Category Archives: Personal

The Shop is open for business!!

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So the original plan had been to do this sometime in Q1 of 2020. Fabulous Publisher Babe (TM) got her store up earlier this week and on Friday she got it installed here and we are off and running. (Thanks to my two first customers for confirming that everything works.)

The Shop

Every month, the plan is to put up a new “short” story in one of my series (or start a new series, as the muse strikes). We started off with Farouk Al-Hashemi.

The genesis for this story was a call I got from an Islamic Science Fiction magazine that was getting ready to go and looking for product. (Not sure they ever achieved lift-off, but they weren’t asking for an exclusive and have gone dark so we’re bringing it out here.) They wanted SF with a distinctly Islamic bent, which is not all that common in North America. (At least I have not had a lot of luck finding stuff. If you know any, send me links.)

I have always been fascinated by Islamic culture. During the Gulf War in 1991, I was in grad school in Los Angeles with a number of folks who were of Egyptian, Palestinian, and Saudi backgrounds, and one of them got me a fantastic Quran in blue leather hardback that has pride of place on my shelf when I asked. (Image of me, in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Dec 1990, wearing green BDU pants, a black T-shirt, cowboy boots, blue Levi denim jacket, black cowboy hat, reading a Quran. I got some great looks.)

To write this story, I had to do a deep dive into Islamic history and culture while looking for a story I could tell. Because I’m an outsider, I also had to dance a careful line so as to not end up accidentally offending folks that I was trying to reach.

The point of Science Fiction is usually to ask uncomfortable questions posed as a “What if?” and go from there. Easy enough to do in your native culture, but fraught with risk elsewhere. (I’m no Harlan Ellison, ya know.) Especially as I had a most interesting idea once I dug deep enough and started exploring the Sunni/Shia split and how that could drive something.

Lester Dent’s 7 Point Plot Structure: a Character in a Setting with a Problem.

The result was an interesting new universe where I could play around and ask some of those questions in a way that was meant to be mind-expanding rather than insulting. Even went so far as to ask an Egyptian PhD friend to read it tomake sure and he liked it.

So we have Assassin, the first of a new series starring Farouk Al-Hashemi. I have the second one, Witness, written and will be working on more in that realm going forward. My plan is to put that one up the first week of February. (I won’t promise always hitting on a First, because I’ll miss, but you should get into the habit of checking that first week, or paying attention to blog posts (here) and newsletter.)

Additionally, I have a whole bunch of stories in the can. If you’ve been following my blog and my social media, you’ve seen some of the covers before now. All to get ready for this day.

YAY!!!!!!!!

So you are aware, my plan with many of these short stories is not to put them up for sale under wide release. Maybe ever. No Amazon. No Barnes & Noble. No iTunes. Just here. On one of those other sites, I tend to make about 35 cents for a 0.99 sale. Here it will be much higher, while still being able to give you quality story telling.

Maybe, eventually, I’ll pull a story down from the shop and put it up other places, but that’s only going to be for the really big ones where I might be normally charging $2.99 for them. Think novellas and such, rather than the short stuff.

For now, let us celebrate that there is a new way you can get Blaze Ward stories. And I have a new stream of nickels that help fund my lifestyle.

Most importantly, because I plan to deliver twelve new stories here and another twelve to my Patreon, I plan to write something like 40 short stories in 2020. That’s a lot, but it forces me to focus on short fiction in between and around novels.

So y’all take a look and a read and let me know what you think, okay?

</smooch>

2020: The Plan

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So, in 2019, the final count was 20 novels and 21.5 short/medium/novella stories (finished Eva #5 on Jan 1, 2020 as the 22nd). 1,394,982 words because I damned well didn’t want to push that hard the last three days, thank you very much. Call is a shade under 1.4 million words.

Good enough. My goal had been 1.2+ or 100,00 words per month. (My goal is always 100,000. Sometimes easy, sometimes a hard stretch, but I’ve done it since May 2018 at this point and that’s kinda awesome.)

The only real target had been 20 novels in 2019. Managed that. Wrote a novella at the end of the year because that was NOT going to turn into a novel. Kept it at 19,000 but it is very obviously a book one in a new series of historic espionage/thriller. (set in 1977 with no more science fiction than Q provides to Bond, per se, and not even that much, except that I know where technology goes, so I can pull things forward a little.)

So now we’re looking at 2020. Second full year of writing for me as a full-time vocation. Making enough money that I generally don’t worry, except that this year I plan to dial back some expenses because of the crazy-ass election season coming up and all the other shit. Previous presidential seasons have seen entertainment sales Aug 1 – Dec 1 tank hard. This might run much wider and longer, depending.

I’d rather be proven wrong as a cynic than an optimist. I’m probably unemployable at this point.

So going forward. 100,000 words per month. That doesn’t change.

