Biggles: A Literary Adventurer (Melissa Robbins)

Movie still from Biggles:Adventures in Time

One of my favorite literary characters is Major James Bigglesworth aka Biggles.  I first discovered him in a campy 80’s movie, Biggles:  Adventures in Time when I was a kid.  I loved the movie then and since it came out the same time as Top Gun, it only fueled my pilot obsession.  I have since watched it as an adult and cringed, but who can resist a pilot? The first time I saw the movie, I had no idea that Biggles was a literary character.  The English books weren’t found on my Maryland library shelves.  With the joy of the Internet, I now have five Biggles books, three are 1940’s editions. 

Biggles was created by WW1 pilot, Captain WE Johns.  Through many, many books (101), Biggles has flown in both world wars for the Royal Air Force and any time a flyer is needed to save the day (secret air service and air police).  Many of the original stories were first published in flying magazines in the 30’s, but became so popular, they were published in book form too.      

  In every book, Biggles gets himself and his friends in some crazy and sometimes hilarious situations.  With the ones I’ve read, the bad guys are German or sympathizers, with one in particular, Biggles’ nemesis, Erick Von Stalhein.  The Germans really hate Biggles since in every book he steals one of their planes (or car or motorcycle) and uses it against them.  He’s quite fluent in German.  If Biggles isn’t rescuing his mates, they’re rescuing him!  “Biggles is facing an execution.  Let’s torpedo the sub he’s on.”

Now this being a romance blog, many of you may be wondering does Biggles breaks women’s hearts.  It’s quite the opposite.  Biggles fell madly in love with a French girl, but she turned out to be a German spy and her actions almost killed his entire squadron.  Still in love with her, he never loves again.   

Even in the most harrowing situations, there’s humor. I still laugh out loud when Biggles, Ginger, and Algy are naming their spy planes in Biggles in the Baltic.  If the scene wasn’t three pages long, I would post it here.  They call themselves the Boomerang Squadron, because a boomerang whirls out, strikes, and then whirls back home again.  This causes them to give their planes Australian names and after much debate Dingo, Didgeree-du, Willie-Willie, and Duck-billed Platypus are chosen. Sadly, the four planes don’t survive to the end of the book, but Biggles and Company destroying a plane or four is par for the course for them. 

My pilot character Connor (Cheeky Pilot) started reading the books as a teenager.  He joins the RAF because of Biggles. Connor's sister, Wren receives a Biggles book as a gift from her boyfriend and they use it to send coded messages to each other.  

This blog post made me realize that sometimes when we like a literary character that we also have to consider the supporting cast.  They give us a glimpse of how our hero reacts to things.  Where would Harry Potter be without Hermoine and Ron?  

Imagination: Fueling children and writers for centuries (Melissa Robbins)

At our writing retreat, I shared how imaginative my ten year old daughter is.  I still want to create a picture book of her story about a little girl and her pet pig living in a Paris hotel even if it's just for her.  

I too grew up with an active imagination.  I was a shy kid and played with my made-up friends more than with real kids.  A child of the 80's, naturally my first story I wrote down involved a winged unicorn with a rainbow mane.  It was 'published' in my fourth grade class complete with illustrations by yours truly.  I still have it.  It's awful.  

Part of my extraordinary imagination came from hours spent reading.  My parents took me to the local library and an amazing used bookstore all the time.  Easy to get lost in your imagination when the bookstore had so many shelves, it was like a maze.  

Books allowed me to travel to far off places.  I loved books about dragons, magically lands, and pirates.  My dad was a sailor so that fueled my pirate obsession.  My next story (written when I was a young teenager) was about a girl who went sailing with her dad, but a freak storm appeared.  She got hit with the boom and fell over board.  When she woke up, she was on a pirate ship in the 1700's.  That story is unfinished due to lack of GMC I would later (a lot later) learn I needed.  

From dragons to pirates, I drifted to mysteries, borrowing my mother's copy of Murder on the Orient Express by the Queen of Mysteries, Agatha Christie and I've been hooked ever since.  

I bet I got some of my creativeness from my grandfather.  That man was an amazing storyteller.  Between his childhood stories and WW2 ones, I still wonder how much of them were made up and which ones were true.  Sometimes, truth can be just as amazing as fiction.  

Whatever the case, I have to write and create stories.  I can't help it.  It must be in my blood or was it my environment?  That would be an interesting study of writers.  Are you a writer because of you, your environment, or both?    

