New Review

Well, I have certainly been neglecting this blog, haven't I?

Work has been a Lot-O-Busy, the holidays, the War College (I'm doing a Masters in Strategic Studies through the US Army War college as an Army Reservist), family obligations, and of course farm chores. Oh, and I have a host of other lame excuses, if you'd care to hear them.

In the past two months I've continued to flesh out the WIP (work in progress) a little, okay barely, but I have scratched away at it. I finish the masters in July and plan to begin writing again in earnest, after that, promise.

But what I really wanted to tell you about was my new review from the Deepening. (Click on Deepening) Overall it's pretty positive, but there is a negative about the editing. And of course the editor takes time to underscore that negative, but he's right. No excuse for writing a good story and then editing it poorly.

Military Sci Fi

I posted earlier that my current WIP was a Military Science Fiction story. One of the things an author must do when writing genre fiction is to respect the conventions of the genre. By this I mean that people who read a certain genre have expectations. If you are reading a gothic romance novel you need a certain setting (preferably a moor) a strong male lead (preferably a brooding sort) and a plucky female (it wouldn't hurt if she were a bookish sort that could give way to her passions). You don't want to write such a book that violates the conventions of the genre unknowingly. You can bend the rules, be iconoclastic, but it's better if you know what your doing wrong rather than just stumble along. As I have said before, I don't feel constrained, but at the same time I try not to be blatant (like calling Twilight 'Horror' fiction- argghhh!)

For this reason I thought to have a look at some of the premier Military Scifi out there and I came away with this short list (if you think I've missed one please speak up).

1. Starship Troopers, Heinlein (Clearly the all time best of the genre-read it loved, still love it)
2. The Forever War (a Vietnam ere anti-warish sort, but great)
3. Old Man's War, Scalzi (I've read the third in the series and wasn't blown away- good but not terribly realistic from a military perspective)
4. Anvil of the Stars, Bear
5. Exultant, Destiny's Children, Baxter
6. The Kinsman Saga, Bova (Have this to read but haven't yet)
7. The Man-Kzin Wars, Niven (Inspired a whole slew of books, and made it into the star trek cartoons of the 70s- read a few, liked them but not very militarily strong)
8. Armor, Steakly
9. A Hymn Before Battle, Ringo (Read it, liked it, Ringo's first novel, clearly written from the perspective of a junior NCO-even though the Main character is a junior officer, but these are the young men that fight our nation's wars)

What do you think? Have I missed a good one?

"Succumbing to Gravity" is a riveting read that will be hard to put down.

My Midwest Book Review review came in, and they liked it. About 20 book reviews down in the fiction review section [here]. They were also kind enough to five star me on their companion Amazon post.

The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation - Again

My Steampunk-ified story, The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation is now out in the 'Cover of Darkness', a biannual digest [trade paperback-anthology] of darker fiction, by Sam's Dot publishing. Yay.

I've commented on the story before (it was first in Steampunk Tales).

My first second sale, and since it's a rewrite of a previous tale that I sold can I count this as a trifecta?

Three British authors and one not

I knocked out books by three British Author in quick succession.
The first was Ukridge by PG Wodehouse. If you haven't read any Wodehouse, you're missing out (if you like stuffy, dated British Humor- which I do). He is often held up as an example of how to write sympathetic characters, humor, timing. These books are antiques, but timeless.

The next was Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell. I've spoken of him before- he writes great Historic/Military fiction. This one was the fictionalized account of one of the most famous battles in history. A British force outnumbered ten to one (or so), prevails. I think some famous deadguy wrote a play about it.

The last was With One Lousy Free Packet of Seeds, by Lynn Truss. Truss is the author of the best selling 'Eats Shoots and Leaves', a cute little book about punctuation. The book was fine, a sort of Britsh Comedy of errors. When I picked it up I didn't realize it was an early 90s book, as her ESandL was quite recent.

After all this Britishness I had to cleanse my palate with a good old fashioned dose o SciFi. I read Scalzi's 'The Last Colony'. I went to my favorite used book store looking for Old Man's War, or Ghost Brigades, but neither was available, Stand alone it felt like I was missing somthing with this one (some books are like that, if you like the earlier books in the series you are 'on board' with the characters, but if you haven't you don't buy in so readily- this one was like that for me).

Interview on Horroview

(No, I'm not trying my hand at poetry, the title just worked out that way.)

