Christopher Ruz's Blog, page 3

XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 13 – Operation Purple Shield

THE B TEAM by CHRISTOPHER RUZ Chapter 13: Operation Purple Shield   Table of Contents Note – Another full year break between chapters! Now that XCOM 2 is out, I’m gonna have to hurry this up. Don’t worry, the end is in sight. – – – “We’re designating this one ‘Operation Purple Shield.’” “Purple shield, purple heart… Portentous, don’t you think?” “Not my fault, Commander. It’s randomly generated.” “Who’re we sending?” “Well, with Rudd and Huang in Zambia, and Colonel Chi taking the new snipers through a two week crash course…” “Who are our most talented?” “Captain Evan Leybourn and Captain Marsh. Both talented, cool under fire…” “What do they call Leybourn? Hiroshima?” “Close. Nuke. He’s, uh, indiscriminate. Had to run him through basic weapons training a second time. Couldn’t hit the ass-side of a barn.” “Who else?” “Some promising recruits rising up the ranks. Corporals Cassie Hart and John Oakes are both strong talents, and Lieutenant ‘Twitch’ Wendig is our best shot by far. We call those three the Brontes, you see, because-” “I don’t care. We need someone senior to lead. Where’s Major Richardson?” “On leave until the-” “Call him back.” “Sir.” “Christ. Purple Shield? Bad omen.” Commander Pournelle gripped the edges of his desk like the office was tilting, like he’d be tossed off if he didn’t dig his toes into the shag carpet. “Sometimes…” “Sir?” “Fuck this job.” He stared at the iPad propped on his desk, the satellite imagery of the crashed craft. A metallic […]

Rust Three hits ebook stores, while Rust One joins a Storybundle!

Such big news! So many cool things! Where to start? Rust. Always with Rust. After months of editing and rewrites, Rust Three is now available pretty much everywhere! Amazon will be the main hub for most readers, but you can also find it on iBooks, Kobo and Barnes&Noble Nook. As for paperback copies… that may take a little longer, but it’ll happen! As to why this book took so long… One: it’s the biggest Rust release so far. Two: I wanted it to be good. It went back through revisions five times, then endured an additional two rounds of proofing. I wanted to release it earlier, to get it out into the world, but getting it right was more important. So here it is. The next instalment in Kimberly Archer’s journey across the world’s worst little town. She’s fought her way through a convent of mutilated nuns, found her husband’s entrails in her bathtub, and now she’s joined forces with the one man that might… might… help her fight back against the forces that control Rustwood: the Queens. But her new ally, Mister Gull, has hidden plans of his own. Meanwhile, Detective Goodwell and Fitch are being pursued by the New Queen’s emissary, a force of pure, unstoppable hatred. Madness, murder and bad dreams have settled across Rustwood, and if Kimberly Archer doesn’t move fast, she and all her companions will soon discover that death is the easy way out… Are you excited? I’M EXCITED! And as a bonus… RUST […]

State of the Ruz: Rust 3, God Factory, and an interview with Inklings Press

Ready for Christmas? Still frantically shopping? Waiting for it all to go away so you can go watch Star Wars for the fifth time? Yeah, I get it. I won’t keep you long. Here’s where things are at: Rust 3 is almost done. Aaaaaaaalmost. I’ve gotten some great feedback from first and second round test readers which I’m incorporating into the book now, after which comes a couple rounds of proofreading, and then BAM, done. Will it land by Christmas? No chance. Shortly after? Fingers crossed. God Factory, my sci-fi project in progress, is almost beta-ready. It’s 75% through a second draft, at which point I’ll be dumping it on test readers. Whether it’s a self-pub or trad-pub project is really up to the agents I throw it at next year, but I think it’s got a great chance of making it into print. Fingers crossed! Finally, Stephen Hunt invited me to do an interview with Altered Instinct where I discuss my influences, my writing style, and what makes some of my favourite novels so personal to me. I had a hell of a lot of fun being interviewed, so I hope you check it out! Merry Christmas, everyone! And if you’re wondering what to get me… some reviews would be nice! Head to Amazon or Goodreads, pick a book of mine you’ve enjoyed, and leave a 20 word review. That’s less than this paragraph! It’ll make my day, seriously. Take care, everyone.

