B-17 PIlot over Europe during World War II

Image used with the kind permission of the Arizona Wing of the Comemorative Air Force, Falcon Field, Mesa, Arizona (www.azcaf.org).

Alert readers will note a change in this blog’s name: since the putative trilogy of novels about flier Otto Kerchner and his friends is going to turn out more like a five-book series, I changed the title to reflect that reality. You see, I want to bring the story of Otto’s life up to the present (he’s 93 this year), and the first novel, On Wings of the Morning, covered the years between 1927 and 1946. The second novel was to have covered his life from 1948 until 1975, but I’m about 2/3 of the way done with On Eagle Wings Upborne, and it has covered the period from May, 1946 until October, 1950. Clearly, I’m not going to make it to 1975 with this book. I’ll be lucky to reach 1953 at this rate, which is why I’m thinking five books. I was alive starting in late 1947 and will soon reach events in the book that I remember as a very young child.

Which is to say that I have had to do a ton of research on the Korean War air campaigns. I did some research on World War II for the first book, but since I have been a student of World War II for most of my life, not as much as I’ve had to do on the Koren conflict. So I’m educating myself.

I also wrote a scene between Otto and his daughters that I found absolutely charming (take my word for it!), but realized that their dialogue was not possible, involving as it did Otto and a couple of two and a half-year-olds. They are not much into puns and jokes, my sources tell me. We had two daughters, but before they were five I don’t remember what they were doing when.

So, stay tuned for more news and information. And I don’t even have a glass-enclosed nerve center.(http://www.wtop.com/41/2020261/The-story-of-the-Glass-Enclosed-Nerve-Center-)