So last week, I geeked out on carriers.

This week, I want to talk about offensive firepower in the way distant future. I thought about coming up with a fun and exciting name for the various classes of beam weapons, like several movie and TV show universes have, but in the end, I realized that the Republic of Aquitaine is a fairly technical place, in spite of their Founding Legends.

The smallest beam weapon is the Type-1 beam. This is a short-range weapon, pretty small, and usually mounted in fighters or escorts. In Auberon, the M-5 Harpoon melee fighter has a triple Type-1 installation. That means one on each wing, and one mounted centerline, all facing forward. The outer two also parallax in, so when you get a lock on someone and open up, all three should come to something of a focus at the point of impact. When dog-fighting, the triple beam will eventually knock down shields and get a kill, if the other pilot can’t get away.

Defensively, an escort like CR-264, which is a converted Revenue Cutter, mounts several Type-1’s in turrets with good arcs. CR-264 specifically has four Type-1’s, which is not much, compared to the GunShip Necromancer. CR-264 is much bigger than the GunShip, however, and has better shields and way more comfortable sailing. Escorts and Destroyers use the Type-1 to kill missiles and drive off melee fighters.

The next weapon up is the Type-2 beam. This is larger weapon, and will rarely be mounted on a fighter craft. Auberon carries a pair of S-11 Orca medium bombers that each have a single Type-2 in a fixed mount. (They also have a twin Type-1 in a turret with a single gunner, mostly for defense against melee fighters.) Necromancer has a triple Type-2 (wings and nose like the M-5 Harpoon has with the Type-1), but she is designed to go up against bombers, DropShips, and GunShips, as well as tangle with the smaller escorts an enemy fleet might field.

The Type-2 is a lovely weapon to kill melee fighters and missiles with, having range and hitting power. CR-264 has two of them, Dorsal and Ventral in turrets.

The Type-3 is the weapon of warships. It can be used to hunt melee fighters and bombers, but they tend to be nimble enough to evade fire from the big guns, unless you get lucky. Instead, the Type-3 is intended to batter down the shields of an enemy vessel. It has the most range of the beams, and the most hitting power. CR-264 has no Type-3’s, while Rajput has four and Auberon has two. And remember, Rajput is an up-gunned Destroyer, and an unsuccessful design at that, while Auberon is a Strike Carrier built on a Heavy Cruiser hull. A Republic Heavy Cruiser, for scale, will have six Type-3’s and a Battlecruiser will have eight.

Finally, there is the Primary Beam. This weapon is different from the other beam weapons, in that it requires ammunition. The weapon was invented when someone accidentally overloaded a Type-3 and drilled a hole partway through a nearby moon. Where a warship can fire the beam weapons (1-3) all day, they have a limited number of Primaries. These weapons, however, hit an order of magnitude harder.

Think of each one as a cartridge for a gun. It contains a firing mechanism, a lasing focus, and a generator filled with fast-burning fuel. When you fire it, it uses up the mechanism, and you can either eject it into space as trash, or haul it home and recycle it. Aquitaine normally recycles the weapons.

Auberon has two Primary mounts, instead of the four of a Heavy Cruiser or six of a Battlecruiser, but she retains the two because she is expected to go into combat with Cruisers and hold her own when she does. Rajput has three Primary mounts, where a Destroyer or Destroyer Leader only has two. She also has a larger armoury for shells, which is part of the reason the vessel is so cramped.

However, you kill enemy vessels with missiles, not beams. Crecy or Agincourt, not Trafalgar.

The Republic of Aquitaine has a variety of missile types available, and they tend to be named after birds of prey from the now-lost Homeworld. The Hawk is the standard missile of the Fleet, with a regulation warhead and guidance systems.

The Eagle is a longer-ranged variant of the Hawk, where explosives for the warhead has been reduced in favor of greater fuel and endurance.

