Combat Air Patrol: 

     An alternative history of the years following the Second World War, following the fights and flights of Major Christi Tannager,

    whose "job" in the US Army Air Corps is much more than just combat sorties, and all of which have her wondering just who she

    really is, and why.

     I don't recall the impetus for the original illustration for this when Maj. Tannager appeared on the cover of Inter-Galactic  (all the way down at the bottom of the Vol 4 page).  What-ever that had been, I had thought it would be much more in the vein of the flying adventure tales as they were read in the magazines, in the "Big Little Books," or briefly seen on television programs like Tales of the Gold Monkey.  With elements of heroic flying, combat, near-misses in mid-air, as well as intrigue and action on the ground, the thought was much more "pulpy."  

     I had the basic style set from the cover art: there needed to be planes in the air, her uniform pieces were "vintage" not modern, and Tannager was going to take up some portion of the art without necessarily being set into the background imagery.  I also needed to come up with the milieu of the stories: why that style of uniform, where would she fly, and when would it make some kind of sense?  Once I had the idea of an alternate post-WWII, early Cold War era settled, and began to work on the novels, the character and the story ideas got much darker.  Something about the idea of Tannager with her whiskey -- a nod to the original magazine art -- got it going and the rest followed, and has spun out much less "adventure" and much more "tortured emotions."  Though the adventure is still there of course -- it's just a "macguffin" to get you inside Tannager's head!