Doug Dandridge's Blog, page 24

Refuge Promotion and a One Star Review

Today is the third day of my promotion of Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1. So far I am getting the same results I got from my promotion of The Shadows of the Multiverse, Friday and Saturday are kind of slow days, and I gave away about four hundred books as of Sunday Morning. With Shadows I noted that Monday and Tuesday were actually the big give away days. I am thinking that people are doing other things on the weekend, and then checking their computers again the evenings of their work weeks. If the pattern holds true I will adjust my days slightly, starting on Saturday and going through Wednesday to give the book three weekdays after a weekend promotion.

Also received my first one star review, this for the first book of my Exodus series, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1. Now I don’t really like one star reviews, as I learned when I looked at this one. There was really very little information in the write up, sort of like the reviewer just wanted to give the one star and wrote something so it would be accepted. The two major complaints were that there were too many inside references to other science fiction (and I think there were four or five in the whole hundred thousand word book) and that I didn’t seem to have a real grasp of how military discipline worked. I actually have a very good grasp, across multiple time periods. Now the real problem I had with this review was that it received one star for the reasons stated. To me a one star means there was absolutely no merit to the book. That it was so poorly written that it was barely understandable, with so many mistakes and typos that the storyline was impossible to follow, if there even was a storyline. Not because you didn’t like a character or characters, or you didn’t agree with the premise or the politics. The reasons he gave for not liking the book would rate a three star at worst. Again, it seemed that the reviewer wanted to derail a book which has sold 569 copies in less than four weeks. I will move on from that review and take nothing from it, since nothing was offered that helps me to become a better writer.

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 will continue to be free through Tuesday, 10/20/2012, then will be back on sale for $2.99. Book 2 is also on sale for the same price, and if you like the story and want to continue it you can go to Amazon and buy the second book. If you like lots of action and don’t mind a whole bunch of characters to follow then this it the book for you. If not, then maybe it isn’t. But don’t leave a one star review just because you can’t stand one of the characters. Remember, one stars are for people who can’t speak or write in the language they are trying to use in their book. And now for an excerpt: two sectons involving the German Army fighting something they never expected.

“What in the hell is that,” yelled the Private, swinging his rifle down from firing position as another of the Orc’s fell to the ground with a burst skull.

Sergeant Tomas Mier turned at the exclamation, his own last victim falling dead to the ground. He was not sure what he saw striding from under the trees. Only that it was very large and very ugly. And that it held an enormous mace in one hand and a great round shield in the other. The next thing he noticed were the three other creatures moving with it, each as big and ugly as the first. All were wearing metal armor, open faced helmets, breast and back plates, shoulder guards and forearm guards, chain skirting below their waists, and metal shod boots. The armor boasted a ridge of plates down the back, and spikes from the helmet and shoulders. The handle of another mace thrust above the left shoulder of each of the monsters.

The lead monster tilted his head back and roared to the heavens, a sound like a dozen lions coming from his lungs. Mier felt his legs turn to jelly at the sound, and all he wanted to do was drop his rifle and run away. But he was a German soldier, the men looked up to him, and he would be damned if he would let them down. So he looked on when the creature pointed his mace toward the nearest armored vehicle and yelled something incomprehensible. The monster moved toward the vehicle in a shuffling gait that covered a surprising distance, his fellows at his side.

“Fire,” yelled Sergeant Mier, bringing his auto-rifle to his shoulder and sending a burst of 6mm rounds into the nearest creature. The rest of the stunned Germans obeyed the order, their training and instincts taking over for their frightened minds. Scores of tracers, indicating hundreds of rounds, flew into the creatures. And bounced off into the air as they hit the thick armor on the monsters.

Mier adjusted fire, aiming into the uncovered knee of the creature where wrinkled yellow skin showed. He gasped as he watched his tracers bounce from the skin as from the armor, and the creature turned its attention toward him, something he had neither wanted nor expected.

One of the monsters got within range of a German soldier who was trying to bring the creature down with his rifle. The mace came in quickly and the soldier’s head disappeared into a mist of blood and gore, and the body was flung to the side by the momentum of the strike. The monster brought the mace back the other way and hit another soldier in the lower chest. Body armor crumpled and the soldier was flung away like a boneless doll, to land near the trees a hundred meters away.

“They’re fucking Trolls,” yelled one of the troops, backing away from the creatures, then turning to run. The Sergeant backed up himself, reaching for another magazine and wondering why, since the bullets didn’t seem to be doing much good. A dozen soldiers were down, and to be down to these creatures meant you were dead. He pushed the magazine in and looked up to see one of the creatures towering over him, raising the huge mace into the air. It has to be three meters tall, thought the Sergeant in what he was sure was his last thought. Taller. He raised the barrel of his rifle and fired from the hip toward the head, blazing through the entire magazine in less than two seconds. As the weapon clicked on empty the NCO tensed, waiting for the impact of the mace that he knew would destroy his body.

A ripple of small explosions spackled across the head and shoulders of the creature. The Troll rocked back as small spurts of blackish blood flew into the air. Mier jumped back as he recognized the sounds of a thirty-five millimeter cannon ripping into the monster. He was splashed with foul smelling black blood as he moved away, reloading his rifle and looking for cover. The Troll fell back, then went to one knee as the armor piercing rounds tore through its body. With a plaintive grunt the creature fell forward into the dirt and lay still.

Sergeant Mier dropped behind the body of the Troll into a kneeling position and brought Orcs, creatures he knew he could kill, under fire. The auto cannon on the APC continued to hammer away, then went silent. Mier turned his head and felt the next shock of the day. One of the Trolls had jumped onto the APC and was hitting the turret with his mace, rocking the movable capsule back and forth. With a two handed swipe the Troll smacked the mace into the turret and tore it from its mount, breaking the haft of the mace at the same time. The turret tilted over to the left and it was obvious to the Sergeant that the weapon in it was out of action. And the other two Trolls were still moving among the Germans, swinging their heavy maces and killing men with every swipe.

Sergeant Mier couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The American officer was battling the two Trolls, keeping them occupied. She was moving with unbelievable speed and coordination, making the huge creatures seem even clumsier than they were. They were missing her with every strike, while she moved like the hero in some Oriental martial arts flick. Then she hit the one Troll with a kick and injured herself. The injury couldn’t have been too bad, because within moments she was back to moving like a superhero.

Mier felt the shock of the arrow piercing the young black woman as if it had hit him. She staggered from the obviously mortal blow. One of the Trolls then lifted her from the ground with a swing like a golf stroke, sending her flying through the air fifty meters to land hard on her back.

Mier looked around for a moment, spotting the Elf who had fired the arrow. The man was drawing back another long shaft and sighting in on something. Mier brought his rifle up to his shoulder, developed a good sight picture, and send a short burst at the Elf. One round impacted the bow and knocked it out of alignment just as the Elf was releasing the arrow. The other two rounds hit in throat and lower face, killing the Elf instantly. Mier sprayed bursts at the other Elves moving past the bowman, scoring a couple of hits and making the others drop to the ground. He then turned his attention back to the woman and the Trolls.

The Trolls were walking toward her with their ponderous gait, waving their maces and roaring their anger and hate, while she lay unmoving on her back. Mier dropped the magazine from his rifle and slapped another in as he ran toward the Trolls. As soon as he snapped the mag into place and released the bolt forward he stopped, brought the rifle up, and sprayed the magazine at the monsters. Sparks flew where the 6mm rounds hit the heavy armor. The Trolls screamed and one turned to the others to grunt out something in their language. One Troll turned back and continued on to the woman, while the other strode toward the Sergeant with blood in its eyes.

Mier slapped another mag in the rifle and aimed carefully, sighting in on the face of the creature, determined to do some damage before the monster took him out. The Sergeant felt the rifle recoil gently into his shoulder as he fired on sustained full automatic, striking most of the rounds into the face. The creature roared as it brought its hand up over its face. Some blackish blood spurted into the air and the creature roared again. The monster pulled its arm down and shuffled toward the Sergeant, the orbits where its eyes had been now blood filled holes.

Mier ran to the side of the now blind creature and looked over at the woman. She was unmoving on the ground, and the other Troll was standing over her, mace gripped in both hands and raised overhead. Mier fired off his remaining three rounds, striking the creature on the back. It hesitated for a second, then brought the mace down. The Sergeant opened his mouth to scream, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop the monster. That was when the second superhero struck.

Filed under: Armor, Barbarians, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Near Future, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Superheroes, Sword and Sorcery, Tropes, Writing Tagged: Elves, empires at war, Free ebook promotion, Germany, Kindle Promotion, military discipline, Refuge, Refuge:The Arrival, Trolls, warfare, weekend promotion, Wehrmacht

Refuge: The Series

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 is free today (11/16/2012) through Tuesday (11/20/2012) on Amazon KDP Select. I have big plans for this series, at least twelve books in the main storyline and possibly 4-6 spin offs. That should take up a significant amount of my writing time for the next decade. I say significant because I will also have other projects in the works during that time, including the Exodus science fiction series and the Deep Dark Well set of trilogies. I think I can get them all done, especially if I can get to the point where I either quit my day job or at least go to part time status. I also have a book on Amazon and Smashwords called Refuge: Doppelganger, set over a thousand years in the future, which may have some spoilers to people starting the Refuge series, or may not, depending on how you look at it. I myself don’t think it spoils too much of the storyline about the past.

Refuge grew out of the idea about humans inhabiting a world of fantasy would that had connections to our history and culture. So there would be elves, dragons, demons, vampires and magic, but there would also be Baseball, Soccer, and modern orders of battle, as well as classical and rock music, and the Catholic Church and others. I was hoping it would be a blend that exposed readers to a new world while maintaining some of the familiarity of the old. And I wanted it to have lots of action. It is military fantasy, no doubt about that. Most of the stories will feature armies maneuvering across the map in a series of thrusts and counterthrusts. And the timeline will advance, with new characters, but then again many of the initial characters, being long lived elves or human immortals, will be in the entire series.

I would have to say that Refuge in style is a mix of Harry Turtledove meets R. A. Salvatore. Turtledove in that the book covers a large geographical area with a lot of characters to provide viewpoints of the story from both sides. I have gotten in one review of my science fiction series Exodus that said there were too many characters and it became confusing. That might be so, but this is the style of book that needs a lot of characters, and if you like Turtledove you will probably like this book. If not, it may not be the book for you. I try to do the battle scenes in a Salvatore style in which there is a lot of action and viewpoint scenes switch fast a furious. A review of another book of mine, The Shadows of the Multiverse, said that I had too much action and not enough character development. I’m not really sure how you can have too much action, but I try to write the books I would want to read, and twenty page scenes of people sitting around coffee tables sipping beverages and raising eyebrows while discussing things that have already happened do not really get me going. So it has action with character development within the context of that action. Yes, the book is an introduction to the series, but still a good yarn in its own right. Books one and two go together to make the introduction to the story. It just seemed silly to offer a two hundred thousand word novel in one ebook, so it is two. And this book’s last chapter is also an action sequence, and unlike any other I have found in fantasy, though I haven’t read everything out there. That would be a fantasy, would it not? This chapter involves a battle between an Armored Cavalry Company and a Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Now what could be cooler than that? This excerpt is not from that battle, but from an earlier fight between the Immortal Humans and some Trolls. Enjoy, and please drop by Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 from 11/16/2012 to 11/20/2012 to pick up your free copy of the ebook.

Excerpt:

The old German pulled up as soon as he caught sight of what was down that road. Levine skidded to a halt beside him and swore in Hebrew. Kurt could understand the feeling, because he really couldn’t believe the three creatures he was watching.

From the scale of the people and vehicles around them they had to stand over three meters tall, maybe just a bit less than four meters. And if they didn’t weigh at least a ton he was a Russian. There were a couple of burning vehicles, including a truck and a couple of cars that looked like they had been flipped over, proving the strength of the creatures. One of the monsters was chasing some German soldiers at the far observable end of the road. Another was stumbling around with its hands over its face, black blood shining on its throat and upper chest. And a third was rearing up with a mace, about to bring it down on a body lying on the ground. Germans were firing at all three of the monsters, and the bullets were bouncing off, even where they hit exposed flesh.

Kurt looked at the closest monster, the one about to smash someone helpless on the ground. A German soldier fired at the monster, tracers bouncing from the helmet and body plate of the creature. The monster hesitated for an instant, turning his head to look at the German, then turned back toward his victim.

Kurt exploded into a sprint toward the Troll, for such he was already calling it in his head. His legs pumped smoothly as he ran as fast as the fastest Olympic sprinter, though more burdened than the athlete, hauling his armor and weapon along with him. The Troll was bringing his mace down, and Kurt could see the body of a dark skinned woman in military fatigues lying on the ground, about to receive the blow.

The two handed sword came in at the closest arm of the creature as the mace passed its waist. Kurt put all of his strength into the blow, and the laser sharpened blade hit at the elbow, directly above the forearm guard. The blade sliced through the rock hard skin with a solid chunking sound. Black blood spurted into the air. The Troll roared and spun toward the German, the mace missing the target as the damaged arm’s hand lost its grip on the weapon.

Kurt’s arms shook as the blade stopped on hitting the granite like bones of the creature. He pulled the blade free and backed up as the monster turned its attention to him. Kurt brought his sword up to a guard position as the monster advanced, swinging the mace in its off hand.

The mace swung out as the monster went into the attack. It swung the mace in and the German grabbed the hand grip on his blade and went for a two handed block, catching the haft of the blunt weapon on the blade between the grips. Kurt tensed as the weapons met, locking his arms in place. Despite his demigod like strength the monster out massed him by a factor of eight or more, and the German was pushed backwards by the hit, his booted feet sliding on the turf.

The monster clumsily brought his mace back for another strike, and the German moved in, dropping his left hand back to the handle of his sword and shoving the point forward like a spear. The blade punctured the skin of the Troll in the middle of the right thigh, slicing deep into the muscle. The Troll shambled back, pulling itself off of the blade while it roared its pain and anger. Kurt drew the blade over his left shoulder and sliced across the opposite thigh of the monster while stepping forward, cutting through the large muscle and wounding the creature deeply. The monster lost control of the left leg and staggered to a kneeling position, putting a hand down to keep from falling over.

Kurt sliced in with his blade on the supporting arm, the one that was holding the mace, the left. The blade sliced in again, chopping down to the bone. The mace fell from lifeless fingers as the creature roared and tried to regain its feet. A slice at the right knee hurt that leg even more, and Kurt backed away, looking for the killing stroke.

He knew his blade wouldn’t cut through the thick, steel hard bones, so there was no way he was going to cut through a limb or sever the head. But he might still bleed the creature out with enough deep wounds, or cut off its air supply by cutting its throat. As he thought about his strategy he continued to monitor the creature. He was very surprised when it reached over with the hand he had crippled with his first stroke and picked up its mace. He looked closely at the arm while the monster pushed the mace his way, trying to keep him back. He saw that where the cut had been was now a thick scar. A scar that was diminishing and fading as he watched. Looking at the legs he saw that those wounds had also closed or were closing. Then the creature lurched to his feet and steadied himself.

Damned thing regenerates, he thought, wondering again how he would kill it. The ground rumbled underneath his feet at that moment and a shadow passed over his vision. Startled, the German looked up to his right in time to see a mace descending. He quickly brought his sword up to block the weapon, diverting most of the impact along the blade. One of the Troll’s fingers was caught up by the blade and fell to the ground. The finger continued to wriggle along the ground as if a sentient creature, while the Troll, missing a finger, flung his arm up high with the mace and swung it down once again. Kurt dodged away, coming within reach of the first Troll, who staggered forward and swiped at him with its mace. Now he was in a fight with two difficult to kill behemoths. And all he could consider at the moment was keeping life in his own body.

I know that bastard was blind, he thought, looking at the second Troll that still had blood dripping from his face, but with two perfectly good angry red orbs glaring from it. So they regenerate eyes too. Then the creature swung at him again and he was forced to dodge.

As he was dodging, striking back when he could and leaving what always would be superficial wounds on these creatures, he heard another roar. He glanced to his right, up the road, and saw the third creature coming at a shuffling run toward him. And to his horror he saw the fourth, which had appeared to be dead, raise its head and look around for a second, then push itself up and come his way.

“Ishmael,” he called out, looking for his friend, while backpedaling quickly. At that moment his legs hit something and he fell over onto his back, rolling on the ground with the woman he had thought was dead, who was groaning and pulling the arrow from her own body.

* * *

Levine finished off another of the Elves, pulling his blade across the throat of the man and half severing his head. The Elves were worthy opponents, he had to admit. They outclassed him in grace and agility. But he was faster, quicker and much stronger than they were. And he was the complete dirty fighter, with tricks they had never seen. Add to that their magic appeared to have no effect on him, and he was their worst nightmare moving through their last waking moments.

Another Elf gestured at him, murmuring some words under his breath. Levine felt the energy wash over him, and a nearby German soldier fell to his knees, his eyes unfocused for a moment. The Elf frowned, then eyes widened in alarm as the immortal headed for him at a run, putting his sword through the man’s ribs and leaving him coughing out his life on the ground.

Damned sleep spell, thought the immortal, shaking his head, catching a glimpse of the German soldier staggering back to his feet. Many of the Elves seemed to have that spell, and they had knocked out more of the soldiers than they had killed in combat. Of course that was as good a way of putting them out of action, as they were almost impossible to awaken. And the enemy was willing, almost eager, to take prisoners. Levine was not sure why, but was sure it was not because of any altruistic feelings on the part of the Elves. At least when I kill the attacker their magic seems to fade with them, he thought, picking out another target, a small group of Orcs, and heading for them.

“Ishmael,” yelled a loud voice from some distance.

Levine turned, his eyes immediately focusing on a large man in armor, about a hundred meters away, who was battling against a trio of very large opponents. As he watched the human stumbled backwards and fell over, a large mace missing him as he toppled.

“You,” yelled Levine to a soldier who was reloading his rifle, his eyes searching for targets. “Do you have any flamethrowers with your unit?”

“I don’t think so,” said the Sergeant, looking confused for a moment, then glancing over at the Trolls. Recognition of the problem registered on his face and he nodded. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Levine waved a hand and ran toward his friend, reveling in the speed of his rush. I could have shown up Hitler in that damned Olympics of his, thought the Jew as he ran lightly over the ground. He would have loved to have his resident supermen outdone by a member of an inferior race. But I guess it was enough that the black man humbled him.

Levine knew that he was not like other men, besides his long life and seemingly eternal youth. He was faster, quicker and stronger than other men. His abilities had increased as he got older. But they had also increased when he had arrived on this new world, as if something here resonated with his abilities. He knew that Kurt had felt it as well, though the other immortal was much younger, just into the beginning of his second century. He could also feel the heat building up in his body. The damnable heat that caused nerve damage and loss of memory.

Then the time for thought was past, as the back of a Troll loomed up before him and he went in for the strike.

* * *

One of the Trolls stepped forward, brought his legs apart in a wide stance, and swung his mace down at the big German. Kurt brought his two handed sword up, one hand on the grip in the middle of the blade, and locked his arms. The head of the mace hit the blade with the clang of metal, and Kurt felt his arms pushed down by the massive strength of the creature. Gritting his teeth, feeling the weight of the monster behind the weapon that threatened to push him down into the ground, the German pushed back with all of his might. Pushed back, and felt his arms straighten as he pushed the mace up and the Troll backwards. The creature stared down at him in disbelief, clearly surprised that such a small being had such strength.

Kurt shoved hard, unbalancing the Troll, then pulled the sword back down and rolled to the side, just as another of the monsters swung his mace to connect with the ground where Kurt’s head had been. The mace dug into the ground and Kurt rolled up to his feet, sword coming to the guard position. He swung a hard strike into the leg of the Troll who was still trying to gain his balance, cutting into the flesh and dropping the creature into a kneel. He dodged back as the second Troll swung a waist high strike at him, then did a roll over the sweep, landing on his feet and bringing his blade around to knock the mace of the third Troll out wide before it could come down on the helpless woman who was trying to sit up, the bloody shaft of an arrow in her hands.

The farthest Troll, the one he had leapt over, came back in with its mace raised overhead, trying to come down with the weapon on Kurt’s head and smash the human into the dirt. The monster roared as blood spurted from its neck, then its left arm. The creature turned into the flurry of a sword as Levine came into the fight.

“Get her back up,” said Levine, pointing with his chin at the woman. “I’ll keep them busy for a moment.”

Kurt nodded as the Jew went into a frenzy of movement, shield seemingly everywhere at once as his sword danced around the three Trolls, drawing blood with every dart. He reached down and grabbed the woman by the shoulder of her jacket and pulled her back, dragging her along the ground, backing clear of the fight.

“You wait here,” he said to the woman as he gently lowered her shoulder. He could see that the front of her jacket was covered in blood, but the eyes that looked back into his were free of pain and seemed most clear. She nodded and he looked back to the fray, where his friend was keeping the Trolls busy with his swordsmanship, moving like a ghost among them. He swung his own sword once and yelled out a battle cry, moving in as he saw a fourth Troll coming in a shambling trot to join the battle.

Filed under: Armor, Barbarians, Comics, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Fusion, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Past, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Superheroes, Sword and Sorcery, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Writing Tagged: Elves, Free Ebook, Free ebook promotion, Immortals, KDP Select Promotions, Orcs, Refuge:The Arrival, Trolls

Forbidden Planet

When I was growing up there were a large number of science fiction movies appearing at the theater. Most involved cigar shaped space

ships with flames curving out of the ends (a product of filming the things in an Earth gravity field and atmosphere). There were bug eyed aliens, and men in flight suits and jet pilot helmets fighting them with .45 caliber pistols in hand. Or the men fell in with the hot women from Venus, or some other hokey plot. The actors were the B-list marvels who we saw in the same kind of movie last year and the year before. Some were decent actors. Most weren’t. They were still exciting to a young mind, who imagined blasting off with the spacemen and patrolling the lanes of the Solar System. And then there was the first of the truly modern science fiction movies, Forbidden Planet.

Forbidden Planet was a different sort of beast. Made a year before I walked this planet (or should I say the year before I lay in a crib screaming for food and crapping my diapers) Forbidden Planet had a cool looking flying saucer (that was stolen by Twilight Zone and many others later on), a great robot (also stolen for Twilight Zone and many others), an alien civilization that made you think, disintegrator beams, and really out of this world electronic music. Of course, since it was done at the beginning of the atomic age everything was atomic, with Neutron Beam disintegrators, in a time when the risks of nuclear power were not as clear. It had big name stars like Ann Francis and Walter Pidgeon, and Leslie Neilsen when he still considered becoming a serious actor. The setting was a planet around another star system. The special effects were wonderful for the time, even better than what Star Trek boasted ten years later, though to give Trek credit, they were a TV Show and as such low budget. I kept trying to catch Forbidden Planet on TV when I was small, but my parents kept taking me to other events when it was showing, so I never really saw the whole movie until I was twelve. When I did I was amazed. And science fiction movies as a whole got better.

Oh, not immediately. There were still low budget flicks with bug eyed monsters or civilizations of gorgeous women and no men, and rocket ships that would take forever just to get to Mars, but could get to the imaginary inhabitable worlds swarming our Solar System in days. But the seeds were planted by Disney, and we started getting some better movies in the 60s, even more in the 70s, and now we have a bunch of really high quality space movies coming out each year. Forbidden Planet opened up the possibility of movies about travel to other stars, a mainstay of written science fiction at the time, but not explored on the big screen. It opened up robots that weren’t just clunking pieces of stove pipe. And it opened up alien civilizations that weren’t just cruising the Galaxy looking for easy marks to conquer, and that didn’t look like us with silver skin. I think Forbidden Planet was a risk at the time. But it was a risk that paid off. I have watched the movie several times lately. Friends have remarked that it seems dated. To me it still looks wonderful. No, it’s not Star Wars or Trek, but keeping in context the time it was a very well done movie, a true classic that set the stage for Star Trek and Wars. And now I discover a Facebook Page called Forbidden Planet, that is not just a celebration of the movie, but of all science fiction. So hooray for Forbidden Planet, and may the Krell always dwell in our hearts and our imaginations.

