I get asked how I create my characters. Most of the time it happens during the early morning hours, in between a dreamlike state and reaching for my first cup of coffee. Sometimes I have this imaginary conversation with them, other times my mind listens to them tell me their story. Below is one such character, James Sparky Miller from Shuttered Reality.
My name is James Miller. You may know me as Sparky. I am the guy that likes to blow things up. I get off on seeing the sudden flying of different materials out from a sudden flash of fire. Then the gray smoke as those pieces fall to the ground.
I was born and raised in the mountains of Colorado. Growing up, I would love to watch hillsides being blown up and rivers of snow sliding down hillsides. They said it was to reduce avalanche danger. I thought it was cool.
You would think I would like to watch the fireworks on the fourth of July. Not so. The explosions were in the air. Nothing really got blown up.
In high school, people asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated. I would tell them I wanted to blow things up. I would see worried looks on my teachers. I never understood their reaction. I think watching things explored was neat.
When the Army recruiter came to our school. He said after I graduated, I could join the Army and blow things up. A month after graduation day, I was going off to boot camp in Fort Ord, California. After boot camp, I applied for and got sent to demolition school. There, I learned the fine art of creating explosives to do the unexpected. From there, I went to Vietnam.
I did three tours of duties in Vietnam. Halfway through my second tour, they promoted me to sergeant and assigned me the responsibility of six man squad. They put this Lieutenant fresh out of West Point in charge of me and my squad. He wanted me to just carry a crappy M16. He didn’t like me blowing things up.
We were out on a three-day patrol. The night of our second day out, that lieutenant was sleeping. I placed a bunch of M80 firecrackers around him. When it came time to wake him up, I set off all those firecrackers.
It got me busted down to private. As further punishment, they sent me to Da Nang. They assigned me to a Long Range Recon Patrol, which was manned by other soldiers who had been in trouble for various reasons. They liked to see me blow things up. Because of their encouragement, I am an artist using all types of explosives. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army lost a lot of soldiers and supplies because of my artwork.
That squad did some pretty bold things. At one point, they wanted to charge us with desertion and treason. But when they discovered everything, we did. They gave us an honorable discharge and made us promise not to tell anyone what we did for twenty-five-year.
After I left the Army, I went down to Texas and spent some time on an uncle’s ranch. He got me a job with the local bomb squad. I got into some big trouble when a bomber set a bomb in the city council chamber. The bomber set it to go off during the weekly city council meeting. I reasoned that detonating the bomb required less effort than disarming it. When the bomb went boom, it nearly destroyed all of that city hall.
I finally got a job with an international demolition crew. Now, I get to travel around the world blowing up buildings and mountains.
