When I embarked on writing the Sunset Saga, primarily about the lifelong vision quest of a Native American savant who is contacted by time-travelers attempting to retrieve Hiawatha for undetermined purposes, I knew I needed a co-protagonist; a physically dynamic supporting character. I investigated the action hero—largely in terms of film trends during my life time—and determined that they come in three general types.

The passionate alpha male of the type often played by John Wayne in movies of the 40s and 50s is generally regarded as cliché in our more cynical age, unless played by Russell Crowe.

The unforgiving enigmatic killer, most convincingly played by Clint Eastwood from the 60s to the 90s, has been done moderately often and well. I chose that type for my action hero’s estranged adopted older brother; his ‘father influence’.

The current oft done hero archetype is the ruthlessly efficient paramilitary killer played well by a number of current actors such as Matt Damon, Jason Statham, and Daniel Craig. These movie heroes are generally shorter, less articulate, and more athletic than the older movie heroes.

The character I came up with was Jay Brant Bracken, West Virginian trailer-trash Conan/Achilles. Due to his name and the passion I write him with—and his body count and booty count—some readers have assumed that he is my fantasy alter-ego, the guy I wish I was. We writers do have to put a piece of ourselves in the protagonist. As a book reviewer one of the joys of reading old fiction is figuring out what part of himself the author wove into the character. I needed to get personal with this character, close to myself and those I have been close with, to make him live in the sea of pure action hero archetypes that postmodern literature is awash in.

I wanted something less standard for my main plot driving character, someone more flawed, more sympathetic, and, above all, doomed. I wanted an updated Achilles for a time-travel epic that would span many novels. Classically the hero is doomed. I wanted to get back to that, away from the invincible post-modern hero.

I looked to Robert E. Howard’s Conan character as an inspiration, for I always considered him an American version of Achilles set in a fantasy age. They both had a strong weakness for women, which I decided my hero needed to separate him from the post-modern hero who tends to have a Bond-like ease with women.

Conan also had another weakness, alcoholism. Since I had given that handicap to my hero’s brother, I had to find something else.

As the series would have a common thread concerning time-travel back among the Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands I chose Lewis Wetzel, a psychopathic man-hunter, as another influence, and made Jay a West Virginian, ‘Old Death Wind’ Wetzel’s hunting ground. What I required were two real people and a compatible piece of myself to use as the basis for building Jay.

He must not be smarter than the villains like Bond, Savage and Bourne are.

He must not be stronger like Gilgamesh, Conan, Tarzan, or any hero played by Arnold.

What he had to have was that primal Achilles intensity, that instinct for action that would make him a mover, a shaker—even a legend—and would, in the end, get him killed.

My oldest son Vance’s best friend, Dante, is the most likable ass-kicking machine I know. I knew him as a small boy in the 1980s, coached him as a boxer in the 1990s, and, more importantly, knew his father well; the negative influence that would be replaced in Jay’s back story with the cruel older brother, Randy Sterling Bracken [my favorite character]. Dante likes sensitive people like Vance. They calm him.

I thought back to around 2005, when I ended up on Vance’s patio sitting between his mother, who had kicked me out back in 2003, and Dante’s new girlfriend, who was built like Angelina Jolie and had a face like the black leather clad chick from The Matrix. Dante was standing next to her while she chewed him out. He pointed to me and said, “Hey Babe, that’s my adopted father Mister Jim. He’ll keep you company while I’m gone.”

She smiled at me tolerantly and my ex snapped, “Oh Mister Jim won’t mind at all!” and stormed off, leaving me alone with this smoking hot biker chick half my age, who I was supposed to keep entertained while Dante did whatever the hell Dante does when his girl is pissed at him over whatever the hell it is he does when she’s not pissed at him. I turned the conversation toward their relationship, as I have always been concerned that he will not be able to find a woman that compliments him. I said, “Is this the normal tone of your relationship?”

“Yeah, he’s an asshole and I’m a bitch. We pretty much can’t stand each other. But the makeup sex is great. Can you believe his arms?”

“Well I’m not really a bicep man myself. But I coached him and am well aware of his freakish athleticism.”

She leaned forward excitedly, with her elbows together on her knees, an unconscious habit of pressing her arms up beneath her large breasts apparently engrained in her body language. “I was out at this redneck bar in Churchville with my cock-blocker. We were there to drink, just wanted to be left alone and make the dogs drool. I sat on the end and she sat next to me, with our purses to her right. Then this smoking hot stud, ‘Dante!’, comes walking in like he doesn’t have a care in the world—doesn’t even know any of these guys. He walks right by these losers that have been trying to buy us drinks all night long, picks up our purses, sets them on the bar, and says, ‘Hey ladies, mind if I buy you a drink.’

