Category Archives: Writing

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Writing

What’s in a Villain?

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Star Wars’ Darth Vader and Conan’s Thulsa Doom have one thing in common.  Well, two, but this blog post isn’t about James Earl Jones.  The commonality is that they have strong, powerful villains who strike the audience with fear and hatred.

Building a character beyond the antagonist role, into a true villain is something that brings both challenges and rewards to an author.  A powerful villain can bring instant emotional involvement to the audience, in a way that makes them root for your protagonist(s).  A powerful villain is memorable and the elements of their character can heighten the audience’s emotional highs and lows as the villain and heroes clash.

The two examples above are from movies, and in movies they have some advantages.  They can make use of impressive audio and visual techniques to impress an image on them.  In writing, we don’t have that advantage.  We can describe the villain, but in that, we need to pick our words with care.  Getting overly verbose can distract the reader, while a few quick words can too easily be overlooked.  It falls on an author to choose the description carefully and to insert it in such a way as to avoid distracting the reader.

But a description doesn’t tell the whole story.  It gives the reader a few words to capture their imagination, but it doesn’t tell them what makes the character a villain.  True villany requires acts of darkness and it is this that makes a villain truly vile.  As with most writing, showing is better than telling.  Don’t tell the reader that the villain has no value for human life… show it.  Such callousness is part and parcel for evil characters.  A caution here, it is better to make implications rather than dive too deep in such darkness.  With small implications, you capture a reader’s imagination.  Often the readers can paint a darker idea of the character’s actions than you can describe on paper.  Wallowing in such details can also quickly go from tasteless to ghastly.  An atrocity is there to remind us what the hero opposes, not for authors to work out latent psychological issues.

Making a villain distinct is the next important area.  This is difficult for a number of reasons.  Science fiction and fantasy are replete with villains, both well developed and… not so much.  The tropes and cliches are such because of the vast scope of the genre.  The genre lends itself to powerful, maniacal and insane villains, and you’ll see scores of these chewing on the scenery and sending forth their Legions of Doom.  This is where being able to build strong, vibrant characters is important.  If the villain feels real and the actions they take seem to follow from their motivations, then the tropes and cliches won’t jar the reader.  Making those characters as unique as possible goes a long way towards this as well.

Hopefully this helps you to develop strong, powerful villains in your stories.

Fantasy, Reading, Science Fiction, Society, Writing

SFWA, the Great SF/F Censoring, and WAFFLES

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For those of you who aren’t really interested in the great hubub in the writing world, you can just skip this post.  For the rest of you, I’m sure it’s been highly entertaining and also somewhat like watching an avalanche or train wreck.  We’ve had the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The good comes in the form of various established authors who are standing up against what amounts to censoring.  Authors (from a variety of political perspectives) saying that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) are being unreasonable.  The organization designed to protect and support authors is, well, doing the opposite.  Attacking members, limiting their free speech and the topics they can discuss, and generally being very juvenile.  If you’ve been following it, I’m certain you have a good idea of what’s been going on.  If not, well, read Sarah Hoyt’s article, or Larry Correia, Kate Paulk, or Mike Williamson.  They delve into the depths plenty and they’ve far more patience for it than I do.  They also say it better than I could and often in ways to poke fun at the stupidity manifest in the organization of SFWA.

I’ll preface this next bit by saying that I’m not a member of SFWA.  I don’t qualify, as a self-published and independent author.  Even if I do become published… well, I don’t really see much point in joining the organization.  At it’s root, SFWA has become that most dreaded of institutions… it’s a clique.  It’s rather like the juvenile groups I saw in High School, groups which hung together from popularity and commited terrible actions against their own members and individuals in the interest of establishing a social heirarchy.  This is most ironic to me because, well, isn’t SF/F supposed to be made up of the free-thinkers and the outcasts, people who don’t go for the social heirarchies?  Oh, officially it is a professional organization… which spends far too much time worrying about hurting feelings and making sure that all the ‘qualified’ members feel good about themselves.  It feels more like a union or guild to me… complete with popularity contests and a party line.  Anyone who steps over that line is a ‘scab’ or worse.  Anyone who doesn’t stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the collective is double-ungood.  What is SFWA, anyway?  How is one supposed to say such an acronym?  Try to say it with me “SFFFWUH?”  It sounds oddly like when I tried to catch a football with my stomach or that time I sneezed after the dentist had used local anesthesia.