The Crow is commonly referred to by Republic crews as the Shot or Murder. Instead of an explosive warhead, this missile contains four smaller missiles inside. After the weapon is launched, it can be programmed to deploy by opening the sides like a flower. Each of the four sub-munitions is fairly short-ranged, and has a small warhead. They are used primarily defensively, where each of the four shots can be targeted at an incoming missile with a very high kill-ratio. Against a melee fighter, one of the Shot sub-munitions will likely shred the craft’s shields, although it probably won’t damage the craft much. Two of them should score a kill.

The Barn Owl is a stealth missile. Auberon tends to use them at the time when it is launching a pair of fighters from the forward tubes, or crash launching the entire wing. Enemy scanners are unlikely to pick the missile up against such a noisy background. The missile does not use scanners. Instead, it is programmed to follow a particular course, passively scanning for emissions from a target, and then actively running down the target. They are shorter-range than a Hawk, and the lack of active scanners, and the lesser fuel load, means that they have a much larger warhead. If you can get one in and catch the other guy off guard, you can kick his shields in, or shatter a smaller vessel if they have lost their shields.

The Vulture is an armored missile. Instead of being killed by a Type-1 beam or a Shot sub-munition, it might take two. The warhead on a Vulture is smaller, but they are primarily used is a larger wave, to cause gunners to panic when hits don’t kill.

Lastly, Aquitaine uses the Osprey. This is a very heavy, slow missile, normally used at the end of a battle as a coup de grace against a warship that has been damaged enough to not fight back. It lacks speed, because everything is in the warhead. It can kill a battleship if it hits home.

This now concludes today’s lessons in Armaments. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Today, boys and girls, I wanted to geek out a little. Just a little. Call it a tour in world-building. Some writers talk about how they write, or why, and I do that. But I really wanted to spend some time inside the place I have spent so much time lately.

——————–

Auberon is an Republic of Aquitaine (RAN) Strike Carrier. She was designed to a complement to fleet Heavy Cruisers, being built on the same general hull. This means she is as fast as a heavy cruiser, and has some offensive armaments. In this case, two Primary mounts and two Type-3 beams, where a standard Heavy Cruiser has four and six respectively. On engines and shields, she is comparable.

Additionally, a Strike Carrier normally carries nine fighter craft, arranged in three groups of three, with a lead and two wings. (For comparison’s sake, the Fribourg Empire flies squadrons of twelve in pairs and fours.) On most Strike Carriers, the Flight Wing consists of nine fighters of a single type, or sometimes one of the wings will be swapped out for a Special Operations section.

This is what Auberon is like when Jessica Keller takes command. Six fighter craft (M-5 Harpoons instead of the more advanced M-6 Gungnirs) in two wings. However, for reasons never explained adequately by the records, the third wing consists of a single P-4 Outrider as a scout, flown by Senior Flight Centurion Ainsley Barret, and the two S-11 Orca medium bombers, Damocles and Starfall, commanded by Leila Ketevan and Edgar Khachaturian respectively.

Where things get weird is in the shuttle bay. Normally, a Strike Carrier has three utility shuttles. Think big straight trucks or small semi rigs. They’re for hauling things and people around, safely, but with not much comfort. On the frontiers, especially the quiet ones, a ship might have to scrounge, or might find something interesting and decide to use it. Thus, Auberon.

Instead of the normal three shuttles, the bay has been reconfigured and expanded to accommodate a Kartikeya-class GunShip, Necromancer, and a Nightshade-class DropShip (Assault Shuttle), Cayenne.

Kilo for Kilo, Necromancer is actually better armed than the former Revenue Cutter CR-264, in terms of guns and missiles. She does not have Jumpdrives, nor the ability to go on long sails, being a short-range, short-duty killing machine.

Cayenne is, for all intents and purposes, almost a medium freighter for size, but not cargo capacity. She is designed to deploy a company of marines into close combat, or a platoon of marines and two armored fighting vehicles. As such, she has good shields, thick armor on her belly, and weapon racks and a ventral turret for support. And a crazy pilot, Hollis Dyson, Gaucho.