“We’re like, ‘Sure baby.’ Of course the rednecks take offense and before we’re on our second beer he’s fighting the entire bar. I kid you not, there were ten men in that bar, and when he was done he was the only one standing. He knocked them all out cold.”

“Oh I’ve tasted his power. He’s crushed two chests boxing and one of them was mine. He was only a kid then. I’m just curious as to what happened next—I mean cops?”

“Oh, no. As soon as I saw him in action I said to my friend, “I have got to fuck this guy!”

“I’m sure that wasn’t too difficult for you to pull off.”

She wrinkled her nose playfully, “Nope, easy peasy.”

I heard my ex snort derisively behind us.

I was just then attempting with little success to extradite myself from a relationship with a nasty little vixen who would have eaten this little sex goddess alive. Thinking back on that day I decided to plague Jay Bracken with all of the dysfunctional relationships of Dante and myself combined. I once walked him into a boxing gym past a hooker who reflexively offered him a free ‘date’. He’s not the only fighter that has these problems. The natural combat athletes throw off some ridiculous pheromones. I once trained with a kid who had one girl waiting in the gym, another one calling him on the phone, and a third, older one, waiting for him on the parking lot in her car. Women would be Jay Bracken’s curse, making him something of a Samson character as well. The Samson aspect grew from my consideration of Dante’s nature.

Years later I showed up at church for my grandson’s Christening and Dante was sitting there with his arm around a cute little blonde who was so pregnant she seemed to have swallowed a basketball [she gave birth the next day]. He grinned and introduced us. Then he patted her belly and said, “Go ahead Mister Jim, tell her what kind of devil spawn she’s got inside of her.”

She preemptively blurted with a raised eyebrow, “Oh, I know, believe me.”

There is something so childlike and likable about Dante that his brutal aspect remains subdued most of the time. This gave me the idea for Jay Bracken’s other weakness. He would have severe learning disabilities. Dante is a bright guy. He just doesn’t win many arguments with his dick. I decided to make Jay as stupid as Dante is when he’s with a woman, as stupid as I was when I was a teenager, and I can still clearly remember that reasoning process. My teenage ethics were basically derived from Conan stories. I had been in the special education class—albeit as the smartest dummy in the room—and remembered how alienating that was. That would keep Jay on the fringe of society instead of running a business like Dante.

Now this guy is an action hero, so I decided to give him a power to compensate for this. When I was 14 we had a 25-year-old man with Down’s Syndrome living in the neighborhood. He liked to play ball, and tag, and lift weights with us. He was immensely strong. What really amazed us was his stamina. He could run all day long. I was also the fastest runner my age in Washington County. I remember what that felt like to be faster than anyone I knew. I figured that was my one chance to mentally connect with the kind of physical confidence a guy like Dante has.

So, the only ‘freakish’ abilities Jay Bracken the character has is Bubby’s stamina and the foot speed that was attributed to Achilles, which is really his archetype. He’s not stronger than everyone like Conan, or smarter like James Bond, or cooler like the Man With No Name. Jay Bracken has, like his minor inspiration Lewis Wetzel, unbeatable foot speed. This gives me a strong internal identifying characteristic for Jay; something that I once at least felt in a very limited way.

How, understanding fighter psychology as I do, could I use Jay’s identity as an unbeatable runner, to conflict him? At some point in the Sunset Saga his story thread itself must become like the river that frustrated Achilles in his mad pursuit of the Trojans. I wanted Jay to have that madness, that conflict.

When I moved to Baltimore I was 18 and had still never been beaten in a foot race. At the age of 20 this still held true. I was still young and spry and had even run down dogs on the street. Walking home one day with my coworker, Earl, he asked me what sports I played in school. He was surprised to find out I had been the fastest kid in an entire county and challenged me to a race. He had been the captain of a Baltimore city high school track team. Realistically, objectively, I knew that he had to be faster than me. I was built for long distance and he was built for short distance. Plus he had been professionally trained in running. I was just fast. But, just like a fighter that has not been beaten cannot visualize it, a runner who has not been outrun just can’t wrap his head around it, especially when he’s a meathead. Earl actually gave me a head start and then poured it on. I never heard anyone run like that before. I had to turn my head and look, and there he was, his knees pumping all the way to his chest which was almost parallel to the ground. He was going to blow be me, so I elbowed him and sent him into the gutter.

