For the past few weeks, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for my next big novel project. One of the ways I’ve been doing this is to by trawling tvtropes and putting together a mashup of the story tropes I’d like to play with.
By far, the one that’s struck me the most is Fighting for a Homeland. This is basically when a band of displaced warriors is wandering the Earth, trying to find their own promised land. There are a lot of examples of this on the tropes page, but the coolest one is probably this from real life:
The first Czech legion, after World War one. Their country was then merely a province of Austria-Hungary, who started the war and teamed up with the Germans. The Czechs had very little reason to fight for them, and surrendered to the opposing Russians whenever they could. Through a lot of political scheming, the Russians were convinced to raise a Czech legion of 60,000 men to fight against the Austrians.
Then the Revolution broke out, and with the peace treaty between Russia and Austria, and the vicious warfare and politicking in Russia, they would not get their goal, an independent Czechia, so they turned to the western allies. They could not leave the country through the western side, so the allies chose to rendezvous with them in the port of Vladivostok, on the other side of Russia.
They crossed the country in three years, using the railways that they hijacked, joined with the Russian White Army (anti-communists) and the allies, stole the Tsar’s gold, traded it for free passage to Vladivostok with the advancing reds when they lost, and safely sailed home, to the newly founded country of Czechoslovakia.
Isn’t that friggin awesome? What’s even cooler is that I might have ancestors who fought in the legion. My great grandfather emmigrated from Moravia right around that time, perhaps a little before. Man, if I ever write a historical novel…
But yeah, the trope almost perfectly characterizes Danica and her band of mercenaries, who feature prominently in Bringing Stella Home. Their homeworld, Tajjur V, was fighting for independence right before the Hameji conquests began, and the New Gaian Empire put down the rebellion rather forcibly. Later, when the system fell to the Hameji, their homeworld was bombarded and slagged into oblivion, leaving them with nowhere to call their own.
Long story short, the story of the Czech Legions and their epic journey across Siberia has totally inspired me for this next novel. I’m going to make Roman (Danica’s NCO) a major viewpoint character, bring back the old mercenary team, throw in a few new ones (including a character from Desert Stars)…man, it’s going to be AWESOME!
In other news, “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” are both available for free from Diesel Ebooks. Genesis Earth is also up there too, so if you feel inclined to post a review, I would certainly appreciate it!
Also, if you REALLY want to help, drop by the Amazon pages for “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” and fill out the little form where it says “tell us about a lower price.” I’m trying to get Amazon to offer my short stories for free, but the only way to do that is to make it free somewhere else and get Amazon to price match.
Hopefully, by making them free it will get me more exposure and drive more interest in the novels. Moses Siregar did a guest post on that just this morning.
Also, I think I’ve found a new template that might work well for this blog. What do you think? Obviously, I would tweak the background and header (and possibly the color scheme as well). The main thing is that it has multiple sidebars, which will make more room for my books. But if you have a better suggestion, please let me know.
You should keep the picture of the horse in your template. Just a suggestion.
Only if it’s a space horse. 🙂
Let me get this straight. The Chzech legion was formed at the end of WWI around 1919. They had some adventures as they wonderd around Russia for three years on their way to Vladivostok. Then they had more adventures until the end of WWII when the returned to their newly formed country of Chzechoslovakia.
They were freedom fighters who defected from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Entente in the hopes of achieving independence for their ethnic homeland, Moravia / Bohemia / Slovakia. Their unit was based out of Rusisia; however, when the Bolshevik Revolution happened, they found themselves trapped deep inside hostile territory as Trotsky and the Red Army decided not to let them join up with the West.
During the civil war, the Czech Legion occupied some territory in Russia and fought alongside the White Army, hoping to win passage to the West. British, French, and American forces entered Russia from the Baltic regions in the hopes of helping them fight their way through to some of the ports out there, but that didn’t work, so the legion decided to work their way back through Siberia and Vladivostok, which was occupied by the Japanese.
Eventually, it became clear that the Red Army was going to win. When that happened, the Czech Legion struck a deal whereby they gave the Bolsheviks the Czar’s gold (which they somehow acquired during their military campaigns) in exchange for passage to Vladivostok–which was all they really wanted since the beginning. They sailed out across the Pacific, landed in the US, and from there headed to their home country, which by now had achieved its independence and was known as Czechoslovakia (this was before Hitler annexed it, I assume).