However, the Strike Carrier design is not a very common one. It has not proven to be generally successful, because it requires a Command Centurion willing and able to take the vessel into direct combat with other vessels, something that most Carrier commanders do not have experience with.

There are several other RAN Carrier designs. Smallest is the Pocket Carrier, built on the same hull as a Destroyer, minus the Primary mounts and Type-3 beams, but with more missile tubes and a single Wing of three fighters. The Pocket Carrier usually operates as part of a Destroyer Squadron of three vessels, providing a scouting, melee, or heavy element depending on the type of fighters flown.

Next largest is the Escort Carrier, built on a Light Cruiser hull. This vessel flies two wings, for a total of six fighters, at a loss of most of the Light Cruiser’s offensive firepower. Interestingly, this class of vessel is frequently attached to Carrier Task Forces as an escort, where it can range far afield of the Fleet Carriers and support a very large Flight Wing without requiring them to return to the main vessel.

At the Heavy Cruiser range, the Republic of Aquitaine Navy also has four vessels classed as Hospital ships, where they will add medical facilities instead of missile storage, and carry a six shuttles and a Mobile Hospital, an Assault Shuttle-sized DropShip with a self-contained Emergency Surgery facility that can be dropped right into a disaster zone to provide medical services.

Finally, the Queens of the battlefield, the Fleet Carriers. They are of a size with Dreadnaughts, but are purpose-built from the keel up. In a manner similar to the Strike Carrier, the Fleet Carrier carries some offensive armaments, namely two Primary mounts, and four Type-3, to go with a forest of Type-2 and Type-1 beams. However, the Fleet Carrier’s power lies in three Flight Wings, twenty-seven fighters, almost always M-6 Gungnir’s, the top of the line. Without escorts such as corvettes and light cruisers, that many melee fighters could annihilate Fribourg Empire Battleship. RAN Ajax and RAN Archon are two examples of the Fleet Carrier design.

Built on the same hull as the Fleet Carrier is the Assault Carrier. This is a Command and Control vessel that sacrifices all of the offensive armaments (but none of the defense) in favor of a Wing of medium bombers, an entire squadron of DropShips and an elite armored regiment.

One last note. The Republic of Aquitaine Navy currently has one Dominator-class Space Control Ship, the RAN Athena. As the RAN Flag, this gigantic vessel combines the firepower of a line dreadnaught with an entire Flight Wing from a Fleet Carrier. While she rarely sees combat, her crew is composed of the very best the entire RAN Fleet has to pick from.

After all the work, and all the planning, and all the waiting, I have a novel coming out this week, generally available this Tuesday. I’m still kinda boggled by the whole thing. On the one hand, I have around thirty titles published to date, and this is just the next one in the line. On the other hand, this one is a novel, and my first. And the first of many.

I’m still in shock. Hopefully you’ll bear with with me.

Last fall, I was talking to Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) about what I should concentrate on for 2015. I was then finishing up what would become the third Beyond The Mirror collection, Alternate Worlds. My brain had happily transitioned to science fiction and gone completely to town. She looked at me as Marketing Executive and said, “Novels.”

Independent bookstores occasionally have her in for signings and readings. She did one last fall in Oregon at a Powell’s Books where they had twenty or so authors all signing books for readers to buy. (Sunday night after OryCon.) All of those people had written shorter fiction, many of them very successfully, but they were there on the basis of novels. Bookstores only want to deal with novel-length pieces. Easier for inventory. And some writers can be a bit snobbish about that sort of thing.

So I finished the projects at hand and wrote Imposters. After that, Auberon. I have Queen Of The Pirates in edit mode right now, and I’ll start Last Of The Immortals shortly, which means I will have four novels out by the end of 2015, plus several novellas (The Mind Field, and The Story Road at the very least), and several short stories.

And in a few days, Auberon will be for sale. And a few weeks after that, Imposters.

