Ashes of the Phoenix

by ginOO7

Phoenix Series: Part I. Set 10 years after the series ended, a Company agent returns unexpectedly from Serbia, and his treacherous intentions result in the death of Control at a New Year's Gala. McCall and Kostmayer must unravel a web of deceit to avenge their friend and bring his body home.

25. Author's Notes

Author's Notes:

I thought it might be fun to add a few notes to these stories. The original idea for Ashes of the Phoenix was a 10 year update to the Equalizer series. I started writing it concurrently with the timeline, so I actually started quite a long time ago now. It underwent a significant revision in 2013 when I published it on FanFiction.

There have been a lot of themes that fans have explored in EQ fanfiction (and if you want some more EQ fanfiction, there is some great stuff over at blueskydancers and at the archive on angelfire), but I wanted to focus on the friendship between McCall and Control because I felt it was a very important secondary narrative in the series and a critical one to Control's character. I also wanted to explore what would happen to Control at the end of his career with the Company. I wanted to maintain his enigma, but I also wanted to weave in some details about his life, which are primarily done through the flashbacks. I think the flashbacks give the account I was trying to convey, but I will likely revisit some of the topics.

Clint Hughes is partially based on the later events of the life a secret service office, Clint Hill, who jumped on the back of President Kennedy's limo. The character of Clint is based on Hill's strong emotional reaction to the trauma he endured at work and the spiral of alcohol and depression into which those events sent him.

Isra Nasari is based partially on the character Edmira, from the song "Last Embrace", a track released on Up With People's "The Festival" which was originally released in 1995.

The OSS is based on . . . the OSS. It is really fascinating to read about the OSS, there are a lot of great documentaries on it.

Perhaps the most fun I had was killing off the original character - the Jag. Although I'm not really sure a later Jag is a step up in quality, since the XJ6 was such a beautiful car.

I wrote the sequel to AoP - Midnight of Manon, which can also be found on FanFiction, and the third in the Phoenix series is called Nomad.

I hoped you liked it, including the ending, it was difficult to write the story because of the twists that happen and trying to keep them under wraps while still following the characters as those events are going on was challenging. But of course, you saw the title and knew all along, right? ;)