- The movie, Boondock Saints, is talked about briefly in the second chapter of the first book. It is in fact Andrew's favorite movie and can recite nearly every line of the movie. However, Andrew did not watch Boondock Saints until the original draft of The Phoenix Blade was written and did not include that chapter. Andrew decided later changed the direction of the book to ensure the series did not resemble the Boondock Saints series.
- The Ace of Spades made it's mark twice in the Project Justice book. The bar itself does not exist on Long Island, but was written to resemble a bar Andrew and his friends used to frequent called Stillwaters (all except the large neon sign). The bartender described in those chapters was loosely based on one of Andrew's friends who was the actual bartender from Stillwaters.
- More than half of the characters found in Project Justice (including secondary and tertiary characters) were originally based on real people, but through re-writes most characters including Andrew, Mike and Lilly developed their own personalities that made them stand apart from the people they were based off of.
- Natalya is the only one from the original six from Andrew Lancaster's group that was not based off of any friends or real life people.
- The original draft called for the team to return to NY, had two more friends added to the mix and saw the team carry out more missions in NY including taking down a greedy corporate business man, a pimp and a racist. Due to time constraints, maintaining the plot and not wanting the book to go on and on forever, Andrew decided to cut the entire section after the first draft and changed it to introduce the Amber Fergusson character.
- Without giving any plots away, there are four events in Project Justice that have ties to later books (and no I will not tell which ones they are; not yet anyway).
- The ending to Project Justice was not the original ending. The original ending was intended to wrap up the whole story in one book. After a restless night's sleep, Andrew dreamt of a new ending which gave him ideas for future books as well.
- The name of the series The Phoenix Blade came from Andrew's fascination of they mythological Phoenix (because of its symbolic rising from the ashes) and because of seeing the Phoenix in the X-Men series (Jean Grey who becomes the Phoenix). The other half of the name, Blade, comes from Andrew's days of wrestling where he used to wrestle under the name Blade Crew.
- In the original draft, Faith was not a character in the story and did not exist until the third draft of the manuscript.
- Andrew, Mike and Lilly all originally went under the aliases: the Phoenix, Exodus and Camille but thought it would be too confusing for the readers and just kept the Phoenix's name.
The first book in The Phoenix Blade Series, Project Justice is now available for free on Smashwords. Pickup your copy now
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/462530
And get ready for the second book in The Phoenix Blade Series, Awakening, available on Amazon.com 9/2/14
No comments:
Post a Comment