My Writing Process - Part 1 - In the Beginning - The Idea

Oh what fun it is to sit here and think about how my writing process works.  It is by far different than one would expect perhaps, but then each author is no doubt unique (and I would love to hear the story behind those guys writing the bigfoot porn, man would I ever, shit I might get into some of that myself).  Anyway as usual, I digress, I am good at that, especially since I am on a third gin and tonic this evening, with some red wine mixed in.  Ahh the happiness that comes with it.  As it is, I am sitting on my deck, in the dark, writing this entry.  My colleague Ellie Di Julio posted something about someone describing the stages of writing and I thought I should maybe do one about how I write.  Maybe somewhere it will help someone. 
I guess my ideas in some sense, start with both a mix of actual history and movies, and probably the biggest influence when I was younger was Star Wars.  I mean unless you saw it in 1977 when it came out, there is no way in hell you cold understand the profound effect it had on people, even with special effects considered primitive by this day and age.  Watching that movie, inspired me as a kid to always play Han Solo in the play ground when we played Star Wars. which was something we did all the time.  I wanted nothing to do with being a damned Jedi.  But as it stands, it was such things as this that led me to imagine lots of different plots that we could play with on the play ground (hell I remember after Empire Strikes Back was released, we were trying to imitate ATAT tracks in the snow, while building a snow fort that would be the Millennium Falcone taking them on).  Through the years I imagined many things that Han Solo would get into.
Now as I got older, I did start writing small plays, what one could call 1 act plays at best.  Perhaps only one of my childhood friends (Gab) actually remembers any of this, but it was a time. He said he loved them, whether he was being nice or not, well he's never owned up to it.  Anyway, for years after this I dreamt of a sci-fi world where a man named Savage (a nickname I had as a child, thanks to dear old Gab (man we need to have those cigars and scotch)) was fighting a war.  I dreamt of this world for probably over 20 years.  the ideas floated and evolved, but my main issue was that I had no means of getting them down on paper.  I had no confidence in myself that I could actually write a book.  Hence 1998 comes around (I was born in 1972 to give you reference, and was alive when the goal that was heard around the world was scored) and I have in my hands one important thing:  my Masters thesis.  It was 208 pages - a novel by many accords.  I had written my first work ever.  Stoked from this, I started writing my first novel ever, Triumvirate, in part using it as a break to get away from studying for my PHD comprehensives, but as a means to fill the time I was staying awake at night.  I wrote my ideas down, formed the story from said ideas to produce what is probably the grittiest war epic that has been seen for quite some time.
I am an avid history buff and as such I looked at many aspects of many wars such as WWI, WWII, the vietnam war and of course I made it through Gulf War I.  But the ideas were flowing, and it was time to write the series that I had dreamt of from childhood.
So here is an idea of where my ideas came from, a big inspiration being StarWars, Star Trek, B-movies, and whatever sci-fi seemed good.
Now below is one of a few surviving shots of a 19 year old Alex Dundass, just to show that I am real.  I am the one on the left and was taken in July 1991 (in the last century!!) at the final party I had with my high school buddies.

Yup that is me on the left in the Guns N' Roses Shirt