When thinking of how I was overcome with this visceral animosity over the nullification of the one thing I had ever been good at, and had lashed out, I decided on Jay’s phobia. He would have a jealous fear and resentment of horses, which would work well with many of his time-travel destinations. This is where I find the core of his identity, the place where the nature of Achilles, Wetzel and Dante intersect with mine and Bubby’s one best attribute, the thing that set us apart from our kind, but would not carry us into a wider world; Jay’s pathos.

Convergence: An Excerpt from Thunderboy

…He was standing naked in the cold surf as the sand retreated under his feet. He could see Israel Heft’s sloop bobbing off shore in the dim silhouette cast by the moon. Toward the small ship a launch pushed through the swells just beyond the surf. He could see himself sitting there shackled next to Black Tim. He then thought to his other ghostly self, Enjoy the life at sea boy. It won’t last long enough.

A horse’s pain-filled snort brought him from his lost world within. Beneath him floundered Johnny Hardtack’s old nag, the horse of the man who had sold him to Israel Heft. The man himself was a mere lump of fat-stuffed clothing submerged beneath the incoming tide. The corrupt customs official—or whatever they were called in Georgian England—had drowned beneath his own fallen horse. The horse was an old mare, and had managed to lay her head on the fat body of her dead master, keeping her nostrils momentarily above the incoming tide. She glared up at him with a crazed and accusatory eye. When she bared her worn and yellowed teeth he expected just a whine or a snort. But melancholy words were the sounds that issued from her mouth; words spoken in the voice of a pitiful elderly woman, a woman that sounded a lot like Ma Bracken had after Pap had been buried in the cave-in, “Why me hound-eyed man, why? I too was a slave to him who sold you, suffering under his ill-gotten weight even as my old back bent also under the weight of years.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

“Why me, why break my old aching foreleg? Bad enough it was before your cruel kick.”

Unformed words caught in his throat. She looked searchingly at him and then batted her old eye-lid when the surf began to wash over her head. He squatted under her and held her nostrils above the sea foam. Just as the tide began to retreat he leaped over her and dragged her by the saddle up the beach, one painful inch at a time, pulling with all of his considerable strength. The tide came back in now with a vengeance, as if claiming a soul about to be denied The Deep. The wave itself was up to his chest. He cradled her head in his arms to keep her nostrils above the water…

…Wave after wave covered them, until she no longer snorted or opened her salt-crusted eyes, and her body became heavy and slack. He was still determined to drag her up to dry land. As he strained for one last leg-burning effort he was buried by a wall of water and sand…

…Thunder beat in his head as he slowly came to consciousness. He was walking across the cobblestone courtyard of a castle. The thunder in his head was the ringing of the massive hooves that clomped next to him; the steel-shod hooves of an armored Clydesdale marching on either side of him. He was chained at the waist to both of their saddles.

He walked between them to a granite staircase atop which waited King Phillip. The disembodied neck and head of the black charger appeared to sprout from the crimson throne. King Phillip had been Don Andre’s faithful warhorse. He had led them all into a nightmare ambush, slaying his friend Don Andre in the last act of the massacre. On either side of King Phillip levitated the severed heads of his six slain mares, butchered by the blood-mad Cherokee, Iroquois, Shawnee, Potomac and allied warriors when the base camp was finally overrun…

The tower above was black, and the sky above that gray streaked with red. The Clydesdales placed one steel-shod hoof each behind his knees to force him to kneel before their king. Phillip tossed his full flowing mane of black once, bared his great white teeth, and then leaned forward. When he spoke his voice was different somehow from the last time. The voice of the great warhorse seemed to consist of the myriad sounds made by the 200 dying horses on that day of slaughter, when he had turned on them like a rabid dog with 2,000 warriors at his back. “Huntsmen, your sins against horse-kind seem boundless. An old mare even fails to find that lone drop of mercy that lies in the deep well of your blackened soul!”