Filed under: 2001, Acceleration, Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Golden Age, History, Military, Movies, Near Future, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Writing Tagged: Ann Frances, Atomic Power, Disney, Forbidden Planet, Interstellar Travel, Leslie Neilson, Star Trek, Star Wars, Twilight Zone, Walter Pigeon

And Now For Something Completely Different

I know. I stole that line from an old Monty Python Movie, but I think it is true for some of the books I write. I loved Python. They were wacky and irreverent and took on some of the more nutty aspects of our world. But you could also tell that they knew their history, and were great imaginative minds at work. I also believe that I know my history, and my science, and my mythology. I may not be an expert on any of these subjects, though I come close on military history. But I also know I have a greater knowledge base than most, and I try to use that in my work. I still make mistakes, probably a lot of them, and I steal and rework ideas without shame or regret. I don’t copy them verbatim. I take them, combine them, and come out with something completely my own, just like a musician does with notes and musical themes.

In the World of Refuge I tried to come up with something completely different. I wanted to write in a High Fantasy World in which our own history and culture existed and had a major influence on the world. This includes art, architecture, science, religion and of course military history. I did not want to write an urban fantasy, in which Elf detectives track the Vampire murderers of the Great Mage in a fantasy New York City (though come to think of it, that might be cool). I wanted a world of Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Dragons and Trolls, where there was interaction between them and Humans who remembered the history of Rome and the Battle of Stalingrad. So I came up with Refuge, the tale of humanity in the millions transported to another dimension where all of our fantasies, archetypes and mythologies were real, to a certain degree. The first story I wrote was set thousands of years after the entry event, and think that I might have lost some of the people I sent my manuscript too. Refuge: Doppelganger is also set in the far future, though I tried to write a tale that focused on some of the central characters, unlike that first book I wrote. Then I determined to write about the coming of humans to Refuge (at least modern Earth humans, as there were some there before), starting as most stories should start, at the beginning.

I thought of how these humans, without the use of magic, unskilled at muscle powered warfare, would fare on dropping into a world where most everyone could use magic, and the mighty magic users would be truly formidable. And I thought they would not do so well. But, as my favorite ESPN personality says, Not So Fast. Because I also thought about what would happen if those same humans brought some of their own toys with them. I thought that a Leopard 2 or Abrams tank would be pretty impressive. And would magically enhanced armor actually stop a 35mm cannon round, and if so, would it stop a 120mm high velocity tank round? Probably not. In the original book (The Quest, The Sword and The Cross) I had thought that magic would really depend on belief, much as Voodoo does in this world. A magic user would have to believe they could tap the energies needed to power their spell, then believe that the incantation would do what they wanted it to do. And people who believed in forces beyond magic (like a God of the Universe) would be immune to the powers of those who practiced magic. So, thought I, what would happen if several millions humans came through the dimensional barrier with weapons they believed would work, and belief in a God that would protect them from evil (in the case of some humans). Tanks, artillery and nuclear weapons would give them an advantage, but one that would only last so long. Eventually they would run out of fuel and ammo, and the beliefs of a several hundred million natives would eventually overpower the beliefs of the humans, and things would stop working.

So this is the gist of the story of the first two books of the Refuge series, humans transported to a world of magic who must use their advanced weapons to carve out a refuge for themselves. The next two books will deal with what the humans do when the tech stops working. I have noticed that in most fantasy worlds fighting is little more than a bunch of people meleeing around the field in individuals duels. I think this is due to the effects of magic on people gathered in formation. Conan by Howard was somewhat different, but then again magic is different in the Hyborian world, being mostly the summoning of Demons, who would probably not be too grateful to be released at a pike line while archers plugged them with hundreds of arrows. But humanity has a way of figuring out how to make things work, and disciplined armies of the muscle powered era almost always overwhelmed melee fighters. And hence the name of the next two books, The Legions. Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 will be free on Amazon Kindle from 11/16/2012 to 11/20/2012. Book 2 is also available now, and books 3 & 4 should be available in the late Spring of 2013.

And now for an excerpt: This is about a young American woman who does know she is immortal discovering her abilities in a battle with creatures of mythology.

Jackie skidded to a halt on the grass as she came around a turn and saw what lay ahead. She had not imagined that the enemy would have anything like the three creatures she saw killing Germans with the huge maces in their hands. An APC lay tilted over on the side of the road, the turret on top dislodged from its mount. And the Lieutenant didn’t hesitate, fear totally removed from her adrenaline charged system. She ran forward at a sprint, yelling at the top of her lungs and firing her rifle at the nearest creature.

The Troll swiveled in mid step towards the soldier, bringing its shield up to bat the bullets from the American’s rifle away. She ran toward it, firing low now, watching as her bullets bounced off its skin and wondering for a moment what the hell she was doing. Then she was in range of its mace and the creature swept the weapon down to crush her.

Jackie dodged away from the blow and the monster brought the blunt weapon down onto the ground. It pulled the mace back and attempted a backhand swing at the woman. Jackie ducked under the blow. It brought the mace back again on a downswing, this time missing the leaping woman.

Another roar brought a shiver down the young woman’s spine, breaking through the warrior’s trance she had been a captive of, and she realized that another of the monsters was on her, coming in from behind. She caught a glimpse over her shoulder and dove forward, tucking into a roll that brought her between the legs of the first Troll, and the second missed with its swing, almost hitting its fellow, who gave an accusatory roar in return.

I need a better weapon, thought Jackie, feeling the inadequacy of the rifle in her hands. She couldn’t really use an auto cannon, it being too big and bulky to carry. And all the ones in the area were already manned. A grenade launcher might do some damage, but she didn’t have one of those either.

Jackie’s thoughts were interrupted as she became aware that the Troll she had dodged through the legs of was rearing up over her. She quickly dodged from its downward swing, then ducked the swing of the other Troll, then leapt backwards ten meters from the beasts, her eyes searching for a weapon.

How in the hell did I jump so far, she thought as the leap registered on her mind. Then time for thinking was gone as both Trolls came at her again, moving so they would come in on opposite sides. Jackie moved into a graceful dance that was perfectly timed, making both of the Trolls miss with multiple swings. The creatures stopped for a moment as the human back flipped away, staring stupidly at each other as their tiny minds tried to come up with a strategy to take the annoying warrior out of the fight.

Jackie noticed that she was not even breathing hard. Her reflexes were much faster than she had ever remembered them being. She was dancing around the creatures like Spiderman, one of her favorite comic characters. And while she wasn’t doing the creatures any damage, she was keeping them occupied, away from harming any of her fellow soldiers.

I wonder how strong I am, she thought, moving fluidly to keep the Trolls off balance. With a thought she was moving in, bringing her leg in as she leapt through the air. Her right leg rocketed out and struck her target Troll in the face. She was ready to ride through the kick and land on the monster as it went over. Reality was very different. Her foot hit the monster in the face, the shock transferred up her leg, and she bounced off with a sickening crunch of broken bone in her ankle, while the creature staggered back about a half meter.

Jackie landed on her back, feeling the agonizing pain in her ankle as the ground jarred her. She ignored the pain to the best of her ability, and rolled away as the second Troll brought his mace down on where she had been. Rolling up onto her feet, she felt nausea almost take her down again as the pain shot up her leg from the ankle. She backed up as fast as she could, hopping on her good foot, keeping a wary eye on the two Trolls that came after her with snarling faces.

A mace came at her from head high, and Jackie ducked under the weapon, then jumped with her good leg into the air over the second mace that was coming in at her waist. She was surprised that she still cleared the second mace, and came down well balanced on her one leg. The first Troll came at her with a back swing and she back peddled away, forgetting her injured ankle and surprised that it held up so well. Jumping over another swing and twisting in the air, she landed on both feet and felt no pain.

