - can relate to. Another writing friend of mine, Shawn Kupfer, was blogging about becoming an instant fan of the short-lived Firefly series because of that - the main characters.

Having said that, I'm a tad guilty of glossing over the whole character thing in Iron Falls. Ok, ok, so it's a tad ironic that here I'm writing how important it is to have good characters that we as readers can relate to, and go about admitting that I just glossed over them in my story. Admittedly, I was experimenting with a style more or less used by the likes as David J. Williams and Matthew Reilly - where characters take second to action. With my next story, which will follow on from Iron Falls, I'm moving away from that and it'll deal more with such characters as Gene Bukowski, Kevin Yamakawa and Emilio Heerdan.

But what about you guys, do you have any favourite characters (whether it be from a book, movie or series) and why do you relate to them?