My Favorite Things (cue Julie Andrews)

My grandkids look at me as if I've lost my mind when I tell them to take care of their books, because books are their friends.  For me, growing up as an only child, books were my friends, especially when all the other kids were busy with something else.  Books opened up the world around me, whether fiction or non-fiction or even encyclopedias.  Is it a wonder I started wearing glasses in second grade, after reading books by nightlight?

It was no accident in later years that when I had an answer or a problem that I would go out and search for self-help books.  From being a better person and uncluttering my house to pregnancy and child-raising and everything in between, I had a book on it.  So when I came to the point of deciding that I wanted to be a writer, it was books that I turned to.

I still have one bookshelf filled with writing how-to books that contains one book that actually put me on the road: You Can Write a Romance...and Get It Published! by Yvonne MacManus.  That's where I found information on Romance Writers of America and the date of an upcoming National Conference.  I joined immediately, rented a car, and purchased plane tickets...all in one day.  That day changed my life.

Although You Can Write a Romance... was the book that put me on the path to--well, not stardom, by any means, but learning and happiness and new friends and more--it was only the beginning.  I discovered Debra Dixon's Goal, Motivation & Conflict, boosting my writing skill to a new level.  I met and became friends with author Elizabeth Sinclair, who penned The Dreaded Synopsis (A Writing and Plotting Guide), and have nearly worn off the cover.  I've not only used it for writing a synopsis, but for plotting, too.  The one book that is always within arm's reach is The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale.  It's basically a thesaurus, but contains only synonyms, and is nearly three inches thick.  I'm on my third copy.  The first two copies were only well-worn, but worn out.

But the best thing about all of this is not the books, but the people I've met along the journey.  There are my WARA friends and the Ditzy Chix, a group of 10-12 authors that came together in the summer of 2001 to share the ups and downs of being writers.  My friend Kathie DeNosky has always been my guide and inspiration, keeping me from throwing in the towel, many times.  In fact, we became best of friends at that first RWA conference in 1996 in Dallas, Texas.  We still laugh about the day the lightbulb lit over our heads when we realized at the same time what the difference was between Harlequin Temptation and Silhouette (now Harlequin) Desire.  The other who makes up our triad of craziness is Kristi Gold, who makes me laugh and makes me think.  Listening to one of our three-way phone calls as we brainstorm would leave most people dazed and confused.  But even with the three of us talking at once, we understand and help each other, whether it's brainstorming or sharing the trials and joys of life.

So that's it.  Books, books, and friends, none of which I could live without and am eternally grateful to each and every one.  Without them, I'd be sitting in a corner, gibbering senseless stories to myself.  Now I get to share that gibbering with many, many more.  What could be better?

Are We What We Read? by J Vincent

After pondering what book helped me most as a writer or a person I drew a blank. Not exactly a blank, just not a SINGLE book but many. I’m not sure what stories were read to me as a child, perhaps none were since I was number three and my mother not only had all the household chores but milking and feeding cattle, working in fields etc. But a love of reading was instilled and there were always books and magazines available.

I remember my eighth grade teacher opening the world to me by bringing a different collection of books from the public library to our small rural school each month. At about the same time I discovered my father’s stash of western books and magazines with serial stories and short stories. I have never figured out why he thought we needed to be protected from them as I don’t recall anything graphic or lurid. I found excitement and adventure and another whole world for my imagination.

In high school I devoured Reader’s Digest Condensed books. They were eagerly awaited at our home and we vied for turns at them. Today I marvel at how well those books were abridged and at what a broad spectrum of literature they offered. There were classics and modern tales like Pearle Buck’s The Good Earth and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Romances, more specifically historical and regencies which I write, didn’t come my way until I was busy raising a family. The couple of hundred that my sister loaned me could aptly be termed as Reese said, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. But they too, opened a new world to my imagination. Not only opened it but fostered characters and story lines which resulted in my turning to writing and being published.

Which set of books helped me most? All taught me vocabulary and grammar, even indirectly what not to do. How to plot and build suspense were in them too, as well as character development. All contributed to a life long and continuing hunger for the written word in fiction and nonfiction. So I quote Reese who said it very well a couple of days ago, “So today if you ask what books influenced me, I’d have to say ALL OF THEM. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I learn something from all of them.”