Fight Through

Foreword

Well I am in a decidedly different place now to the one I was in back in 2002 when I first put pen to paper to scribble down the opening lines of ‘Stand To’ on the back of a blank antecedents form.

I was sat in the Police Room in the basement of the ILCC, Inner London Crown Court. It was bitterly cold outside, the cold and damp were having an adverse effect on my knees which had taken a beating when I was an infantryman, running up Welsh mountains carrying my own weight on my back. They ached eight months out of twelve, they were certainly aching that day and I had a cold. Hell, everybody had a cold, it was January in England.

Eleven years on and I’m not a copper any more, I did my thirty but I’m still working on the same book, just a different volume and four hundred and fifty thousand words further along with it.

It is 92° outside and my knees are fine these days as it is always summer here.

The first two books were something of a learning curve and I learned a few things about who likes what, and who does not.

Teachers concentrate on paragraph structure and syntax whereas their former pupils are happy just to read an entertaining story.

You may recall the foreword in volumes one and two about my reasons for writing this yarn? Well I did not know how the story would be greeted across the water in America. It is a global story and the USA shares the stage rather than being a one man band as she is in so many military fiction tales.

Helpful suggestions have been sent my way that I carry out a re-write for the American market with the Coldstream Guards becoming a US infantry regiment and HMS Hood as the US ____ have also included a wish that I would cease misspelling so many words.

Well if I did re-write the book somewhere down the line then I certainly would not keep the title in fact it would be an entirely different book.

I have made some good friends in America over the years and they come from various and diverse backgrounds, just like everyone else. They tend to come from law enforcement, the military and the film industry. They are capable, professional and heroic as are their opposite numbers in other countries and they have the same motivations and drives as their opposite numbers. This series however, Armageddon’s Song, is not about America saving the world it is a team effort that also shows the other guys viewpoints on occasion, and it is not full of misspellings either, it is written in English, not American, and it is staying that way.

When I started writing this tale I had an idea of what should happen, where it should happen and how it should end. I did not aim to write a standard 80,000 word novel I aimed to write a detailed story which people would enjoy. I just hoped it would reach 80,000 words.

My style of writing is to imagine a course of events and rough it out. For example, the cruise missile attack on London started off as less than one page, 321 words, simply that of Janet in her office receiving a summons to meet the of battalion wives who are on the death message rota, accompanying the Padre to break the bad news to wives who have become widows overnight. I added detail and conversation. What came next was the ‘how’ of the missiles arriving, which included the Spetznaz member carrying out ‘CTR’, a close target reconnaissance of Canary Wharf. Janet’s commute to work came next along with the collision with the spy, and finally the missiles effects on Canvey Island, the result of their arrival at Canary Wharf and what effect this had on Janet. That was 14,011 words.

It is the detail which takes time to add and the description which fills the pages.

Volume 1 was not 80,000 words, it was 150,000 words.

By the time I was a further 50,000 words along into volume 2 I was fairly certain I could bring in the story in three volumes but after six months writing it was clear the European war was only going to be done and dusted inside of three books and there was still China to address in full.

The physical realities of how many pages can actually be fitted in a 4’x6” paperback book became apparent. The answer is, less than volume 1. I had to set my paper size up to 6” x 9”, although the Easy Reader editions require 7” x 10” for the larger print.

Four volumes and not three will be required to finish this tale, without scrimping on the detail. It is no longer a trilogy, but now a four part series.

I will begin the final volume, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ the day after I publish this volume, but the family, including the lively two year son, need a holiday as much as I do. All work and no play makes for dull prose.

For those posting grumbles about not realising volume 1 was not the whole story, I apologise, but you should go back and read the Product Description again, the bit that says ‘Stand-To' is the first book …. . The ‘Volume 1’ in gold lettering on the front cover is also a bit of a giveaway.

Volume 3 is a deal busier than the other volumes, indeed for some 200+ pages it felt a little as if I was writing ‘24’ as there is so much that is going on simultaneously in different international time zones on different parts of the planet as various threads throughout the previous two volumes come together.

Writing the operation orders for policing Europe’s largest Latin American Carnival was easy in comparison, and markedly less than the 490,000 words, 1360 pages this tale has so far taken to tell.

I hope I cannot be accused of short-changing anyone.

Andy Farman.