Rebranding Rust

For the upcoming release of Rust 3, I’ve gone back to the beginning with a complete rebrand of the Rust series. That means new covers, and the death of the episodic serial structure. Why? 1) The original covers just didn’t work. I have huge respect for the artist, Helen Pinkney: she drew exactly what I wanted, and I absolutely loved her work. But when I took Rust to cons, people would always pick up the books and say, “Woah, great cover!” and then flip the books open and pause. “Wait, this isn’t a comic?” I got the same reaction online. The illustrations, while amazing, didn’t reflect the content of the novels. Hence, a change. 2) I killed the episodes because nobody read them. Everyone wanted the complete novels in omnibus editions, and who can blame them? Five purchases vs one, a complete story vs five shorts… The market spoke, and I listened. From now on, Rust is a series of five short novels, not a series of twenty-five or more bite-sized episodes. I think my cover design skills leveled up during the process. Many thanks to S.A. Hunt for his design input. Now, back to editing Rust 3 – I hope to have it in your hands by Christmas!

We’re Running Out Of Bootstraps (flash fiction)

“Madam Director? We have a problem.” “When?” “Beethoven. A research squad was sent to observe his composition processes, but he wasn’t there.” “What period?” “1802 onward. He’s simply-” “Calm down, Ms Hart. I’ve seen this before. Who do we have on staff who can play piano?” “Well, there’s old Norris Friar. Works in time-stream stabilisation. He’s quite good, actually. I heard him play at the office Christmas party. And he knows a bit of German.” “Does he have field experience?” “Let me… oh. His records with the department are sealed. Sanitised temporal missions, most likely.” “Perfect. Here’s what we’re going to do. Fill out form D-37 and schedule Friar for emergency facial surgery. Then run forms BB-2 and BB-5 to head office, have them signed in triplicate, and organise a cache of all of Beethoven’s sheet music, as well as period-appropriate currency. Friar will need, oh, say, eight hundred marks. If we don’t have enough in the store-room, send a team back to retrieve some direct from the bank of Hamburg. And an acting coach! He’ll need to pretend to be deaf.” “You’re making Friar into Beethoven?” “Classic bootstrap, Hart. Never fails.” # “Madam Director?” “What now, Hart?” “It’s Mozart.” “Vanished?” “We don’t know when it happened, but there’s simply no trace.” “Do we have anyone else who can play piano?” “Friar was our best. He’ll be back on Tuesday’s timestream, but he’s lived in the 1800s for twenty years. Much too old to play the part.” “This is a […]

God Factory in the bag

I’ve just polished off the first draft of my latest sci-fi novel, God Factory. The first chapter was previously posted all the way back in March as Project Goma, but it’s come a long way since then, developing from a cyberpunk heist tale into a space-opera style swashbuckling adventure. It’s rough and messy, but I think it’s a lot of fun. With that first draft out of the way, I’m returning to polish off a redraft of Rust 3. I hope to have that book with you by the end of the year, with Century of Sand 3 following close behind. Thanks for being so patient, everyone!

State of the Ruz

3 months since my last update? UNACCEPTABLE. Let’s keep it quick and to the point. 1) Olesia Anderson #7.2: Blackout, Part 2, is available now on Kindle! It’s big, it’s bold, it’s explosive, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. If you’ve enjoyed my Olesia Anderson series in the past, please check it out. 2) I just (as of ten minutes ago) finished the alpha draft of Rust: Season Three. It’s nowhere near ready for external readers, but it exists, so don’t fret! It’ll be done soon. If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about Rust, why not check out the first book on Kindle? 3) Century of Sand 3 and Olesia Anderson #8 are ticking along slowly. They’ve taken a temporary back seat to my current scifi novel, Project Goma. You can read the first chapter of that right here! 4) I still haven’t beaten Dark Souls 2. That game is a mofo.