However, I’m only “planning” 14 novels. And 40 short stories.

(—WARNING MATH AHEAD—)

I have a patreon account and promise them a new short story every month long before it ever comes out to the general public. So that’s 12 new stories.

I am publishing Boundary Shock Quarterly 4 times per year and have a story in it.

I expect to do two new volumes of Blaze Ward Presents (#1 and #2 here) annually, plus strange ideas that need me.

Starting soon, I’m going to be offering new short fiction on my website every month, with exclusives that do not go up for sale anywhere else. Like, ever. Only get them here so folks get used to coming to my site for a new fiction fix for cheap. ($1 sort of thing.)

So as you can see, I’m already at 30 stories, and I haven’t even broken a sweat yet. Throw in the odd projects where someone asks if I can write them a short story to theme, weird shit that wakes me from a dead sleep, and whatever other silliness comes around, and I don’t see it being that hard to hit 40. It comes up to three and a quarter stories per month, basically.

I also have 3 business/technical books on the calendar this year. Those don’t count as short fiction, but generally come in around 12-15,000 words.

I’ll be busy. It will be a good busy. Writing books, writing novel series, writing short series serializations.

Not going to push as hard on the novel count also means that I can aim for some longer stories that unfold slowly. I enjoy writing crazy-fast stories that suck you in and hold you underwater, but occasionally I want to just sit back and let the world slowly enfold the reader. Or write a single volume that’s 175,000 words long if I can do it and not get bored.

Health has been good. Sales have been good. Life has been good. I’m still not rich enough to buy an island or build a castle, but those would be the long term goals if I was suddenly wealthy beyond a safe level.

Today, I blasted out my usual morning word count and then realized that I was all set to finish the current novel off (#1 for the year and #10 in the Science Officer series). Finished the morning session typing “Epilog” as a header, so that’s lovely and I’ll finish it Wednesday.

And looking forward to the next project. Need to write several short stories over the next week or two, and then I can go on and commit a next novel. Likely to flip a coin between Lazarus #3 and Taft Station #2 at this point, but that’s fine. Been reading the finals of the Star Tribes books. #1 & #2 are “done.” #3 is at the First Reader. Working my way through a final edit pass on #4 now, then on to #5. April-August release dates.

In case you missed it, the Handsome Rob books are up now for pre-order. Can’t Shoot Straight Gang is actually #1 and originally came out in Boundary Shock Quarterly #3 (Grand Theft Starship). Then Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns, which you might have read. Hunting Handsome Rob is #3. Handsome Rob, Assassin will be #4, sometime in the fall, most likely after Star Tribes is done (SWAG: September)

This blog will see less updating than it used to going forward, mostly because I plan to update the patreon news every Monday. Plus I have newsletters with more information than comes here. If you aren’t subscribed, this is your reminder. 🙂

Gonna be a busy year. Hope y’all are along for the ride.

It was thirty years ago today

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Sgt Pepper taught some punks to play…

Woke up this morning and realized that 2020 did have some emotional impact on me after all. We bounce back thirty years to one of those spectacular inflection points that you run into in life and look around.

(Those of you who’ve known me for a while can testify that I can be kinda reticent. Rarely talk about the deep past. Most of those enemies can no longer find me or have forgiven me and we chat now on social media. The future is weird.)

January 1990.

I have just graduated from Wichita State University with double majors in Philosophy and Political Science and a minor in Geography (Thanks, Dr. B!). Six months ago, WSU won the College World Series. a first for a team from a state north of the southern border.

In six months, I will turn 21. In eight months I will pack my ass up and head out of Los Angeles, to start a new adventure at Claremont Graduate School (I still have shirts from before the name change). (Coincidentally, the week I’m set to drive out, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and gas goes from $2 to $4 overnight. Yum.)

I continue to have a part-time job at the law firm where I’ve worked the last few years, happy that they cured me of the notion of wanting to go to law school. I would have been an amazing lawyer, and utterly miserable. Used to joke that I’d be on my third trophy wife by now.)

I have a group of gamers that I regularly get together with in the evening. We’re mostly employed and not going to school, so we might play 3-4 nights per week.

I still chat with two of them these days, but have seen neither in more than 20 years. Another one died of mysterious health issues in his late twenties, give or take 1997. I only found out after the fact several months later and apparently nobody who was willing to talk knew.

Several women made interesting offers in those days, to go with me to Los Angeles and escape the places where life choices had taken them. I didn’t take any of them up on it. Still chat regularly with two of them on social media, but haven’t seen one in 8 years and the other in 22. Both are happily married and we’re all old now.

The face that popped up out of nowhere this morning was the one who I gather hated my guts in the old days. It was an argument over a woman, of course, but he wasn’t involved.

