Yesterday's Heroes (Consortium of Chaos Book 1) (59 page)

Overeducated and underemployed,
Elizabeth (“Lizzy”) Gannon lives in Florida with her sister Cassandra Gannon
(who is also an author).  She enjoys comic books,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
soap operas, and Facebook.  She has always been the type of person who
genuinely votes for the bad guys in movies, TV and video games, and usually
can’t
stand
the hero.

******

The inspiration for this particular
story came from the classic 1944 drama
Mrs. Parkington. 
I first saw it
around 2005, and really liked the brief subplot of Augustus’ 4 year long quest
for revenge against the people who chose not to come to his wife’s dinner party,
and thus caused her to get upset and fall down the stairs and suffer a
miscarriage.  (Sorry for the spoiler if you haven’t seen it.  ;- ) )  The point
of those few scenes was that vengeance was wrong, but I was struck by how
awesome
Augustus’ revenge plan was.  Over time, this revenge theme changed and grew,
until it turned into the story you see before you.  How did a dry parlor room
drama about millionaires turn into a story about comic book characters?  Who the
hell knows?  I sure don’t.  Just seemed to fit. 

In the initial conceptualization of
the story, Peter’s character would have been Wyatt’s love interest, who had
died, and was now guiding him back to her.  The only surviving evidence of this
story in the finished text is Wyatt’s briefcase that he’s oddly protective of
in chapter 2.  It would have been a subplot in that version of the story, and I
just never bothered to take that part out.  It was utterly unworkable from a
storyline perspective though, and so Harlot was born.  She proved to be an
interesting person, and the story allowed for more villains to be a part of the
story anyway, so everything worked out for the best. 

Incidentally, in case anyone cares
(which I doubt they do, but too bad because it’s my book), I thought of the
name “Harlot” thanks to the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
episode “
Who Are
You?” 
It’s the name of the color lipstick that Faith wears.  And the last
name “Ferral,” comes from the folk song,
Whiskey in the Jar
.  “Captain
Farrell” is the name of the officer who is chasing the unnamed robber in some
versions.  I preferred the “Ferral” spelling though, as in Latin “
fera
”
is “
wild beast
,” which fit into the running “birds/beasts” theme in the
quotes at the start of each chapter.  The quotes themselves, by the way, all
are modified and edited
Aesop’s Fables
, with the exception of Chapter
28, which is an abridged version of
The Wicked Prince,
a Hans Christian
Andersen fairy tale.

The title of the book is inspired
by two different Irish songs; “
Yesterday’s Men
”, by Ronnie Drew, and a
line about forgotten heroes from the Pogue’s cover of “And
the Band Played
Waltzing Matilda
” by Eric Bogle.  I just liked the sound of it when you
combined them, and thought it fit the themes of the story rather well.

The cover image was designed and
created by me.  I originally conceived it as an image of the duality of the
characters; one half would show the hero, and the other half the villain.  A
sort of “ying and yang” thing.  This cluttered the image though, so the villain
was discarded, and the only hero remained.  Somewhere along the line, I came up
with the idea of simply using the little guy from the men’s room sign, and
putting a cape on him.  This produced an interesting visual, and my sister
Cassandra suggested making it into a road sign.  Since I’ve always liked
roadside iconography, I went with that idea.  A “no” symbol was added to it,
and eventually morphed from a graphic into a spray-paint looking version. 

Time spent on the book, about five
months total; with a few weeks of
actual
writing.  First chapter
written: Chapter 3, the first meeting between Wyatt and the Consortium crew.  When
I started writing the chapter, I had no idea who the people in that room were
going to be, so each new character introduced was a surprise, even to me.  If
you think it’s long now, you should have seen it before.  At one point, that
chapter topped
32 pages
.  Last full chapter written: Chapter 18, the
party scene.

If you enjoyed this book, please
leave a rating on Amazon or “like” it on Facebook or Good Reads or elsewhere. 
It only takes a minute, and I
genuinely
enjoy reading the comments.  If
you
didn’t
enjoy the book… well, don’t bother leaving one.  I’ve already
wasted enough of your valuable time, and the rating process takes hours anyway
and is SUPER difficult to complete.  You just don’t need that kind of
aggravation.  Besides, no one reads those things anyway.  :- )

Please feel free to email me if you
have any questions or comments about the book, series, characters, life in
general or just feel like chatting about Star Turtle books:
[email protected]
. 
I actually do answer all my email, so while I can’t guarantee my answer will
make any sense, you will receive one.  

Thanks for
reading!