Behind the pages of CUSTOM

After each posting of my writing, I plan on giving an inside story on the creation of the work. I always wondered how authors came up with their stories, so I plan on telling you, reader how these stories are forged.

Custom  was born out of watching HBO's The Pacific, while trying to come up with an idea for a flash fiction website submission. At the time, I was trying to publish a short story and not having any success at that, I tried my hand at flash fiction. The idea came suddenly and within a hour the first part was done, after two hours, I had the complete story arch. My plan was to sell Custom as a serial, but no one went for it, so when we opened FWS, this was the natural place for it.

• The Nix are born out of episode of the Pacific were those crabs were everywhere, and mixed with the nightmare of the Warhammer 40,000's Tyranids.

• The concept of the Customized soldier is nothing really new, but I wanted Jamie to be fighting for her survival in different way, not just her life, but the very soil. The name Jamie Jaren comes from...no...you're going to have to google that one.

The .410 Shatter handgun is a semi-real thing, my father talked of buying a Taurus Judge Revolver, and from the damage that it can do, it seemed prefect for dealing death at close range. While the Reaper rifle that fires flechettes is a nod to the Steyr ACR concept rifle from the mid-1980's. Flechettes are something that I would want in my hands during a war, they are nasty and during the 1980's it looked we (USA/NATO) might be going that direction. Well, that didn't happen.

• The hardsuits are a nod to the great cyberpunk Anime epic, Bubblegum Crisis, one of my favorite Anime series. I didn't want the Custom soldiers to be in armor powered suits, been writing too much about them lately
• My concept was for a story arch of the desperate of the situations were you are just hanging on to survival, then in one moment, you just don't frakking care anymore.
• The Jeep was nod to the epic Jeep Unlimited Rubicon and the WWII Willys Jeep that helped us win the war
• Wireless Ridge is a reference to the Falklands War, and Vickers is a nod to the Vickers Machine Gun.
• BTW-Anyone catch the Portal reference in part Three FOB? That took some doing, but it makes me smile every time I read it!
• The Atchisson Auto-Shotgun is the AA-12 in the real world, and I put this in the serial due to watching the Future Weapons Video on the AA-12 and it's steer destructive power left me speechless.