Living Dangerously: Blood Ocean Primer (2 of 3): Setting and Characters

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Blood Ocean Primer (2 of 3): Setting and Characters

As promised, here is your second primer for Blood Ocean. If you haven't read the first one, which discusses the Pali Boys, you can find it here.

Why set this in the Pacific Ocean? Why not the Atlantic or Mediterranean? The answer to that lies with the plague. The very nature of the plague is that only people with O Neg blood survive. It just so happens that more Asians have Oneg blood than most other races, so it seemed a good choice to place the setting aboard a floating city in the Pacific Ocean. Also, since I've traveled extensively throughout Asia, I could write about many of the peoples and their microcosmic cultures with a sense of understanding.

Link to Book

Here's what I used in my initial pitch:

SETTING: Nami No Toshi.
Definition. City on the Waves (Japanese). Created by survivors of the Oneg plague off the coast of California. At the core of NNT is the Freedom Ship. Initially idealized by American President Richard Nixon, this ten story floating city, four times the size of the Queen Mary, was created by the Mitsubishi Corporation to support natural disasters. NNT was quickly overrun by those attempting to escape the violence and the gangs operating in the aftermath of the plague. Little is left to identify it as it once was. Now, more than a thousand ships, submarines and barges have been attached to NNT. The original ship is governed like a Japanese corporation (called Corpers), but all other areas and places aboard the other vessels have set their own governments and ways to survive. Other places are usually aligned by economics, and or ethnicity. They include, but are not limited to:

Corpers – The remnants of the Mitsubishi Corporation who live in the Freedom Ship. They have a dirigible that can travel from the city to shore. They also have computers and other sophisticated machinery, powered by nuclear reactor.

Saru No Kyuden (Japanese) – Monkey House (run by the Corpers).

Boxers (Chinese) – Fists of Righteous Harmony, or Boxers (from the Rebellion of 1898).

Taeyang-ui Sallam (Korean) – People of the Sun.

Sky Winkers – Satellite Worshippers. Scientists from all walks of life who are actually recording information blinked from a pair of satellites.

Water Dogs - Those who choose to live beneath the city. They control the water, and everything outside the Corpers fish bins. If you fall in, you are ransomed. If your family can’t pay, you are bait for the bigger fish. They trade in trash, fuel, and anything of value. If it floats or sinks, they eventually get it.

Mga Taos (Filipino) – The People are monkey worshipers. Most of the time they just follow monkey-backs around.

He-Shes - Multi-ethnic group of cross-dressers

Vitamin-Vs -The crew of a disabled Russian sub who spend their days distilling vodka

Los Tiburones (Spanish) – The Sharks. The drug dealers of the city.

The Real People – Multi-ethnic (non-Asian) group of North Americans.

Pali Boys (Hawaiian) - Young men who live on the edge, and do the most dangerous things as homage to their warrior ancestors and King Kamehameha’s defeat of the enemy armies at Pali Point, Hawaii.

One of the things I love about books like these are the various and myriad characters. Anyone who has read Velvet Dogma will know this, especially with the Day Eaters and the Ack Acks. Maybe it comes from Watching and loving Warriors as a kid. Or maybe it's all the other books I grew up reading, such as Robert Adams' Horseclans books or any of the Conan books (Yes, I said Conan), or any number of Fantasy books filled with interesting groups and characters. These sorts of creations provide depth to the world building.

http://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Dogma-ebook/dp/B005KT0MJK

I have links to brick and mortar and online stores in Estonia, Czech Republic, Romania, India, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, Germany, England, United States, United Kingdom and many more. I have world wide links with free shipping. I have links to book clubs. I have links to your favorite store.

Note that I've left the links in the event you might want to cut and past this list or a portion of it and share it with your friends (hint hint).

Also, if you have a link I don't have or know of a place that's carrying it, please shoot me the information.

As on Pali Boy to another - Shaka Shaka!

Book Groups

Shelfari Link - http://www.shelfari.com/books/24218226/Blood-Ocean-%28Afterblight-Chronicles%29

Library Thing Link – http://www.librarything.com/work/11806825

Goodreads Link - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12318005-blood-ocean

Brick and Mortar Bookstores (Note that all of these stores have online ordering options)

Australia – Angus & Roberston - http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/by/weston-ochse/format/Paperback/

Australia – Abbey’s - http://www.abbeys.com.au/book/blood-ocean-book-9781907992865.do

Belgium, Europe, Ireland, Netherlands, and U.K. – Waterstones - http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/weston+ochse/blood+ocean/8689794/

Canada – Indigo – Chapters – Coles - http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Blood-Ocean-Weston-Ochse/9781907992872-item.html

England – Blackwells - http://tinyurl.com/88fb2n9

England – Foyles - http://tinyurl.com/7uyet7k

England – WH Smith - http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=9781907992865