Writers Note-
The main character in the following stories, James (Jim) Ganic, is a character I created a long time ago for a World Of Darkness Roleplaying Game I was part of back in 2006. The stories I wrote around the character allowed me to flesh him out and give a thought pattern for role play responses in the game I was in; background psyche stuff as it were. They also served as simple flights of fancy, allowing me to spin tales of deeds that in some cases, were fantastical yet possible…. I mean, truth can be stranger than fiction. And as the last few years in real life have proved, somethings that actually happen cannot be made up as no one would believe them.
When events in my friend Mike’s Blog Story “Final Days of America” (https://finaldaysamerica.wordpress.com/) got to a certain point in the July timeframe, I got inspired to write a piece as filler for him using a non-WoD version of him…. And the piece helped inspire more story ideas… which resulted in a very long multipart story based upon the setting of Final Days.
The first piece… the one I wrote initially, you may see there- its up to Mike if he’s going to publish it on his site as it details an event during a No Entry in the main Final Days character’s diary and would serve for a food-for-thought entry for his character. Said piece will be posted here shortly, as it sets up a few items for the stories I wrote. And still am writing.
The saying about how some ideas snow-ball… is not just a saying.
That said, for those interested, the following is a bit of info on our hero who refuses to be considered such…
James Michael Ganic’s military career is a very unusual one. He began it as a Seabee Equipment Operator when he joined the Navy in 1990. He managed to qualify and make it through UDT/Naval Special Warfare School in 1994 and was in and out of the Teams for the next 22 years, ultimately retiring in 2016 as a Chief Special Warfare Operator.
His fictional story is a plausible one, with the character performing both Seal operations as part of the various Seal Teams- East and West Coast. At one point, he was assigned to the Hague as a part of a Nato-oriented unit tasked with hunting War crime-accused individuals in the Balkans late 1998 to 2001.
The Unit was an Experimental one that eventually was dis-established just after their first official snatch mission. (That mission is detailed in a series of stories here on my own blog). When 2001 happened, he was back with the Teams, first in Afghanistan then Iraq. Then back to Afghanistan like many Teams did during this time as well as the occasional mission dealing with Pirates near the Horn of Africa.
The very last mission he did was one where he and most of his team was loaned to the CIA for a snatch mission alongside a Russian Spetznaz team. This mission did not go exactly as planned and while successful, casualties were not light and very few of both teams came away unscathed.
Retiring not long after healing up from the mission, he spent the next few years between retirement and the events in the story enjoying his life on a farm in Rural Pennsylvania with a horse, some other animals and a good bit of land.
His life once the events of September 2022 in Final Days occurred, changed and what he did after that point has details within the short(?) stories about to be posted and there are pieces of his past that resurface in surprising ways within this series.
The stories ultimately did not fit with the overall timeline and framework of Final Days and its direction- but they have served as inspiration for some of Mike’s writing as his served for my own. Some of it may see light in his blog- its a matter of making the story fit what has gone on.
In any event, the stories have provided himself and a handful of folks who have read them enjoyment and entertainment. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Happy New Year!
-John T
December 31, 2021 (real date. 😊 )
Musings of a Gamer 