This other woman had her eye on me and didn’t appreciate rejection when I happened to be dating someone else at the time. She and he knew each other long ways around from somewhere else, and she poured out all her woes to him. He’s the kind of guy who took it all and was deeply offended on her behalf, but didn’t come after me.

Unlike the rest of you, I’m sure, I did some crazy, stupid shit  in my late teens. To this day I have no idea how I didn’t manage to get myself killed in those days, other than most of the time I gave off the same sort of pheromones that you get from a rabid badger.

Looking back at myself, I was kinda scary. It was a defensive mechanism against shit that I’d been through as a kid and teen. Took me decades to understand that, because I never encountered the literature explaining the reason behind some of your behavior when you’ve been emotionally abused. Getting better, but holy hell I was a psychopath on a short chain in those days. (Lots of good beer if you want to hear any of those stories.)

But I have inflected now, thirty years ago. I can see endpoint in front of me. I will pack my shit up and vanish from the face of the earth. Didn’t entirely succeed, but let me put it to you this way:

  • Folks I was friends with in college I have spoken with in the last ten years: 0
  • Folks I was friends with in High School I have spoken with in the last ten years: 0
  • Folks I was friends with in Junior High I have spoken with in the last ten years: 0
  • People I knew before 1990 I have spoken with in the last ten years (excluding family): maybe a dozen, including my best friend in 4th grade who I lost track of for 35 years.

I got to reinvent myself when I finally landed in Seattle. Kids these days (ha!) won’t understand that it is possible to disconnect your phone and leave no forwarding address, and just ride off into the sunset. Big Data companies will manage to track your ass across hell and high water, but this was before technology changed the world.

It also helps that I moved 17 times from Aug 1990 to when Donna and I bought the house in 2001. Three of those involved time zones. Most of them involved zip codes. Averaged moving ever 9 months over that stretch.

Also helps that I have friends who have been there for me over the last twenty years when I needed them. I’ve tried to do the same for them. And become so many different people that I can barely remember them, other than it is possible to mark a city or job that links with a particular year (moving a lot does that) and extrapolate outwards from there.

I can tell you frequently what year a movie came out if I saw it in the theater, because I knew where I lived that year. That year. Yeah…

So it’s been thirty years ago today that Sgt Pepper taught those punks to play. I’m 50 now, and more or less at the halfway point, because I plan to live to be 100, pumping out crazy novels and ideas until the moment I keel over, with my great-great-great-grandkids having stack of books to publish after I’m gone. (Got a grandson who is a freshman at Colorado School of Mines this year, so you can do the math on death + 70 for copyright.)

So it’s 2020. That has been my single look back at the mirror that was my past. 1990 was an ending across so many aspects of my life that I can draw a hard line in the dirt and call it good. 1998 would be another one, because that’s when I met Donna. 2008 when I lost her to breast cancer. 2013 when I won the lottery a second time and found another wonderful woman. 2015 when I published Auberon and discovered what the second half of my life would be like.

Hopefully you and yours are having a happy new year. It’s good to take a moment to reflect, but don’t wallow.

The whole future lies before you waiting.

The Jessica Keller Chronicles

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Update 2026: If you are searching for the complete reading order for the Jessica Keller Chronicles (part of the larger Alexandria Station Universe), I’ll try to keep this updated as we go and the universe continues to expand.

The Jessica Keller Chronicles

  • Auberon
  • Queen of the Pirates
  • Last of the Immortals
  • Siren (Vo Arlo)
  • Goddess of War
  • Flight of the Blackbird
  • The Red Admiral
  • St. Legier
  • Two Bottles of Wine With a War God (Yan)
  • Queen Anne’s Revenge (CS-405)
  • Packmule (CS-405)
  • Persephone (CS-405)
  • Winterhome
  • Petron

Followed by First Centurion Kosnett

  • Encounter at Vilahana
  • Consensus at Aditi
  • Hegemony at Dalou
  • Princes at Ewin
  • Empire at Gloran
  • Domain at Yaumgan

Then Heather Lau/Warlord of Yaugman

  • Warlord of Yaugman
  • Ground Control
  • Tyche
  • Chevalier
  • Griever

Coming Soon

  • RAN Stormhawk (Daughter of the Shogun)
  • RAN Asouri (Daughter of the Shogun)
  • RAN Pangolin (Daughter of the Shogun)

============

ORIGINAL POST (updated above only)

For those of you keeping score at home: I just got back copy edits for Jessica #7 (title changing from what I originally suggested, so new cover reveal coming at some point for a December release date.)