I know the damned thing was broken, she thought as she ran around the Trolls on both feet. But now there was no pain and the ankle was functioning perfectly. And the Trolls were again roaring in frustration as they chased after her.

Lieutenant Smith felt the physical shock of the arrow before she felt the pain. The arrow sliced through the back of her body armor, through her lower left thoracic region, nicking the heart, and out through the front of her armor. She looked down at the red dripping head of the arrow before the intense pain hit her brain. She could feel blood in her throat and coughed, which caused more pain. The roar of the Troll came to her as from a distance.

Something slammed into her hip and she was flying through the air. The agony in her side was warring for space in her awareness with the agony in her abdomen. Light and shadow flashed by before she hit the ground, adding more pain to the mix. She lay on her back, trying to pull air into her lungs through the pain of broken ribs, feeling the tread of massive feet approaching and knowing that any moment she would be smashed to jelly under a massive mace. That was her last thought as blackness unfolded over her brain and the world faded away.

Filed under: Armor, Barbarians, eBooks, Fantasy, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Marvel, Military, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Proofreading, self publishing, Shape Shifting, Superheroes, Sword and Sorcery, Tropes, Writing Tagged: Refuge:The Arrival, Trolls

My 100th Blog Entry

Today marks a historic event, at least for me, though it may be ignored by most of the rest of the world. Today I am posting the one hundredth entry of my Doug BrotherofCats Blog. When I started this thing I really didn’t know where it was going. I know there are thousands of blogs out there with many more followers. That’s OK. This thing has grown over time and gotten bigger and better than I had dreamed. I have this blog on two blog directories, Amazon, several Facebook pages, tweeted by many friends at the Independent Authors Network, and is now on Goodreads. I wanted the blog to be a platform for my writing, but decided early on to not only promote my writing, but to also write about all the subjects of fantasy and science fiction that interest me. I had taken on some of the tropes of the genres that really do not make sense, and covered topics as diverse as black holes and vampires. Discussed future warfare and past, how fleets of spaceships will battle in the future, and how barbarians were defeated by the Romans. I really have no idea how many people read this blog. It gets sent to 49 followers I believe, and then is posted where thousands more can read it if they wish. I do know that this blogs is one of the most enjoyable things I do in the promotion of my writing. It stretches my imagination and helps immensely in my worldbuilding and plot development. I plan to continue and possibly expand this blog in the future, with the possible inclusion of reviews of other books as well as articles on science and history. I thank all of those who follow, and all of those who read the semi-random ramblings of a sick mind. And I look forward to hearing from you in the future, please feel free to post comments, as dialogue makes the thing much more interesting.

Filed under: Barbarians, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Near Future, Past, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Tropes, Writing Tagged: blogs, books, goodreads, literature, random ramblings

Realistic Energy Weapons?

Energy weapons, ie lasers, particle beams, plasma beams and disintegration rays, seem to be the most misunderstood of weapons. Which is probably why they are handled so poorly in TV and movie science fiction. Lasers were used in several 60s TV shows in a manner that is not consistent with the way they really work. In Lost in Space lasers, with very visible beams, simply splashed off their targets like colored water and the victim was killed or not. No holes burned into the creature, which is what a laser would do. In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea the laser beams were invisible, probably more due to budget than an attempt at accuracy. And they disintegrated their targets completely. Most portrayals of lasers showed visible beams, no matter the medium they traversed, when in reality the beams are invisible unless something like smoke or moisture gets in the way. Phasers were probably the most well known beam weapon, and Star Trek was never very consistent with them. In one show they are blue, in another red. They were regularly shown to be hyperlight weapons fired from one faster than light spaceship at another. But in one episode they were shown to be slower than light, demonstrated by a hyperfast being stepping out of the way of the phaser blast. In the original series they were said to turn matter into energy, resulting in the target glowing, expanding and disappearing. Then I guess someone told the producer that turning a ninety kilogram object into energy would be the same as tossing forty-five kilograms of antimatter at the same amount of matter. Lots of heat, radiation, and a blast wave that would destroy a good portion of a continent. Not the kind of thing you would want to fire at someone standing twenty meters away. Later is was said that the phaser burned people to death and moved their body to another dimension. I guess the dimension of burned dead people. Wouldn’t want to live there during a war in our galaxy, as there would be bodies appearing all the time. Then it was said that phasers vaporized their target, which is supposed to mean that they heat the victim to the point where they turn to vapor that dissipates through the air. But they don’t show vapor. In one Deep Space Nine episode a man is vaporized while kneeling on the floor. He disappears and leaves a few scorch marks on the carpet. There are many other bad portrayals of energy weapons, and I have researched the concept to make sure that mine don’t join them. They may not be perfect, but I believe that they are more realistic.

First off about laser beams. They are more like invisible sword blades than anything else, and they burn holes or cut through things. Now unless the timing is perfect, they will either not completely penetrate the target, or they will penetrate the target and beyond, meaning walls, windows and other people are all at risk. What about vaporizing someone with a laser beam? It would be possible if enough energy was pumped into the target. More likely parts of the victim would be vaporized while other parts fell to the floor charred or possibly even intact. But let’s say the entire body of a hundred kilo human was turned to vapor. This would take a lot of energy, as every gram of the person would have to be converted from liquid or solid to gas state. And the room would be filled with superheated steam, as at least part of the body would rise to these temps. Not air you would want to breathe, or even contact your skin, as severe damage was sure to follow. In fact the air temperature could rise to the point where objects in the area burst into flame. Also, there may be some bleed over that strikes other objects in the room to their detriment, unless the wide angle beam is perfectly shaped to the body it is destroying, which would seem impossible.

Now if I understand it properly, a particle beam could kill or destroy in several different ways depending on the strength of the beam. It doesn’t take that much energy to kill by penetrating the body with hard radiation. A higher energy level would cause heating of the target to above laser beam temps, and could result in anything from charring of the surface while killing internal cells, to vaporization. Again there would probably be some heating of nearby objects leading to their melting or flaming depending on their material. And some beam that didn’t hit the target would cause collateral damage to the area. Plasma weapons mostly depend on the high heat of their substance to cause damage. If a beam or bolt is superheated to let’s say ten thousand degrees, and puts a gram of plasma on the target, then it would heat a hundred kilogram body ten degrees. Not that it would distribute the heat over the entire body. The area hit would probably be vaporized and a hole burned into the target. A 100,000 degree bolt would cause a hundred degree rise, and of course adding more mass to the plasma would also increase the damage. If enough energy was pushed into the target to vaporize it or cause severe burning, then collateral damage could also be expected, just as with lasers and particle beams. Antimatter beams in atmosphere have a lot of associated problems and would probably not be the weapon of choice, though they could cause some spectacular damage. Electron beams could also be used to raise body temperatures to the point where the meat cooks, but would probably not be capable of vaporization.

The point here is that energy weapons on settings designed to cause massive catastrophic destruction of a physical form also bring their own problems to the equation. But instead of making such weapons a problem to the storyline; they introduce elements that the author can use to make the story more interesting. Instead of destroying a body and leaving no evidence, they leave behind a tale of their use. What could be a bigger mystery than a story in which a body is vaporized, not even leaving the DNA behind, but the room shows that something big and nasty was used here to commit murder. In my opinion thinking about the science behind the device can only make the story better.

Now an excerpt from Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2, coming out at the end of this month:

“Nothing,” said the dark man as he pulled a heavy pistol from under his coat. He quickly set the charge and pointed the weapon at the Prime Minister. He waited until the man turned with bottle in hand. The count’s eyes went wide as he saw the pistol, and his mouth silently formed the word no.

The dark man fired the heavy military laser on a wide beam, holding the trigger down for two seconds as it pumped eight hundred megawatts of energy into the Prime Minister and the wall behind him. Clothing flared to ash and flesh flashed to vapor. The bottle in his hand burst in a fireball of burning alcohol and glass vapor. The man’s bones caught fire, much of it turning to superheated powder. The wall behind the Prime Mister caught on fire as paint vaporized and an old painting flashed to ash. The liquor cabinet ashed under the heat, said ash blown into the air as the bottles within exploded.

