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It’s Here – SPOTREPS Is Out

Today is the day. For the first time, I’ve got other authors – including some powerhouses – playing in my sandbox. SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology is live on Kindle and Paperback. The World Order is Crumbling… …And only a handful stand in the breach. But should they defend the status quo, or destroy it? The Triarii were founded to hold the line, to fill in the gaps where order was breaking down in the US, and then overseas as what looks very much like World War III breaks out. They aren’t the only ones, though. Many men and women can see what’s coming. And they’re pissed. From the Stateside unrest to peacekeeping missions abroad, to mercenary operations in Africa and South America, twelve authors bring their talents to the Maelstrom Rising series. Twelve stories of action, combat, and intrigue set against the backdrop of a new kind of World War. The future of war is amorphous and dirty. Are you ready?

Strategic Assets Prologue

Yes, it’s getting close. With SPOTREPS coming out in days, Strategic Assets is not far behind. Violent Divisions Grow Sharper Across the US In the aftermath of the mass blackouts and terrorist attacks that all but paralyzed the United States in the early fall, a divide that has lain beneath the surface for years has become all the more bitter and pronounced. States have locked down their points of entry, some using the National Guard, some using a combination of law enforcement, National Guard, and private military companies. Many cities have become sharply divided by area, some neighborhoods becoming veritable fortresses controlled by local groups, which now go openly armed. The right-wing organization calling itself The Triarii has taken control of several Midwestern and Western cities, as well as major supply chains. In the meantime, considerable portions of the Northeast and West Coast appear to be all but completely under the de facto control of the left-wing People’s Revolutionary Action. PRA spokesperson Shirley Wang stated yesterday, “The fascists and racists who have exploited this tragedy are on the move. We have no choice but to act decisively, to stop them by any means necessary. The racist, xenophobic defenders of a corrupt

SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology Foreword

This collection came together thanks to a couple of things. One goes way back to the beginning of my writing career. In a way, it could even be said that this entire book is Dave Reeder’s fault. I sent Dave a copy of Task Force Desperate, in the hopes that he’d review it on Breach-Bang-Clear. He did, and the review was pretty glowing. Over the next couple of years, as the American Praetorians series advanced, his enthusiasm didn’t wane. In many ways, I’m indebted to Dave as a perpetual source of encouragement as an action thriller writer. He also brought up the possibility of writing in one or another of my series. When the idea for the Maelstrom Rising series came to me, I initially worked up a little promotional graphic, a black and white photo of a raging fire on a street, with the following text: Most of the pundits are calling it World War Three, though a friend of mine says it’s really more like Five or Six. Others are calling it the Great Global Breakdown, or the War of All Against All. We Triarii? We just call it work. Dave immediately wanted to know what

Maelstrom Rising and the Wuhan Coronavirus

So, the question has come up, whither the Maelstrom Rising series in the aftermath of the Wuhan Coronavirus? It was originally floated as question about whether people would really want to read more about the world unraveling while it appears to be doing just that in real life. It’s since turned into a different question: Since the original backstory was written before the coronavirus outbreak, how would it effect the overall storyline? After all, there’s no mention of a global pandemic in the backstory. And how would the current crisis play out in such a way that the backstory remains mostly intact? I think it’s actually somewhat simpler than I might have thought. The economic fallout from all of this is going to be far worse than the death toll from the disease itself. The global economy is taking a huge hit, that will only get worse as quarantine measures continue. At the same time, global interdependence has also taken a blow that it might not recover from. (There were op-eds published several weeks ago, bemoaning the fact that the coronavirus has dealt a blow to globalization that it might never recover from.) The rapid spread of the coronavirus, both due

Announcing A Maelstrom Rising Anthology

That’s right. There’s going to be an anthology of stories set in the Maelstrom Rising series. And it’s going to have some pretty big names in it. I got the idea the first night at LTUE. Like I said, the interesting stuff there came from the discussions between panels. So, though it won’t be a numbered volume in the series, SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology will be coming out on Kindle and in paperback. I will have at least one story in it, along with contributions from: Larry Correia Mike Kupari JL Curtis LawDog Brad Torgersen James Rosone Mike Massa Steven Hildreth, Jr. David Reeder Chris Hernandez and Jonathan LaForce It’s a fairly eclectic group: Larry’s a civvie gun guy and a hell of a storyteller; Mike’s been a security contractor and an AF EOD tech (and he and I have already written a story together); Jim Curtis is a retired Naval Aviator; Lawdog is a sheriff’s deputy who grew up in Africa; Brad is a National Guard WO; James Rosone is an Army veteran and a former contractor; Mike Massa was a SEAL (nobody’s perfect); Steven Hildreth is a former Army and NG infantryman; David Reeder is a former AF

A Volatile Situation Boils Over – Crimson Star is Out!

While Matt Bowen and his Grex Luporum team close in on their target in Slovakia, Hank Foss has a different set of problems. A hotbed of unrest, rampant crime, and political violence, Phoenix has plenty for a Triarii Infantry Section to do. Especially when a narco capo starts forming his own revolutionary movement. But things can always get worse. The power grid goes down. Desperation mounts. Chaos intensifies. Blackouts bring coordinated attacks. The system grinds to a violent halt. And the only source of help might be a Trojan Horse. Because the People’s Republic of China only offers aid with strings attached… With Crimson Star, we take a step back in time to events contemporaneous with Escalation. We get to see just how bad things have gotten Stateside. And we get to see the…event…first hand. It’s live now on Kindle and Paperback!

Crimson Star Chapter 2

He went in fast, going over the corpse in the doorway and stepping right. There wasn’t a good place to move in the entryway; it formed a short hallway that opened up on the kitchen in the open central room, with a double door immediately to the left, that was currently closed. The closed door wasn’t the immediate threat, though. The two men and a woman in the kitchen, the woman coming out of the bedroom beyond with what looked like a semi-auto shotgun, were. He stroked the trigger as he moved, driving forward and slowing just enough that he wouldn’t quite clear the short wall to his right before he dealt with the three threats in front of him. His first shot took the tall, bald, heavily muscled man, covered in tattoos, high in the chest. Red blossomed on the man’s white wife-beater and sprayed from his back, spattering the woman with the bobbed hair and red shirt in the face. She blinked as the man crashed onto his back in front of her, then Huntsman put a bullet through her skull, the thunderclap of the report physically painful in the enclosed space. Hank could already feel his ears

Crimson Star Chapter 1

The desert felt downright cold in the hour before dawn. Hank Foss drew back the cutoff sock cuff on his wrist just far enough that he could make out the faintly luminous hands on his watch dial. Five more minutes. He slipped the cuff back in place and looked over at Cole Spencer, who lay in the shallow wash next to him. Spencer’s pitch-black face was obscured by a mottled pattern of sand and loam camouflage paint, just as Hank’s considerably lighter complexion was. He met Hank’s eyes and nodded. Hank nodded back, then started double-checking himself. He’d handed his rifle, a thoroughly customized 7.62 battle rifle that had started its life as a DPMS Oracle, off to Spencer, along with his assault pack. All he had left on was his chest rig, his belt kit, and his pistol, a suppressed SIG Tactical 1911. The holster was a miserably large chunk of nylon strapped to his thigh, but he found it preferable to any of the other carry options, and he couldn’t just carry the damned pistol as his primary. At least, once he was done with this first phase of the operation. Every strap had been taped, every buckle

Crimson Star Prologue

New Wave of Murders Hits Baltimore While estimates are still coming in, at least seventy-two people have been killed in a fresh wave of violence in Baltimore this weekend. Victims include several police officers, and at least one family of four, identified as Jim and Patty Gorson and their two daughters. Gunfire tore through the night, and social media posts have claimed most of the killings in the name of the Black Kingdom Revolutionaries. The group’s anonymous spokespersons have said that the killings are in retribution for the Fourth Reich’s assassination of activist Kamal Lamont Granger last week. Standoff in Detroit The siege of Harm’s Elementary School enters its second week today. The leader of The Martyrs of Al Gharb, Abdulqaadir Ismaili Abdi, has issued another statement, claiming that, “The sons and daughters of the filthy kufar will be returned to their unbelieving mothers and fathers one limb, one piece at a time, unless Siad Muhammad Abdi, Ahmed Abu Qadir, and Ali Omar Hersi are freed. If the Martyrs of Al Gharb do not receive, in addition, five hundred million dollars, we will cut out their tongues before we set them free. Allahu Akhbar!” Local police still

Setting the Stage: Peter Zeihan on Economics and Demographics

This video came across my radar a week or so ago. It’s a long listen, but well worth it. Dr. Peter Zeihan goes into some of the economics and demographics of the collapse of the post-war world order. Some of these trends have gone into the background to the Maelstrom Rising series already. Zeihan’s talk has further fleshed some of them out. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with his entire forecast. I think he’s overlooking a number of, shall we say, violent variables. His outlook is almost entirely economic and demographic, leaving aside some of the potential impacts of violent ideology, desperation politics, terrorism, and “hybrid” Fourth Generation Warfare. Many of these variables have the potential to derail the economics he’s talking about. The demographics can also lead into some of these problems. As was mentioned in a discussion of this video, the solution to demographic problems has occasionally been “foreign adventures.” All of that said, the Maelstrom Rising series is predicated on the trends that Zeihan outlines. The difference is, the crisis brought about by these trends leads to desperation. And desperate governments can do things that, in the long run, are extremely destructive and stupid. Maelstrom Rising is about the