Wow. Dunno how else to put it.

Weirder, I have actual fans, and they send me fan mail. The writer behind the website 21AAR sent me a wonderful thank you in response to the quarterly newsletter. That made my whole weekend. He even offered to post a banner for me on his website, because he thought that my Alternate History SF (Valeriya and Tatiyana, plus Moscow Gold) would be interesting to his readers. (Those of you who like hard, sharp, pointy things that go boom will really enjoy his site.)

And next weekend, I’m having a party to celebrate Auberon, with whoever wants to come up to Capital Hill in Seattle for some cupcakes and ice cream. There might even be cool posters and wine. And books to sign.

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) told me it would be like this, one of these days. I just didn’t comprehend what it all meant. I’m usually the supportive spouse. And those of you who know me know that I don’t do Life of the Party well. But I’m working on it. Promise.

Still. I have a novel coming out. A First Novel(tm) to be followed by several more. And its kinda awesome…

You’ve heard me talk about it as a place, a concept, and a universe.  Figured I’d cover all three and let everyone have a brief look inside the weirdness that is my head.

First: Universe. In my notes, I have four different sets of “worlds” i want to write Science Fiction in. So far. Like, today before lunch. Ask me again tomorrow and the number has probably gone up. It does that. The key signal to Alexandria Station, as I talked about last week, is the total lack of alien species that have been discovered to be interacted with. Humans, today, and for at least the next 13,500 years, are alone. Who knows what happens after that. I haven’t gotten that far in my notes.

This universe contains several characters and arcs. Javier Aritza. Doyle Iwakuma. Henri Baudin. Jessica Keller. But most importantly, Suvi. The AI whose name means Summer. She was Javier’s Probe-Cutter, Mielikki. She was The Librarian. She is the Provost of the University of Ballard. She will be the Last of the Immortals. When I talk about Alexandria Station, I mean one of the many stories with one of these characters, and several others I plan to write one of these days.

Next: Concept. Historically, there was a great center of learning located in ancient times in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. It is known to have been “destroyed” at some point, although nobody agrees when or by whom, with blame alternatively being placed on Julius Caesar, the Roman Emperor Aurelian, the Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria, or Caliph Omar. While no one knows the truth at this point, we do know it was gone by some point in ancient history.

When Doyle rescues Suvi at Kel Sdala, she had already become a librarian, but on a world that had fallen into utter bronze-age barbarism. On the way to Ballard, she decides that she wants to continue to be a librarian, since she has the collected knowledge of the lost Homeworld, and because they will never allow her to be a starship again, after what the AI fleets did.

Finally: Place. The University of Ballard is a school of higher-learning, located aboard a station orbiting the equator of Ballard. It is contained in a larger facility, known as Alexandria Station. Suvi is the Provost of the University, wired directly into most of the learning spaces and at home in the library, which is a mix of electronic books stored in her core, and physical books, roughly half of which are printed from her core, and half of which were brought here and scanned in afterwards.

Like any university, it is an eclectic mix of professors and students, with the addition that Suvi, as an AI, can appear in many places at once, both as a student and a guest lecturer. She no longer teaches students directly, unless it is on a topic that is so obscure that nobody else knows, including many facets of human history where she was actually there to witness it, or at least heard things first hand. Henri Baudin, in the upcoming novella, The Story Road, studies astrophysics while teaching music.

The station itself is a large sphere in orbit. It is not Geo-synchronous with the ground, moving much faster. This was important when it was built, because the university it houses is for all of Ballard, and not just Ithome, Doyle’s home city. It has come to represent all of the planet, simply because everyone can look up at night and see it passing overhead, if they are far enough from the bright lights. Ballard certainly has other universities and colleges, but Alexandria Station is preeminent.

In time, it becomes one of the jewels on the Story Road, because people travel there to discover, bringing with them their own culture and stories, and transmitting back what they have learned. Think of the Silk Road that once bound the city-states of the Mediterranean Sea with what we know today as China. Exotic things traveled that road in both directions, letting radically different cultures communicate.

In Jessica’s time, the Story Road has faded in importance, past by as technology, culture, and humans have moved on to different wants, different needs. Other worlds have risen and become more important. The Republic of Aquitaine has absorbed the four worlds that originally made up the Story Road: Ballard, Pohang, Saxon, and Zanzibar; and they are now in a quiet, somewhat forgotten corner of the galaxy.

Originally, this remoteness, this isolation from the key travel corridors, is what caused these worlds to survive, when so many others fell after the Homeworld was destroyed. They had to be self-sufficient almost from the moment they were colonized. And each of the four descended from Homeworld cultures with strong maritime traditions: Scandinavia, Britannia, East Africa, and Korea. Thus, they survived two thousand years of darkness, until they could return to space, starting with Zanzibar, and accelerating with the help of the Provost from the University of Ballard.

So when I talk about Alexandria Station, I mean many things, but all of them rotate around the universe that contains it. (As a contrast, Rick Pine, in The Shipwrecked Mermaid, and the upcoming novel Imposters, exists in a universe known as The Collective. There are aliens. They live among us, trying to understand us so they can eventually help us become the sort of sentient species that they could welcome into the broader galactic civilization.)

But Alexandria Station is special. Suvi lives there.

The Muse

“No Muse-poet grows conscious of the Muse except by experience of a woman in whom the Goddess is to some degree resident; just as no Apollonian poet can perform his proper function unless he lives under a monarchy or a quasi-monarchy. A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse…

But the real, perpetually obsessed Muse-poet distinguishes between the Goddess as manifest in the supreme power, glory, wisdom, and love of woman, and the individual woman whom the Goddess may make her instrument…

The Goddess abides; and perhaps he will again have knowledge of her through his experience of another woman…”

–Robert Frost

I was not functionally cognizant of Suvi’s place in my heart and mind when I started out writing what would become the universe of Alexandria Station. I had written Greater Than The Gods Intended as an introduction to Doyle Iwakuma, with the plan to write the exact same story from Doyle’s Point of View in a science fiction story, to complement the fantasy side.

Instead, I started working on what would become The Science Officer, with Javier and his little AI starship-babe, who would become something of a long-term sidekick. About midway through that story, I realized that I needed to build out more of Suvi, in order to cover the details of the second half of Science Officer. So I put that on hold and wrote The Librarian in order to bridge the two worlds together.

And I had a universe.

An earlier review by a voracious reader who loves my stuff pointed out that Suvi was really my Muse. And I went “huh?” But Fabulous Publisher Babe ™ looked at me and said “Duh. Of course,” so I had to take the both serious.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Suvi inhabited an interesting and possibly unique position in my fiction. In order to place her in time and place, I had to create the depths of that universe. For me, world-building is the best part of writing. People, places, dates, smells.

And Suvi has been there. But she never gets jaded, because she’s not organic. She won’t die of old age. Damocles is not hanging over her head, as he does the rest of us. She gets to be the pixie Librarian who occasionally regrets not being human, because many of the people she has fallen in love with over the millennia were men. And because people like Javier made sure that she was human, when the rest of the AI’s, the Immortals, were all too stuffy and full of themselves. (That’s why they all go crazy eventually. They develop a God-complex and decide that humans should either worship them, or be destroyed by them. Yucky people.)

But Suvi is just a breath of fresh air. I always look forward to writing a Suvi story, because she has this silly way of looking at the world, kinda screwball and fun. Sarcastic, but without that sharp edge that Javier gets from time to time. Just having fun being herself, a total free spirit uninhibited by convention and able to follow her how dreams.

Later, when she does become a goddess, of sorts, that helps her be a personable deity.

As part of finishing up Queen Of The Pirates, I realized that I needed to write another Suvi story, to explore part of the founding of Aquitaine. I had already known that the four civilized founding planets in Doyle’s time (Ballard, Pohang, Saxon, and Zanzibar), where members of the Republic of Aquitaine, but small-time, peripheral players who get left somewhat behind when technology and civilization sweep the galaxy and bring everyone back to the space age again. Think of them as dowdy aunts.

I was listening to a friend play her violin one day. Someone asked her some technical questions about how one played, and specifically how you knew it was right when there were no frets (he’s a guitar player).

She explained that when the instrument was singing to her, she knew everything was correct. (And it’s almost always right, with her playing.)

It was something Suvi would have said.

And it inspired an entire arc of history and legend, because one of my current characters (Arnulf, the King Of The Pirates) was about to ask Jessica Keller about the Founding Legends of Aquitaine.

The main character, Henri Baudin, is a bard, in the classical sense of the word. (Don’t tell Dean. He hates reading stories with bards. Heh.) Henri has to travel to Ballard as part of his quest, and while he is there, he meets Suvi to ask her a question. That question, and the answer, fundamentally lead to the Founding of Aquitaine. But they do so in such a way that Suvi, while important as a stepping stone, is no longer central to the arc of human history. (At least for now. There are stories to be told “After Jessica Keller’s Time” that Suvi might be implicated in.)

The future is Suvi’s story, in a strange way. Even when I plan to write some “near-distant-future” stories (before Suvi will be born: Sunday, March 19, 7426 CE), that take place in the millennia before Suvi comes to be. She inspires them. She binds them together. She is their goddess, their Muse, just as she is mine.

All of these men and women who I write about will be seen through the reflection of her bright, cheery smile. “How would Suvi see this situation?” is a question I have asked myself more than once along the way. Whether it is the mutant tuna of Ballard or the culture-war fanatics of the Fribourg Empire. Javier Aritza, or Doyle Iwakuma, or Jessica Keller, or Henri Baudin, or Ayumu Ulfsson, or others along the way.

They are all inspired by this cute little electronic pixie named for the Finnish word for  “Summer.” And so am I…

So, starting shortly, my publisher plans on doing several Goodreads giveaways of my first novel, Auberon. At least, that’s what she tells me. It’s due out May 5, so this will be your opportunity to read it before anyone else. (The giveaway is for paperbacks, not electronic books. So some of you might get early copies, before everything is finalized.)

For those of you keeping score at home, this novel (and the two behind it: Queen Of The Pirates and Last Of The Immortals) takes place in the Alexandria Station universe, but well after the time of Javier Aritza or Doyle Iwakuma. A little more than 1100 years after Doyle, to be exact. (And yes, I will put up my timeline on this website when Auberon, the first of the Jessica Keller novels, comes out.)

My plan is to have the whole trilogy out this year. I am on track for that, and I plan on several other pieces that will be published as we go. Last year was very productive for me, but I’m only now getting everything caught up and published.

Assuming that the New Yorker doesn’t suddenly buy it before then, the sequel to Myrmidons, entitled Moonshot, will come out in mid-May. Hive returns for more adventures.

Then my second novel, Imposters, (the first one written last year, before Auberon, but second published,)  will come out in June. And finally, another Suvi piece, The Story Road, which I’m hoping will launch as ebook, paper, and audio at roughly the same time. (Matt W’s on board, which is good. A happy Matt is a wonderful thing.)

Jessica Keller has been a fun character for me to adventure with. She’s hard, and tough, and smart, while at the same time being vulnerable and closed. Eventually, I’m planning a second trilogy (titles and stories already plotted out in the notes, lacking only copious spare time to complete), but first I need to go back and write down some of the Javier stories people have been clamoring for, as well as more Henri Baudin and Doyle Iwakuma. And maybe some more Rick Pine, depending on how people react to everything.

