Author Archives: Blaze

Inspiration

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Those of you know have been keeping score at home know that I moved this summer into a new place. The old house was 1800 sqft with a three car garage.  The new gig is just under 1100 sqft, with no garage, but a couple of outbuildings and a little over six acres of trees, ponds, and quiet.

I have spent the better part of several weekends unpacking boxes that I put away over a year ago, left first in a storage unit, and then a barn. As a result, I have had to assemble old bookcases, find the shelves, rearrange them several times, and then finally stack them with books.

It’s interesting, what changes you can go through over a year. Or, in my case, something like ten years.

It was a decade ago that my first wife was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and given six months to live. She wasn’t done yet, so she got another three years out instead. I still miss her every day.

One of the things she required (REQUIRED, mind you) was that I not turn into a shut-in when she was gone. That I would start dating again after she was gone, and be happy. (She left me several pages of lists of things I was to do, afterwards. I have now, finally, checked off the last item.)

So I met the woman who would become Fabulous Publisher Babe ™ around seven years ago. We dated for around six months, but it didn’t work out at the time. I went off and had other adventures along the way.

A little over two years ago, she appeared in my life again in a strange way (you gotta buy me cider, mead, or wine to hear that story). It worked out this time, and we got married a little under two months ago.

Along the way, I had to re-invent myself into someone completely new. People that knew me ten years ago might recognize the shell, but not the innards. My friend Dusty can attest to that, and he’s in the best position there.

So today, Labor Day Weekend in the US, I’m looking at the strange year I have had, and two years, and three, and five, and seven, and ten. And I’m arranging books on shelves, trying to sort out what should go where.

Between then and now, I’ve probably gotten rid of around 3,000 books. Mostly paperbacks, but still. I figure it comes down to roughly 3-4 cubic meters of books. And around a standard ton of paper.

When I decided it was time to move, I was ruthless, kinda. If I hadn’t read it in six years, and it wasn’t being retained for a very specific reason, it went. My office suddenly became navigable, which is saying something.

As I unpack, I’m culling more, simply because I really have become someone else, someone who doesn’t need so much stuff. It’s very weird.

Which brings me, long ways around a shaggy-dog, to inspiration. Thanks for staying with me thus far.

A number of readers have compared Jessica Keller to Honor Harrington. I feel honored, because that’s one hell of a nice comparison. But it’s not really accurate. I’ve read the first few books in the series, but they just never reached out and grabbed me. Haven’t read any of them past about the third one, not even sure how many there are.

When I set out to commit science fiction, my inspirations come from a different set of sources. I own everything Doc Smith ever wrote, including things he inspired, but someone else wrote, like all four Tedric books, written by Gordon Eklund from something Doc wrote, or the D’Alembert books (the original set) with Goldin. Everything, including a mystery title called Have Trenchcoat, Will Travel.

At the same time, I have read almost everything David Drake has ever published, but I have generally only kept the SF stuff and let the fantasy go. (He writes good fantasy, but it doesn’t inspire me as much as his SF.) And that’s generally in hardcover, so Drake takes up an entire shelf with hardbacks and another with paperbacks. I’ve probably recycled two more shelves of stuff.

(Pardon me, I keep having to wander back to my bedroom and examine what’s still on the shelf. I just got back from another run to Half Price Books to deposit more stuff for future generations of me to find.)

The only other significant writers in that bookcase now are CS Friedman (almost all of her stuff, regardless of genre, except a couple of recent, “modern” pieces), Michael Moorcock (the original 15-volume Eternal Champion hardbacks I picked up 20+ years ago), and Glen Cook (Books of the North and all 4, so far, Instrumentalities of the Night.) On a different shelf, in the hallway, I have all twenty Aubrey/Maturin books.

So, inspiration.

Patrick O’Brian inspired Drake to write the Leary/Mundy books. I love those. Re-read them when a new one comes out, so I have it all fresh. Drake writes realistic characters responding in human ways to extraordinary circumstances. Not many writers focus on that sort of thing, at least not while telling big stories. That’s why I rank him first.

Doc Smith just told humungous space opera. He invented the very genre, as far as anyone else working was concerned. A million battle fleets converging on a single planet and trying to blow it up. Grand Moff Tarkin was the next person to think on that scale. And Doc was on the bleeding edge of tech.  Re-read the second on the command ship describing “the Tank” and tell me that’s not a standing 3D Laser hologram, before any of those words had been invented.

Glen Cook, when he’s on, tells cracking good stories that bring a ground trooper’s point of view to grand epic fantasy. And if you asked me to rate my top five favorite single books, The Dragon Never Sleeps makes that list.

Michael Moorcock pretty much invented his own sandboxes to play in. Epic blending of fantasy magic and technology, along a strange spectrum that works.  If it’s a little too pot-boiler/deus-ex-machina in places, he handles it well.

CS Friedman, when she’s on, constructs fantastically rich worlds into which a variety of characters can romp. In Conquest Born makes my top five list as well. But Coldfire is close behind, as is The Madness Season.

So my inspiration is drawn from writers who told big stories, but always tried to keep the human element. Tolkien bores me because he wanders all over the place, down irrelevant dead-ends, and several of the big characters are gods masquerading as mortals in order to play their silly games with each other. The price of immortality is boredom, not evil. Don’t let Gandalf fool you.

I was inspired by some really amazing writers, telling stories that take place in a technological future where we’re still human. Where we could have a conversation over a beer or cup of coffee, separated by technology, not humanity.