But that’s just my perspective from the outside.  And like I said… I don’t even qualify as a member.  What gives me any ground to say such mean and derisive things?  Well, I’m someone who has something of a deep interest in the future of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  I’m a writer.  In my perspective, every piece of drivel that some yah00 writes right now, with some thinly veiled message resembling a steel bar mace coated with a thin layer of flowery paper, is a book that some poor unsuspecting sap will be forced to read in college or high school and told that it is “Great Literature!!!”  I don’t know about you, but when I go to relax at the end of the day, I don’t want to be beaten over the head repeatedly by a heavy chunk of metal.  I just want to relax and read a book.

So, I propose a new writer’s organization.  If nothing else, it needs to be something that has a name you can actually pronounce.  I’ve already brought it up in other forums: WAFFLES.  Writers, Authors, Fans of Fantasy literature and Excellent Science fiction.  Yes, it flows somewhat like the acryonym for the PATRIOT Act… but there’s a reason it passed the House and Senate, after all.  Who can oppose being Patriotic?  Who doesn’t like WAFFLES?  See where I’m going here?  WAFFLES is an organization for everyone… no rules or restrictions, no clique, no saying you aren’t good enough to participate.  I think part of where SFWA went wrong is that it didn’t allow readers a voice… so it’s become detached from the one group they really need to hear from: people buying their books.  WAFFLES is going to be part help-group and part discussion forum.  The biggest part is that you come to discuss, in a logical and non-emotional manner.  Leave your thin skin and easily bruised emotions at the door.  Lets talk about possibilities and This is something of a trial run, in part to see who is interested, in part to stick a thumb in the eye of SFWUH?, and mostly because I don’t like guilds, unions, popularity clubs, or cliques.  Why WAFFLES?  Well, it’s kind of hard to call someone a jack-booted thug for liking Waffles… kind of hard to get worked up in a frenzy in that fashion, eh?

So, if you like SF/F books and are an author, artist, or fan, join WAFFLES.

Entertainment, Fantasy, Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Independent Author’s Toolbag: Reviews and Book Sales

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This post is as much addressed to readers as it is to authors.  Many readers might feel that they are pestered, one might even say harassed, to provide reviews.  Why is that?  Well, it’s simple.  As a reader, when I browse through books on Amazon or B&N, I’ll take a few minutes to glance at what other people said.  Especially if it’s a book from a new or unfamiliar author.  I’ll check what the 5 star raters say and I’ll check what the 1 star raters said.  Why?  Because what irritated someone else about the novel often says more about the author than what someone who loved it might have said.  Also, especially in the era of self-publishing, if I see complaints about poor grammar, awkward sentence structure, or bad plot, I can steer clear.

Apparently, from various market research, ebook sales are highly driven by reviews and ratings.  There are a variety of readers, high consumption readers, who filter by number of reviews.  There is also a prohibition, from Amazon, on ‘reveiw farms’ of authors giving one another incestual reviews.  As an independent author, receiving reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and other locations can be the difference between selling well and not selling at all.  Full reviews at blogs and websites also help to channel some traffic, but the impulse buyers, the ones who need their reading fix, are browsing for their next fix right now… and does your ebook have the reviews to garner their attention?

The other part of this is sales ranking.  Amazon does this most visibly and has the highest volume of ebook sales in the US, so I’ll use it as the primary example.  As an author, you want your sales ranking high for a number of reasons.  The first reason, of course, is high sales means more people buying your book.  This is good for a variety of reasons.  The next reason is that high sales means that your book will appear higher on the lists when someone searches for ebooks in your genre.  That’s less of other people’s stuff that someone has to filter through before they find your work.  paradoxically, this means that in order to sell well… you need to sell well.  However, there are ways to ‘game’ the system.  Amazon tracks sales over time rather than total sales.  The good part about this is that if you can sell even a relatively small number of books in a short period of time, you can books yourself higher on the book sales ranking… which is good, because when a reader sees your book is #23 on some listing versus #230,000, they’re more likely to read what you’re putting out.

