Moby's
Dick - A Tale of a...Tale
By
A.J. Llewellyn
Thank
you Anna for hosting me today!
I've
had a wonderfully happy and successful creative collaboration with
author D.J. Manly. There is a true meeting of the minds between us
and I can hardly stand myself when I get a call from D.J. saying,
"You know, I have this idea..."
Similarly,
D.J. gets these calls from me, too!
I
have another collaboration that is different - a visual one - with
gay porn director John Bruno who has done several covers for me. One
book we worked on, Bad Cops, became webisodes on his
now-defunct Massive Studio offshoot of Falcon Studios. More were
planned, but life has its own ideas sometimes.
Late
last year, John who has now relocated to Michigan, asked me if I
wanted to do another collaboration. He had an idea of a man out in
the ocean rescued by a ship. That was his basic plot. He came up with
the title, Moby's Dick and started to work on the cover.
I
was intrigued and felt this was a job for both me and D.J. and D.J.
loved the idea however as we started to talk the story evolved from
that single line John gave us.
We
both discovered we had a fascination with the story of the doomed
cruise ship, the Costa Concordia. I followed the events
rabidly and became utterly consumed with a sidebar story: the
numerous salvage crews waiting in the waters off the Amalfi Coast of
Italy hoping to land the gig of salvaging the fallen vessel.
Research
is one of my favorite parts of writing. I had no idea what salvage
work actually entailed and once a crew was assigned to the task I
began obsessively researching them and was stunned to learn how many
vessels they have rescued - everything from submarines submerged deep
in the Arctic Ocean to stranded sea mammals affected by oil leakage.
A
story began to emerge and D.J. and I began to work on our whale of a
tale. D.J. too, became immersed in the facts of removing oil safely
from a ship's hull, and the politics involved.
Salvage
crews are the heroes of the modern world.
Beneath
the facade of a sort of romance to the idea of a "doomed"
ship is the true horror it creates. Firstly of course is the loss of
human life.
Secondly,
oil leaks into the ocean, chemicals from the ship begin contaminating
harbors that local towns rely on for their food and water supply.
I
had no idea!
While
the search for bodies takes place, salvage is crucial but must wait.
Waiting
causes more environmental catastrophe.
Oooh!
The angst! As each day of the Costa Concordia's tragedy passed by I
began to talk to people. I'm amazed how kind the experts in the field
of salvage work are.
They
are not vultures waiting to pick at the bones of dead ships.
These
are hard-working men of the ocean who are gone from their families
for months at a time protecting small towns and big seas...
I
loved our characters and I love our story.
At
night, I dreamed of Burke Matthews and the man he rescues from the
ship, Gabriel Bergeron. I could smell the oil, hear the slap of the
waves. This book haunted me because beneath the sand and water was
the knowledge that so many people have died at sea and the stories
are devastating.
John
Bruno, meanwhile fashioned a great cover and we loved it. Then he had
to size it to Silver Publishing's specifications and he felt that his
story credit made the cover too wordy. I happen to disagree but I am
posting both here for the record.
Meanwhile,
I still dream at night of Burke and Gabriel...these guys really got
to me. Here is the blurb for the story:
Burke
Matthews and his wily team of experts on board the salvage cargo
ship, The Brigadoon, have hauled everything from Russian nuclear
submarines to stranded catamarans. After having spent almost two
weeks in the sunny port of Palermo, Italy trying to win the bid to
salvage half a million gallons of oil from a distressed cruise ship
half-sunk off the coast, Burke starts to worry about the trapped fuel
in the ship's hull.
As
families of the missing passengers urge the country's environmental
minister to hold off the salvage as the search for their loved ones
continues, Burke knows with each passing day, hope of life
diminishes. There's another problem too. The Bella Donna has crashed
in the middle of a marine reserve and is on the verge of fatally
contaminating the water that also goes to the main water lines for
the entire Amalfi Coast. It's an environmental disaster waiting to
happen.
Allowed
to drill finally, he is astonished to hear plaintive knocking from an
engine room above. He breaks down the door to find a sick, but
very handsome French Canadian waiter trapped for twelve days. Gabriel
Bergeron is one of the sexiest guys Burke's ever seen...and he soon
learns as he visits the man in a local hospital, one seriously hung
dude...
As
for me and D.J., the collaborations continue. We have a new, twisty
thriller, Haywire coming to Silver Publishing on July 14, a
wonderful, tense and sexy cop drama, Orgasmic Texas Dawn right
after that...
