E.S. Raye

I often struggle with coming up with blog topics, so I’m constantly on the hunt for interesting ideas. This week’s comes from a suggestion I found on Goodreads: Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

The path to the idea that sparked Shallow Trenches/Open Skies is far from direct, and somewhat interesting–at least, it is to me.

Delilah and The Cobalt Fist

Like much of my writing, the initial tinder on which I build what would become this fire, was the story idea that first inspired me to start writing fiction: my World War II superhero, The Cobalt Fist.

When that idea first occurred to me, I fell face-first into the world-building. It was a huge sandbox that I not only got to play in, but got to define the edges of in any way I wanted.

I knew from the beginning that my superhero would be joining a fictitious unit in the US Army, and I needed to build that unit from the ground up. One of the initial ideas was for an older officer to run the unit, and act as a mentor. I knew I wanted to feature more diverse characters than was generally found in the army in the 1940s, so I needed a commanding officer that was more progressive than his peers in that regard.

This eventually became Captain Pyke (named for the captain of the Enterprise years before Strange New Worlds first came out).

Another of my early ideas was to give The Cobalt Fist a unique, sci-fi weapon to carry into the war. Thus, Delilah the ray-gun was born.

(If you’ve been around for a minute, you may recognize Delilah from Gas Giant Gambit. It is the same weapon, and it will appear again when I eventually get to The Cobalt Fist.)

I needed a backstory for Delilah, and lost in the sauce of world building, I wrote one.

World War I and The Red Baron

Decades after the first world war ended, a story popped up, allegedly told by one of the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen’s wingmen. He told of Richthofen engaging and ultimately shooting down a strange, saucer-shaped aircraft over Belgium in the spring of 1917.

As a kid, fuelled by episodes of The X Files, I was obsessed with aliens and UFOs, so I have been familiar with this myth for some time. It felt like a natural fit for both Captain Pyke and Delilah.

Pyke quickly became a member of a strike team tasked with retrieving anything of value from the crash, and Delilah became the ultimate end result of that research effort.

It was a rough and vague idea, but since it wan’t the focus of the story I was trying to tell, it was plenty for my purposes.

Why Now?

When it came time to start considering what my next novel after Gas Giant Gambit would be, I immediately thought returning to The Cobalt Fist. It was, after all, the project I had abandoned to write Gas Giant Gambit.

And I did return to outlining the series. I even got up to book four or five out of seven.

But I’m still a new writer, and I want The Cobalt Fist to be a masterpiece–my magnum opus. The stories I want to tell feel important–moreso every day. But I don’t feel like I’m ready yet as a writer, nor do I feel like I have built my audience enough.

So, I’ve decided to pause that story once again.

But at the same time, I didn’t want to stray too far from it either. That suggested a path forward: Pyke’s story.

Refining that original World War I tale would help me achieve a few goals at once: improve my writing skills, playing in the sandbox I had so much fun creating, practice writing a brand of military sci-fi I want to perfect with The Cobalt Fist, and, if its successful, build my audience of readers further.

Add in themes of overcoming xenophobia and hatred, ideas I think are becoming more and more important in our contemporary world, and it felt like a logical choice.

Shallow Trenches/Open Skies

A lot has changed from that rough idea. Not least of which is Captain Pyke, himself. With the premiere and popularity of the new Star Trek series I felt it was a good idea to change his name, so now he is Bernard Behr, or “Griz” to his friends and family.

But the basics of my original backstory remain. This plot will make Griz the man he’ll need to be when the second world war breaks out years later, positioning him to act as mentor to a superhero turned soldier. And although Delilah will not appear in this book, readers will get a peek at where the technology came from, and how it ended up in the hands of the United States government. I’m also trying my hand at a little romantic subplot, so that’s fun!

I am currently working on the first draft of Shallow Trenches/Open Skies, and hope to have it finished enough to offer to my publisher by the middle of 2026. Wish me luck!