The dark man stepped back from the heat as he lowered the pistol, shielding his face with his other hand. Before him were the remains of the Prime Minister, some blackened pieces of his major bones and ash that was swirling around in the flames. Alarms sounded through the otherwise quiet house. The dark man took aim at the floor and fired another long burst, destroying the bone fragments and turning the hard rock that had been hidden by the carpet into lava.

The job completed, the dark man shook his head and faded back into the shadows. He did not kill for pleasure, though it had been a pleasure to eliminate this loose end. If he tarried there would be others that would see him, and he would be forced to kill again.

Filed under: Acceleration, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Warfare, Kindle, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, Tropes, Writing Tagged: lasers, particle beams, Plasma Weapons, vaporization

Dragons, dragons everywhere

Dragons are another fascination in fantasy that has taken many forms. There are the intelligent dragons (D&D, Dragonheart and others) and the mostly beast dragons (Dragonslayer and my own dragons in Refuge). Intelligent dragons may be able to speak, indeed they may have the command of several tongues. They can be of just below normal to genius intelligence depending on their type. They might be of many colors depending upon the fantasy world, the colors denoting their powers and alignment or not. Or they can all be one color, and all either be evil or good. Not all have breath weapons, but those that do are considered much more dangerous than those that don’t. Breath weapons include fire (the most common), cold, electricity, acid and even poison gas. And some of the intelligent dragons can even use magic; casting spells like a human mage. One thing they all have in common is flight. I guess a dragon that couldn’t fly and had no breath weapon would be called a dinosaur. But some are configured with only hind legs and wings sprouting from where their arms would be, while others have arms and legs, and wings sprouting from their backs. The latter have the advantage of front claws, and the ability for limited climbing. Some live long lives of centuries, and some live for thousands of years. Some grow to a certain size and stop, while others keep on growing through the centuries until they achieve almost Japanese monster sizes (almost. Let’s not get carried away here).

I use dragons a lot in my Refuge series. Dragons of different colors and breath weapons. Some can use magic, at least in an innate form. Most are as intelligent as a very smart dog, while the brighter ones have the intelligence of a Chimpanzee. Not what you would call genius, but neither are they dumb animals. They can be contacted through the telepathy that many intelligent creatures on the planet use for some forms of communication. I don’t really make the dragons good or evil, but some of them, the reds and blues and some others, have very volatile and angry temperaments, and are the dragons of choice for evil and destructive people. Other beasts, the golds and silvers, have placid temperaments and are best for the good characters.

It would seem that dragons would be the ultimate flying weapon, but I tend to look at them as not quite as good as our fighting machines. They are not as fast as jet fighters, or even attack helicopters. Their breath weapon, though powerful, is in most cases only about twice as fast as the dragon themselves, and have no ability to track a moving target. While the missiles fired by aerial combat machines are very fast and very accurate, and can track a target trying to avoid them. And the guns of fighting machines have much greater range and velocity. Now Refuge answers the question, at least in my mind, of who would win in a battle of dragon and M1A2 Abrams tank or Comanche attack helicopter? You’ll just have to read the book to find out, but the excerpt below may provide a hint.

Warrant Officer One Jessica Stuart banked her Comanche gunship over the virgin forest, wondering again where she was. She didn’t recognize the terrain below. There were none of the endless villages of the German countryside, no autobahns, no urban centers. What there were was a collection of small farming villages with buildings of an unfamiliar design. They sort of looked like what she thought medieval European farming villages would have looked like. There were no vehicles but those pulled by horses, and the people were either on foot, in wagons or riding those equines. Castles adorned a few of the hills, looking very similar to castles she had seen in Germany, but with enough differences that she knew they were not German.

She saw some lines of mounted men wearing shining armor, which was a clear indication that she was not in Twenty-first Century Deutschland. A few had fired arrows at her chopper, that had fallen back to earth well clear of her ship. And once someone had thrown what looked like a ball of light at her that had streaked past her cockpit in a near miss. She had pulled away from those people and stayed well above the ground from then on.

“What the fuck is going on?” asked her copilot/electronics warfare officer, Second Lieutenant Burkes. “Where in the hell are we?”

“I don’t know, Frankie,” said Jessica, looking down on a field in which a couple of Leopard tanks and four Marder APCs were parked. She waggled the helicopter at the waving men in field gray uniforms. “We’re not alone, though. Wonder what division those Krauts are from.”

She pitched the helicopter over another ridge and looked down into the valley below. There were a bunch of people in civilian garb gathered by the stream in the middle of the valley. They motioned at the helicopter. She dropped lower and she could see people waving at her. A couple of Mercedes Jeeps came rolling down to the river and some German soldiers got out as people ran over to them.

“We’re definitely not alone,” she repeated. “Wherever we are.”

“I’ve got someone from division on the radio,” said Burkes. “They’re asking where we are.”

“Don’t know what to tell them,” said the Warrant Officer. “Unless they want to triangulate on our position.”

She thought back for a moment on the total terror of less than an hour ago. Her flight of gunships had been taking off from the aviation field of the U S 1st Armored Division moments after the alert had come through. She had just reached two thousand feet and was heading toward Poland when the weapon targeting the airfield went off with a bright flash.

Her ship was shielded from EMP, so except for a few sparks there were no system malfunctions. But the ship was tossed in the blast wave as the cockpit heated up from the nuclear fire. She started to scream and she knew that death had found her. And then the heat was gone and she was looking out on a pristine scene of snowcapped mountains in the distance.

Her ship was in good condition, not completely torn up from being so close to a blast. She had to wrestle it out of a spin for a few moments and then she was fine. One of the ships was not so lucky. It had spun close to the ground and smacked down, its rotor blade hitting the ground and shattering. At least the two crew climbed out. And the other two birds had sustained some superficial damage and set down next to the crash. Captain Jerkovich, the flight leader, had ordered her on a recon, while he saw to the repairs to the two mostly intact Comanche’s.

So here she was, on who knew what world, flashing through the sky. Looking over the landscape and the people and all the interesting sights.

“What the hell is that?” called out the officer.

She flashed a glance to the right and saw a quartet of objects low in the sky. She couldn’t tell how big they were, having no scale to compare them, but thought that they were probably big. One was much larger than the others, its wings flapping heavily through the air. And they were turning above something like a flock of vultures. As she watched a gout of flame came from the front end of one of the flying monsters, followed by bright flares from the other three.

“There be dragons here,” she said while she turned the chopper toward the far off creatures.

“Are you out of your mind?” asked Burkes, his voice cracking over the com. “You’re not going to get close to those things?”

“They have to be attacking something,” answered Jessica as she pushed the throttle forward. “And there are a lot of German civilians and military about. And maybe some Americans as well. We have to go see what they’re attacking and help out if it’s someone we need to care about.”

“OK,” said the officer in a firm voice. “I agree. But I have to admit it scares the hell out of me to go hunting dragons in the air.”

“Me too, sir,” said the Warrant Officer, cutting a little to the side as she headed toward the creatures. “But I didn’t train on this thing to hold back in fear when the shit hit the fan. Plus, what are we worrying about. We survived a damned nuke for Christ’s sake. What’s a bit of dragon fire?”

“Which target you going after first?” asked the Lieutenant, working the targeting systems. “My dad always told me to go after the biggest bastard first.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Stuart, pulling the chopper up a bit so she could get a look into the valley. “Let’s make sure these things are going after people first though. They might be making an attack on a herd of sheep, just to satisfy their hunger.”

“I doubt it,” said the officer, looking at the scene on the camera on high mag. “That looks like civilians trying to get away. Along with a couple of burning cars.”

“Crap,” said the Warrant Officer, turning her attention from the valley ahead to the flying monsters. They were much closer now, and she got a sense of scale as one of the smaller ones dipped into the valley and let loose a ball of flame. The minivan it targeted went up in a blast, and she estimated that the creature must have weighed at least fifteen tons. About the size of a medium dinosaur. Which made the big one it was now twisting around weigh between thirty and forty tons.