How do you do that?  Larry Correia uses a term called a ‘book bomb.’  When an author releases their new book, the author has everyone they know, who’s interested, buy the book around the same time.  The author’s book sales spikes and their book rises up the charts.  How effective is that?  A solid spike can guarantee that other people will see your book.  They might not buy it, but they’ll at least have the opportunity to make the decision… whereas if they never see it, they’re never given the opportunity.  This is an area where networking, developing loyal readers, and communication are essential.  You can seriously help your book sales by organizing loyal readers (also known as herding cats) to get them to buy your stuff.

What does that mean for readers in general?  Well, keep in mind that the authors you read and enjoy don’t just publish out of the goodness of their hearts.  Authors want their works to be appreciated.  We spend thousands and tens of thousands of hours on writing something to entertain you for a day or two.  We also like to eat, so getting paid for it is a nice form of appreciation.  If you really like what someone wrote, post that, write what you liked and didn’t in a review on Amazon or Goodreads or whatever.  A detailed synopsis like your teachers wanted in high school isn’t necessary.  A one liner “I liked this book, author X is my favoritist person EVAR!” isn’t particularly helpful, either.  A couple sentences such as “X writes with strong characters and a vivid setting.  His story hooked me with the first words.  I really enjoyed the dynamic between Character X and Character Y” tells a potential reader much more, without giving away anything that might spoil the read.  Ideally, if you really liked something, you can take five minutes to write three or four sentences about what you liked.  The same goes for something you didn’t like.  If you bought a book and it was the skunkiest piece of drivel you ever stumbled across, post a review about what you didn’t like.  If the author clearly wrote about a subject they didn’t understand, they had “teh worts grammer evar,” or if they wrote a preachy diatribe about some subject in which you disagree… give warning some other folks.  There’s nothing I hate more than spending some of my hard earned money on a book that isn’t worth the time spent in reading it.  And, believe it or not, some authors want that kind of feedback, so we know what to improve upon.

Here’s a link to Larry Correia who wrote a better article on the ‘book bomb’ subject:

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/book-bomb-variant-today-get-a-good-book-for-a-good-reason/

And he’s apparently doing a book bomb for an author right now as well, so check it out:

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/next-book-bomb-chuck-dixon-feb-18th/

 

 

Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

The Fallen Race cover and upcoming release

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The cover for my upcoming release, due on Saturday, 1 Feb 2014
The cover for my upcoming release, due on Saturday, 1 Feb 2014

The Fallen Race, my Military SF / Space Opera novel will be released tomorrow at noon on Amazon and Smashwords.

Blurb below:

Baron Lucius Giovanni, Captain of the battleship War Shrike, finds himself without a home or nation, his ship heavily damaged, and crew in bad shape. The odds against their personal survival are slim. The time of humanity has come to a close. The great nations have all fallen, either to the encroaching alien threats or to internal fighting and civil war. The aliens who seek to supplant humanity, however, have not taken one thing into account: Lucius Giovanni. He and his crew will not give up – not while they still draw breath. If this is to be the fall of humanity, then the crew of the War Shrike will go down fighting…and in the heat of that fight, they may just light a new fire for humanity….

Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

The Fallen Race upcoming release and sample

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The Fallen Race, my Military Science Fiction/Space Opera novel, will be released on 1 February on Amazon as both an ebook and a paper copy.  The ebook will be $ 4.99, the paper copy will be significantly more.