More importantly, about five minutes ago, I finished the draft of  Jessica #8 (yeah, I have a suggested title, but you’ll find out about it later. Probably when I do the cover reveal for it). That’s targeted for a May 2019 release date, because the Alexandria Station Universe schedule looks like this:

  • Dec 2018: Jessica 7
  • Jan 2019: Two Bottles of Wine With The War God ( Yan Bedrov)
  • Feb 2019: Queen Anne’s Revenge (CS-405, book 1)
  • Mar 2019: Packmule (CS-405, book 2)
  • Apr 2019: Persephone (CS-405, book 3)
  • May 2019: Jessica 8

There remains for me to write Jessica 9, so I can round off the series and finally be done, but I  need a break. This novel came in at 130,000 words, before I go back and reread it , or send it off to First Readers and the Copyeditor Babe ™. Between 7 & 8 I wrote five novels, but that was over an eleven week stretch, because they all came in around 45,000 words and I was on a roll.

After this, more of an intellectual break, filling in some spots, after my brain recovers some. I find it hard, not talking about the things I did in book 8, because most of you don’t even know what happens in 7, having only read The Red Admiral so far. So I’m nearly four years forward in time from the First Trusski, and the galaxy has changed.

That’s actually the theme of book 8: The galaxy has changed.

All the pressures from the previous three books have built up and forced things into new forms, and new outcomes. Seven will be an emotional rollercoaster that most of you will not be prepared for. The CS-405 trilogy sets up the ending of Eight, so you’ll need to read those as they come out, or you’ll get lost in Eight. Can’t help that. Without that trilogy, Eight would have come in at almost 250,000 words all by itself. (Think Stephen King doorstop for scale.)

So now, decompression. I have four more Star Dragon novels at some point. Javier laughs at me every time I want to set down and start season two, but he’s like that, and something will click when he’s ready. Have some ideas, but need a long drive to set them up in my head.

I have also been writing some cyberpunk lately. In Boundary Shock Quarterly, issue 004 is entitled “Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My!” and my story there spins up a new universe and new characters. I already have a sequel story in the can, and then writer-brain said: “Oh, here’s a novel, but she’ll need a whole team. Let’s write origin stories for everyone that you can publish as a collection when the novel comes out.”

No, I haven’t the slightest clue, either. But I have several done, and two more to write, and then maybe I’ll tackle Kumiko’s first novel as part of this break. Or not.

As a reminder: I won’t be individually publishing the stories that I put into Boundary Shock Quarterly until much later, so you might need to read those in the magazine to keep up with other things.

  • BSQ 001: Last Leaf Falling (Lansdowne, Concordancy War, individual for now)
  • BSQ 002: Hack (Karl and Deke #1, with #2 “Unintended Consequences” coming out in Sept.)
  • BSQ 003: Can’t Shoot Straight Gang (Handsome Robb. Alexandria Station, first in a new series)
  • BSQ 004: Dancer (first Kumiko, see above)
  • BSQ 005: Forgotten Paper Dreams (SECOND Angus story, with #1 “Daddy’s Girl” coming out Sept)
  • BSQ 006: Patrol Cutter: Bellerophon! (Gareth Dankworth/Star Dragon prequel. Planning more prequel stories for 007 and 008, if all goes well)

So it is absolutely worth your time to get the BSQ magazines and keep up with them. Other folks are doing similar things with their universes, so you’ll get your money’s worth.

But Jessica #8 is done. And I like it. It went good places, and sets up #9 the way I want to bring the entire series to closure. I have other ideas for what happens in the Alexandria Station universe once Jessica’s story is complete.

Vibol solving crime on Petron was a suggestion that has me giggling and considering. Handsome Robb begs for more caper stories. Lansdowne is the first of three, so I need to write those soon, now that I have done Two Bottles of Wine With The War God. John-Pierre and Suvi. The rest of the Henri Baudin stories that follow up Story Road and complete the Founding Trilogy. More Javier. Maybe even a set of stories following ‘Mina Teague. Olivier at the beginning of the stellar age. Dunno. Lots.

People have asked for some sword and sorcery fantasy, but my heart’s not in it right now, beyond the occasional dabbling. Got some more coming, but mostly for other people’s anthologies. Got some weird SF coming (“Terranaut” is only the tip of that bizarre iceberg, bubbles.)

Same goes for the superhero stuff. I like writing it, but NOBODY buys it. They only want their comic book heroes (Marvel and DC) rather than the concepts of superheroes. I suppose if I wrote it as some sort of urban fantasy, people would eat it up, but that’s not my wheelhouse, and I make way more money from the SF than anything else. (Tell all your friends to buy the Modern Gods books if you want me to write more. I track sales, so I know nobody’s buying them right now.)

Okay, enough rambling. Time to put this to bed and get organized.

Will be off the radar for a few days doing stuff. The Story Bundle that has both Awaken the Star Dragon and Boundary Shock Quarterly 001 is still running for about a week, and is a kick-ass price for a lot of good SF to read.

Please share the link with all your friends and tell them to buy it too. Thanks.

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA