Biggles flies in the face of realism (2): The challenge of telling it as it was and still keeping readers!

In a recent post I had a bit of a rant about about Biggles and his legacy. You can read it here: https://malhavardwriter.blogspot.com/2020/04/biggles-fliesin-face-of-realism.html.

I think some people took it the wrong way. They thought I was getting at W.E.John's legendary creation. I really wasn't. I love Biggles, he, Ginger and Algy WERE my childhood. I read and re-read his books. It was what fired my interest in aviation in general and WW1 aviation in particular.

I know from the responses to my post that I was not alone in this!

No, I didn't come to bury Biggles, but I didn't come to praise him either! My issue was with the focus on fighters and fighter aces at the expense of the poor guys who really were the heroes: the reconnaissance crews and the artillery spotters, particularly in fiction.

Of course, I understand the attraction of the ace. People want excitement, they want the thrill. Hell, I revere Voss and Josef Jacobs from WW1 and 'Pat' Pattle from WW2 (if you haven't heard of the latter, shame on you. If you think Johnny Johnson was the highest scoring RAF pilot of WW2 you're wrong, but that's another topic). I have my own fighter pilot book on its way, set during 'Black September' 1918 (watch out for Three Brothers later this year). I just wanted to do something different; I wanted to tell the story of the poor sods in the BE2s, RE8s and big Acks.

And there's the problem. Why it's taken me six long years of drafting, re-drafting and re-thinking before I'm ready to launch it onto the world. Because it's bloody hard to do and still keep readers! One of my original respondents to my blog said that they had tried to write a novel about reconnaissance squadrons too but had given up after a few chapters because they didn't know how to sustain it.

I understand that feeling.

I think I have managed it. I've set my book, Eleven Days, in the most dramatic and intense part of the air war, Bloody April, over the skies of Arras. I've come up with what I hope are strong characters and a story arc that will keep the reader interested.

Even doing this I've hesitated to launch it on an unprepared readership used to Biggles and the books of Derek Robinson (someone else whose books I admire). I have felt the need for an introduction to the style.

A sort of lead-in.

An Eleven Days Lite if you like.

It was why I wrote Leviathan. It's about another BE2 pilot. In fact it's just about one night in his life, lost and scared as he hunts Zeppelins over southern England in October 1916. It shares a lot of the characteristics of Eleven Days; the intensity of the experience, the inexperience, the self-doubts, worries, thoughts that, for many, were the pilot's only companions.

I hope I get a readership. Not so much for me, even though of course that would be nice, but to do justice to the largely unsung heroes and to tell it how it really was.

Fingers crossed!

Leviathan will be published on 1st June.

I've made a video to accompany the launch. Here's a link: https://youtu.be/ugeVTwnaI2k