I recently did an interview via email with 'Catwalk' (not his real name) at Horrorview. And if you go to the main horrorview page you'll see my scary mug!

Horrorview Article (click and all will be revealed).

Stoker?

My book Succumbing to Gravity has made the list for best first novel in the Bram Stoker Award Recommendations for 2010. Yay.

The Stoker is like the Emmey of horror fiction. Very cool. The recommendations are winnowed down to the final ballot, the winner gets a cool statue, the losers get a letter saying they are a 'stoker finalist'.

If you're an HWA member remember to vote early and vote often...

W.I.P.

One of the things people often ask me about writing is, what are you working on now? The lingo is, your 'Work in Progress' or W.I.P.

Some author friends of mine that blog will often post their WIPs, detailing story development, progress, weekly word counts. I think it helps to have an external accountability.

Others have even gone on to publish their works as serialized, online novels (covered under creative commons copyrights).

Since I started this blog I really haven't started a new work. I finalized and worked on the marketing of StG, and I edited the novelization of my were-hyena story (Gift of the Bouda) but I really haven't started anything new. Two big reasons were my Army Reserve commitment- I'm doing a Masters degree for the Army through distance learning (a combination of online, group chats and residence phases) with the US Army War College (pretty cool- but also very time consuming) in additon to my weekend army job and my job job. I was bumped up a notch at work and this requires me to travel. I've done 3 round trips to the Republic of Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atalanta) since June.

So I've been pretty much leaving everything on the field and don't have much to devote to writing.
But thanks to poor food prep hygiene, I was gifted with the nastiest case of the shivering-fever-trots that I've ever had. It was great, I lost 10 kilos and was confined to bed. What does a writer do in such a circumstance? He makes lemonade, and begins a new WIP.

Inspired by some of the destruction in Georgia due to the war with Russia, and the scenery in general, I penned out 3 pages of rough outline, and the first three chapters (6k words) of first draft material. It looks pretty good.

As with most of my work, I don't feel strictly constrained by genre conventions but this one would largely fall under 'Military Science Fiction', with a liberal infusion of postapocolyptic science fiction horror (zombies and alien monsters), hand to hand combat, military hardware. Even a hot chick. You'll love it.

I use an alternating first person POV (the Captain of a Transatmospheric assualt craft or -drop ship- which is a cross between a vietnam era huey-of which I have much experience- and a normandy era landing craft) and a close 3rd person POV. Right now the primary 3rdPOV is a fourth generation planetary settler whose world was been blasted from space by aliens and is now in the 'mop up phase' with bioweapons and urban assault forces. The good guys go in light due to civilian oversight. Mayhem ensues. Yes a little bit of an Iraq war influence.

I see it as 90K words based on the story arc I have so far. A lot of Military Science fiction crosses over into what is know as 'space opera' and these books can be monsters (140K words, 300+ pages). I write books about monsters, not monster books. I find with those I tend to skip pages(other people's stuff, I try to pay attention to my own pages), so heeding my friend Elmore's rule number 10...don't write the parts they skip, mine should come in around 250 pages. But that's on this side of the story- there's no telling what the characters will need once they start to have lives of their own...

That's my WIP.

A funy aside, I was editing the second chapter and working on the third on my flight from Munich to Dulles. An early twenty something guy sitting next to me asked, when my laptop battery gave up, and I quit, if I was working on a novel. "Why yes I am," I said. He asked in a manner that made me unsure if it was derisive or impressed, if I'd ever had anything published. "Why yes I have," I replied. Must be hard, he said. "Yes it is," said I.

Reviews, reviews!

The reviewers are finishing my book and the reviews are starting to come in.

My first Review is live on Horrorview (click on horrorview)!

My second Review is live on Paperback Horror.

My third Review is live on Dread Central.

My fourth Review is live at the Antibacterial Pope.

My fifth at the horror fiction review.

So far they're all pretty positive.

Go...check them out..I'll wait.

StG Now in Kindle

Thanks to the staff at Reliquary press, my Debut novel,
Succumbing to Gravity, is now out in a kindle edition!

I encourage those of you have read it to post a reveiw or 'TAG' it on Amazon (either the paperback page or the kindle page- or hey how about both?).

I am a member of the Horror Writers Association and they have a program where they pair up junior members with more senior members for mentorship. More how the biz works than the actual mechanics, but that too if needed. My HWA mentor is Dan Keohane (a Stoker nominated author- Stokers are like the oscars of horror fiction) just left a generous review on Amazon. Blurb-worthy.