Horses and the Internet

Do you ever feel that some things just don’t add up?  For me it’s the industrial revolution.  I mean our progress up to 1860 or so was at a very measured pace.  Sure we left our caves, but fire was as much in the centre of our civilization as it was two thousand years prior.  What’s funny is that if our great-great-great grandparents looked at their parents and grandparents, not much would have been different.  Not socially, and definitely not in the way they each lived, albeit a century apart.  But if you look at our current adult generation and their parents and grandparents, we have light-years between us.  The technology that surrounds us is almost incomprehensible to them.  My mother is convinced that THE Internet is downloaded to her computer.  If an 18^th century soldier time traveled two centuries back, he’d still be on a horse.  If I fell into a coma for a couple of years I might not recognize the world when I woke up.

I don’t have answers. Only questions and theories. And a feeling that something just isn’t right.

Trevor Jones

Trevor Jones is Grey Seal’s reluctant hero. He had it all - looks, brains, girls and all the toys a man would want. He even had an exciting career as a Navy Seal serving in a secret task force of the Pentagon. Life couldn’t have been better. Then he got shot.

Now, Trevor is confined to a wheelchair, living on a war-vet pension in an apartment above a smelly Chinese produce store.

Trevor is a bitter man; almost everyone on the spinal chord injury ward is. But he truly believes that his pain is more special than everyone else’s because he had the most to lose. Trevor has always considered his looks and physique to be his biggest assets. It’s what separated him from being just an average and boring guy. An adrenaline junkie, he was the team leader, the go-to guy, a mover and a shaker, a ladies’ man and a player.

I don’t know anyone with a spinal cord injury so I had to do a lot of research. I interviewed a couple of people and found many great websites, one written and operated by Alex Brejcha http://www.netreach.net/~abrejcha/. Although I’ll never claim to know how any of them feel, I was able to find a lot of the bits I needed to create a disabled character. I have enormous respect for people who can remain strong and positive in the face of losing everything we ordinarily take for granted.

After we published the first issue of Grey Seal I read an article in Maclean’s about Howard Wasdin, the author of Seal Team Six©. Later that day I bought the book and couldn’t put it down for two days. It read like an action/adventure story and gave a real glimpse into the heart of a Navy Seal. I already had some pretty strong ideas about Trevor, and the kind of man he is, but I hope that reading Wasdin’s book will help me create a more accurate picture of what a Seal’s life is.

Like most people in my country, I have many adverse views about the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but the soldiers, the men and women who are deployed there, deserve nothing short of our support and gratitude.