Setting the Stage Part 2

Setting the Stage Part 2

While the first-person narrative of the Maelstrom Rising series will limit each book or phase to a particular theater, the events of the series will have global scope.  The interconnectedness of current global politics and economics mean that when the order breaks down in one place, there will be ripples elsewhere.  And multiple simultaneous such breakdowns lead to the perfect storm that is Maelstrom Rising. The events in East Asia and the Western Pacific during this series will be rooted in current trends already happening over the last ten years or more.  While most open focus has been on China and North Korea (which will be dealt with in later installments of this article series), this article will look at the near future of Japan.  Specifically, the near future of Japan as a military power.

Setting the Stage, Part 1

Setting the Stage, Part 1

The idea for my current work in progress came a couple years back.  It involved a complete breakdown in what we have come to consider the “global world order” since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the paradigm shift represented by Operation Desert Storm (though the whirlwind victory and subsequent return to the status quo represented by that short-lived war turned out to be more of a fluke than a lasting reality, despite it forming the basis for most of Tom Clancy’s post-Cold-War fiction).  While the American Praetorian series had already represented some of a similar model of breakdown, it was largely focused on the continuing war against jihadism, and that war’s unintended consequences. This is something different.

My First Box Set

My First Box Set

What started as a rescue mission turns into a bloody shadow war! The primary US base on the Horn of Africa has fallen.  America’s overseas assets have been allowed to slip.  Now the survivors’ only hope is a group of hard-bitten, veteran contractors, who are willing to go into the hell of East Africa on a rescue mission. It is Praetorian Security’s baptism of fire.  And the first steps they take in a shadow fight against jihadists, pirates, terrorists…and worse. With little more than grit, determination, and sheer, unadulterated ruthlessness, they wade into the growing conflagration that is the Middle East, hell-bent on taking the fight to enemies that their own country often won’t even acknowledge. And along the way, they start to draw the curtain back on even darker forces at work… Task Force Desperate, Hunting in the Shadows, and Alone and Unafraid are now collected into a single set, for a price only about two-thirds of the collected cover prices. No, I’m afraid that it’s not a physical box set.  The production cost would be too high, at this point in time.  If the ebook bundle sells enough, maybe it can be looked into.  Maybe.  I’m not even

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

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. 

Cheah Reviews American Praetorians

Over on Steemit, Ben Cheah has posted his review of the entirety of the American Praetorians series.  It’s mostly praise, with some critiques. Read it here. I can’t say I disagree with any of his critiques, though I’ve seen the opposite comments on the Jeff-Mia thing.  Needless to say, there’s a reason I’m not a romance author.  But I learned a lot writing that series, and they are lessons that I hope I’m applying well to the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series.

We Are Across the Line of Departure

Brannigan’s Blackhearts have commenced operations.  Fury in the Gulf went live at midnight last night. Iranian Fanatics, American Hostages…And The Clock Is Ticking! The tiny island kingdom of Khadarkh, strategically placed in the Persian Gulf, has swung back and forth between the Saudi and Iranian orbits for years. But when a mysterious force seizes control of the island, executes the tiny Khadarkhi Army, and takes any Americans they can find hostage, it appears that Khadarkh will be an Iranian puppet for the foreseeable future. The politicians are afraid of risking the hostages. And as the Western powers dither, some people start to look for another solution. They find that solution in John Brannigan. Brannigan already has a rep for pulling off the impossible, through a combination of audacity, ruthlessness, and ferocious loyalty to his men. His military service is over, but now he will pick up a rifle again, putting together a squad of mercenaries to land on Khadarkh and rescue the hostages, in a hail of bullets and swift, sharp violence. Brannigan’s Blackhearts are about to strike. “Fury in the Gulf” is the first in a new Action Adventure series by Peter Nealen. “Peter writes brutal, believable action at