“How could something that big fly?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.

“Painting it with the laser,” said Burkes. “You’re clear to fire.”

One of the dragons started drifting their way as she lined up the copter on the largest one. They must have noticed us, she thought, and she wondered what they made of her. She could see that the beasts were of a deep red hue, with large horns sprouting from their long snouted heads. And she could make out the figures of riders on the backs of a couple of the beasts.

“They’re under intelligent control,” she yelled into the intercom as she hit the firing button, rippling off a pair of Hellfire missiles that sped unerringly toward the largest monster. The missiles were fire and forget, following the laser beam reflecting from the scales of the giant. But she still had to allow her copilot to keep the beam on the target, so she maneuvered out of reach to allow him to keep the target painted.

The Warrant Officer cursed under her breath as the missiles closed on the target. The giant beast coughed up a ball of fire that struck one of the missiles dead center. The weapon exploded in the hellish flames, scattering pieces across the sky. A few bits of shrapnel might have hit the chest of the beast, but they didn’t penetrate the thick scales if they did.

The second missile struck the monster, in a manner. The missile drove through the leathery membrane of the right wing, putting a sixty centimeter diameter hole into the wing that didn’t affect the monster in any noticeable manner. The beast continued to flap on, and it belched another fireball, this one aimed at the helicopter. Stuart hit the throttle and banked the Comanche, easily avoiding the, to her perception, slow moving ball of heat.

“Well,” she said over the intercom as she brought the copter back onto a level and headed toward one of the smaller beasts that was flying away from her, putting her ship on a parallel course. “I know better than to take them head on, at least.”

“What if this is just some kind of crazy hallucination?” asked Burkes as he checked his status board. “I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me. Multiton dragons flying through the air and breathing fire.”

“I’m sure the nuclear blast was real,” said Jessica, banking her copter and arming her chain gun. The smaller red, rider on its back peering down, was lining up to make another attack on the ground. She could make out several burning cars and a flaming bus down there, with a scattering of burning bodies around them. “This might be a hallucination. But it’s affecting both of us if it is. Or it might be Hell, and then we’re really in trouble. But I seem to have a multi-million dollar gunship under me. And I’m capable of fighting it. So I’m just going to do what the Army trained me to do and fight these fucking things that are threatening people I’m supposed to protect. Anything else that you would suggest, sir?”

“Not a thing,” said Burkes, as she juked the copter into line with the beast that was heading straight for a line of cars stuck in the field.

Did only people in vehicles come here?, she thought. There were a lot of cars in the open area. That didn’t mean that pedestrians weren’t carried here as well, but she couldn’t prove it.

Making sure the sighting pip on her helmet was centered on the man on the dragon’s back, she triggered the thirty millimeter cannon and sent a line of tracers into the beast. As she pulled the helicopter around the beast she kept the pip on it, allowing the gun to move in the nose turret. The man exploded on the back of the creature when the first rounds struck. The beast let out a tremendous roar as the high explosive armor piercing rounds stitched from the saddle to the shoulder and up its neck. The roar cut off as rounds hit the back of its skull in a flurry of small bright explosions. The wings folded up and the animal dropped heavily from the air like a sack of flesh and bones. It hit in the midst of a group of ancient oaks in the forest bordering the clearing, cracking branches and bones on impact.

Refuge: The Arrival: Books 1 & 2 are out on Amazon as Ebooks, and also as paperbacks. I will be doing a promotion on Book 1 from 11/16/2012 to 11/20/2012, when you can get it for free. I am hoping enough will to buy Book 2.

Filed under: Armor, Barbarians, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Past, Plotting, Proofreading, science Fiction, self publishing, Sword and Sorcery, Titles, Tropes, Typos, Writing Tagged: Attack Helicopters, Breath Weapons, D&D, Dinosaurs, Dragonheart, Dragonslayer, Evil Dragons, Good Dragons, Jet Fighters, mages, Refuge: The Arrival

Ghouls, the misunderstood undead

While vampires are the rock stars of the undead world, and zombies the everyman turned monster, and even mummies get some respect, ghouls seem to be the red headed stepchild of the monster world. A check of the movie databases reveal hundreds of movies about vampires made worldwide, zombies as the newest craze with scores of recent movies, and even mummies with movies in the double digits. I think there was one old black and white feature titled The Ghoul, and little else. It is the same in literature, with vampires commanding overwhelming attention and ghouls little if any mention. Robert E Howard seemed to like the idea of ghouls, featuring ghoul like creatures in several Conan stories, and Carter and De Camp placed them in at least one of the novels they wrote about the big Cimmerian. The ghouls in Howard were said to be stronger than human, with hair like wire, but they crunched satisfactorily when hit with a broadsword. There were also ghouls used in several of the old Gold Box D&D games, especially in sections that required the player to examine graveyards or deserted areas of town. Not all ghouls were stronger than human. Some were described as being weak creatures who overwhelmed their prey by force of numbers, sort of like zombies. Or, if the prey were dead bodies, there was no overwhelming necessary.

I guess one of the reasons for the dearth of ghouls in literature and film is the low threat level of the creatures. In most cases they can be avoided by not going into graveyards, especially at night, something most sensible people have no trouble doing. Or stay out of the haunted pass or woods that everyone in the area warns about. Vampires frequent clubs and dancing establishments, at least according to the movies, and zombies can come right into your yard and living room. No self respecting ghoul is going to be found in your yard unless you are throwing the mother-in-law’s body in the dumpster. Also, while vampires and zombies feed on the living, and mummies just kill the living out of sheer cursedness or out of revenge, ghouls are mostly carrion eaters. I mean they won’t pass up a meal if it happens to go walking by, but they prefer their meat tenderized through the process of decay. Hey, I guess whatever floats your boat.

I personally would like to see more of the ghoul. Not in my back yard, of course, but in the literature and movies of our time. It would be something different than the same old blood sucker or brain eater, even fresher than the much more sparsely done bandage wrapped priest or prince. Surely someone could come up with a good storyline that would fit with modern times. Maybe ghouls haunting the subways of New York or London, or people disappearing while walking by the graveyard of small town USA (you know, because there aren’t enough bodies being buried there). But I’m sure there’s an area waiting to be tapped by a person with the right imagination. So maybe another form of undead can join the ranks of the celebrated vampires and zombies.

Filed under: Barbarians, Comics, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, History, Kindle, Magic, Marvel, Movies, Plotting, Proofreading, self publishing, Shape Shifting, Superheroes, Sword and Sorcery, Tropes, Undead, Vampires, Websites, Writing Tagged: Bruce Banner, Dungeons and Dragons, Ghouls, gold box, L Sprague de Camp, Lynn Carter, monster world, Mummy, Robert E Howard, The Hulk, zombies

The Double Edged Sword of Reviews

Last week I was still flying high on the reviews I had received for The Deep Dark Well (8 Five Star and 2 Four Star). Also received three five star reviews for The Shadows of the Multiverse. Most of the reviews were detailed, and some let me know what fault the reader found with my work, despite the praise. That seems to be the thing about good reviews. They point to particulars in the story that they liked, as well as what didn’t work for them. Some things are easily correctable, typos, formatting, misspelling a character’s name half the time (which can happen with made up names). Some are not so easy, like changing a book from a multicharacter, multiviewpoint work to one with a single strong focus. I got one of those the other day, a three star which complimented me on my science and the descriptions of hyperspatial dimensions, but came down hard on the use of so many different characters in different scenes stretched across an Interstellar Empire. I knew that was a risk with that kind of story, but I have always loved Harry Turtledove, who makes a living with such works. Another review loved that approach, so it seemed to work for some people, which is all I can ask. The guy who left the three star later wrote a glowing, detailed five star for The Deep Dark Well, and also communicated with me on Amazon to let me know that he was reading The Shadows of the Multiverse and loving it.