My second inspiration is to tell stories about a future where mankind has spread to the stars, and not just white people from North American and Western Europe. China and India collectively represent forty percent of humans. They are poor today, but that’s a modern invention. India and China have both been the center of human civilization at one time or another. It is likely that they will be, again.

And I don’t mean modernists. China as outsiders see it is not the China that would take to the stars. I imagine that they would be more like those sailors and pirates of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Or the grand explorers of the 14th and 15th.

India is no more India than Europe is Europe. Both are collections of interesting peoples with their own languages, their own cultures, and their own dreams, working fitfully to find their own place in the sun. A thousand years in the future, I expect both will still be recognizable as such, assuming we make it off world.

And that brings me back to inspiration. David Drake makes no bones about basing many of his stories (however loosely) on historical events and adventurers. He mines all of history for how people hundreds or thousands of years ago got into a mess, fought their way through, and came out the other side. All the stupid friction that occurs makes it into the stories as well.

As you know, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The first thing the enemy does is f#%! it up. In Drake’s stories, plans go astray. And people react and respond.

This is on my mind because I just finished reviewing the final battle sequence of Last of the Immortals before I send it off to First Readers. Emmerich has a plan. Jessica has a plan. Both fail, but it is how they fail, and how both recover, that makes the final battle interesting.

It will be everything I expect readers of Auberon and Queen to be clamoring for, and none of it. It will be a final battle, but not THE final battle. Futures will hinge on it, but nothing grand appears to come of this battle, except for the men and women who pay the ultimate sacrifice.

I realized along the way that I don’t write epic fantasy, but I do (occasionally) write epic SF. I have (at least) nine Jessica novels planned. I’ll probably start organizing for #4 early next year, and start the series forward from there.

Between then and now, another Javier, another Brak (short) piece, and then I don’t know. I will let the Goddess of Music dictate for me when we reach that point.

I hope all that makes sense. I realize I’ve just written a way-longer blog than normal, but I had something to say and it took more paper than I planned. Hopefully, it made sense. Or will, after you go check out the names on your own bookshelf.

 

Shade and sweet water,

bd

Queen of the Pirates Goodreads giveway and other fall news

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First news: There is a Goodreads giveaway of Queen of the Pirates happening, for those of you that would like a paper copy that you can track me down and have sign, sometime.

Additionally, Book Three, Last of the Immortals, is now in the hands of first readers and editors. Expected publication date is roughly November 17th, just in time for OryCon 37 in Portland, OR.  I won’t be on any panels, but will be hanging out and generally having fun with a tribe of writers and other silly folks.

As cons go, Ory is much quieter than ECCC or Pax. Partly, that’s because it is a writer’s con, rather than for gamers or comic nerds (of which I am also both). There will be a lot of panels on how to write, how to become a writer, how to be successful, and how to enjoy it. And yes, those are four different tasks we all face. There will be a small dealers room, and a reasonable art show. But the core is writers.

There will also be a fantastic costumed element. Costumers from up and down the west coast come to OryCon and show off. Plus there is an amazing steampunk guild in the Pacific NW that goes all in. And it shows.

Afterwards, there will be a mass book-signing event at one of the Powell’s books satellite locations (the one out west, I don’t have the address or city in front of me, but over the ridge from downtown). Lots of people come up for it (like 20-30 authors signing kind of thing) and Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) will be there signing her books and is friends with the folks running it, so they invited me.

Immortals will be my fourth novel, so I at least look like a professional, even if last year, Fabulous Publisher Babe was seated between Todd McCaffery on one side and Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch on the other, with me running errands for Irene Radford. But this is your chance to get a signed copy.  And OryCon is about as close as we’ll get to a book release party.

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Thank you for everyone who bought and enjoyed Auberon and Queen of the Pirates. The reviews have been generally very good, but better has been that people liked it enough to leave a comment and a good rating. I write for me. I can do that, as a true independent writer not beholden to Manhattan editors. But it’s nice when other people read and like it, and even get it.

By now, hopefully, you’ve read Queen, and come to that lovely cliff-hanger ending. Your wait won’t be too long. Immortals turned out to be almost as long as Queen (81k before editors, probably 85k after, compared to 91k for Queen), because I ended up with a much broader and deeper story than I expected going in.

But we do resolve the three books as a trilogy. And there will be more Jessica Keller books, just not immediately. She’s finally happy to let me get back to some of the other things I originally had planned for 2015.  I will let everyone know when I start the next trilogy, as I expect to write those back to back to back once she tells me what I need to know.

Before that, I need to write a short piece for an anthology (the annual camp-con piece, of which Tales From An Alien Campfire was this year’s issue). I have another Science Officer story planned. A few secret projects that I can’t tell anyone about until probably the middle of next year. You know, stuff.

 

Went to World Con this year. That’s why there was no blog last week. In between exhaustion and other things, I felt it would be a good idea to keep myself to myself. There are some ugly trends out there that are slowly resolving themselves, and a few people caught on the wrong side of history, and few trapped in the middle.

One particular jackass has made it a point, over the last few years, to try to stack the slate of stories nominated for the Hugo awards, which are the Oscars of science fiction and fantasy. His general position is that women and minorities don’t belong in science fiction, and certainly shouldn’t be nominated for any awards. The Hugos should only be for white European men. Like I said, jackass. Racist, misogynistic, homophobic jackass.

