Anderson Becks, the Warrior

I never intended Colonel Anderson Becks to be that important of a character, but he surprised me.

He was "the soldier who spoke at the diner" for the longest time, wanting to take Jessica in like some heavy brute in the movies. All he was there for was to make her run away, a 'heavy' if you will.

Then during early summer, I took a break away from the book. I left it, I put it aside. I think I got as far as the scene where she arrives at the church, and I needed inspiration before I could go on with the project. There is a reason the church is the turning point in the book, because I needed some time away to make the book what I wanted.

There does come a point in projects where you are in such a new place you feel lost. At this point, Jessica had been all over time and the history of the event, the bad guys have spoken, and she was on the run. She had just saved an innocent family, and she ended up at a place where the survivors of the terrible day had huddled together to pray.

It was as good as a place of any to take a break for myself.

So I worked on several other projects, I took some time off, and I read through the book several times before I wanted to commit to finishing. When I came back, I wrote the chapter where the religious leaders in the church helped her figure out the forces behind the events of the day, and then it hit me - she needed to go back.

She has this moment in the church bathroom where she is very reflective, and she is staring into the bathroom mirror just talking to herself. I had always intended for her to go Ellen Ripley on the evil knights holding Azrael, but a thought hit me - she couldn't do this alone. In a way, she told me this, and she was sitting there alone in the church bathroom waiting for an answer from me as the writer. By now she has a little more control over her powers, so she decides to go back and go to the one person who has the power to help her - the Colonel and his men in the diner.

It was a surprising turn for me and Jessica, for the first time she's seeking out help and not going it alone. It is also a chance to introduce those who make the regretful task of war their occupation, the warriors themselves. I wanted this balance, I didn't want the book to be so anti-war that it left no room to honor those who fight them for us, so the Colonel became the second most important character in the book almost immediately. He does play such an important role later where he directly changes the ending, so there is an honoring of the sacrifices these people make.

The book needed this message, and it needed this man as a metaphor with his story.

All of a sudden, the book had an ending, and it had balance through this character. The Colonel took the book on a whirlwind ride by the ending, his contacts and role put Jessica on a completely different path than the dark and brooding beginning. We meet some great characters, the book steps into a grand finale worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, and she realizes what she must do and how she must do it.

Involving him was really Jessica's decision, not mine, and I went with it. These are those magic moments when a book surprises you, and you need to chase them down to see where they go.

Yes, the tone of the second half is more action-adventure than gothic-horror, but again, this is the book I wanted to write. It had to be this way, it felt true to me, and it showed the change that positive action in the face of uncertain adversity and what that could do. Then again, this was the Colonel's doing, he led me down this one possible path, and I enjoyed it so much it became the book.

There is a message here too that kept true to the ideas I wanted to present. It couldn't drag on forever with the dark horror elements, and once our heroine changed, the tone and direction of the story had to as well. If it were to drag on with the dark elements and the hopelessness, the book would not have the meaning I wanted it to have, and the message would be lost. So act two of the book is purposefully a roller-coaster of horror, tension, and action.

There still are some very, very dark parts to this half, and some parts where our heroine becomes a willing tool of evil, betraying her friends for a selfish cause. She lives with this sin, and by the end she realizes the role she has to play, the promises made to her by evil be damned. Things just happen, evil made its bed and she reacts harshly, and she rises to the moment.

And in the final pages the warrior sacrifices, and something wonderful happens. She helps this along by doing the right thing, and it is a very personal, beautiful, and bittersweet moment. That sacrifice honors the warrior, but not the war. Balance is achieved, and the story can end.

She walks away a little wiser, a lot sadder, and with pain in her heart. She knows, however, she has done the right thing, so that makes the pain a little easier to live with every day.