The Rock of Battle

The Rock of Battle

Today is the day. The Lost comes to a close as war comes to Cor Chatha: The Rock of Battle. It has been a long road since 1st Platoon drove their Zodiacs into that unseasonable fog off the coast of Norway, and found themselves in this strange and haunted world. It has led them here. To face one of the mightiest armies on the face of the planet. *** War Has Come. The sorcerous rebellion within the Kingdom of Cor Legear was only the beginning. Now half a million men and monsters are on their way to invade the kingdom in the name of the Empire. All that stands in the way is the fortress of Cor Chatha. The Rock of Battle. Conor and his fellow Recon Marines have ridden ahead to scout the enemy and try to disrupt the advance. A recon platoon can only do so much against such an army, however. And the army is the least of their concerns. Monsters, sorcery, and ancient evils descend on the Rock, as the Marines and their allies prepare to make what might be their last stand. The Rock of Battle is available now on Kindle and in Paperback. ***

The Alchemy of Treason

The Alchemy of Treason

The World of The Lost gets a little darker, in The Alchemy of Treason. *** I got as low as I could and continued my inch-by-inch skull drag, moving into a slightly lower fold in the ground, shielded from the sentry by several stands of nearly two-foot-tall grass. I still had to move very slowly—even more slowly than I already had been for the last two hours. I was a good twenty yards away from him, but that was plenty close enough to get spotted or heard if I wasn’t careful, even in the deepening dark. I might have heard something off to my right. Maybe a grunt, suddenly cut off. Santos was supposed to be over there. Maybe he’d moved faster than I had. The last of the faint remaining glow in the west had faded and the stars were glittering in the black sky overhead when I finally rose to a low crouch. Firelight glinted faintly off the dark, satin steel of the Bowie in my fist as I quickly scanned my surroundings before padding as silently as I could toward the sentry, his back now to me. The fire still flickered, though most of the Avurs were now proned

Interviews about the Ice and Monsters Launch

Interviews about the Ice and Monsters Launch

So, for the launch of Ice and Monsters, the first WarGate Books title outside the Forgotten Ruin series, I went on a few podcasts and interviews lately. First, we had a launch party on the Galaxy’s Edge stream on Tuesday night: Then came the Blasters and Blades podcast, with JR Handley, Nick Garber, and Cisca Small (JR’s got jokes, even in the title): And this afternoon, I was on Keystroke Medium with Josh Hayes and Scott Moon: I’ll be on the Superversive stream on Sunday, at 6pm CST. Overall, this launch has been a blast. Got my first orange #1 Best Seller tag. Looking forward to Shadows and Crows coming out a month from tomorrow.  

Taliesin’s Riddle

Taliesin’s Riddle

Just got home from Life, The Universe, and Everything in Provo, Utah on Sunday.  It was a great weekend; got to hang out with Larry Correia, Jim Curtis, and quite a few others.  The panels might not have been that useful; it was the conversations around the panels that were enlightening.  Several new projects came out of it, including a Maelstrom Rising project that I’ll keep under wraps for the moment, but it’s going to be cool. For today, this is a bit of a blast from the past.  Since I mentioned in last week’s post that I’m delving into some Fantasy and Science Fiction again, I thought I’d put some of my short work up.  This story appeared in an anthology by Superversive Press entitled Tales of the Once and Future King.  Since Superversive folded recently, and the book is out of print, the story rights reverted to me, so here it is. Taliesin’s Riddle The spring rains had cleared away, and the morning of the tenth day after Pentecost was bright and green when Ercwlff, son of Cadwgan, rode out from his father’s holdings astride the horse he had received when he had taken arms at the Feast of the Resurrection. 

Some Writing Updates

Some Writing Updates

Well, Crimson Star has been out for a little over a week and a half, and it’s doing pretty well.  A few reviews are in, and some of you have said it’s actually your favorite of the series so far.  Some of that seems to be because a lot of it is much more irregular warfare, more reminiscent of the American Praetorians series.  To that, all I have to say is that as the war drags on, and more expensive (and irreplaceable) assets get taken off the board, the more irregular this next World War is going to get. I was planning for Hank and his section to head out into the Pacific after the Chinese following Crimson Star, but now that the first volume of his arc is done, it’s not looking quite so cut and dried.  The state of affairs CONUS is bad enough that the response is going to take time.  At any rate, we’ll be back to Matt’s Grex Luporum Team in the ETO with Strategic Assets later on this year. Before that comes Brannigan’s Blackhearts #8 – Enemy of My Enemy.  That’s going to be fun (we may see a certain Russian mobster again from Fury in the Gulf). However,

Status Update

So, a week and a half after Fury in the Gulf‘s release, I see I still have some learning to do when it comes to making Amazon’s algorithm sit up and do tricks.  Working on it.  There might be a new push just before launching the pre-order for Brannigan’s Blackhearts #2 – Burmese Crossfire next month. As for Burmese Crossfire, it still has one editing pass to go, plus I have to get the preview for Enemy Unidentified done to put in the back. As I’ve been thinking about Enemy Unidentified and the later books in the series, there might be some adjustment in the planned schedule.  There seems to be more of an arc forming in my head, contrary to the original idea for the series.  (I’ve already established some continuity with characters–no, not everybody’s going to survive–so this won’t be quite “’60s TV show episodic.”) With the series sitting where it is, I’m adjusting to an every-sixty-days schedule for releases.  This will allow me to work on a couple of other projects, one of which has already been started.  Not going to say too much about ’em yet, since they won’t be launching for a little while (February

Book Review: Iron Chamber of Memory

As you may have determined from my review of Somewhither, I have been impressed by the work of John C. Wright.  Somewhither was an awesome roller coaster ride with as much depth as it had spectacle. Iron Chamber of Memory is different.  It is a much slower burn.  Don’t get me wrong, there is action, adventure, and derring-do.  There is also romance, though in more than one sense.  I’ll get to that in a bit. Slower burn or no, unlike Somewhither, I read Iron Chamber of Memory in a day.  Thanksgiving Day, to be precise.  It’s taken me this long to write the review because how to review such a book was a bit of a conundrum. The story starts out with Hal Landfall, a poor graduate student working on a paper on Arthurian legend, looking for his missing friend Manfred on the island of Sark.  (Sark is a real place, a small island in the English Channel, just east of Guernsey.)  Manfred has recently become the hereditary lord of Sark, and Hal is seeking him in the middle of the night, at a bizarrely labyrinthine mansion where the Lords of Sark reside, presently unoccupied.  (Unlike the island, the mansion,

Book Review: Somewhither

How does one describe John C Wright’s Somewhither?  That is, indeed the question. While this book won the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction novel this year, Science Fiction doesn’t quite cover it.  In some ways, it’s about as Science Fictional as Star Wars.  But since it deals with multiple parallel universes, with technological interfacing between them, I suppose the label “Science Fiction” works.  It could just as well have been called “Philosophical/Metaphysical Action Adventure,” though even that wouldn’t quite cover it.