He heard an awkward clomp of hooves on stone as he hung his head in shame. When at last the three hooves ceased their hollow clamor he raised his head to look up into the unforgiving eyes of Johnny Hardtack’s old mare. In the background he could hear 200 voices call out. They sounded like thunder alternately rumbling and cracking, “No mercy for the huntsmen. Grind his bones to make our feed. No mercy for the huntsmen. Grind his…”

He woke in a cold sweat in the dim morning sun. He was shivering up against the base of the church wall. The sound of the ugly locomotive and aging railcars rumbling along the tracks along the river below seemed to him the clomping of hooves on cobblestones receding into the distance.

Get it together dummy. You can’t sleep around here, its haunted.

He brushed himself off, dried the sweat off of his neck with Jack’s bandana, and pressed the rest of his sweat into his buckskins so it could evaporate while he walked. He tried as best he could to get the ‘daymare’ behind him. But it haunted him terribly. He had sat down there hoping to have warm thoughts of Sarge barking harsh orders, only to pat him on the back in the end. Sarge had not come to him.

He was walking down Route 340 into Charles Town on the right shoulder, right where a pedestrian was not supposed to be. He was half hoping he’d get flattened by a semi, but the 18-wheelers seemed to be off the roads today. To the right was a horse pasture, above which he could see a ridgeline, where he imagined there was an access road. He decided to turn right at the crossroads and maybe find a country store. He did not want to go to a gas station or commercial farm store. These places reminded him too much of his adult life as an inmate of the 21st Century. He hoped that a country store would remind him of his 20th Century childhood—the good parts at least.

Then it occurred to him that no country store would be open on Christmas. But Jay Bracken was nothing if not stubborn, so he continued along the rural route, walking along the painted line next to the cold crunchy grass and weeds between the road and the fence-line; grass that was still green in spots despite the time of year.

After about 15 minutes he noticed a lone horse in the pasture, nosing about the semi-green stubble like a kid poking through his long-ago-plundered Easter basket in June, hoping to find something good to eat.

If I was a horse I’d want some onion grass, some round plumb green shoots, maybe even the bulb. With nostrils like they have I bet they could use something to clear their sinuses.

As he walked along looking over at the distant horse he stopped to pick the occasional bunch of onion grass, avoiding all of the brown stalks, the stringy crab grass, and the bristly tall grass. Eventually, as he continued to follow the fence-line, he noticed that the horse—who occasionally eyed him from a distance—was keeping pace with him.

You know dummy, it’s about time you made friends with one of these critters.

On sheer impulse he vaulted over the top rail of the wooden fence and jogged up to the big beast. When he got within a few yards, the horse apparently snorted a warning and slapped its tail this way and that, holding its head high and shaking its mane.

“You a big fit boy ain’t ya?”

He walked slowly up to the horse and extended the hand that held the onion grass, “Got somethin’ fer ya boy. Figured me en you can get along. I’d like to make up fer da past.”

The stallion took the grass and munched it down making a noise in its throat that Jay hoped was approval. Jay jogged toward the fence-line, “Come on boy. You can keep up—I got but two legs afer all.”

When the horse cantered up beside him he broke into a full run, and then that horse just broke into a gallop and left him behind, turning to wait for him by the fence-line. He caught up within seconds, slapped the horse on the shoulder, “Good run hotshot”, and hopped the fence again, “Jus’ keep pace with me en I’ll fine you da res’ a dat grass boy.”

The horse eyed him suspiciously, as a teenager would to an uncle who had made a seemingly unsustainable promise. But the horse walked on besides him nibbling at the turf, even as Jay rooted in the weeds on the wrong side of the fence.

He walked aimlessly along the fence-line picking shoots for the horse and feeding him as he went. They had finally come upon a crossroad at the ridgeline, which was just a private road with a trespassing notice. He stopped to pet the big boy one last time before heading off to look for a campsite on the wooded ridge-line above, “Dis da end a da road fer me boy. Merry Chrismess.”

The horse snorted slightly and lifted his head as a chromed-out 2009 black Mustang rumbled up besides them, pulled over on the shoulder and idled. He turned to look into the vehicle and a young pretty girl with long brown hair waived him over as she leaned to look at him through the lowering passenger-side window, “Excuse me—Merry Christmas by-the-way—but what are you doing with my horse?”

The horse really lit up at the sound of the girl’s voice. Jay felt somewhat embarrassed, and was already looking up and down the road expecting a tribe of redneck brothers in pickup trucks to swoop down on him in defense of their sister at any moment, “Ah, sorry miss. I whuz jus’ feedin’ ‘im some onion grass.”

With your luck that stuff probably kills horses. She’s looking at you like you are an idiot.

