Weston Ochse's Blog, page 13

Video Review of Grunt Traitor

All reviews are great.

But for some reason, I like video reviews even more. It's like I'm sitting across the table from the reviewer. It's personal. It's close. It's cool. The reviewer is definitely a fan, but he's also smart. I enjoyed hearing what he said. If you watch this, please support the reviewer and comment in the feed... then get your butt in gear and get a copy of the book.  Lol.




If you follow this link, you can get a free book.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Grunt-Traitor/Weston-Ochse/9781781083581

Grunt Traitor -- Free First Chapter -- Share Everywhere

Welcome to the first chapter of Grunt Traitor, gifted to you by me, the author, and friend of your friend who reads cool shit.


GRUNT TRAITORby Weston Ochse © 2014




DedicationTo Martin Cochran,Father-in-Law, Adventurer,Race Car Driver, Alaska Traveler,Solice Seeker and Korean War Veteran.


We invaded ourselves first. Make no mistake about it, had the Cray not descended from the clear blue sky, we humans—as our own invasive species—would have killed ourselves off within two hundred years. Un-regulated population, pollution, water overuse, and our utter failure to shepherd intrinsically important flora and fauna would have been our crimes. Our punishment would have been starvation, suffocation, dehydration, and overpopulation. Maybe the invasion of the Cray was the best thing that could have happened to us. Maybe the advent of the Cray was our control-alt-delete. Regardless whether you believe this, we have an undeniable clean slate. What are we going to do with it? Are we going to change, or trot out the same old governments with the same old ideas? —Excerpt from Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,Night Stalker Monologue #1343


PART ONE


A hero can be anyone; even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.—The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan

Chapter One
The battlefield was a disorganized collage of panic and desperation, where screams of human and alien mixed in a savage orchestration of unconstrained murder. We’d run out of ammo an hour ago and were locked in hand-to-hand combat with the multi-winged, jagged-clawed alien Cray. Orders still flew across the net, but I’d long ago ceased to follow them. I had another mission. The jaw-clenched mantra never leave a man behindfueled my muscles as they powered the leg servos of my scratched, battered EXO across the dusty African earth. Airplane carcasses littered the landscape. A Cray hive split the sky like the devil’s middle finger. Both man and Cray crunched sickeningly beneath my titanium-coated Kevlar feet. I ignored that and everything else. Let the others fight the Cray. Let them do the impossible. I had to find Michelle. I had to find Thompson. My eyes scoured the horizon, but all I saw were the humans and bug-like Cray locked in battle, the exoskeletal hands and the multi-limbed claws of the creatures who’d ruined Earth, each seeking the fastest way to do the other in.
Never leave a man behind.Never leave a man behind.My HUD flashed a warning as my heart rate soared with panic. Where the hell were they? A black hole began to grow in my chest, pulling hope into its abysmal maw.“Romeo Three, prepare to evac,” came Oliveras’s steady voice.“Negative, Romeo Proper. We’re missing Thompson and Aquinas.” I spied an EXO trying to move and rushed towards it. The markings had worn away from a thousand Cray scratches.“Mason, prepare to evac!”I ignored the command, and reached the struggling figure. I helped it stand, then turned it. A grimy face, strong Irish features, wan smile: McKenzie.“Thanks, pal. Thought I was done there for a second.” He pushed away, stumbled a few feet, then was jerked in the air by a pair of Cray. I watched as he was lifted higher and higher, then released. He slammed into the earth, crumpling like a beer can, servo fluid and blood seeping from the shattered mess of metal.Wait. I’d seen this before.“Mason, get your ass back here.”Oliveras’s command wrenched me free of my temporary paralysis. I broke into a run, ranging back across the battlefield. What had I missed? Where could they be? Then I saw it—a black box the size of a tractor trailer, sitting in the middle of an empty part of the battlefield. I headed towards it, but felt my legs slowing.Checking my HUD, I saw my power was down to five percent.Never leave a man behind.I fought to move as fast as I could, but without power the EXOs were concrete suits. I was close enough now that I could see inside the black box. I slowed, then finally stopped a dozen feet away, my power at zero, my hope at zero, any chance of a future with the girl I loved at zero. Michelle. Or what had once been Michelle.“What have they done?” I wailed.She hung from a pod affixed to the ceiling of the box, connected by tubes through which fluids moved in a slow soupy mix, presumably keeping her alive. She faced me, naked, the rivers of pain on her arms where she’d tried to commit suicide so long ago now stark white reminders of who she’d once been. If only that girl was still around. But she’d been turned into a horrific marionette. A hundred multicolored wires and cables ran from her shaved head to a computer terminal. I could only imagine her horror. Was she aware what had happened to her? What was it she’d said? Can you imagine? Being taken over by another entity and not being able to control your own body?The aliens hadn’t done this to her. We had. My rage corrected me. Mr. Pink had done this to her.Her body shook and trembled. She took a great breath and raised her head, and her gaze met my own. For one brief moment, we were those same two people, reclining behind the generators, interlocked, the end of the world not even mattering, living only in each other’s eyes as we made each other laugh, cry and sing with pleasure. Then her face changed. She became sad, then angry, then enraged.Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme.The thought slammed into my head, devouring everything else. Kill her? Kill Michelle? I could never kill her. I’d rather die.My suit powered up and I was once again able to move.“Then why didn’t you save her, asshole?”I spun and saw McKenzie. “What’d you say?”“You never saved her. She’s out there now, and half machine because of you.”I beheld him as if he were flesh and blood, but I knew it couldn’t be. I’d seen him die. We’d honored his body. I know this because it was the morning after she and I had—Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme.“Mason, get your ass over here.”“Then why didn’t you save her, asshole?”My eyes locked on another black box—five hundred meters away, according to my HUD. I pushed past the ghost of McKenzie and ran for it.Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme.Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme.As each thought struck me, I stumbled, but I never went down.The sound of drums began to come to me; a low heartbeat in the earth beneath my feet. At first it was on the very edge of my hearing, but gradually I began to make out the individual strokes. A drum like a drummer boy would play in a parade, like something that had been played for Washington’s Army, or General Lee’s, or General Patton’s, or Mr. Pink’s—the martial rat-a-tat-tat designed to bring everyone into patriotic lockstep.“Mason, get your ass over here.”I ignored Olivares and began to sprint. Thompson was in there. He had to be. The drums... they’d saved me... he’d saved me. I owed it to the guy. I owed it to Michelle. Why did I ever leave them? Why did I—“Mason, get your ass over here.”I snapped my eyes open to a blistering desert sun lancing between breaks in the camouflage fabric above me.