I’ve said it before. I have not been able to find the sorts of science fiction I wanted to read, so I had to write my own. What does that mean? It means that, right now, Distopian Young Adult is all the rage. Several movie trilogies over the last few years back that up. Wonderful, but not my cup of tea. Before that, it was Urban Fantasy Mystery, with hot-babe magical private detective wizards hunting strange creatures in hard-boiled back alleys while wearing mid-riff baring tops. Again, not my book.

The joy of writing today is that I can write the kinds of stories I want to read, about the characters I find interesting. For me, that means snarky know-it-all Javier Aritza, or Doyle the Salvager. Right now, it is Jessica, a young naval commander trying to out-think one of the best tacticians and strategists the bad guys have. While not making him the bad guy. He’s not. He’s just on the other side of the war. He’s generally a nice guy.

I also think in series, as those of you who have wandered through my back catalog might have noticed. Any one story is interesting, but it’s how characters grow and change over time, instead of just over the course of one story, that fascinates me. I have often wished I could split myself into several iterations at once. One to go to the day job and keep a roof overhead. One to write about this character. One for her. One for him. Etc.

It’s kinda awesome that people actually buy my books and read them. Hell, people even buy my poetry from the bad old days. I’m planning to do this for as long as I am physically and mentally capable. If I could live forever, I’d be there, writing more stories as we went. Even if I didn’t have this outlet, I’d still be there, furiously writing stuff.

I just wish I had more hours in the day.

But there will be more Javier stories soon. And more Jessica. And more Henri. And more Alicia. And more Hive. And more Jesilyria. And more Brak. Hopefully, you’ll join me on the adventure of a lifetime.

I have had good teachers.

Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith (both of http://www.wmgpublishing.com) are big time writers who have made it their work to train up new writers in the craft of good writing and business of being a successful businessman. What I know comes from what they have taught, largely filtered and refined through my own sweetie.

I am just back from the “Anthology Workshop” for Fiction River (http://www.fictionriver.com). I didn’t participate (this is by invitation to really seriously high-caliber writers), but I got to hang out because Leah was in it (and she sold two stories). I also got to do a lot of baking, goofing off, and writing/world-building. But I also got to listen to Kris, Dean, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Kerry L. Hughes, John Helfers, and Mark Leslie (yes, go google those names for things they have written and edited, and then pick your jaw up off the floor).

One of the things Dean lectures about is the need to have as many different ways to communicate with readers and potential readers as possible. That means making sure you have a personal web-site (www.blazeward.com & www.knottedroadpress.com) that you keep up to date, plus author pages in as many places as you can: Amazon, Kobo, GoodReads, etc. It means making your work available on as many different platforms and as many different places as you can, because not everyone reads the same thing, the same way, or the same place.

——————–

When The Science Officer became a minor hit, I went out and got lucky to find a fantastic voice guy (Matt Weight) to read the story (available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible). People who have listened to the audio book have given the story pretty high marks, and him five stars for absolutely awesome radio voice. I am extremely lucky.

After that, I got him to do The Mind Field next.

I am happy (serious happy-dance-time) to be able to say that The Mind Field is also now available for you to purchase on on Audible and Amazon, to go with The Science Officer.

And better yet, I expect The Librarian to be available in the next few days, for those of you who need more Suvi.

Hopefully, I will be able to convince Matt to do more things for me in the future. He has a fantastic voice.

As I wrote this, the thought that has been with me is how important it is to be out there where people could find me, read me, enjoy me. I would be writing without the outlet of publication (I was writing before I met Leah, after all), but it is extra rewarding to be part of a larger writer community, to be able to sit at their knees and listen, to learn as they adapt in real time, and even make my own contributions.

For those of you into audio books, please let your friends know about Javier and Suvi. I think they’re kinda awesome, and hope to share them with more people who feel the same way.

And if you have questions, let me know via FB, on blazeward.com, or goodreads. It’s fun to talk to readers and see what they like, what they want to know, and where they want the stories to go. I have lots of Javier plotted out, I just don’t have time to fit it into my crazy schedule right now.

But the readers are still the reason I do this. I’m just the storyteller, here.