The AP Facelift Continues

So, I’ve got to get new files for the revised Task Force Desperate cover.  KDP Print is printing way too dark, and the silhouettes are disappearing into the background. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue with the updated Hunting in the Shadows cover.  Feast your eyes: I think it fits the title a little better.  (And before somebody starts pointing out the AR, notice the profile, and remember that .300 Blackout ARs were in common use in this book as well.) Currently no similar updates in mind for the other covers; I think they’re still pretty solid.  Some interior updates are happening, but they are relatively minor (reformatting, updating the “Also By” list, etc.). Once everything’s updated, I’ll probably run a Kindle Countdown deal, probably next month, see if I can’t rekindle a little interest.  Drawing the Line might (might) be coming down off Amazon and turning into a free newsletter draw via Bookfunnel (like Incident at Trakan for The Unity Wars).  Haven’t quite decided that yet.  (And, it’s going to mean redoing interior files again to put the link in the back matter.) Now, back to the word mines.

Updates and Revisions

It’s been a slow couple of weeks, because that’s how outlining goes.  I’d hoped to speed that process up, but the Cogitation Engine only seems to work so fast, and outlining a book still takes the better part of a week.  A week for less than 5k words (Grumble, growl), but those 5k – are necessary to get the machine running when it comes to hammering out the draft. In the meantime, however, the aforementioned updates to the American Praetorian series have begun.  Task Force Desperate has been reformatted, bringing the front and back matter (and the rest of the interior formatting) more in line with later stuff.  Applying the lessons of the last six years, you might say (yes, it has been six years since TFD first was published). There’s also a new cover.  Over the five years of the series, the style was developed to a sharp point, and so we’re going back and touching up the first couple to match.  Feast your eyes: Hunting in the Shadows will be getting a similar update soon; I’ve just got to figure out what reference photos to send Derrick for him to work the silhouettes.  Currently, the Kindle edition has

So, This Happened

Dave Reeder, from Breach-Bang-Clear (which I’ve written some articles for in the past), is a bit of a fan of the American Praetorians series.  So much so, in fact, that he commissioned an American Praetorians Radical Firearms RF-15 for me. Haven’t had a chance to shoot it yet, but it feels good, and it looks badass.  Consider this your official Thank You, Dave.

High Desert Vengeance Chapter 2

With High Desert Vengeance going live tomorrow, here’s another sneak peak.  Things are starting to get tense in the aftermath of the massacre in Chapter 1. Mario Gomez squinted in the sunlight.  It was cool at the moment, but it still felt warm after Transnistria in the winter.  He’d been home for a month, but most of that month had been spent watching over Sam Childress as he underwent multiple surgeries.  His wounds had been bad, and he still wasn’t ever going to walk again. He rarely showed it, but Mario worried about his comrade.  He’d prayed every night for him, either for his recovery, or the strength to cope with whatever came next.  It wasn’t something he talked about much.  Mario Gomez wasn’t much of a talker. He never had been.  He had always been more comfortable watching, listening, and acting than talking.  His tendency to silence had been a source of eternal aggravation to his gregarious younger sister, and his propensity for sudden, apparently impulsive action a matter of often grave concern to his more stolid, hard-working father.  Only his mother, Cocheta, had really understood him, and even that was an often-unspoken understanding.  She had been the only

River of Flesh

I was initially a bit leery about this one, noticing on MackBolan.com that it was written by Robin Hardy.  My last go-round with Hardy was Show No Mercy, which was really, really poorly written. But, a weird, double-entendre back cover notwithstanding (a double-entendre which has no bearing whatsoever on the story), River of Flesh turned out to be surprisingly solid.  Hardy still has some odd descriptive flourishes in this one (not to mention an overly high opinion of the lethality of 5.56mm), but the writing is generally a tier above what came in his last standalone SOBs title.

The Key To Authentic Combat Action Scenes

What’s the key?  What makes a combat scene really “authentic?” Pain. There’s an old saying in the Recon community: “Recon ain’t fun.”  It’s pain and agony and suffering, only faced with the grit and perseverance to get through it and survive, to kill the enemy before they kill you. Over on Tom Kratman’s wall on FB, the subject has come up of a young woman on a panel at Life, The Universe, And Everything 2017.  She claimed at one point that “gamers can write good action scenes, because we’ve experienced that.”  No.  No, you haven’t.

Release Day

Frozen Conflict went live on Kindle at midnight.  It’s also been available in paperback for a few days now; I approved the proof a little early.  The plus side of that is that the Kindle and Paperback pages were linked by yesterday, so I don’t have to pester KDP about it, like I had to with the last two Brannigan’s Blackhearts books. Manhunt In A Post-Soviet Hellhole Transnistria.  A breakaway republic on the eastern border of Moldova, and a bolt-hole for notorious black-market arms dealer Eugen Codreanu.  Except that it’s suddenly turned from safe haven to prison for the man who was once rumored to be dealing in ex-Soviet backpack nukes. A shadow facilitator reaches out to John Brannigan, former Marine Colonel turned mercenary.  The job: get Codreanu out of Transnistria, out from under the noses of the thousands of Russian peacekeepers swarming around the breakaway republic.  The hook: Codreanu might have information about the terrorist operation in the Gulf of Mexico a few months before.  The catch: there might be someone else trying to beat them to the punch.  The terrorists who seized the Tourmaline-Delta platform in the Gulf of Mexico might be trying to tie up loose ends. 

Frozen Conflict Chapter 2

John Brannigan sank the bit of the double-bladed ax into the log round he was using as a chopping block and lowered himself painfully to sit on a bigger log nearby. His breath was steaming in the cold air, and looking down at his bared forearms, he could see steam rising from the graying hairs there, as well.  It was well below freezing, but he was sweating and stripped down to his shirt. He gulped air, wincing slightly at the stitch in his side, as he critically looked at the woodpile.  He might have gotten a quarter of a cord split.  It wasn’t bad, given how long he’d been working, but it wasn’t up to snuff in his mind, either. Stretching, he felt the scar tissue on his side pull.  It had been months since he’d been shot out on the Gulf of Mexico, and the wounds were healed, but it felt like it was taking forever to get his conditioning back.  His leg and his side were tight, and his leg especially didn’t seem to want to work quite right. Getting old, John.  He was further reminded of the fact as the cabin door swung open and Hank walked