“Mason? You sleeping?”My mouth felt like cardboard. My lips felt like sandpaper. Fuck. I brought my hand to my face to wipe away the vestiges of the nightmare and sat up, putting my boots on the ground. You’re not in Africa, I reminded myself, shaking off the remnant of the nightmare. You’re in Death Valley, near Barstow, California. The battle is over and you’re a survivor. You’re also an asshole for leaving Michelle like that. You’re a dick for not finding Thompson. You should fucking die for leaving those two behind, but instead you get three hots and a cot, you get promoted, you get to watch fucking videos of how great life used to be.Olivares came around the corner, dressed in desert fatigues, a maroon beret on his head, sunglasses covering his eyes. “There you are.” He clapped his hands. “Come on, we got to go. This is last day of Phase I for the new recruits. They’re going to be happy to get to the physical training.”I shook my head, not at him, but to get Michelle’s image out of my mind.“Listen, if you’re not up for it—” Olivares began.I stood. “Fuck that shit. I’m not a profile,” I said. Profiles were soldiers who rode illness or injury to get out of work.“Maybe you should be.” His face was serious. He pointed to the side of his head. “You’re not handling the mental shit well. I’m no psych, but you need to get over it.”I grunted. “You’re right, you’re no psych. You’re also not in charge of me anymore.”We’d both been promoted to master sergeants when we’d arrived at old Fort Irwin in Death Valley. TF OMBRA required experienced non-coms to train new recruits, and had pinned the rose on us and a bunch of others from the other Cray kill sites. Ohirra had been bumped to lieutenant and was now working in intelligence. Of course Michelle was out there somewhere. I knew it because these dreams were her doing. She was making sure I felt like shit for not killing her. I’d aimed my rifle at her...  I’d been ready to kill her for a moment, take her out of her misery... but I’d even failed in that. Then there was Thompson, our little drummer boy.Never leave a man behind. I’d sure fucked that one up.Olivares stepped in front of me. “Depression affects us all differently, Mason. Consider going to see the psych. Let them help you. Talk to someone. Just fucking deal with it.”I went to push past him, but he grabbed me by my collar. “You think you’re so fucking tough.”I shook him off. “I’m not tough. I’m just unlucky enough to have survived.”He gave me a disgusted look. “You’re a shit NCO, you know that?”I nodded. “You always were better than me.”“It’s not about that. It’s about the recruits. If your shit isn’t together, you’re going to put their lives in danger next time.”Next time. That’s all Mr. Pink could talk about. Next time. Where were the other aliens? What was going to happen next? Every surviving human on the planet was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe they were here already. Maybe they were on their way. No one seemed to know the answer, but we needed to prepare the task force to combat it. How do you prepare a soldier to fight an enemy you know so little about? The same way TF OMBRA had trained me and all the others. We could only study the hypothetical. Like these recruits, we’d been locked in a cell for six months and forced to read novels and watch movies, then demonstrate our ability to critically think and understand the challenges posed by an alien invasion by completing a series of graded tasks. We’d been given ninety-six manuscripts, forty-seven movies, and seven biographies. The biographies included Julius Caesar, Chesty Puller, David Hackworth, and other soldiers. Of the movies, I’d seen around half. They were the usual suspects: Kelly’s Heroes, A Bridge Too Far, The Guns of Navarone, Hamburger Hill, They Were Expendable, We Were Soldiers, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Saving Private Ryan, and Platoon. But there were also some foreign films I had never heard of, like Ivan’s Childhood, Kanał, and Gallipoli. There were also some science fiction movies, such as Starship Troopers, the 2005 version of War of the Worlds, Battleship, Battle: Los Angeles, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Puppet Masters, They Live, and Independence Day; I’d seen all of them except They Live and The Puppet Masters. I’d read many of the books already. Or thoughtI’d read them; it was funny how being forced to answer questions changed the reading experience. They included Armor, Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Old Man’s War, Ender’s Game, A Mote in God’s Eye, Legion of the Damned, Hammer’s Slammers, and Bolo. But there were a lot I had never read, books by C. J. Cherryh, David Gerrold, Jerry Pournelle, and Robert Buettner, to name a few.“Did you hear me?”“Yeah, I heard you.”He turned to leave, then turned back. “Listen, Mason. That was some fucked-up shit that was done to her. But she helped us defeat the Cray. She saved us. Something in our fucked-up PTSD heads, some chemical change, has enabled us to do this. I know she wanted you to kill her, but without her, we’d all be dead.”“Which is why I owe it to her to do something.”“Don’t go being a hero, Mason.”“I know you don’t like heroes, Olivares, but sometimes you just got to be one.”“Wouldn’t be necessary if everyone would do their fucking job.”I nodded. “What are the chances of that happening? It’s why we’ve had to find heroes for as long as Christ was a corporal.”“That’s not our job, now. We’re not training them to be heroes. Our job is to train these recruits to be soldiers.”I snatched my beret from my pocket and adjusted it on my head. Then I snapped sunglasses out of my shirt pocket and put them on. “Come on, Olivares. Stop lollygagging. We got work to do.”He frowned, then smiled, and patted me on the back. “There you go. There’s the asshole Mason I know and love.”“You’ve never loved me.”“No, I haven’t. I’ve never hated you either.” And with that he left.
I stepped out from beneath the camouflage awning and followed in Olivares’s steps. Staring at his back, I knew I couldn’t say the same myself. I’d once hated him terribly. It had been Michelle who had reminded me how selfish it was to hate another human when there was a whole universe of Cray to hate.
END OF CHAPTER ONEFor order information, click here - Simon and Schuster