Then I received a pair of two star reviews back to back on The Deep Dark Well, which was really ego deflating. The first review stated that the novel was not polished, and made a crack about self publishing, stating that the best reason to be published by traditional firms was that the writer received constructive criticism. And of course none of this constructive criticism was offered. I am still not sure what the reviewer meant by polished. Did he get an earlier version of the work before I learned how to format, and started more rigorous quality control procedures? Or did he mean the writing style itself was not “polished’. The second one was just as enlightening. The reviewing mentioned a few books by masters scifi writers and said that I was not there yet. Remarks were also made about poor writing, but nothing that gave me any useful information. The most painful remark was how the book might be a good story for young readers (children?) Then I received the five star review which talked about how intelligent and thought provoking The Deep Dark Well was, and how I treated the reader like he had some intelligence of his own. I guess what I came away with from this is most negative reviews, even though they hurt, are pretty much useless, except to tell you that they thought you sucked as a writer. While many good reviews actually tell the writer something about perceived strengths and weaknesses. I corresponded with a friend who is a best selling scifi author on Amazon, and he pretty much had the same assessment. And I guess that I have arrived as a writer when I am getting attacked in the minority of reviews.

Today is the last day of my free KDP Select Promotion of The Shadows of the Multiverse. It was not doing well through Sunday, and I had only given away a little less than five hundred books. Yesterday it picked up, and by this morning I had given away 2,500 of them, and this evening is sitting at 2,828, and was ranked #84 on Kindle Free Books for some of the afternoon. Just hope I will get some reviews out of them, and the book will pick up in sales in the coming month. I haven’t tracked the other books like this, but since I learned how to use Amazon Reports I will do so in the future. Are Mondays and Tuesdays really the best days for giveaways, and the weekends not worth anything? Or was it just a statistical blip. I was trained in graduate level statistics, and know better than to put much emphasis on a One N study, unlike the people I work for. I will track again on my next promotion in three weeks and see if there is a trend there, then report it to all of you out there.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Movies, Multiverse, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Opec, Past, Proofreading, Quantum Physics, Robots, Shape Shifting, Space Navy, Space Program, steampunk, String Theory, Superheroes, Typos, Uncategorized, Undead, Vampires, Websites, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: Free ebook promotion, Free Ebooks, KDP Select Promotions, reviews

The Shadows of the Multiverse, now free on Amazon.

The Shadows of the Multiverse is Officially live today as a Free Ebook on Amazon through KDP select. The promotion worked very well for The Deep Dark Well, not as well for The Hunger, but as this is a science fiction novel I am hopeful it will do as well as TDDW and will get out into the hands of many readers, who will generously go back to the Amazon page and write a review (hint, hint). The promotion will run through Tuesday, 10/30/2012, after which the book will be offered for the ridiculously low price of $2.99. So far I have gotten three reviews of this novel, all five star, with another promised from someone who told me it was better than TDDW. Don’t know about that, but I think it is a very good novel, one which fans of both hard science fiction and science fantasy should enjoy.

Set nine hundred years in the future, when the solar system is the home of several governments and almost a trillion citizens, many of them in the mass of space habitations in the Dyson Swarm around the sun, the human race has spread to other stars by use of the many faceted gates that orbit a half dozen planets in each of the Galaxies throughout our Cosmos. There are lots of ruins across this space, both eroded on planetary surfaces and in pristine condition in the vacuum of space, showing that a lot of sentient races have appeared and disappeared throughout the last ten billion years. The real mystery is that many seem to have fallen at the same time, in cycles, and that there are no signs of a great war or natural catastrophe to explain where they went. And then we meet the catastrophe come to life, in the form of creatures from another dimension that fear our quantum minds. The mystery is solved, but unlike some mysteries finding out the truth does not in any way lessen the threat posed by the nightmare personified that is the Weavers (so called because they can weave reality into the form they want).

Three unlikely heroes are called to fight the Weavers, who are pretty much immune to the weapons deployed by the space faring races. Lucille Yamamoto is the captain of a Terran Federation battle cruiser. Known as Lucky Lucille throughout her career for her uncanny streak of fortunate circumstances, Lucille is a more than competent captain who is hated for her luck by many over her. Howard Turner was once a physicist who gave up his research into weapons of mass destruction based on the Zero Point Energy of Space. Known as Howard the Luck in scientific circles, Howard is also an extremely fortunate man for whom the ball always seems to bounce in his direction. Siobahn Hunsicker is the child of missionaries, and the third member of the trio who are the only hope of the Universe. The three must learn to use their abilities to fight creatures of equal ability, and must do so before it is too late. I hope my readers will find this one as imaginative and enjoyable as The Deep Dark Well. Get it now while it is free, and remember, reviews are much appreciated. And now for an excerpt.

“What in the name of the ten hells are they doing?” exclaimed Admiral G’Narjanasan.

“It would seem to serve no purpose,” agreed the tactical officer.

“How far are they from us?” asked the admiral through his com link, wishing he were not so constrained by his acceleration tube.

“Over seven light minutes,” said the tactical officer.

“Over six hours travel time at their current velocity,” said the nav officer.

“Their ship would reach us before those projectiles,” said the tactical officer.

“So the projectiles serve no offensive purpose,” said the admiral, his eyestalks straining to see the view of the enemy ship. Purely a reflex action as the image was actually projected directly into his visual cortex. “Do they serve a defensive purpose? Or a diversion?”

“I assume they were intended for one of those purposes,” said the tactical officer. “Which one I am unsure of. And what good it will do them I am also unsure.”

“They must feel it serves a useful purpose,” said the nav officer.

“We will just have to wait and see,” said the admiral. “But they are of no immediate concern to us. What of the convoy?”

“They are heading away from us at maximum acceleration,” stated the nav officer. “But they can at best make twelve gees with their slower freighters. We should be within effective main weapon’s range in approximately ten hours.”

“And the battle-cruiser will be within range of our weapons,” said the tactical officer, “and we within range of hers in about seven hours.”

“One capital ship against our entire force,” said the admiral. “What can they do without any support?”

What do they expect to do, thought the admiral. It depended on the ship’s commander. Was he a fool or a genius? Or would chance decide the fate of the human ship? Only time would tell. Seven hours’ time.

The admiral turned his attention to other matters. Like the disposition of the enemy ships they were vectoring toward. The escorts were falling back from the merchant vessels even farther, obviously hoping to sacrifice themselves that their charges might escape. A false hope, thought G’Narjanasan. The escorts would cause minimal damage to his own ships while he destroyed them utterly. And then went on to sweep up the defenseless cargo vessels.

“Detonation,” called one of the bridge officers, catching the attention of the admiral who brought up the view toward the battle-cruiser. One of the warheads had flared, causing sensory nodes to switch to heavy filter mode to dampen the deluge of radiation. Seconds later another of the warheads flared, followed by yet another and then a fourth. Seconds passed as the other forty-six warheads continued to fall toward the fleet.

The admiral noticed it just as the tactical officer brought it to his attention.

“The battle-cruiser is gone.”

Yes, the capital ship had seemed to disappear from his sensors, shielded by the flood of radiation that interposed their view of the human ship.

“The human captain set that spread of warheads on a path that would cloud their approach,” said the admiral. “Keep a close watch in case we catch some hint of movement out there. But they obviously intend to detonate those other warheads at points that will maximize their ability to hide the ship.”

“Or make us think that they maximize it,” said the navigation officer. “If I was the captain I would make sure the pattern of detonations gave us multiple possibilities to think of.”

“Contact the other captains,” ordered the admiral. “Calculate all possible paths that the enemy ship might take and keep running the calculations to update probabilities. Assign a ship to sweep the path of each possibility with a portion of their sensory systems.”

“Aye sir,” replied the flag captain, as communications officers worked diligently to send the messages on secured tight beams to the other ships of the fleet.

That devil might cause more damage than I find acceptable, thought the admiral. But they would not stop the fleet from reaching its target. Nor would they escape destruction themselves. The admiral relaxed, sure in his decisions and confident in the ability of his squadron to handle anything the inferior enemy force could throw at him.

Find it here. The Shadows of the Mutliverse

Filed under: Acceleration, Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, String Theory, Titles, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: Aliens, Dyson Swarm, Free Ebook, Free ebook promotion, KDP select, Kindle Promotion, Shadows, Terran Federation