“I didn’t mean no harm miss. He jus’ seemed kine’a unsatisfied wit da grazin’. En dere’s still some green shoots lef ova on dis side—I’m sorry. I don’ wan’ no trouble. I’ll be off—sorry miss.”

He hustled off down the road with his hands in his pockets, not knowing where he was going.

The horse had kept pace with him on the right and now the mustang was chugging along beside him on his left, the window still down. The girl’s voice was apologetic. “I didn’t mean to be rude. His name is Ethereal Hooves. He won a few races before I bought him. I don’t race horses. I just love them. He’s my buddy—thanks for picking him the onion grass. His trainer doesn’t approve, but I know EH loves the stuff.”

He risked a look over his hunched shoulder and saw that she was smiling. “Merry Chrismess miss.”

“My name’s not ‘Miss’ it’s Duty.”

“Nice to meet you Miss Duty. Name’s Jay, sorry ta trouble ya.”

“No trouble at all. Get in.”

He stopped and looked as she hit the door lock, and tried not to dwell on her shapely little body. “You sure Miss Duty?”

“Mister Jay the only thing I’m sure about, is, if you call me Miss one more time I will leave you in the road. Now get in.”

He slid into the seat and noticed her really checking out his buckskins and moccasins. He had never felt this insecure around a woman before, and she was just a girl, not even 21 he thought.

She feels sorry for you; thinks you’re homeless—a hobo off the train.

Her voice was warm and light and made his chest hair prickle under his buckskins. “Where are you headed Jay?”

“Really Miss…”

She raised one accusatory finger and wagged it. “Ah, ah, ah—the name is Duty, not a ‘miss’ in it.”

“Yeah, sorry. Ah, I’m really jus’ wandering. Jus’ finished a job en had a few bucks, so I decided to walk through my ole home state a bit before headin’ back out wes’.”

“No place to stay, no backpack, no bedroll. What do you sleep in trees?”

“I have, fer a fact, slep in trees.”

He could not help but crack a smile when he said that and she broke into a light airy laugh. “Well Jay, I am taking you to my farm, and you may sleep in the barn, in my tree, or on the couch in front of the fireplace. My roommate is Amber, and her parents were not able to make it out from New York for the holiday. My brother would love a guy to hang around with too. We have a lot of food, how about it?”

“Sure Miss”—shoot.

“Okay Jay, I warned you. Really, this is serious. I want you to get out and follow me up the driveway okay. You are welcome for dinner and I’ll have time to inform Amber. But you are not driving in my Mustang so long as you address me like some Southern belle. Go on, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

He left his jacket on the seat hopefully and shut the door easily.

Dummy, you have got to be the biggest idiot on the planet. Look at this. She’s revving it and only staying a few yards in front of you. EH is trotting up besides her. I guess she plays this game with him. It looks like the house is a quarter-mile up the driveway.

Before he could finish the argument with himself he bolted past her, knees pumping up to his chest, hands knifing the air, sucking in oxygen like an engine. No matter how ridiculous the odds, since he had never lost a footrace to a man, and had managed to outrun animals as varied as Irish Wolf-hounds, whitetail deer, black bear and Jurassic raptors, Jay simply could not visualize losing a race—even to a sports car. He could not even imagine not being fast. EH was breaking into a gallop to his right and passing him. He ate up twenty, forty, eighty yards as the stallion pulled away. Then she blew by with a sparkling laugh and he was sucking in fumes, obviously fated to finish a distant third. He would not quit though. He ran it out hard all the way to where the mustang was parked in front of a feed station outside a small barn.

Duty was there wearing his jacket and petting EH when he pounded to a stop. She smiled at him sideways and winked. “I’ll give you a head start tomorrow. We’ll have to bring my brother along—he’ll get a kick out of you actually trying to win. His name is Edwin. Edwin has Down’s Syndrome. But it doesn’t have him. Just treat him like a kid. He’s about your age I imagine. How old are you Mister Jay?”

Damn, when is the last time you tried to figure that out?

“I won’t hold it against you Jay. I like older guys.”

“I think I’m thirty-two.”

She grinned in surprise. “You think you are thirty-two?”

“Well I been away for long stretches ‘ere and dare—en my math’s none too good. I was born in Nineteen-eighty.”

She then walked over to him and looked up into his eyes while she seemed to measure his chin between her thumb and forefinger—or was she checking out his broken nose? She dropped her hand to his shirt sleeve and squeezed his bicep. When she did so her eyes widened and then she smiled with pursed lips as she dropped her hand to his rock-hard chest and held her palm over his heart, cupping his pectoral muscle. Her voice had become a little husky. “Jay, you may not know how old you are, but every geek on the planet wishes he were you.”

She then slapped him on the butt as she walked by him up to a redwood cottage. “I’m legal by-the-way; nineteen. At least we were born in the same century.”

He followed, a bit bemused, pleasantly surprised, a little nervous, and absolutely incapable of keeping his eyes off of the swishing seat of her stone-washed jeans.

Jay Bracken is a plot driver, an Achilles, a tragic figure with a likable edge. He will die in the last book in the series, Run to The Hills, and, just like Achilles, he at least has that much figured out. I cannot, however, let myself write that scene out of order like I have often done. I won’t risk losing touch with his pathos along the way by writing his ending now.

As a writer I use a trance-like state when composing fiction. Everyone that calls me while I am writing fiction apologizes for waking me up. I have to be able to write Jay as stubborn as he is, unable to conceive of his legs failing him. I’m not writing for Hollywood. When the storyline no longer has room for Jay, he’s not going to jog off happily ever after. Jay represents the action hero as an enabling personality, a fleeting force that helps an introspective protagonist at least attempt to realize his dreams.

Earlier this month I ran into Dante and his new lady. He sat her down next to me and said, “Don’t be afraid of the creepy old man,” and went off with the children to play. I began speaking with her and found out that she was helping him with his business.

She got onto the subject of his personality. “He is so loyal to his mother and daughter and so giving. But he has that scary side. I was getting my daughter from my ex and strapping her into the car seat. Dante was sitting in the car with the window down. My ex used to hit me and he started mouthing off. Before I could even answer him Dante had reached out through the window and pulled his head into the car and was trying to rip it off.

“Who does that? Who attacks without a word, without standing up? Anyways, I got over the seat between them because I could see Dante was going to punch him and I didn’t want any police. I said, ‘You will have to hit me.’ He is so flexible he whipped his foot over me and kicked my ex in the face and knocked him back. My ex was in shock, like he had been attacked by an animal.”

“He was attacked by an animal.”

“But I don’t understand—I mean I’m glad that my ex doesn’t threaten me anymore. He’s terrified of Dante. How does someone get like that?”

“I knew his father. He killed a guy with a knife in a city stairwell. You know what he did after that? He went and got some peanut brittle to share with the kids when he got home. If you were a local narcotics wholesaler, and you pissed off the supplier, or your money wasn’t right, his old man was the guy that came for you in the night. His old man made him fight men when he was a child, made him fight his brothers before he ate. Let him protect you. He’s a decent expression of his father; as civilized as you’re going to get.”

She then asked me about the character in my novels that was based on Dante, “What’s he like?”

“He’s a hunter, who splits his time between playing with children and slaughtering men.”

As I said that we looked out in the yard at Dante—who had just beat the piss out of two big bikers and a redneck the day before—out in the yard with a golden party cone hat on his head and wearing a childlike grin, as he towed a wagon full of children around the yard like that was all he ever wanted out of life. She looked up at me and laughed, “Yeah, that’s about right; my biggest kid.”

One’s hope, having composited such a character, is that, no matter how outrageous their adventures, they, the character, ring true. One thing I just threw in for story grist was Jay being recruited as muscle by an outlaw biker gang. I felt kind of guilty about this, as I could not imagine Dante going for the biker lifestyle. Yes, he rode, but on his own. I threw the biker thing in for a ‘Conan the Barbarian’ element, as I felt like that part of my inspiration had waned, and that outlaw bikers are our current version of the hairy Germanic barbarian. This was in 2010. When I ran into Dante at a family function in 2011, I discovered that he had been recruited as muscle by an outlaw biker gang.

I knew then that I had built a character I could trust.

This piece has raised some questions about the uses of an action hero in science-fiction and fantasy. I will take a stab at an answer with the companion to Writing With Balls. It will be titled Blood Song, and will be up in May.

For more about Dante, the real guy, check out the Harm City Page for the articles Banno’s Boys and, and the ‘Primordial Human Resources Development’ series.

For the Jay Bracken Character, probably the best introduction are the novelettes God of War and By This Axe!, available at our online store. He and his brother show up in the last chapter of the free novelette This Design Is Called Paisley. There are also some free samples that can be read by clicking on Of The Sunset World and Pillagers of Time.