Guerra is the wildcard in my upcoming novella, “Rise or Die.” He’s a seventeen-year-old warlord in conflict-ravaged Brazil, forged in the crucible of deadly asymmetric warfare since he was four years old. He’s got more bonafide combat hours than most soldiers ever see in a lifetime. Now there’s two separate groups chasing each other through the territory he controls, a band of art thieves and the Brazilian military units chasing them. Aren’t they going to be surprised when they meet Guerra?

By the way, Guerra means “War” in Portuguese.

As an exercise, I often start off by writing a profile for each major character in a story. Here’s the profile for Guerra, a dangerous, homegrown warlord. He’s 17 years old, 5’6″ and 125 pounds.

Guerra

I don’t remember my parents. I was maybe four when a war band killed my village. What I remember most was the heat and the tears and the screams and the smell of cooking meat. They burned everything and then they took me and some of the other children, maybe ten or twelve of us, with them into the jungle. I did what I was told to do, because that was how you survived.

None of the others from my village lived more than a year. They weren’t tough enough. Me, I took my first life before I was five. Turns out, I was good at killing. Really good.

Knives. Guns. It didn’t matter. If I could lift it, I could kill with it.

But it was like I saw things different from everyone else. Enemies don’t just walk in front of your gun, especially if they got guns, too. You got to arrange for them to be where you want them. I was good at that, too. Really good.

I’m not a child no more. I’m too dangerous. I’m a threat to the ones above me. In the jungle, you kill threats. I want to live, but I got to become something else to do it. I got people depending on me now.

I’ll paint the jungle red with blood if I have to.

It’s rise or die.

Carlitos Paiva is the villain in my upcoming novella, “Rise or Die.” In 2214, he and his hand-picked unit are military advisors in Brazil during a long, long civil war. Unfortunately, he’s working for the losing side. His employer, General Diego, needs his help in arranging a strategic exit to a luxurious life in exile funded by a cache of stolen artwork. However, somebody is trying to steal that cache from both Paiva and Diego. That’s a bad idea.

As an exercise, I often start off by writing a profile for each major character in a story. Here’s the profile for Carlitos Paiva, international mercenary and military advisor. He’s 42 years old, 5’9″, 217 pounds and has close-crapped black hair and a salt-and-pepper beard.

Carlitos Paiva

I just follow the money. I’ve got some specialized skills that are in high demand. The downside is I have to travel to some of the most God-forsaken spots on this planet to exercise them. Like Brazil in the middle of their damned civil war.

You can call me a mercenary, if it makes you feel better.

Security services, corporate extraction, tactical decommissioning, military consulting—I provide whatever the client needs. I’ve got a team that I regularly work with and a boatload of mil-grade gear, plus I can field larger units with sufficient lead time for recruiting and training. It’s a profitable, albeit dangerous business, but one that I’m well prepared for thanks to my military experience.

One big score, though, could push me over the top.

I’m good, but the years are catching up. Tech only makes up for so much. One big payday and I’m running Paiva Security Services from a corner office somewhere. Living the high life and sending others into the field and raking in money without personal risk. This thing in Brazil could be just the ticket.

Emily Dunkirk is the lead character in my upcoming novella, “Rise or Die.” In 2214, she’s an art curator working for the Monumentalists, an international organization devoted to rescuing the world’s lost and stolen artworks. The organization is a successor to the Monuments Men Foundation, originally formed in World War II to find and preserve artwork stolen by the Nazis.

She’s leading a dangerous mission to rescue the One World Exhibit, a traveling art exhibition promoting world peace that had gone missing thirty-two yard before in Brazil upon the advent of World War III and the Time of Troubles that followed.

As an exercise, I often start off by writing a profile for each major character in a story. Here’s the profile for Emily Dunkirk, the leader of the mission. She’s 34 years old, 5’8″, 130 pounds and has long brown hair.

Emily Dunkirk

I think I’ve loved art for as long as I can remember. I came by it naturally. My father was a museum director and my mother was a graphic artist with a passion for Renaissance paintings. She’d always talk about famous paintings as if they were people, like they spoke to her, made her feel new emotions, showed her the world in different ways. Her favorite painting was the Mona Lisa, so one day I asked if I could see it.

She got this strange expression on her face. Then she told me that I could see a picture of it, but not the real thing. The real painting had been destroyed in the Paris Flash, a mini-nuclear bomb that had destroyed much of that city when I was just a baby. I recall being devastated, like something beautiful, and profound, had been expunged from the world.

For a long time after that, I was determined to become an artist. A painter, of course. But, though I had many talents, alas, painting was not one of them. At least not at the level I aspired to reach.

I found myself majoring in Art History in college. If I couldn’t be an artist, then at least I could choose a career that would leave me surrounded by fine art. I envisioned a future in which I might come to work in museums like my father. I certainly had the aptitude, and the connections.

Then I was invited to do restoration work on a batch of paintings that had been rescued by the Monumentalist Foundation. The paintings had disappeared, like thousands of other works of fine art, during the Third World War (really, more of a global meltdown) and the lengthy Time of Troubles that had followed it. The Monumentalists had followed the trail and retrieved the stolen paintings (and some statues), but so many more works were still missing.

That was really the start of it all. I knew the Mona Lisa was gone, but there so many other works that could still be rescued. I knew I had to help somehow. And that’s basically how I ended up more than a thousand miles up the Amazon and in the middle of Brazil’s unending civl war.