So this year, he managed to dominate the nomination process in ways that will probably get it changed next year. And he appears to have burned so many bridges that you’ll never see him in anything major again, as big publishers are allergic to bad publicity. (Bad boy is one thing, neo-nazi punk is something entirely else, especially at a time when more and more women are buying and reading science fiction.  Did you see the article recently where the single largest demographic of gamers right now out there are adult women?  Warms my heart.) Enough voters chose “No award given” that there were literally no names for something like five of the categories.  It was brutal, and rude, and probably necessary.

Anyway, those of you who have read my stuff will note that I don’t generally have a socio-political axe to grind. (Okay, not many, but still.) I just want to tell a really good story, with interesting characters doing believable things in the face of incredible odds. If I happen to have characters who are black, or brown, or female, or alien, or whatever, it is because I believe that in the future, we will have moved away from the current lens of race and gender politics. (Hopefully, some researcher in the distant future is reading my ancient historical works and giggling at the concept of only having one gender. I’ll keep banging the rocks together, just in case.)

I had this conversation yesterday with someone. Science fiction, at its best, is about what it means to be human. To explore where we are right now, and where we are going. To go back to some past point and change a single thing and see where it lands us. To move past our present and engage our future. The very best episodes of Star Trek (TOS or NextGen) did that. (“There are FOUR lights!”)

There are important works in science fiction that explore all the strange corners of human civilization. Past, present, or future.  While I may not be the right reader for some of them, it really does warm my heart to see so many new voices, so many new cultures, so many new genders exploring these things. Doubly so when the old white dinosaurs of publishing culture are finally dying. It gives me more things to read, more things to talk about, more ideas to think. And while I might prefer Doc Smith or Isaac Asimov, I do some for their exploration of the future, not their horribly-dated social consciousness. I can laugh at the Lensman books, or Skylark, or Robots, while not losing the core of the idea they wanted to convey.

That being said, modern space opera tends to be a very Euro-centric affair. Can someone recommend me a writer from that geographical span of cultures we call “Middle East” for some good space opera? I would like to see how they would do it different, and what I can learn from them.

Shade and sweet water,

blaze

Last of the Immortals

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Hiya,

First off: thank you.

I had a big print-book giveaway on Goodreads last week and had a bunch of people sign up for a copy of Auberon. At the same time, pre-orders for Queen of the Pirates have gone kinda through the roof right now, and the book won’t drop until Tuesday morning (I think Seattle time, but I’m not sure. It will be in your hands electronically by the time you get out of bed, anyway.)

Planning to do a Goodreads giveaway for Queen the week after I get back from World Con, so in about eight days. Like the others, it will be set up for readers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Because things have gone so well this week, both from a business standpoint as well as a creative one, figured I’d give everybody a sneak peek on what’s coming.

Y’all are familiar with Auberon by now (I hope.) Queen of the Pirates picks up after Jessica gets home, as she is getting ready for her next mission.  This mission takes her even further into the back of beyond, and the First Lord and the Premier want her to learn diplomacy so she can be more than just a Fighting commander, going forward.

<plot and storyline explanation chopped out />

So after all that craziness, I ended Queen on a cliffhanger note and set up Gotterdammerung with Emmerich Wachturm, the so-called Red Admiral. The third book in the first trilogy is Last of the Immortals. For those of you that have read The Science Officer, (that’s all of you, right?), the actual being who is the Last of the Immortals is Suvi, making her appearance in Immortals some twelve hundred years after the events covered in The Librarian.

As of this morning, I’m just shy of 60,000 words on Immortals. I had planned it to be 60k, but I’m still deep in the middle of three different simultaneous final battles. Feels like it might be 70-75k at this point, once I round off everything and tack in several epilogues. So I need to put my head down and write more.

I think y’all’ll be pleased with the results. Queen was a fun novel for me to write, extending everything that we had in Auberon and taking Jessica places I never expected. But that’s the fun of writing into semi-darkness. (I call it darkened hallways. You know where it heads, roughly, but you don’t see the details until you’re on top of them.) Immortals brings it all to a place of rest, where we can recover and figure out where we go next.

There is a second Jessica Keller trilogy planned. Dunno when, because I have other things I want to write, and I still can’t afford to quit the day-job yet (planning. trust me, planning for that day). As an extra teaser, book four is entitled Goddess of War. That will make much more sense once you complete Queen of the Pirates, by the way. (There is also a third trilogy planned, but I won’t get to it for a couple of years, most likely, as I need to write a half dozen other novels before I can get to what will be Jessica’s Book Seven. I also have that title, but I’m not sharing it yet. More suspense that way.)

Schedule reminder, for those of you keeping score at home.

World Con, Aug 21-23 in Spokane, WA

Ory Con 37, Nov 20-22 in Portland, OR

I have also been invited to the big book signing event Powell’s books does, the Sunday night after Ory Con. I will have copies of Auberon, Imposters, and Queen of the Pirates with me in paper form. More importantly, Last of the Immortals will be out that Tuesday prior, and you can get your copy and get it signed if you happen to be northwest enough to make the trip. I’ll include links when we get close. This is more to drum up business for Ory Con, which is a lovely, writer-centric con (as opposed to a gaming con or media con) that deserves lots of traffic.