Olesia Anderson #7.1 hits Amazon, and announcing the ImmerseOrDie Storybundle!

BIG NEWS! It’s been a huge couple days. Super huge. I won’t waste your time by going on about the ups and downs of the past week. Better to get to the point. Two announcements, both of them awesome. The latest Olesia Anderson novella, BLACKOUT PART 1, has hit Amazon! It’s a the first part of a double-length Olesia adventure that sees my favourite spy headed into the badlands of Mexico on a life-or-death operation. No friends. No backup. On the run, and headed for the most violent city in the world. It’s all in a day’s work for Olesia Anderson. After narrowly escaping a hit-squad sent by her former employers, Olesia is headed south. Her only hope: Kay, the assassin-for-hire she worked with in Moscow. Kay promises answers, so long as Olesia helps with a job across the US-Mexico border, in the badlands of Juarez. This could be the mission that kills her. But if it takes her one step closer to the truth about her parents, and the man pulling Zero Error’s strings…   It’s been waaaay too long between Olesia Anderson releases, so getting this one out the door is an important milestone. Part 2 is going through final revisions right now and will hopefully be available by the end of April 2015! The second bit of news is just as awesome. No, wait. MORE awesome. You see… ah, hell. Easier to just show you. Yep, Century of Sand is going to be part of an upcoming […]

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. Vale, Sir Terry.

I don’t get choked up over celebrity deaths. I mean, they’re interesting people very far away, I’m just a fan of their work, we never shook hands… But Sir Terry Pratchett passed this morning, and I feel I’ve been shaking hands with him my entire adult life, ever since a good friend gave me a hardcover edition of Hogfather for my eleventh birthday. I didn’t understand half of it, but I knew I’d been introduced to something elemental. A story that my parents didn’t mind me reading that was also deeply adult, unsettling, possibly dangerous.   Of course, I backtracked to his first novel and started reading forwards. I wasn’t even a teen and escapism was a survival tactic. Were there other authors I enjoyed at the time? Sure – Card, King, Brooks. All of them inspired me in some way to imagine further, to create stories in my head, but it was Pratchett who built in me the fanaticism required to put pen to paper, to understand that this was something I could do, that I had to do. My first real attempts at writing were all Pratchett imitations. They were terrible but necessary. I saw, in his works, how he’d grown as an author, how his prose had tightened and matured between The Colour of Magic and Sourcery. I knew I could do the same. I read Pratchett religiously until I was perhaps nineteen, when I decided I’d outgrown him. I put my books aside, in a box, […]

Project Goma – Chapter 1

This is an experiment, the opening to a novel I’m developing very slowly in the background of my other projects. It’s a little sci-fantasy, a little cyberpunk, a little far-future Indiana Jones. This first chapter is more of a prologue, but I hope it’s a fun little read. Take care, everyone. – – – The heist of a lifetime was already going bad when the slam-pup blew Abel out a ninety story window and into freefall. It was a long way down. More than long enough for regrets. # Like all get-rich-quick schemes, it began with a tip. “It’s the All-Mother. Their patron, their deity.” That was Frankie D, a dwarf of a man who hobbled around the Swansong Bar with his ankles immobilised by lattices of surgical steel. His collar was shucked up to protect his cheeks from the sheeting rain – there was a squall coming off the black towers on the east edge of the city, carrying with them great clouds of ozone and acid. Abel didn’t mind the rain. She’d been born in the shadow of the towers, spent her childhood drinking the runoff from the pinnacle plants. There wasn’t much left in her that wasn’t scarred by the effluent. She hung one arm over the Swansong’s railing, letting the breeze eddy between her fingers. “How much is she worth?” “She’s a data god, what do you think? Three hundred years, they’ve been carrying her around. They’ll pay everything to get her back.” “How much is […]