Here is the back-cover synopsis:

Baron Lucius Giovanni, captain of the battleship War Shrike, finds himself without a home or nation, his ship heavily damaged, and crew in bad shape. The odds against their personal survival are slim. The time of humanity has come to a close. The great nations have all fallen, either to the encroaching alien threats or to internal fighting and civil war. The aliens who seek to supplant humanity, however, have not taken one thing into account: Lucius Giovanni. He and his crew will not give up, not while they still draw breath. If this is to be the fall of humanity, then the crew of the War Shrike will go down fighting… and in the heat of that fight, they might just light a new fire for humanity….

And here is a section from teh beginning:

June 1, 2402 Earth Standard Time

Venture System

Nova Roma Empire

 The seven remaining ships of Convoy 142 writhed at the heart of a maelstrom.

 Baron Lucius Giovanni clutched at the arms of his command chair as the enemy fire battered the War Shrike yet again.  The short, dark haired man peered at his displays with dark, almost black, eyes.  His black and silver vac suit bore the eagle symbol of Captain’s rank on the collar, and his shoulder bore a patch with the snarling wolf’s head of Nova Roma.  He acknowledged the fresh round of damage reports.   His eyes went to his Executive Officer, “Tony, can you get anything past their cruiser screen?”

Commander Doko shook his head.  The confines of the battleship’s bridge seemed even tighter with the acrid stench of ozone and shorted electronics.  “No, sir.  Their cruiser’s firefly systems are too strong.”

Lucius rolled his tongue around a mouth that felt dusty and tasted like ash.  His eyes went to the sensor plot that showed what remained of the ships of the convoy.  As he watched, the destroyer Sicarius dropped out of the formation in a broad cloud of debris and far too few escape pods.  “Very well, keep hammering their cruisers.”

Lucius looked over at his brother in law, “Any new orders from Commodore Torrelli?”

“No, sir,” Commander Reese Giovanni-Leone said from the communications section.  Everyone on the bridge had expected one command from Torrelli ever since the initial ambush.  One battleship couldn’t take on six dreadnoughts, not with any chance of survival.  But if they charged into the enemy formation they would disrupt it.  That might save the convoy.

The hell of it was, Lucius would rather take that chance than watch the convoy slowly vanish under the enemy guns.  Soon enough they’d loose enough sensors or weapons and the enemy missiles would get through.  They already had the bad luck to jump in on the Chxor force in close vicinity to Venture’s refueling station.  The escorts couldn’t survive that firepower much longer and the merchant ships would not survive after that.

 “Don’t know why he’s waiting,” Lucius muttered.  His ship rocked again under multiple impacts.  “Not like the bastard can’t be happy at the chance to give that order.”

***

 

 Commodore Vito Torrelli grimaced as the Augustus shuddered.  The elderly dreadnought had held up far better than the convoy’s other escorts.   The forty year old dreadnought had far more resilience and armor than any other ship in the convoy.  Even so, an early hit had opened the bridge to vacuum and slaughtered most of his navigation section.  Other hits had wrought serious damage on the old ship.  Commodore Torrelli was well aware that his ship was bound to Nova Roma for extensive refits even before all of that damage.  “Order the War Shrike to close in on Regal‘s aft quarter.”  He grimaced as he saw Lucius Giovanni’s ship swing into position immediately.

 He could almost see the aloof expression of the other ship’s commander.  He wants me to send his ship into the throat of the guns, want’s to die a hero’s death, Torrelli thought… as if that could ever make up for what his father did.  “I won’t give him that honor,” Torrelli muttered.  He noticed a flicker on one of the enemy cruiser’s firefly systems.  “Guns, focus on cruiser three, hammer me a gap so we can hit these bastards!”

The enemy dreadnoughts hid behind the massive, pancake-shaped defense screens of the cruisers.  Those overlapped screens and the massive jamming of the cruiser’s firefly systems counteracted the better targeting systems of the Nova Roma warships.

As Vito Torrelli watched the displays, he could hear the unvoiced criticisms from his rival.  It felt like he could feel Lucius’s breath on the back of his neck.  “Dammit, get me a shot!”

***

 

 “That bastard can fight,” Lucius said.  The Augustus had received the brunt of the enemy’s fire.  A comet’s trail of debris, air, and water vapor trailed behind the battered dreadnought, but Commodore Torrelli continued to fight.