As always, please let me know if you have questions or ideas. If any of you know makers, I would love to work with someone to get Science Officer mugs made (see The Mind Field for more details.) The University of Ballard will also need t-shirts and maybe mugs at some point, based on how Last of the Immortals is shaping up. If anybody wants to cosplay, lemme know and I can give you better details about Jessica’s uniform. Haven’t committed it to print yet, because it wasn’t necessary, but you never know. Seeing someone in a Republic of Aquitaine Command Centurion uniform at a con would totally rock. 🙂

That’s about all the silliness I have this week.

shade and sweet water,

bd

Queen of the Pirates, and other news

So about now, the next Hive story, entitled Moonshot, has been finally published on all the major sites. It’s the next sequel to Myrmidons, and features everybody’s favorite psychic ant nest in her further adventures. This time, she steals technology from the gods so that she can demonstrate the non-primacy of man as alpha predator.

Because even ants dream…

Also, starting Monday (8/10), I am having another round of Goodreads Giveaways for Auberon (enabled for US, UK, Canada, and Australia separately) for a print version of the first Jessica Keller novel, as we prepare for the release of the second novel in the series, Queen of the Pirates, currently available for pre-order on most major internet retailers.

Queen is Jessica’s story after she gets home from the Long Raid in book one. To some, she’s a hero. To others, an insubordinate plebe who has risen too far above her station. The First Lord and the Premier want her to become something more than just an excellent commander, so they send her to a quiet front to practice diplomacy with a friendly neighbor.

Once there, she uncovers a plot to destabilize the entire frontier, driven by Imperial Admiral Emmerich Wachturm. The conspiracy keeps getting deeper as she probes, and she must find friends among her enemies if she is going to turn the tide, before a final battle that sees her go beyond everything anyone imagined.

It’s a longer piece than Auberon (90k vs 60k). As I got into it, I realized I had a much larger story to tell. Worse, in the middle of it, Arnulf turns to Jessica and says “Tell about your founding legends for the Republic of Aquitaine.” So I had to stop and figure those out, literally in the middle of a chapter, before I could continue.

The result of that was the novella The Story Road, the first of what will be several Henri Baudin stories. (Word of advice: The Story Road is, as I have mentioned elsewhere, a slipstream of magic realism and science fiction. I mean, let’s face it: Henri is a bard. Literally a man who busks for a living. And he stumbles across how to reignite galactic civilization in the aftermath of the the Darkness.)

It’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. It is a quiet piece. No gunfights, no car chases, no great romantic conflicts or conquests. It also contains more adult content. If you want sarcasm and combat, stick with Jessica and Javier.

I rather enjoyed writing The Story Road, because it’s Henri as a young man, long before he Founds the Republic of Aquitaine, of which Jessica will be born to defend. It’s magic realism, so I get to color outside the normal lines in Jessica and Javier’s universe, where everything is grounded in realism and normalcy. It’s quiet and strange, because one hallmark of magic realism is the fact that you never know if the things you see are real or just in your head.

Henri never knows. It doesn’t stop him from pursuing his dream, and accidentally up-ending the entire galaxy along the way.

But back to Queen. Read them in either order, Queen or The Story Road, but the concept of the powerful magic of Founding Legends will be more apparent when Jessica is talking to Arnulf about them. It becomes all the more so when Emmerich shares his own founding legends from the Empire, and how they differ from Aquitaine. (It’s a very interesting dinner party conversation, as one might imagine.)

And, Queen ends on something of a good cliff-hanger, as one would expect from book two of a trilogy. That’s planned. It’s the end of Act II, after all, when things are supposed to be as bad as they can get. It flows right into the third novel, Last of the Immortals, which is just about done and ready to go to my first readers in the next few weeks, with a publication date in mid-November, just before Ory Con down in Portland, OR. Structurally, you might compare it to the end of Empire and the beginning of Jedi. (Not that I think they are that equal as action adventures, but the pattern of story-telling follows the same river.)

As I said above, Queen is now available for pre-order on the major sites. And I plan to be at World Con in Spokane, WA in a little more than a week. I’ll have a few physical copies of both Auberon and Queen if you want to pick one up then and have it signed at the con. (If you can’t make the con and still want one, send me an email and we’ll work out details. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is good at handling that sort of thing for me.)

For those of you keeping score at home: the house is finally done and I might be able to move into it this week. And the wedding was awesome. Her brother officiated and everyone was well fed and enjoyed all the wine and mead I made (36 bottles when we decanted the carboys). There’s even video on FB.

Once Queen comes out, I can finally say my crazy summer has reached a point where things might settle down and I can enjoy life without the constant churn. I’m looking forward to setting a table down in the upper meadow, under the two big trees, where I can sit and write in the shade, and listen to the little critters chirp and argue. Once Immortals is done, I’m onto my fall projects: something for the next camp-con anthology (Tales from an Alien Campfire being the 2015 edition); some more Javier, some more Dieselpunk, some more I-dunno.

It will be fun. And feel free to drop me a line occasionally. I try to answer in a reasonable manner, given that the day-job still intrudes and I will shortly have a much longer commute both ways.

shade and sweet water…

bd

 

I’m back, kinda

Summer has been kinda awesome. For those of you keeping score at home, I published two novels, a novella, and two short stories, plus a couple of audio books. I also finished building a new house and am about to move in, and got married to Fabulous Publisher Babe™.

Yesterday, I published the summer newsletter, for those of you who are on the mailing list. (This is also your chance to sign up. The next one is due around November 1, as I only send them quarterly. More frequent news comes out with this blog.) Which brings us to the future tense, more or less.