We
look forward to working with John Bruno again soon. I long for a call
from the evil genius saying, "You know, I have this idea..."
D.J.
and I will be waiting...
Until
then here is an excerpt from Moby's Dick, available now from
Silver Publishing.
Burke
Matthews shifted on his surfboard and gazed out to sea. Foamy waves
rolled toward him in perfect sets. The sun suddenly shone, blue sky
poking through the ash-colored cloud cover. Ah... It was the ideal
day to surf and damn it, nobody was out here to drop in on his rides.
He bobbed on a passing wave and sighed. He longed to be part of it
all but the only problem was that he wasn't here to play. He was here
to work. So far, for the third straight day, nothing was going right
and his salvage company was losing money just waiting.
And
waiting...
He stared at the capsized wreck of the $450 million
cruise liner, the Bella Donna. It was eerie looking at the
doomed ship that was so huge it was like a skyscraper lying on its
side. He could see that all the doors to the top flight deck's guest
rooms were closed. The silence, the lack of activity, was unsettling.
Twelve days ago when the ship struck rocks off Salerno on the Amalfi
Coast in southern Italy, he'd seen the images online of the four
thousand passengers climbing over the exposed hull in a human chain,
using fire hoses, bed sheets and their hands to make it to the
lifeboats.
And now, two days of bad weather had turned the
rough seas into an impossible task for Burke and his thirty-five man
crew. He pocketed his satellite phone in his waterproof vest,
awaiting word to begin the long and difficult task of pumping out the
incapacitated ship's half million gallons of diesel and oil.
Even
in his wet suit, Burke was freezing. He lay on his belly and circled
the wreckage of the vessel on his trusty nine-foot pintail. He was
still stunned that almost all the passengers had survived the
collision. Submerged rocks had ripped a three-foot hole in the Bella
Donna's side as she'd set sail late out of Salerno's picturesque
Panino seaport at dusk. Rocks the captain hadn't seen. The
catastrophe had sent the ship listing to the sea within
minutes.
Eighteen people were still missing, presumed dead
from the catastrophe that had rocked the popular Italian seaport and
touched the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world.
Among the missing were seventeen passengers and one crew member, last
seen helping passengers off the ship.
From all accounts, the
French Canadian waiter, Gabriel Bergeron, who'd made his first voyage
with the Bella Donna, had shown incredible bravery in helping
others to safety.
And now, he was among the missing.
Search
and rescue crews had put their lives on the line to secure and scour
the ship. The salvage mission was on hold until deep sea divers could
gain access to the fourth deck, where six bodies of the original
twenty-four missing passengers had been located.
Not all of
the rooms had been searched. Some were fully submerged in water,
making the task dangerous and the possibility of survival for the
people they found negligible. Still, the search would resume once the
weather improved.
In the meantime, there was an environmental
disaster in the making. Two thousand three hundred tons of heavy fuel
and two hundred tons of diesel oil remained on board and would have
to be pumped out.
Burke's British-based salvage company,
Durang, had won the bidding war to retrieve the fuel from the
wreckage. Burke and his crew on the cargo salvage ship,
the Brigadoon, had been in North Africa securing a drilling well
that had come loose during a hurricane.
When disaster struck
the Bella Donna, Burke and his crew had come straight to Italy
and petitioned H.R. Triton, the shipping company that owned the Bella
Donna, as well as Italy's environmental minister, Giovanni Russo.
Signore Russo had heard of Durang's salvage record and hired Burke's
team on the spot.
So far the fuel tanks were still intact.
Burke had informed Signore Russo that the sensors he and his crew had
placed on the ship the previous morning showed that the Bella
Donna had moved nearly five feet overnight.
He'd tried to
put a positive spin on it, that it was possible the ship's vibrations
had caused the slippage as it settled against the reef. However, he
had been honest in his appraisal. He thought she was on her way to
sinking.
Fast.
"As far as we have been able to
gage, the ship is sinking about half a centimeter, or about point one
nine inches an hour," Burke had said.
"This is
important news. The Coast Guard reported something similar. They are
worried about the storms predicted for this afternoon. I'll get back
to you within the hour, Mr. Matthews," the minister had
promised.
Burke believed him.
"In the meantime, if
Marco de Magna contacts you, refer him to me."
"Yes,
sir," Burke had said. "I will." He'd almost
added, with pleasure, but stopped himself.
Please
leave a comment to qualify for a free ebook of Moby's Dick...
For
more information on A.J. check here: www.ajllewellyn.com
For
more information on D.J. check here: www.djmanlyfiction.com
