Pressing ahead

The best way to get around a situation you don't like in your writing is to do something else in it. So...I started work on a section of Léonidès that takes place at the beginning of World War II. Wound up setting it in Poland and the Russians are the bad guys who wind up being fed upon by Léon and his crew. I remembered about the Katyn massacre committed by Russia, in 1940. By some estimates, they killed and buried nearly 22,000 Polish officers and educators, then denied it until after the Soviet Union dissolved. All in the face of irrefutable evidence.

Russia has a history of doing this to other countries. Ukraine went through the Holodomor famine, which killed up to 5,000,000 people and was deliberately brought about by Stalin. It included Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Adding in their willingness to bomb hospitals and apartment buildings not just in Ukraine but Chechnya and Syria and Georgia, just this century, they make the perfect bad guys for Léon and his crew to feed upon. This image is of Konstantyn Kaminyin, a Russian model. I was using him as the idea for Franz, but this works better.

Thinking about it, there were other occasions where food was used as a political tool -- like the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49. There actually was no famine; food was still being exported from the country. But London did little to counter the growing catastrophe, figuring it was a good way to weaken the Irish and disperse them, since they were breeding so fast. And it worked. 1,000,000 died and another million fled the country.

Of course, a lot of my attitude, right now, is colored by Russia's current terrorism in Ukraine...and the West's minimal response to it. Slow-walking arms and sanctions, just like in the late 30s, as Hitler kept marching on. Germany actually asked the US not to declare Russia a terrorist state because it would disrupt the gas supplies to them. Money above morality, in the world. Always has been that way.

Léonidès is becoming a political work as well as a criticism of humanity. A high-level vampire is proving to be more morally inclined than just about any human being he meets. Now this is keeping in mind Léon's sister, Gabrielle, is more typical a Blood Angel, doing as she damn well pleases, like she's royalty, so I can see where the story is leading, now. I think. A direct confrontation between her and him over who will rule the new federation of vampires. Or something like that; I don't know, yet.