Sometime in the next week or two, Moonshot will be coming out. That’s the next Hive story after Myrmidons, although this one is not (to the best of my current knowledge) based on actual events, like Myrmidons was. (Don’t ask. You wouldn’t believe me.)

I’ve also been looking at the proof of the next Jessica Keller novel, Queen of the Pirates. It’s really amazing looking. It is now also available for pre-order on most sites. Sometime soon, it will be available as a paper edition, as well, because I will need to approve it ahead of time so I can order a backpack full of copies for myself so I can take them to World Con, XXX for anyone who will be there and wants to get one signed by the author.

Unlike for Auberon, I don’t plan on doing a book release party for Queen of the Pirates or Last of the Immortals, since both books are coming out for major cons (World Con and Orycon, respectively). Maybe sometime next year I’ll have another party.

I am also on the home stretch for Last of the Immortals. It will mark Suvi’s (possibly) only appearance in Jessica’s time frame. Once you’ve read Queen of the Pirates, you will better understand why she’s here. Once I finish Immortals, you’ll understand how strange the future is going to get.

Queen of the Pirates comes in at a little over ninety thousand words. For scale, The Science Officer and The Mind Field are both around twenty-four thousand, Imposters is around forty-five thousand, and Auberon is a little over sixty thousand. Queen is a third longer than I originally expected, because I got into it and realized I had too much story to tell, but no place to cut because the story flows right into Last of the Immortals with barely time to breathe.

When I’m done with Immortals in another month or so, I will turn back to shorter work. I owe the next CampCon anthology a short story by winter. Last year’s anthology XXX is where I first envisioned The Shipwrecked Mermaid.

Not sure what’s next, but leaning towards revisiting some of my fantasy characters, given the theme of the next anthology (Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Magic. Sub-title Where Close Counts.) The usual suspects will be involved again. Knotted Road Press is publishing, and the volume is due out in Spring 2016, right before Norwescon, so people can take copies to show off. I might do a BarCon, like I did this last time. (That’s where you show up for a while and hang out at the bar with folks actually at the con, but not spending any time doing the con itself. I get grumpy around that many people for long periods of time. If you don’t understand what that means, you should do a search on “Introvert Hamster Ball” and read the comic for a better description of me and most writers.)

After that, I have plans for the next Javier Aritza story. I have known what it would be for a while, but I committed to Jessica Keller a while back and needed to get her done so I could move forward. It also forces me to live in Javier’s distant future, which forces me to think about what the distant past was like when he was live, from the point of view of folks like Doyle Iwakuma and Jessica Keller.

Past that, who know? I am trapped in a place where I am not selling enough books to walk away from the day job and commit to writing full-time, like my sweetie and a few others I know. (Tell more of your friends. I could very much take advantage of the extra time to get more books done. I’m working 50 hours a week right now as a database nerd, and it’s fun, but still…)

I have given thought to Patreon. There is actually an artist I support myself, providing cash to on a monthly bases because what she’s doing is so different from everything else I have seen and entertains me so much. Fabulous Publisher Babe and I have talked about doing a Patreon, but I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. On the one hand, it would be another revenue stream towards not having to have a day job. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I would reward folks.

If I didn’t day job, I’d have a lot more time to write. I know writers who do Patreon, and they reward supporters in various ways. For me, I would probably do more short stories and snippets of longer pieces (character sketches, chapters, etc.) then post them for folks to enjoy before anyone else did, or without having to buy them individually when they did come out at a later date. For those of you who have made it this far, I welcome your suggestions, ideas, or (extremely polite, mind you) abuse on the topic.

I enjoy publishing again. And won’t stop until I can’t communicate the ideas in my head to other people (typing, dictation, direct brain interface, whatever). This is the brave new future before us. It gives me the author a chance to interact directly and personally with you the reader.

I’m not a graphic artist, producing pretty things to look at. I’m not a musician, like many of my friends, where I can sell CD’s at the same time I have regular concerts.

What would you (yes, you laddie) want if I was to get serious with the idea of a Patreon?

I can promise you I have LOTS of things that have never yet been published in any format. I’ve been writing compulsively for thirty plus years. That works out to six volumes of poetry (all of The Forestal, combined, is a little less than one volume, by length and mass, scattered across three of those volumes, for comparison sake); several screenplays we have been shopping around trying to find financing for; several short stage plays; odds, ends, and sundries that need a home.

You could be the first to EVER read some of these pieces. Let me know.

Hopefully, I haven’t bored you yet. I look forward to emails and comments. There are a few people who actually write to tell me what they think. I also could use more (good) reviews of things on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads. Tell all your friends. Make them sit down and read some of the things you’ve read. (You’ll note: I don’t DRM things. The first person I decided to support on Patreon came about because someone had pirated her stuff and I liked it so much I had to go buy things to keep her in business. I hope all people are that kind and thoughtful. Starving artist and all that.)

And again, thank you. Supportive fans mean the world to me.

shade and sweet water

blaze

It’s Summer

So,

y’all remember earlier when I said it was going to go from busy to busier? Maybe not. Anyway, simple note here for everyone.

Things that have come out:

  • Auberon (Jessica 1/Alexandria Station)
  • The Shipwrecked Mermaid (Rick Pine 1)
  • Imposters (Rick Pine 2/sequel to Mermaid)
  • The Story Road (Alexandria Station)

Things still coming (August):

  • Moonshot (Hive)
  • Queen Of The Pirates (Jessica 2)

The house is just about done, and I’ll start moving in next weekend, Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. Might even post pics at some point. Got the fridge clean and installed today.