“Cruiser three just went down, sir, I’ve got a shot!” Commander Doko shouted.  A moment later both warships poured their fire through the suddenly opened gap and into the dreadnought left exposed.  Every remaining gun and missile tube aboard the War Shrike  fired into the gap. 

Lucius snarled as explosions rocked the enemy vessel.  A massive cloud of debris enveloped the lead Chxor dreadnought.  “Looks like we gave them something to remember us by!”  The Chxor formation adjusted though, and a moment later the damaged dreadnought disappeared again behind the defense screen of another cruiser.

 “Sir! Augustus just sent Code Black!” Reese said.

Lucius felt his stomach drop.  The other warship lay only a hundred kilometers distant, close enough for visual.  He looked at his sensor repeater just in time to see the dreadnought’s port side engines erupt in a chain of explosions.  The massive ship began to rotate as its starboard engines threw it into a spin.  The stresses over-taxed the ship’s frame and the midships section ripped apart in a slow-motion avalanche of sheering steel.

Lucius watched as four thousand crew died… and he could do nothing.

Lucius let out a tight breath.  Only five ships left remained and Convoy 142 had a new commander.  His eyes raked across his navigation display.  The civilian ships didn’t have the acceleration to escape the Chxor.  They didn’t have the time to calculate a jump through shadow space to take them elsewhere.  Even if he threw his ship at the Chxor, the remaining transports couldn’t elude the enemy, not without someone to screen them.

“Message to all ships,” Lucius said, his voice suddenly hoarse.  “Prepare and execute blind jump immediately.”

There was a sudden silence on the bridge.

 “Solarius Endeavor, Unicorn, and Trade Enterprise acknowledge,” Lucius’s brother in law said.  “Regal reports damage to their jump drive and that they’ll have it up as soon as they can.”

 Lucius felt a cold mask settle over his face.  The War Shrike couldn’t take the full firepower of the Chxor, not for long.  “Tell them to expedite and that we’ll cover them until they jump.”  He watched as the other three civilian ships jumped away into shadow.  He wondered if any of them would emerge again.

 As if on cue, a fresh barrage swept in from the Chxor ships.  Alarms wailed and Lucius felt the deck heave as multiple beams tore into his ship.  His eyes focused on the inbound missile tracks.  Without the Augustus, they’d lost most of their interceptor fire.

Lieutenant Livianus’s hands flew across his station.  He took the sensor data and picked off the missiles one after the other.  His precise shots almost stopped them all.

 Two missiles slipped past his fire.  One swept past as the helmsman continued his evasive maneuvers.  The proximity fuse detonated only five kilometers in front of the War Shrike.  The Chxor used missiles based off of captured human munitions.  Fundamentally identical to the pilum ship-killer missiles, they packed a sixty megaton fusion warhead.

 The sudden burst of radiation hammered into the War Shrike’s magnetic fields that held the plasma defense screen in place.  The massive induction coils exploded like bombs at the massive surge of power.

One exploded out into Engine Room Three and killed fifty-eight crew.  The other detonated only fifty meters away from the bridge.  The four armored bulkheads between there and the bridge absorbed some of the effect.  The aft bulkhead of the bridge shattered. 

Shards of steel whipped through crew members and equipment alike. Half the weapons techs died before they knew what hit them.  The concussion ripped Lieutenant Livianus out of his shock chair and smashed him against the forward bulkhead hard enough to leave a red smear.

One shard flew like a spear and slammed into the back of the communications officer’s chair.  Lucius’s brother-in-law let out a scream of agony as it bit through his left shoulder. 

Lucius’s gaze locked on the shard of metal that pinned Reese to his seat.  He felt something twist in his own guts as he heard Reese’s scream. 

The explosion itself vaporized fifty meters of armored hull and opened the ship’s entire forward section to vacuum.  The hard radiation and the wave superheated plasma took the lives of two hundred more of Lucius’s crew in an instant. 

 The first missile’s simple tracking system lost the War Shrike and continued past.

 The Regal had no countermeasure systems to prevent that missile from acquisition.  The missile detonated on top of the unarmored transport.  It vaporized the aft end of the vessel and sent the ship’s fusion plant into overload.  Lucius grunted in anguish as the seventy five civilians aboard died almost instantly.

Luicus shook his head.  His sensors told him that only his ship remained.  He cut his seat restraints and staggered through the smoke and noise of the bridge.  He shoved a corpse off the top of the navigation station.  Lucius flipped up the clear plastic cover, the surface slick with blood.

His fist hammered down on the jump initiation.

Hope you enjoyed!

Fantasy, Reading, Writing

Steampunk World Building

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imagesCA2ONS14

So, there I was… knee deep in dead vampires and choking on coal smoke when it hit me… what was the name of this country again?

Come to think of it, why was it named that, what was its history, and why are they still playing around with steam engines in the 1950’s???

I’ve something of a confession to make: I’m a world builder.  I love to put together a vibrant, expansive world, populated by people, organizations, nations, and machines that are interconnected and that make sense.  I’ll spend days, weeks, sometimes even months thinking about the economic systems, technology, and culture.  What does that get me?  In theory, it means I know what motivates characters and what has shaped them.

This gets a little more complicated when you’re writing alternate history… especially steampunk alternate history.  There’s a certain expectation in steampunk for larger than life characters along with odd, sometimes absurd, contrasts between our own world and the created one.  That requires a mix of attention to detail, quirky humor, and enjoyment for building that sort of structure.

So where do you start?  Well, it depends on you, really.  I tend to like to start with whatever big thing is different in that other world than here.  Was some genius born who developed air ships and steam engines?   Did some major event change the course of history?  Why is this so important… and what impact did that have on the world, from the bottom rungs of society to the mightiest nations?

For me, it’s important to explore those changes even before I really start writing.  There’s nothing more annoying to me than to be mid sentence and realize I don’t know why something isn’t possible or where something comes from.  If something is different in this other world, there should be a reason it is different… and sometimes ‘just cause it’s cool’ isn’t good enough.

So, in example, I’ll give a run down of how I started my world building.  In my universe, there was an inventor in England who discovered aetherium, a substance that, when heated with steam, produces power for use in weapons and aircraft.  This discovery came just before the outbreak of the American Civil War.. and the British Empire intervened in favor of their trade partners within the Confederacy.  After they conquered the North, the British appointed a Grand Duke to govern their wayward colonies and turned their attention to other lands.  The Confederacy has since split up into several independent nations, all of whom have abolished slavery, mostly from pressure from their allies, the British.  The Americas have become something of a back water, while Europe has remained the center of technology.  This has changed just recently, as some bright new minds have come up with new, refined aetherium powered weapons which threaten the balance of power yet again.

This gives me a rough basis of the world, in broad strokes.  It’s not perfect, but it gets me started.  From there, I’ll go into the details of what individual nations are up to, the societal pressures which have crafted the conflicts between characters, and the setting itself, from the technologies that they use commonly every day to the way they talk and interact.

For anyone else with steampunk on the mind, hopefully this helps out in making your story work.

Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Renegades: Ghost Story out tomorrow

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Here is the cover art from the awesome Robert Brockman

Renegades: Ghost Story will be out tomorrow.  It is the fourth novella in the Renegades series.  This one follows the perspective of Eric and if I had to pick favorites, it would probably be the novella I enjoyed writing the most.  I’ll be doing a book bomb for it tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon, MST.  So if you plan on buying it, buy it then.  If you haven’t read any of the Renegades novellas yet, you can pick them all up individually for a dollar.  Yes, just a dollar.  Each one is good for a few hours of light, enjoyable reading, or (at least through Amazon, so I’m told) you can return the book.  So why not give them a try?

Here’s the short synopsis:

Erik Stryker is a former Centauri Commando; highly lethal and experienced in combat on a dozen worlds. He’s had almost everything taken from him, his family, his career, and his team. He and his companions have broken out of an alien prison, hijacked a ship, and are en route to human civilization. A chance encounter with a derelict ship brings up ghosts of Erik’s past and awakens something which preys on ships and crews. Erik will have to face his own ghosts if he wants to save his new team.

Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Renegades: Ghost Story is coming!

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Renegades: Ghost Story will arrive on Tuesday the 21st.    Here is the synopsis:

Eric Stryker is a man on the run with a past that haunts him, which has led him to his current rag-tag companions. They’ve escaped from the xenocidal alien Chxor, hijacked a ship, are headed for human space, and they’ve even selected a captain for their motley crew. Yet on the edge of human space, the margin of survival is as thin as the blade of a razor.

When they encounter a ghost ship, the crew awakens a threat. Something awaits them, something that preys upon ships and crews as they ply the void. It will test the fragile alliances of the crew to the breaking point and beyond. Eric will have to bury the ghosts of his past to face that danger… or his past will bury him.

Renegades: Ghost Story will be available on Tuesday (21 January) on Amazon and Smashwords.

I’ll be doing a book bomb for it on the 21st, at 12 noon, mountain standard time.

Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Free Short Story! (and an update)

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I’ve added a short story to the Free Fiction area.  The story is called “Runner” and it is something of an origin story on Run from the Renegades series.  It was interesting and challenging writing from his perspective, and I hope that you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.  Feel free to make any comments about the short story on this post, I’d love to hear your input.

As far as other updates, Renegades: Ghost Story is set to come out early next week.  I’ll be planning a book bomb when it comes out, so if you plan on picking it up from Amazon, please do so on or around Tuesday, 21 Jan, around noon Mountain Standard Time.  It’ll also go up on Smashwords, and from there to B&N, Kobo and the rest.  I’ll post the Blurb and Cover for Renegades: Ghost Story this Friday (17 January).

My novel, The Fallen Race, is on track to come out at the end of that week.  Right now it is forecasted for Friday, 24 January.  Again, I’ll be trying a book bomb, looking at 12 noon (MST) on Saturday, 25 January.  While the Renegades series is more of an exploration/adventure SF story, the Fallen Race is military science fiction.  I discussed it with Jason Cordova in my interview at  Shiny Book Review.  The interview is here for those who want to read it.

Lastly, for those who enjoyed the Echo of the High Kings previews, I have good news.  The novel will be coming out on Amazon next month, and for the first three days, it will be free to purchase.  I’ll have to make it exclusive to Amazon to do so, but I’m conducting a kind of experiment to see if that will allow me to boost sales, and compare it to my sales of other books.  Look for Echo of the High Kings to come out in mid February of 2014.

Fantasy, Reading, Writing

Free Stuff: Preview from Echo of the High Kings, Part 3

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A third installment from Echo of the High Kings.  The section covers a skirmish between Lady Katarina’s followers and some of Duke Hector’s men.

Aerion set his back against the tree and took a deep breath.  Through the trees, the squeal of pigs and the rumble of wagons carried.  He listened to that sound, and he waited.  For a moment, he remembered his home.  Aerion remembered Old Taggart’s voice, rough and low, filled with caution, as if every word were some precious coin to spend.  He remembered the smell of his mother’s apron, the scent of stew and bread, and of smoke from the wood fireplace in the inn. 

And then he remembered the fire, and the screams.

At that moment, a clear trumpet clarion sounded as Gerlin signaled the attack.

Aerion leaped from behind his tree, and immediately spotted the wagons, only thirty feet away.  He ran forward, hands clenched on the greatsword.  One of the guards on foot, raised a drawn bow, arrow pointed at Aerion.  The guard released just as Aerion stumbled.  Aerion felt the arrow’s fletching kiss his neck.

The guard reached for another arrow.  Aerion felt his world narrow, as everything but that guard and his bow vanished.  He felt his legs pump him forward.  His heart raced, a steady drumbeat that drowned all else out.  Aerion felt a cry of rage and fear open his mouth, but he couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything.

The guard, knocked another arrow.  The mercenary seemed to move in slow motion.  He raised the bow, drew it back.

