NEW RELEASE – The Wrong Side of Space

Posted on May 19, 2014 by BR

TWSOS new small coverThe “Publish” button for The Wrong Side of Space has been pushed on both Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes&Noble (Nook). Amazon says it can take up to 12 hours to actually put the book on the market but experience tells me it’s closer to a couple hours. Hopefully that will be the case with this book as well. As soon as the links are live, I will add them to the “Book 3 Notes” page that is now live on this site. I’ve withheld the stellar map that appears in The Wrong Side of Space from the Book 3 Notes page for now, as it reveals a lot. That map does appear at the *end* of the ebook, so the reader doesn’t accidentally notice something too early.

Anyway, I’m very proud of TWSOS, it was tricky to write. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the continuation of the story of Heskan and the original crew of Anelace. It takes some twists and turns, and I earnestly hope you like them.

Each book in the series is meant to be unique, and Book 4 will be a challenge as well. My early hope is Loyalty to the Cause will be ready by late November 2014. Until then, please enjoy The Wrong Side of Space, watch for blog posts that add color to some of the content, and thank you for your continued support.

UPDATE: I see Amazon (.com, .uk, .de, etc.) already has the ebook up.  Nook should be soon, and the print version will be just a couple weeks yet.

 

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T Minus Thirty and Counting

Posted on May 1, 2014 by BR

Unless something catastrophic goes wrong, The Wrong Side of Space should be published in under 30 days. It’s been a busy time as I have received the feedback from all beta readers and incorporated their great comments and catches. The major editing mistakes like spelling/grammar should be gone but I still encounter the occasional “change happy to glad” kind of edits. I also feel like I want to add one more scene into the book but I can’t figure out where. I’m sure it will present itself while reading through it again.

I’m not very good at setting a publish date, more of a “publish by” date (end of May), but as soon as I do release The Wrong Side of Space I’ll be sure to plaster that news here and on my social media accounts. I always want to find every last error, or at least come close. In the meantime, the marketing push has begun so if you watch my feeds on Twitter and Facebook you’ll be privy to some quotes from the book and so forth. Nothing will spoil the plot but there are some fun teases. If you remember, Heskan and Kite are in a precarious position at the ending of No Way to Start a War, so the action resumes right at Chapter One. That’s a bit of a switch from the first two books, which turned up the tension over time. No rest for Kite’s crew this time around!

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No Golden Childs

Posted on April 23, 2014 by BR

Golden Child: (n) A person who people love no matter what. A person who has everything fall into place through luck <slang>

I’ve always loved science fiction. I can remember sitting in front of the TV with my brother watching Star Trek back in the 70s. That began a long and nearly constant exposure to the genre. However, one thing that has always bothered me is how often there was never any real danger. Face it, Kirk wasn’t going to die. Neither was Luke or Han. Ripley was pretty safe too.

I understood why. If you kill main characters, how does the story move on? Well, I believe you do it through good writing. Television shows in the UK are much more severe in that main characters are sometimes killed off in their prime. I believe this adds a lot to a series. It’s much more exciting to read series like Honor Harrington if you have a lingering doubt about her survival. Or Admiral Gary or Desjani. I love all those characters but I’d trade one of them for the excitement that would be added by their uncertain futures.

In the novel Red Storm Rising, a submarine captain who had been in the entire story (over 1,000 pages) died with the simple sentence of, “The two blips merged and that was that.” I remember being unable to process the sentence. I reread it more than just a couple times before realizing that Clancy had just killed off a very likable, main character from a torpedo hit with so little fanfare that I almost missed it. It was so cold and impersonal and after I thought about it, I LOVED it. War is cold and impersonal, and trumpets and glory don’t always (in fact, rarely) herald the death of a hero.

After a brutal beginning in This Corner of the Universe, the Anelace crew was relatively fortunate in the second installment, No Way to Start a War. Because they were skillful (lucky?) enough to avoid major damage, the crew remained intact throughout the book. Sadly, this wasn’t true for Kelly Gary’s ship. However, can Kite’s luck extend two books in a row? In a series about war and with an author that prides himself on the tension added to the story by not having any “unkillable” characters, I’ll leave the answer up to you.

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