I’m getting married in three weeks. Fabulous Publisher Babe becomes Mrs. Fabulous Publisher Babe. I am one seriously lucky dude.

I’ll be at WorldCon in Spokane, WA in August if anybody wants to buy me a cider and get me to sign a book. (Body parts negotiable.) Queen Of The Pirates will be out just before then.

Gonna take July off entirely from blogging, because frankly, as much as I love you folks, I’ve got too much going on. Stay happy and well-hydrated on my absence.

Shade and sweet water,

blaze

The Science Officer

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I’ve been writing a whole bunch over the last half year in the Alexandria Station universe, mostly concentrated on the far end of the calendar, specifically Jessica Keller and Henri Baudin (a name you’ll meet next week when The Story Road drops). It dawns on me that I really haven’t spent a lot of time on Javier Aritza lately. Partly, that’s because Jessica has been all-consuming, like and an itch I can’t scratch.

It’s my plan (still on plan, btw) to work on the third episode of The Science Officer once I finish the first Jessica Keller Trilogy (update: about halfway through Last Of The Immortals, and Queen Of The Pirates is coming out in August).

We left our indomitable hero at the end of The Mind Field, right after Sykora has departed with Wilhelmina Teague, returning to that place called civilization. Javier has made his peace with his lot in life, currently. Suvi is mostly safe from discovery. Javier has decided that he can make a life with the rest of the crew, once he figures out how to deal with Sykora.

I’ve had a lot of comments from people who expect the two of them, Javier and Djamila, to end up as an item together. That may entirely happen, but I hope you aren’t holding your breath.

Those two hate each other.  I mean, planning on how to make it look like an accident kinds of hatred. There are a lot of ways to wrap that up in a pretty bow, but there is a lot of animus there. The Concord is a very sexist place, relegating women frequently to a second-class status. It is also a very status-conscious place, more like part of modern South Asia, or parts of the UK, where it is extremely difficult to overcome the situation of your birth. Javier is a guy, and he comes from a planet that is pretty well connected.

Sykora, however, comes from a much different place. Neu Berne is a very Teutonic kind of place. Their militarism was a driving force in the Great War that just ended 80 years ago, shattering all major powers in such a way that The Concord kind of had to step in and take over. She was a tall, kind of dorky girl from the wrong side of the tracks as a youngster, who rose as far as she could by being as close to edge of human physical perfection as one could get, but she would never make it any farther, except as a trophy wife. And suggesting that to Djamila is a good way to get bones broken.

For her, Javier is almost everything she has been fighting against for her whole life. That he’s a sarcastic, mouthy sh*t around her does not help things.

Finally, I’m the writer, and, unlike other things I write, I see this as a tremendously long arc of stories that need to be told. In my head, The Science Officer is just the first episode of a very long television show on cable, maybe broken into arcs in the way the old Dr Who episodes used to be (and I mean the first  Seven Doctors here). It is the Pilot episode, if you will. The Mind Field could be considered to be the first episode of Series One. I already know what the next story will be about, although I have no idea what it is named yet.

In many television shows, the best parts are always related to the tension that arises between two characters they that might otherwise be attracted to each other, but who have a hatred that evolves. The best shows evolve that into a rivalry that eventually grows into respect. With luck, they drag that out for a long time, with the “will they? won’t they?” aspects keeping the audience on the edge of their chairs. For those of you old enough to remember the show, think about how Moonlighting handled it.

For me, I plan to write a lot more stories about Javier and Suvi and the crew of the Storm Gauntlet. The crew dynamics fascinate me, as you have this complete outsider who probably could turn his life around and become an up-standing galactic citizen if he left, surrounded by people who are not scum and dregs, but generally down-on-their-luck following the end of the war. The economy has not recovered, but it will one of these days. For now, they are just making their way.

And it’s not that I don’t see Javier and Sykora’s relationship changing over time. Both are extremely competent people, doing what they want to do, and doing it well. But there are powerful tides at play that will have to work themselves out. Plus, I get mortally offended at the common trope that the girl is supposed to immediately fall in love with the leading man and betray herself, her side, and everything she believes in, just for a chance to win his love. (See Bond, J, most of for really cheesy examples thereto).

Djamila is a warrior. An Amazon in exactly the way the Hellenes saw them, three millennia ago. Bad-ass warrior babes from north-east of what we call today the Black Sea, who do not need a man to give them worth and definition. Or the Etruscans. Or the Vikings. Neu Berne does not appreciate a woman like that, except as a trained attack dog.

Javier is a twice-divorced goofball who doesn’t much like people, being around them, answering to them, behaving by their rules.

To him, she’s just another stick-up-the-butt authority figures that he instinctively rebels against. To her, he’s just another man-child coasting on the benefits of his birth and up-bringing, and refusing to take anything seriously.

But l like them both. And I have several more episodes to write to see where they will take me. After all, Javier will have been born 5,895 years before Jessica Keller. I have space into which to put stories. Way more stories. Yet more people who have not yet introduced themselves.

They all fit in a nice happy little bucket, with room to play, while at the same time leaving room for everyone else, in their on slot of history.

After all, Suvi is the only one who gets to live forever.

Imposters

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Yay!!!!

After waiting so long and staring at that cover sitting on my desk, probably mocking me, Imposters is finally available for sale at all the usual suspects.

A bit of backstory, for those of you not playing along at home: I wrote The Shipwrecked Mermaid for an anthology that came out this last spring (Tales From An Alien Campfire). When writerbrain decided to write something longer, it latched on to Rick Pine and went totally Thriller SF on me.

Both stories are in a new universe, not Alexandria Station, but The Collective. This one is filled with aliens of all flavors, mostly watching us and trying to decide if we are the most dangerous species in the galaxy, or if we might grow up and become good little galactic citizens. There are folks up there that would just as soon wipe us out and keep a perfectly nice planet as real estate to colonize.

One day, one of them goes bug nuts and starts killing humans, convinced he can make humanity a better place if he gets rid of all the criminal deviants. At that point, it’s a race against the clock to stop him, without the Seattle Police Department tumbling to what’s REALLY going on. (Only fools fight in a burning house, if you will.)

Fabulous Publisher Babe really likes the three voicey women in this one: Laurie, Bethany, and Eleanora. I think it turned out really cool. Total thriller pacing, meaning you’ll eat the damned thing like ice cream and hit the bottom of the bowl before you realize it. It is also short for a novel, clocking in around 45k words. (Auberon is 60k. Queen Of The Pirates will be 95k. Science Officer and Mind Field are both 24k for comparison.)

Haven’t figured out where to take the story next. Or rather, have been steadfastly refusing to listen to writerbrain’s suggestions. Got too many other things I owe you folks before I go haring off on other projects. Hopefully. Popcorn Kittens, and all that.

Hope y’all will enjoy it as much to read as I did to write.

Reminder that there’s a section in the middle where we get NC-17 for a few pages, so be prepared, if you bought it for your 13-year-old, to have them come ask some awkward questions. (Or not, if you’ve been doing your job up until now, then they’re just going to ask if it’s really like that, when things get to that point.) But it’s only one scene, only a few pages, and then we’re back to car chases, gun fights , and snark to the explosive ending.

Lemme know what you think.

shade and sweet water,

b

Valse d’Glaive

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Jessica Keller practices a form of close-combat martial art known as Valse d’Glaive, the Sword Dance. In the distant future of her time, mankind has been exploring the galaxy for nearly ten thousand years. The Homeworld was destroyed by bolide attack, nearly three thousand years ago. What is left is a interesting melting pot jumble of stuff.

The art draws heavily on two radically unrelated fighting arts. The first is the Chinese art known as Tai Chi, which at once was a fighting art and a form of meditation in motion. At least, that’s the way I was taught it, once upon a time. Slow, ritualized movements that are practiced until they become automatic. You will often see people in the park, early in the morning, stepping slowly through the movements, keeping their minds, bodies and souls limber.

The other art that contributed is Florentine-style fencing, although done here with a long and short instead of two long. Many people are familiar with the more traditional single-blade form, mostly from watching Musketeer movies. In Florentine, the practitioner holds two blades, fighting equally with both hands.

At some point in the future, a master becomes a sensei and combines his knowledge of the two forms in a tao, the black and white circles chasing each other. Formal, ritualized movements. The step, the block, the strike, the counter. Now, however, done with blades. Two blades.

The first blade, traditionally the right-hand weapon, is the Saber. This is the attacking weapon, the slashing one. It is a straight weapon, single-edged, nearly a meter in length, but with a fairly light blade, compared to the more-sturdily constructed northwest European blades. This saber is more like a cavalry saber from the nineteenth century, except straight. If you are familiar such a thing, something very much akin to the US Marine Corps NCO Dress Saber, down to the basket hilt.

The shorter blade is the main-gauche, literally the left hand. It is much shorter, measuring around forty centimeters in overall length, with a much heavier blade, edged on both sides, with a strong cross-guard to protect the knuckles. This is the “defensive” blade, used to protect by shielding and blocking. However, it can be used to kill.

Traditionally, both weapons for fighting are forged from high-quality steel. There are much more interesting and exotic alloys that could be used, but Valse d’Glaive is not a field combat art, although it can be. Instead, it is an art for the gymnasium, the dojo, or the garden. Those who practice the art are expected to treat it with the dignity tied to such an ancient art form, although it is taught to warriors who are expected to fight.

In the case of Jessica Keller, because she is left handed, she wields the saber in her left hand, mirroring a more traditional fighter. She compensates for this by using a training automaton that is capable of using either hand equally well, and may fight with a longer blade in either hand, or occasionally the full-sized (traditional Florentine-length) training blade (round plastic wrapped in foam that will still leave a welt) in both hands. When fighting the ‘bot, she also uses training blades. After all, it’s bad form for someone to learn to pull a blow during training, lest those habits continue into the real world.

The fighting robot is not sentient. It is a particularly-capable idiot box, a machine that can play chess at high speed, but it has no sense of self. It is configured to train at a number of different skill sets, engaging from level Zero all the way up to level Ten, although there are less than a handful of masters in the Republic of Aquitaine who can routinely defeat the machine at the level Eight setting.

Combat begins in a cleared space generally ten to twelve meters across and usually round or oval in shape. The student will activate the fighting robot verbally, setting the difficult level. “Fighting Robot activate. Challenge Rating Four.” The machine will awaken, process the command, and reply “Combat Mode initiated. Challenge Rating Four confirmed.”