And then Aerion had closed the distance.  He swung the sword downward, all memory of his training lost, he swung the four foot blade like an axe.

The sword struck the mercenary between his right shoulder and his neck.  The blade chopped down through his simple leather armor, and a fountain of blood erupted.

Aerion stumbled back, spitting blood and suddenly sickened.  He had to tug hard, foot pressed against the corpse to pull his sword free.  Some motion sensed as much as seen caused him to turn.  He ducked under a spear thrust and caught the shaft just behind the barbed head.  Aerion pulled hard, and suddenly stood, face to face with a blonde bearded mercenary, his eyes wide, pupils dilated.

Aerion saw him release the spear, hands going for a dagger at his waist.  He brought the pommel of his sword up into his opponent’s face.   The mercenary stumbled back with a cry.

A shout made him turn, and he saw one of the Jasen on the ground, a brutish looking warrior above him with an axe.  Aerion lunged forward, sword extended.

The iron tip of his sword skidded off of the axeman’s chainmail.  Aerion continued his move and slammed his shoulder into the larger man’s back.  The axeman stumbled away, and Aerion stumbled back.

Another man, his face drawn in a rictus of hate, swung a sword at him.  Aerion brought up his sword to parry, and a shock went down his arm.  The beserk warrior swung again, and again Aerion blocked.  He kicked out, desperate to get some room to move, but his opponent caught the blow on his shield and continued his wild attack.

Again and again the madman battered at him, Aerion desperately swung his larger sword to block blow after blow.  He backed away, tried to gain some space, but his attacker didn’t slow his own pace, and continued to press him.

His feet caught on something.  Aerion fell back over a still body.  Aerion hit the hardpacked road on the flat of his back.  The impact drove all the air out of his lungs.  Aerion brought his sword up to block as his opponent swung a powerful overhand blow. 

The sword struck just inches above the crossguard with a sound like a hammer striking glass, the brittle iron of his sword snapped.

Aerion held the stump of his blade up in shock as the berserk warrior above him raised his own blade for the finishing blow.  Aerion kicked out hard.  His leg struck his attacker’s knee, which bent backwards with a horrific crackle.

The warrior dropped with a scream, and Aerion stood, still clutching the stump of a sword.  The beserker still swung his sword at Aerion.  He crawled towards him, maimed leg dragging.  Aerion saw Jasen, a bloody gash down the side of his face, drive a spear down into the beserker from behind.

“Grab his sword, boy!” Jasen shouted.  He pointed over Aerion’s shoulder.  “There’s more of them, ancestors know where they came from, but they’re attacking lady Katarina!”

Aerion felt a jolt of ice water pump through his veins.  He looked over, just in time to see eight horsemen push through a cluster of fighting.

He saw her then.  She stood in the middle of the road, only twenty feet away.  She had her sword in her left hand, something else in her right.  She looked like a scene from a story.  She stood like a savage warrior princess, her dark hair back in a braid, her chain shirt spattered with blood.

Aerion blindly reached down.  His fingers found the hilt of the sword that had nearly taken his life.  He charged forward.  Jasen had already run ahead, but Aerion’s longer legs easily outpaced him.

He sprinted past Lady Katarina, just as she raised her right hand.  He heard her shout something as he raced past.  He couldn’t hear her words over the roaring in his ears and his own labored breathing.

One of the horsemen reared before him, and swung down with a blade.

Aerion ducked under the horse’s head, then thrust up on the horseman’s left side.  He felt the lighter blade skitter off the horseman’s greaves, then catch and plunge up under his breastplate.

The horseman sagged, just as the frightened horse sidestepped.

Aerion jerked the blade free and turned, just in time to see two more behind him.  Time slowed again as he saw the nearest had his hammer raised, about to descend upon Aerion.  Aerion tried to force his body to move out of the path, but he didn’t have time.

He heard Lady Katarina shout something, her high, clear voice cut through the shouts and screams.

Aerion watched the hammer descend, saw his death in that swing, with no time to move out of the way or block it.

Then the world flared white.