Thank you for hosting me today, Pauline.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk with your readers about one of my favorite topics: the Big Damn Hero.
I’ve always been fascinated by the Big Damn Hero, starting with my first Errol Flynn film on the late show one Saturday night when I was a youngster. Something about the swaggering, swashbuckling, cocky and charming rascal just appeals to me. When I first started creating the characters who today populate SOVRAN’S PAWN, the first book in THE BLACK WING CHRONICLES, women were objects to be rescued by the Big Damn Hero in science fiction. We were all so excited to see the character of Ripley emerge in Alien. But before I had Ripley for a role model, I knew I wanted a strong, kick-butt female in my lead, but there really weren’t any characters for inspiration… not female characters at any rate and not of the type I had in mind.
When Bo first emerged on the scene, she was originally intended to be my version of a Han Solo type of character. Yes, she was originally a male character. She was always destined to be a Big Damn Hero. Drawing from two of my favorite characters in science fiction at the time, Bo was equal parts Han Solo and Captain Kirk, shrewd, cocky and larger-than-life, military, by-the-book, and not above rewriting the book to suit herself.
SOVRAN’S PAWN was originally part of her back story, and not intended to be published. An important part of the hero’s story is the evolution from callow youth to larger-than-life. By starting with her fall from grace, I had to de-evolve my kick-butt heroine into an ingénue and look at the factors in her life which contributed to her becoming “the Scourge of the Seventh Sector” by the last book in the series.
I invite you to join me in Bo’s journey through THE BLACK WING CHRONICLES, starting with SOVRAN’S PAWN. Let’s see what takes an idealistic young girl, safe in her well-ordered little world, to a woman with the courage and integrity to take on the Sovrans themselves for the sake of her people.
United by extortion, divided by duty, someone wants them both dead. They want each other. The catch is, nothing is what it seems, including them.
BO BARRON is the pawn in two Sovrans’ struggle for power. As the Chief of Barron Clan she commands the Black Wing, a strategic asset crucial to the balance of power in a Commonwealth in contention. That’s the reason she was falsely convicted of treason and sentenced to be executed. Instead of letting her meekly go to her death, Bo’s people risk all-out war by breaking her out and smuggling her into hiding. It’s what they do. They’re pirates at heart.
But if she can’t be killed, she can be manipulated. How? By kidnapping her father. If Bo wants him back she has to take on a false name and steal the schematics for a phase weapon being auctioned off to the Sub-socia at a Five Point tournament.
BLADE DEVON knows all about false names. He has more than his share. As Darien Roarke, he’s a well-known Five-Point player. If Blade is willing to use his alter ego to retrieve those schematics, the Inner Circle is willing to overlook the fact that he’s technically a deserter.
A botched assassination under the guise of a bar brawl leaves Bo blind and Blade wondering if there isn’t more to this job than he was led to believe. Never able to resist playing the hero, Blade tends her injuries and delves deeper into the intrigue only to find this mission isn’t about a weapon at all.
The catch is, no one and nothing are what they seem…
JC Cassels, a native of Tampa, Florida, traces her lifelong fascination with SF/Adventure to watching Star Trek on a tiny black and white portable television aboard the family boat as a child. The Space Opera trend that followed the release of Star Wars fed an obsessive need for swashbuckling adventure set in deep space. Today, JC feeds that need by writing her own adventures, heavily inspired by 1960’s television shows like Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Wild Wild West and fueled by Firefly reruns. When not writing in her haunted hospital, JC lives with her husband, three children, five dogs, twenty chickens and a horse in a century-old house in a tiny rural community, and enjoys spending her free time sewing, camping, and heckling theoretical physicists on the Science Channel.
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Giveaway:
One lucky reader commenting on this post will be chosen at random for a FREE e-book copy of SOVRAN’S PAWN.
Many thanks for visiting today JC! The book sounds most fascinating! Okay, dear readers, who are your favorite big heros and heroines in movies or books? Let the commenting (and maybe winning!) begin!