At that point, combat begins and will continue to the first contact, either the robot touching the student, or the student scoring a hit. This resets the machine, although the student can activate an override setting that will go to the second contact, if the first is not judged to have been serious.

A full training session goes to Fifteen points. At the point where the student routinely scores a Nine (9/15), they are encouraged to begin training at the next higher level of difficulty, until they reach a stage where their skill plateaus. As noted earlier, Masters of the Valse d’Glaive routinely fight the machine at rating Eight.

One final note about the art form. Unlike most Blade-Combat arts, Valse d’Glaive teaches students to use gymnastics and acrobatic movements similar to more traditional unarmed styles when fighting. This includes trips, squats, tumbles, and cartwheels to evade contact and to place your enemy in an awkward position. This runs counter to most sword forms, where the common soldier is expected to hold their position as part of a line of troops moving in unison.

Jessica Keller excels at this form because she is a gymnast as well as a close-quarters fighter. Her short stature works to her advantage, allowing her to move in a faster and more combat motion. This compliments her training in three dimensional fleet movements, where down is a relative term and “sides” are non-existent. She is ambidextrous, able to use both blades equally well, to kill with either hand.

What about the reader

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I talk a lot to writers. I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember, but I’ve only really turned myself into a writer over the course of the last year and a half. At first, I was writing pure fantasy because I’ve been into fantasy (and other) rpg’s since grade school (yeah, a while ago).

After two collections of fantasy (Beyond The Mirror 1 & 2), I turned to write some SF. The inspiration for me was the story Greater Than The Gods Intended, which starts out as pure high fantasy and suckers you in quite a ways before you realize it is really hard SF. (And I do mean hard.  All the science is there right now, fully explainable and defensible.)

You’ve heard me kvetch in other places about not being able to find the sorts of fiction I want to read, leading/forcing me to go out and write it. I’ve heard other writers say the same things. In many ways, that is the impetus to become an actual writer instead of just playing.

But what about the reader? What do they want?

Manhattan Publishing (what I call TradPub because it represents the last five major publishers after they ate each other starting around 1990) is busy churning out a slew of new books every year, throwing things at a wall like wet spaghetti to see what sticks. When it does, everyone goes all in, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery meets the cut-throat nature of a very expensive industry.

Thus, two decades ago, young wizards in modern urban fantasy became huge “overnight” after JK changed the world of reading by making stories that grown-ups enjoyed as well. After that, stories about vampires (and all the rest of the previously-“bad” monsters of literature) took over for a stretch. Distopian/Post-Apocalyptic took off after Suzanne’s excellent look at one possible future. And those were just the biggest of the big.

If you come down a notch, Young Adult (YA) urban fantasy or science fiction has never been far from the top. Wander the aisles of your favorite book dealer (new or used) and gander at all the young girls in mid-riff-baring tops, either with a sword in one hand, or and beginnings of a hex, in some dark urban alleyway (presumably New York-ish). Or the dude in the cowboy hat doing the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is absolutely awesome that so many people are reading these days. Even if you don’t read my stuff, every person who reads keeps a book store in business. Or talks books with a friend (who may like me, or maybe they find something in a used book store that looks enticing, with my name on it).

What I’m interested in is how the reader approaches their to-read list. (I won’t ever “write to market,” that is, identify what is hot right now and right something specifically geared to sell on that wave. Creative muse doesn’t work that way, anyway.)

Scienticians have identified three general archetypes of The Reader(tm)

The first group is the “Social” reader. This is the person that picks up maybe one book per year, because that is THE book to be reading. This is the person who read the first Fifty Shades book last year, because everyone was reading it and they either wanted to see what the hype was, or, more likely, wanted to be seen reading the latest hip, trendy fashion.

TradPub makes almost all of their money from the Social reader. They may only buy one book, but that group is usually millions of readers. This is the sort of thing that makes a novel enter the cultural zeitgeist.

The second group is the “Casual” reader. This person reads a dozen or two books per year, generally safely within a few particular genre, say, mystery, or SF, or fantasy, and doesn’t necessarily branch out much, unless they get a recommendation from a friend, or find an author has crossed over.

I don’t read a lot of fantasy any more, because I find it frequently formulaic and derivative. But a while back David Drake did his Isles series, so I had to read it all. Mostly enjoyed it, but I prefer his SF. For other readers it is the same way. They might dabble, but they come home eventually.

The third group is the “Voracious” reader. I live for this kind of person. When they find a new author they like, they quickly sit down and read everything that author has published. Woe unto you if you have only a small bakery of selections when they come in the door, instead of  muffins, and donuts, and coffee, and whiskey. I can tell when someone like that hits my back list, because I’ll sell some of the more obscure titles out of the blue. In a week, I’ll see one of everything go. (To date, I have never actually hit a true Otaku-grade collector, because I have one title that has never sold a single copy individually, only as part of one of the Beyond The Mirror collections.)

If you’ve read this far, I’m interested in what kind of reader you are. How many books do you read in a month, or year? What genre lights your fires? How did you come to know me or my works? (As I wind down the first Jessica Keller trilogy, what would you like to see more of?)

I enjoy hearing from the people in range of my voice. PLEASE feel free to drop me a note at blaze at blaze ward dot com and let me know. Who knows, as I’m listening for the next muse in the fall, your voice might be the one that tips me over towards one of about a dozen possible projects turning to gumbo in my writer-brain.

shade and sweet water,

blaze