Military and the Arts

Kayelle Allen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:38:00 +0000

I grew up in a family where military service was considered a great honor. My father had been in the Army at Panama when the canal was under construction, and contracted malaria while there. He was discharged early due to medical reasons. My oldest sister spent four years in the Air Force, my niece was in the color guard in the Navy JROTC, and I spent four years in the Navy (where I met Mr. Right, who was also active duty USN). Both our sons were in Air Force JROTC and one went on to active duty as a linguistic cryptologist in Arabic.

Kyrenie Firestorm Raging Glory

The other thing our family treasured was art. My mother created paintings under the name Al Terego (alter ego), and her work was sold across the country. My talent wedged itself into writing, although I’ve been told I draw really good stick figures. My husband loves art as well, and the house has paintings and drawings by him and my late mother. I also have posters of art by my oldest son, Jamin Allen.

The picture here, Kyrenie Firestorm Raging Glory came in at fourth place in the 2009 Preditors and Editors’ Reader’s Poll under the Artwork category. He had three pieces entered, and all three placed in the top ten!

The scene is from my website, and depicts a local “firestorm” on the planet Kyrenie. I write Science Fiction Romance, and in order to make the books more “real” to the readers, I created an extensive website to feature places from my books.

My site says it features Art, SciFi, Romance, and Erotica. In support of the Arts, I host galleries on my site for the various cover artists and illustrators from my books. Anne Cain has Yutai Art, and is named as a character in Alitus, Tales of the Chosen. Laura Givens’ gallery is Dark Neon, and she is L Givens in the book Jawk, Tales of the Chosen. In an ironic twist, Laura did all three of the covers for the Tales of the Chosen series, Wulf, Alitus, and Jawk, but she is mentioned in the upcoming book Surrender Trust, which will likely have a cover by Anne Cain.

The gallery for my son Jamin, which, spelled backward, is Nimaj, was then blended with the word imagination to create Nimajination. An art college student turned hard-working married man, his art career is part time right now. He does find time to do work for me. Now if only I could afford to hire him as a full-time artist… ah, someday.

The latest gallery is by Amy Harlib, who illustrated the first version of The Last Vhalgenn. The short story was later compiled with others from the ezine Lorelei Signal, edited by Carol Hightshoe. The anthology went on to final for an EPPIE in Fantasy in 2008. The story was later released as a standalone by Shadowfire Press, and will be released in audiobook format at AudioLark on March 24th of this year.

As fate would have it, the tale of the female warrior Raik, who risks all to protect her country and king, is being released one day after another book of mine comes out from Loose Id, on March 23rd. At the Mercy of Her Pleasure also features a military heroine, Captain NarrAy Jorlan.

Truly, military and the Arts are still mixed in my family, and quite healthy after two generations. I can’t wait to see what my grandchildren do with their heritage.

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

lisapietsch — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:56:30 +0000

I know what it says at the beginning of the book. All the characters and events are purely fiction, blah, blah, blah.

As I was tweeting with an ex Navy friend the other day, we realized we both had the same problem:

Nobody believes the true stories and we have no choice but to fictionalize them!

Let me let you in on a little secret: I’ve met so many characters in my nineteen years (eight active duty and eleven as a military wife) that I just have to put some of them into books.

How can I not?

There was that corporal in the Royal Air Force, that Buck Sergeant from South Carolina, the good old boy from Virginia, the trust fund baby from Texas, the Fratalian from Maine, the farm boy from Kansas, the cowboy from South Dakota…and that’s just the first four years!

The fact is, we’ve met more characters than we can count – and likely had just as many adventures with those characters.

When we put the characters and adventures on the page with a plot, a few hooks and some tension, they make for great fiction but we can never share the truth.

My story “The Path to Freedom” was reviewed once by a reviewer who found only one aspect of the story completely unbelievable – the idea of a good looking woman getting a free drink from a Las Vegas bartender just to sit at the bar. The premise of the overweight cop being sent to a top secret CIA training camp in the Nevada desert wasn’t questionable at all. It was that free margarita that made the reviewer call “bulls***”.

They also had a bit of a problem with so many good looking guys in the story but I chalk that up to their never being posted on a fire team with three Air Force cops with good haircuts who run with forty plus pounds of gear and guns all day.

This is why I have to write fiction – nobody believes the truth.

Besides, who wouldn’t want to romance the characters I’ve met?

Romance Roll Call » Navy

Military and the Arts

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction