Swords & History

Now that the first three books in the Battlecruiser Alamo series have been completed (the third to be released around August 20^th, and naturally it will be posted on this blog as soon as it becomes available) it is time for me to start work on my next project. There will be a fourth Alamo this year before Christmas, but I want to get started on my second book series. This one will not be science fiction, but following a term coined by Scott Oden, 'Historical Fantasy'. On the basic principle that if you go before a certain period – you are having to make up an awful lot of the world from scratch. This is especially true if you choose Dark Ages Britain.

I've been fascinated by 'Britain before the Normans' for a long time (to be fair, I've been equally fascinated by the Normans as well, not to knock the Conqueror and his offspring) and it seemed that this was a logical place to start. I knew that I didn't want to write yet another King Arthur/Merlin book – that topic has been done to death, in my personal opinion, and I couldn't honestly think of a new spin to put on that period. So that ruled out the most well-known part of the period...and then I knocked the Vikings out of the picture as well. Not that I don't want to write a Viking series at some point, quite the reverse, but again it tends to be the sum of the picture that people have when they think of the Dark Ages.

So, that left 'only' four hundred years to play with, and I knew exactly what I was looking for. I wanted a big epic story, one that sprawled across the lands of Anglo-Saxon England and beyond, filled with battles, bloodshed, intrigue, and adventure. There's an awful lot of it in this time. (Seriously, it's dripping with potential. I could write dozens of books in this sort of time frame and not run out of material; I'm mystified that it isn't swarming with writers.) I found what I was looking for in the 7^th Century, in Mercia.

Mercia, the Saxon Kingdom of Central England, in this period exercised its power over much of the land, its king, Penda, able to exert control as far north as Northumbria, as far south as Wessex. The first ruler who could claim to control all England since the departure of the Romans. Then, in 655, that all changed with a massive battle, one in which many of the major powers of the day took part, and he was killed. Mercia was overrun, under Northumbrian control, until there was a revolt that threw the invaders out. That much is history. There are some scanty details, and naturally I don't want to give too much away – but the records are few in number and often contradictory.

It's going to be extremely interesting seeing how my practice of discovery writing goes along with writing historical fiction. I know the key 'beats' of the story, in the same way as with the Alamo stories, so that much is similar, and I'm reasonably familiar with the time – and will be a lot more so by the time I start writing the book. I got a tax rebate cheque in the post a few weeks ago, and let me simply say that it went towards a very worthy cause, augmenting my bookshelf with some more recent works. The plan is for me to spend August brushing up on the period, going through the primary source material to build a personalized encyclopedia of the time and the plot, as well as the writings on the specific period.

Naturally – I'm going to be chronicling the whole thing on the blog. I'll be writing the first book in a series of unknown length (at least three, probably more) in September, and this one is going to be longer. I think these are going to be well over 100,000 words, maybe as high as 150,000 – epics. As for the tone, well, I also ordered the Robert E. Howard 'Bran Mok Morn' collection. I've got pretty much everything in that book in old paperbacks, but I wanted to go over the original texts, and it was the only one of those I really wanted that I didn't manage to pick up. I've paid a little over the odds for it, but it will be worth it. This is 'Swords and History', if that's a term anyone has yet used. In the Howardian style...because it's what I know, and what I'm aiming to write. Now – to work.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, Part I

One of the goals I had when creating the Triplanetary setting was to make it as realistic as possible – to try and make the science right, but more importantly, to make the feel right. The Triplanetary Fleet had to feel like a real military organisation, with everyone acting in a realistic way. As you can imagine...this required a lot of research and reading before I was ready to my satisfaction. It forms a pretty impressive bibliography, so I thought I would share some of the high points. As a general rule, these books are all well worth reading in any case. (Though, er...read Fermi's War first!)

Fall From Glory (Gregory Vestica)

This book I found extremely compelling; it tells the story of the US Navy primarily in the post-Vietnam era, with a focus on the Reagan years and John Lehman's term as Secretary of the Navy. What I took from this book was the feel of the fleet, the politics of naval procurement and weapons design, and how a navy works from the top; the art of 'seeking a mission'. It doesn't pull its punches, but is a reasonably fair assessment. Among other things, it gives strong coverage of the Tailhook scandal.

Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs (Lewis Page)

Written some years ago now, this remains an excellent critical book on the British Armed Forces, providing a splendid overview as well as the author's personal experience as a junior officer in dealing with various branches of the services. His goal is to criticise in the hopes of seeking improvement, but a lot can still be drawn out of this book in terms of how a military work – especially why the best options are not always taken, and sometimes, usually, you have to work with what you've got on the front line.

Age of Invincible and Britain's Future Navy (Nick Childs)

I'm putting these two books together because in many ways they are two sides of the same coin; both of them deal with the development of aircraft carriers in the Royal Navy, the former looking at the era of the 'Invincible-class' through-deck cruisers, the latter at the new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers now under construction. The second is much more of a critique than the first, which looks more at the historical side of it; the two books really should be read together, I feel – they are both excellent companions for the other.

Beyond Endurance (Nick Barker)

This covers the operations of HMS Endurance during the Falklands War; the only British vessel to have been 'in it' for the entire war – as well as its operations in the preceding year. This one is fascinating, because the ship isn't just a warship; it is also a research vessel, a search and rescue craft, and serving a range of other functions. The writer was the Captain of Endurance during these years, and he naturally brings a strong sense of the 'feel' to his work. It's a good look at a less-explored part of the Falklands conflict.

Carrier Glorious (John Winton)

HMS Glorious was one of the first aircraft carriers employed by the Royal Navy, and this follows the ship from its earliest days, mostly covering the inter-war period and the development of British naval aviation, from the perspective of the crew; it is loaded with recollections and discussions which provide the human perspective, and this I found extremely valuable during the early days of my research. It ends with the loss of Glorious during the Norwegian Campaign, and the acrimony in the crew at that time, which is also a fascinating story.

Fermi's War Is On Sale!!!

Fermi's War, the second book in the Battlecruiser Alamo series, is now available for sale on Amazon!

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Three is Done!!!

Whew. Book Three, provisionally titled 'Not One Step Back' – this title now coming up for the third book in a row, but I think it fits this time – is now completed. The next step is to do the revisions on Fermi's War...which will hopefully be on sale in about a week, fingers crossed!

Lieutenant-Captain, Lieutenant-Major, there are darned Lieutenants everywhere....

When I was making my preparations for the 'Battlecruiser Alamo' series, one of the elements I had the most fun with was creating the tables of rank. This is something that has often bugged me with science-fiction in the past, with television SF by far the worst culprit; naval and military terms are thrown haphazardly about with no regard for logic, reason or tradition, the latter being the most important of all – for essentially all the military ranks stem from some long tradition or another, often now totally irrelevant – but yet the rank remains. I had lots of fun here; given that the series opens with the merger of three militaries into one, I had to create five tables of rank, two for the Triplanetary forces (one Fleet, one Espatier) and one each for the other three services. I have a nice complicated table, but I'll break it down here one at a time. (I'm pondering polishing this as an appendix for one of the books...)

Martian Space Service

General, Colonel-General, Lieutenant-General, Major-General, Colonel, Major, Captain, First Lieutenant, Second Lieutenant, Third Lieutenant

Fleet Sergeant-Major, Squadron Sergeant-Major, Staff Sergeant, Technical Sergeant, Sergeant, Senior Corporal, Corporal, Private First Class, Private Second Class, Private Third Class

Mars, in the series, was colonized mostly by the United States, though with some immigrants from the United Kingdom, Canada, and a few other places; hence these ranks take the Army as their guidelines, following the model of the USAF, though with a few variations. Colonel-General is a rank used extensively in Asia, Russia and parts of Eastern Europe; it seemed to fit nicely, avoiding the need for a 'General of the Space Service'. Third Lieutenant – well, I read Starship Troopers, and let's just leave it at that. As for the enlisted ranks, those are much more conventional – but Sergeant-Major, instead of 'Regimental', or 'Company' (and I know those are titles, not ranks – but then most ranks started out as titles) breaks down as 'Fleet' and 'Squadron'.

Callisto Orbital Patrol

Fleet Commander, Flotilla Commander, Squadron Commander, Flight Commander, Senior Flight Officer, Flight Officer, Junior Flight Officer, Recruit Officer

Master Astronaut, Senior Flight Sergeant, Flight Sergeant, Junior Flight Sergeant, Senior Astronaut, Astronaut First Class, Astronaut Second Class, Astronaut Third Class

This one was treated rather differently; I decided to follow the same sort of design process as used when creating the RAF ranks – essentially, starting from scratch, taking a few bits and pieces where appropriate. Callisto was colonised by Russia and the 'European Federation' mostly, so that had a role as well – and again, title has become rank in short order, with the flag ranks following the French pattern of describing what size of command is appropriate – a fleet, a flotilla, a squadron, or a single ship. The enlisted ranks were rather easier here, again taking inspiration from the RAF.

Titan Militia

Commodore, Captain, Commander, Lieutenant, Sub-Lieutenant, Midshipman

Petty Officer, Senior Spaceman, Spaceman, Recruit Spaceman

The Titan Militia was pretty easy; it was settled by the East African Federation mostly, with some from the 'Indochinese Union', but it suggested Royal Naval ranks as a baseline, especially as I established that this was the smallest fleet, the moon having being settled on more of a shoestring. This was to be much more of a 'part-time' service, implied in the 'militia' term; so they didn't need anything like as many ranks. It boiled down to replacing 'Airman' or 'Sailor' with 'Spaceman', and trimming down. Actually, a lot of inspiration also came from the early US Navy rank structure, before the first Admiral rank was created.

Triplanetary Fleet

Admiral, Vice-Admiral, Counter-Admiral, Commodore, Captain, Lieutenant-Captain, Senior Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Sub-Lieutenant, Midshipman

Senior Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Petty Officer, Junior Petty Officer, Senior Spaceman, Spaceman First Class, Spaceman Second Class, Spaceman Third Class

This one, naturally, I paid the most attention to, but did it after I'd established the planetary ones; the peculiarities of the setting meant that it would have to draw inspiration from the others, but couldn't be a direct copy – the militaries involved would not have gone along with it! So – I went to Russia for the ranks, the four flag ranks ranging down from 'Admiral' to 'Commodore', with 'Counter-Admiral' replacing 'Rear-Admiral'. 'Lieutenant-Captain' was my alternative to Commander, if only because...I liked the sound of it! The idea was that it was the lowest rank of independent ship command, and that 'Captain' should be in it somewhere; the enlisted ranks were fairly conventionally drawn, because I wanted that to be more familiar.

Triplanetary Espatier Corps

Brigadier, Colonel, Major, Lieutenant-Major, Lieutenant, Ensign, Cadet

Sergeant-Major, First Sergeant, Master Sergeant, Sergeant, Lance-Sergeant, Corporal, Lance-Corporal, Private, Recruit

If this looks US Marines, its meant to – but I drew in an additional tweak to reflect the 'combined' nature of the services by incorporating the European rank of 'Lance-Sergeant', which I first saw in the Polish armed forces. I actually rather like the sound of it, if I'm honest! And Ensign? Well, that was originally an Army rank; it seemed an interesting alternative to 'First' and 'Second' Lieutenants...especially as there were going to be a lot of Lieutenants running around anyway! The other new rank, Lieutenant-Major, I humbly submit as my answer to the age-old 'two Captain ranks' problem; evidently someone in the service decided to end it once and for all be eliminating the rank of 'Captain' and replacing it with 'Lieutenant-Major' instead; it goes well with 'Lieutenant-Captain', I think, and you can expect to see this one cropping up...

Where am I going, what am I doing....

Usually, during the middle of a book, there comes a point when I have to stop writing for a day, sit down, and take stock of where I am and where I am going; this has been the case of each of the Battlecruiser Alamo books so far, and I was completely unsurprised when this morning I woke up to realize that one of the two chapters I was planning to write today just didn't work. It's usually a signal that I need to unravel a few threads in my head; so I took half the day off, went for a stroll, and managed to resolve it; hopefully everything will be full steam ahead for the rest of the book. (I plan on having the first draft ready in around a week; got about thirty thousand words to go.)

What this has given me a chance to do is sit down and take stock of my plans for the next few books. Sales of 'Price of Admiralty' have, well, blown my breath away. I'm overjoyed that people are buying and reading it, and I'm really looking forward to progressing with the series – for the rest of this year, Battlecruiser Alamo is my absolute top priority. (On that note – I'm really glad that I did the second book before releasing the first. I'm nervous enough writing the third book, I hate to think how I would have been if I'd had the 'can I do this twice' bear on my back as well.)

As I said above, I aim to have what is now titled 'Not One Step Back' finished on or around the 16^th of this month, then it's off to my beta readers for their verdict. A nervous time, to the point that I shall very definitely arrange to be doing something else on the following day if at all possible! The last thing I want to be doing is checking my emails every five seconds to see if there are any new comments. (If curious, I have a pool of around half a dozen people who read each book before I revise it...and none of them pull their punches, I assure you!) As soon as that book is out to the betas, once I have gathered my nerves back together again, I'll be working on getting book two, 'Fermi's War', ready. That's going to take a good solid week, I think, so you can expect to see the second book in the Battlecruiser Alamo saga out around the 23^rd. You can take it as a given that I'll be posting as soon as it's up, but if you want to make sure you hear, remember the mailing list...

What comes next? Well, book four of course! I've committed – at least in my own head – to release a book each month this year. Fast? Well, yes and no. Actually getting the words on the page is pretty quick, but for me personally, a lot of the hard work is done by then. I spent most of the last two or three years working all of this out in my head, and although my characters are throwing some interesting surprises at me, a lot of the hard brain-work is done. Which is not say things are proceeding as planned; they aren't. I'll give you an example; the book I'll be writing in August was not on my original schedule. By about twenty thousand words into the book I'm working on know, it stood up on my desk and demanded to be written; in truth a whole plot segment leapt into place that puts the characters in an interesting place and advances the overall story nicely.

That's the other thing about 'Not One Step Back'; in the first two books – although they are both stand-alone – I've put in a lot of seeds for future plots. There is an ongoing arc, at least in my head, and the third book starts to make some serious progress along it, and this gets reinforced in the fourth book nicely. Which is odd, because that wasn't actually part of my early conceptions of how this series was going to go! (I'm really sounding like a shambles here, aren't I!) As I started to spin books together a few months ago, when I decided I was really going to knuckle down and do this, it only then occurred to me that a story arc was dropping into place. I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out myself – at this rate, I'm going to be as surprised as the rest of you! (Though in time-honoured tradition, I'll have to claim that it was 'all the plan all along'. Looking at you, Final Five Cylons.)

So – right now the projection is for seven 'Battlecruiser Alamo' books to take the series up to December, and which should wind up the primary plot arc I have in mind. (Not that it will represent the end of the saga, oh no. I already have some vague ideas for a six-book series which will follow it, but that's a bit vaguer in my head at the moment.) After I've done that, I think it's going to be fantasy; those who read this blog in its early stages (Hi, Mark!) will know that I have enough of a fondness for Howardian Sword & Sorcery that it's pretty much inevitable that I'm going to be working in the field again, so that's looking likely for next year, whether as a trilogy or something longer, I don't yet know. (Battlecruiser Alamo started as three. Then four. Then five. Now seven. So it's anyone's guess; my primary criteria is simply 'is it interesting?')

All I know at the moment is this; I'm having a complete blast writing them.

The Price of Admiralty: Author's Notes

(Warning – Some Spoilers)

The 'Battlecruiser Alamo' series went through an awful lot of iterations before it finally hit home; I think I did four complete drafts before the final one, most of them bearing little resemblance to what I actually ended up publishing. In a way, this is a series that has been in my mind for the last twenty years, ever since I started to read science fiction in a big way, and I think one of my primary influences was a book written by Stewart Cowley, 'Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD'. This was an art book, a collection mostly of Chris Foss artwork, but it had connected text describing the ships within, and a lot of effort had been made to create a consistent universe. More – it came at a great time, as I had also picked up a book called 'Flight to the Stars' by James Strong; this book was a description, from a 1960s point of view, of how interstellar exploration and colonisation might actually take place. Heady stuff for a ten-year-old!

At the back of a book was a list of 'Stars within Twenty Light-Years'. Well, I was lost here. I spent ages pouring over the names, stars such as Procyon, Tau Ceti, Groombridge 1618; all of them seemed full of promise and potential, and that's really the genesis of the setting. I wanted an interstellar setting, but one that used real stars – I wanted my heroes to go to Lalande 21185, to Ross 128, to Van Maanan's Star. (And yes, Frontier: Elite 2 was also a bit of an influence here as well. I spent months playing that game.) When I got around to actually writing in this setting, well, it was a foregone conclusion that this was the sandbox I would be messing around in.

Then came the core of the book itself, the heart of the plot. Optimism. There has been a tendency for a long time for 'anti-heroes' to come to the forefront, for people to have to do bad things to succeed. I never really bought into that, not properly. Maybe I spent too much time watching Star Trek when I was a kid, but I wanted to have an optimistic setting, one where there was a determination that the future is to be better than the past, that questionable acts can be avoided. In short...I wanted heroes. Not anti-heroes, but people who would do the right thing for the right reasons. And so came the Interplanetary War; because the best way to show that off would be to have this as an improvement from darkness in the past.

Thence the war; well, this has some elements of the American Civil War because they are unavoidable, but I drew primary inspiration – as, I know, many others have before me – from the War of Independence. Three colonies, each for different reasons, choose to secede from the increasingly tyrannical United Nations of Earth, and form their own state, the Triplanetary Confederation, which starts out as a loose alliance but increasingly becomes tighter over time. At some point, I really must write some books set in this time, but for the moment, aside from the odd flashback, I'm writing in a period a decade later, when the wounds of the war have healed and mankind can begin to look outward again.

My priority was always to keep things realistic. I didn't want to just create a setting filled with self-defined rules, I wanted to get into the guts of how space flight, space colonisation, and space war would be. (And so came the Third World War and the eco-caust of the mid-21st century. There had to be a strong reason why millions of people would flee Earth; it being on the verge of destruction seems like a good one to me.) Warfare doesn't involve death rays and photon torpedoes; the Battlecruiser Alamo is equipped with missiles and a large laser cannon. There are 'screens', but that simply denotes the range where Alamo's counter-measures become most effective, rather than presenting any sort of physical 'forcefield'. Ships have to spin for gravity, or get it from acceleration, or just live without it...and people get spacesick if exposed to zero-gravity, because generally it is artificially produced. (Lots of evidence that humans like gravity, you see...so that just makes sense.)

Ah, yes...the name itself. Well, I've always been a bit of a sneaky fan of the Texas Republic. It's the romantic in me. And that goes double for the Alamo itself; I still like the John Wayne film. (Mind you, I'm the person who actually likes 'Green Berets'.) That there haven't been any warships named Alamo seems odd, in a way – though I suppose the Navy likes to name ships after sea battles. It had a nice ring to it, as did Battlecruiser – there really wasn't any justification further than that for the name. The idea of a class of ships named after 'glorious last stands' came a lot later, though it gave me a lot of fun picking them out. (Yes, I have a provisional list – and so far, I've named five of them in books either published or in the process of being published. One left, and I'm holding that for a while.)

The length was a bit of an accident; I was shooting for 80,000 words and ended at 76,000, and the last thing I wanted to do was pad out the story. (When the next book came out at 72,000, I decided that 70-80,000 was probably a good benchmark for the series long-term, though I suppose it might expand a bit in the future. I don't want to go under it, though.) I actually think this is a good length in any case; long enough to keep someone occupied for a few commutes, or a few lunch-breaks, or a couple of evenings. My personal use of the Kindle is far more 'take on journey' than 'sit down and read', though I must confess lately I've been reading it in bed – maybe my tastes are changing a bit!

When it finally came to write the final version (there were four earlier drafts, none of which had much resemblance to the ultimate book), it actually went surprisingly smoothly. By that point I knew the setting and the characters to the point that I could answer questions about them, I almost felt as if I was 'living' in that world. (Heck, I still do!) 

Hacking the World

For a long while, I've been fascinated by tales of a world I missed out on by a couple of decades, the world of the early computer hackers; the people who created the early home computers, the early computer games, and brought about the technological revolution that we are all benefiting from today. (Anyone who spots the little in-joke related to this in 'Price of Admiralty' gets a prize that is as yet to be specified, but which will provide much kudos.) The tales that impress me the most – what comes across well from books such as 'Masters of Doom', or 'Hackers', is that of the lone artist. A single individual who sits down in his room and creates – creates works that pioneered a genre, that we still talk about today. A little tragedy is that this has become less and less possible, though there are some signs that it is returning. There is only one industry where this is still the case, and where technology is actively aiding it: writing.

Think about the wonder of the world we live in today. The barriers have crumbled, and by the views of some, the barbarians are sweeping into the Eternal City, but far from being a bad thing, this is a wonder. You only have to look around the blogosphere to see writers talking about books that everyone had rejected, but which the readers have taken too and loved. There has to be something wrong with a system that is throwing diamonds out into the midden; how many classics have never been seen outside a small circle of friends and associates, lost to us all. That will not happen any more. A single person can write a book, polish it, and publish it. Some contract out for covers, for editing, for layout, and each of these is a creative process in itself – others do it all themselves. (I wouldn't dream of creating my own cover, but the layout and conversion to Kindle was easy enough.)

Progress can be swifter, as well. Depending on your point of view, Price of Admiralty took me three weeks, or three years to write. I first started work on the idea back in the dying days of 2009; I wrote the words that comprised the final book in nineteen glorious days. (I'm a fast-writing advocate, as you might gather from that – I can't write slowly. Tried it, and I never got anywhere.) That's on a par with the time taken for some of the classic computer games, and in similar circumstances – one person sitting in front of a flickering screen.

There's another affinity there that I had last night, and here is where I apologise for not having posted anything for the last two days; I hit a couple of bumps in 'Not One Step Back'. (I swear that title is cursed. This is the third book I have started with that title.) The first Chapter 8 I wrote was actually pretty good, but the last thousand words led me into a massive cul-de-sac, and I had to reconsider a part of my setting, create a new bunch of characters, and then I could start again. Which I did around midnight, finishing up an hour later. Then, yesterday, I wrote Chapter 9, poking away in the afternoon, and it just sucked. The drama wasn't there, the characters weren't there, and the story felt forced. So another midnight binge, the original chapter deleted and replaced, and now I've got one of my favourite pieces of writing and a character I really like developing nicely. That's the beauty of discovery writing, you never know where it is going to take you – but basically, it felt like I was hacking my world. Getting deep into the bowels of the story felt like I was getting deep into the code and changing it, twisting it around to get the desired result. When that works, it feels great.

Review: FoxTales

I've broken from my 'write about science-fiction' concept a little ahead of schedule this time, but my attention was drawn this morning to a book called 'FoxTales', written by Kerry Nietz, which covers the development of the FoxPro system...which I had never heard of, I must confess. I have been interested in the history of computing for ages, though, and soaked up books such as Masters of Doom, Jacked, Commodore: Company on the Edge, and the like. On that basis, I shelled out the £3 for the Kindle copy and read it during what turned out to be an unexpectedly long writing break today.

I loved it. As the story of a programmer thrown in at the deep end, it was interesting enough, but what I found compelling was the characters that were portrayed in the book, all the different foibles and quirks; during the course of the book the reader almost gets to know them himself, which is the hallmark of an author that knows his craft. I am not surprised to learn that the writer has transited to writing novels now, though part of me would like to read a sequel fully detailing his experiences at Microsoft.

No Kindle formatting problems, I should say at this point, and the editing looked fine to me. I was compelled all the way though, and it certainly compares favourably to other books in the genre. Very impressed, and I can highly recommend it – and now I know rather more about FoxPro than I did when I started...not sure what to do with those new found skills, but I suppose something might come up...

Review: The Alecto Initiative

I've seen this book bouncing around the upper ends of the rankings for the last few days, and the description was appealing enough to convince me to buy it. I'll get the technical side of the review out of the way quickly; the formatting was fine, no problems at all that I could see, and certainly no typos or errors made themselves apparent when I was reading, so a good, professional book. (I suppose at this point I should clarify that I read the Kindle copy; I presume the paperback version is similar.)

Growing up, one of my favourite authors was Robert Heinlein, and I still have a strong regard for his work; oddly, one of the books I came too latest, simply because I didn't come across it for a long time, was 'Citizen of the Galaxy', where an ex-beggar from a far-off world, sold into slavery as a child, turns out to be the heir to a massive fortune back on Earth. It's an excellent book, and I can recommend it, and I got strong vibes along those lines here. I'm not for a second saying that it copies the story, in fact – I actually preferred this version of the tale. I'm not going to give any spoilers here, just to say that it covers the story of a slave who is rescued by the navy, and ultimately helps start turn the tables on her captors.

This one started dark and stayed there. The question of why a technologically advanced culture would require slaves is an age-old one, and there are only two real reasons – for some sort of special technical skill or ability, or for sex. And it is the latter one that is dealt with here with regards to the primary character, and dealt with very well indeed. It's the characters that really grip here; the setting has obviously been well thought through, and the military elements are realistic-sounding enough to keep the sense of setting and fiction; I was drawn in very nicely. The story has some good twists and turns to it, and there is a nice, satisfactory ending that sets up for a sequel. A sequel I am definitely intending to buy, so I suppose I can't say any more than that.  

Purchase on Amazon US

Purchase on Amazon UK

Five Great Days

I can honestly say that the last few days have been some of the most amazing of my life. I'd half-expected Admiralty to not sell at all – certainly I was figuring on a slow burn, that it was a marathon rather than a sprint. I was telling myself to keep my expectations low rather than be disappointed. Disappointed? I was exultant, with fifty-one sales by the end of last month, over just three days – and as of writing this, I'm on seventy-two. That people are downloading and reading my book seems like such an enormous privilege that I am hard-pressed to believe it is actually happening. I still haven't cured myself of checking the stats, I'm afraid; I'm attempting to get into good habits, there, but so far, I'm failing.

Certainly, it is making writing the third book a lot easier. I managed a really good start on what will this time really be 'Not One Step Back', I swear! (That was the first cover I commissioned, but it didn't really seem to fit the final versions of the last couple of books...this time, it fits a lot better.) I'm hoping to have that finished by around the middle of the month, whereupon I will start revising 'Fermi's War' for a release somewhere around the 23^rd, probably. I think it'll take about a week to give it the polish it needs, but aside from my 'one a month' goal, I don't really have any plans to tie myself down to a specific date. All I have is the 'write a book, revise a book' goal for each month. Two down...a lot to go!

This one is going to be a little different, as it forms a 'trilogy' within the Battlecruiser Alamo series. I've been looking forward to writing this one for the last two weeks, largely because of the ending; a longer one of those long epic sequences that are usually a complete blast to write. I know that I've had the most fun writing the espatier scenes thus far, and in a weird way, I wasn't expecting to – now I'm at the point that an 'espatier' spin-off is definitely on the cards for sometime in the near-ish future, probably once I've finished the trilogy. No firm fixed ideas on this – at least, not any that I am at liberty to share at the moment.

Next up, is reading! Now I'm developing the habit of reading before I turn in again; I noticed a few weeks ago that I was reading a lot less than I had been, now that I no longer have a three-hour commute a day. (Yes, three hours. About the only blessing was that it wasn't very broken up so I could read.) I'm making an effort to get in at least an hour of reading each day, and using it to catch up on my research and inspiration. When I get around to doing the writer's notes for Admiralty – and I intend to do that at some point this week – I'll probably put in a little bibliography, as a lot of those books are well-worth reading.

More than that, though, I really haven't been reading my Kindle for ages. Aside from checking Admiralty's conversion before I uploaded it (and god did Alkinea make that a dream, I can recommend that for anyone using LibreOffice) I haven't actually read a book on it since March! That's going to have to change, I think, and given that I fancy honing my abilities as a book reviewer, I think I'm going to make this the Month of Kindle; every day I will try and review a self-published work on the Kindle. Focusing on SF, probably; I've got quite a backlog to work through!

Under normal circumstances, I would simply post these reviews on Amazon, but my understanding is that Amazon is a bit 'iffy' on writers reviewing the books of other people, so I'll have to content myself with posting them here instead. I'm not going to have any sort of a schedule; I'll pretty much just see what catches my eye on my list. A good reason to have a break in between writing bursts. (In an 'eight-hour' day, I usually write for three concentrated one-hour spells, doing around two thousand words at a time, with about an hour in between to ponder where to go next.)

So, that's to look forward to, and naturally I will let everyone know progress on the books, both on the scale on the left side of the blog (I generally update that at least every day, sometimes more often – and 'blue' means that the first draft is being written, 'red' that it has been finished and the beta readers are going through it, with 'green' indicating that these second draft is done and I'm in the process of converting and submitting it. Once a book is done, obviously it goes from the list.)

I suppose I'd better get back to work....