My love letter to Die Hard: Making volume 3

Welcome to ‘the making of Janners’ blog.  This is my honest discussion of how I plan, illustrate, create, write and publish The Chronicle Of Janners.  I have been logging a diary of essays for the past few years about this project.  I am sure some people will find it interesting but many will prefer to read the short stories.  If you’re one of the latter then Volume 3: afghaniStANTA-CLAUS is available here: https://amzn.to/3eqDGex

Written on: 08-01-2020 at 22:30

What began with a pun albeit a dreadfully clunky and forced one (‘afghaniStANTACLAUS’ there I’ve said it), has now snowballed into a six chapter (I’ve barely written it but actually scribbled paper notes with a biro in my Christmas stationary).  So much has it snowballed that today my Wednesday (my new day off midweek) I attended yoga class with my wife in Stockport before we had breakfast then I walked the dogs into Cheadle.  Late morning Penny performed laser hair removal on me in our clinic and then I had a coffee in Brezo Lounge as I wrote up the last chapter of the voodoo lesbian witches novella ( https://amzn.to/3bkzjQe  ) before I walked home and spent about four hours writing!  I arrived at a stage where I realised that I needed to watch Die Hard so as to ascertain the reminders of whose who and what happens throughout the film.  As I watched Die Hard on my iPhone via YouTube I scribbled the notes in bullet point format and now I can shape chapters around them.

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Cast

Janners > John McLane

Sadiq Abbas > Al Powell

Hazzari > Dep Ch Police Dwayne T.Robinson

Gloria Hole > Holly Genero

Martin Bellend > Ellis

Colonel Oscopy > SpecialAgent Johnson

Major Praublegms > Agent Johnson

OsamaBinLaden > Hans Grüber

Abdul > Franco

Nasoor > Toni

Qasim > Karl

Mao Yin > Chinese terrorist

Saeed > Eddie

Hassan > Heinrich

Ewa Ôuay > Theo (hacker)

Pasha > Marco

Khan > other terrorist

Yekini > other terrorist

I feel that two beautiful pieces of fun storytelling occur within this DieHard parody; the first is that Ewa is back and fucks EVERYONE over as usual and the second thing is that the ‘Al Powell relationship’ begins.  This story explains how Janners and Afghan National Police Detective Sadiq Abbas first encounter each other and become friends and trust one another.

This novella also sees the introduction of repeat character and affectionate parody to the ‘Angry police captain’ from numerous ‘buddy cop’ movies of the 80s and 90s; Afghan National Police Chief Hazzari.

During this story the recurring femme fatale Gloria Hole is also debuted as the love interest.  Based on Columbian actress Sofia Vergara (of Modern Family fame) she will feature in later stories also.