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness Sucks Big Rocks!

Me in Feb 2014 after a Run or Dye 5KI can ride a bike twelve miles without issue.I can knock off a 5K anytime I want.
I've been doing Yoga now for two years and am in the best shape I've been in for the last two decades.
So why in the hell did 25 squats cause me so much pain that I can't work out for 72 hours?

How in the world was I laid low by a simple stretch!
Sigh.
So here's what happened. I decided I'd try out the Daily Burn. For those who don't know about it, it's a monthly subscription streaming workout video service. I wasn't able to get through the first workout because of wifi issues, but that's for another blog. I was able to do the burpees (which I've done before) and the reverse dips (which I've done before) and the situps (which I've also done before. Those weren't the issues. It was the warm up that got me. They started out by doing 25 squat stretches. 25 fast squat stretches. I could barely keep up. Then the wifi went wonky and I threw an hour long temper tantrum about the quality of our router and whether or not we should nuke it. But as I said, that's a conversation for later.
Then the next morning I go to get up and KABLAMO! I'm hobbling. The muscles in the back of my legs feel like they've gone five rounds with Rocky Balboa. I figured I'd pulled something. I struggled into my clothes and went to work. I figured my legs would get better. By noon they were twice as bad. By the evening, I wanted to cry. 
I had to find out what was wrong so I went to the best source of information at my disposal in a desperate attempt to find out if I had scurvey, or Hanta Virus,or the Swine Flu. Google! Way back in my head I remembered seeing a Facebook meme about some sort of tape worm that wiggles through your muscles and I was like OH GOD PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE A NIGERIAN MUSCLE WORM!!!
Turns out it wasn't. It was DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness. Here's a description from an article about weightlifting:

This is the classic delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which tends to kick in from as soon as six to eight hours post-exercise, and peaks around the 48 hour mark, though there is much individual variation of this timeline. And while lower body soreness tends to be more inhibiting and memorable, the phenomenon certainly isn’t limited to the legs. 

Here's a PHDs take on DOMS if you want to get all scholarly on me.
DOMS. Son of a bitch!
Squats are certainly unfamiliar. I never do them. And part of me says that if it hurts, then stop. Don't do anymore squats. Many people go their whole lives happily--nay gleefully--without ever doing a squat stretch. So then why do I care? Why don't I just never do them and move on.
Because I want my whole body to be in shape. I thought that biking and running and hiking and yoga and the occasional martial arts session would put me there. But clearly the back of my quads is weaker than the rest of my body.
Squat Therapy: 4 Drills That Will Improve Your SquatIt's now almost 72 hours after I did those damn squat stretches.  My legs still hurt. On a scale of 1 - 10 I'd rank it a 5. 
It's supposed to be better tomorrow. 
Either way I'm doing yoga. 
Even if my legs fall off I'm going to do some yoga tomorrow. 
I'm craving exercise. 
I'm jonesing for an elevated heart rate.
And when I'm fully recovered, I'm going to start training my legs for squats and this bad ass chick is going to show me the way.

Interviewed By Nerds With Balls

While I was at Phoenix Comicon this year, the cool guys from Nerd With Balls came by and absolutely begged me for an interview. After I let them bow and scrape for seventeen minutes, I finally allowed them to ask questions. This is how it turned out.


Lots of good shots of books.

Some decent back and forth.

But seriously, thanks to these cool guys for having me on. They were pros and I'm lucky to have been interviewed. Best of luck to Madrid and the fellas!

NOTE: Once you play it once, it moves onto the other interviews. Here's the actual link to the interview-  https://youtu.be/wOA7RnWrN2M

SEAL Team 666 Crossover - Opening Paragraph

People have been begging me for more SEAL Team 666. Some have hinted at the possibilities of a cross-over. I've even had power writers like Jonathan Maberry ask if maybe Joe Ledger and Triple Six might do something together. And why not? It's a popular trilogy. It's cool. It's fun.
Well, finally I can offer you all a fix so you can stop jonesing so much. Really, it's a shame to see you like that in public. Have you no shame?

So, Joe Nassise is editing an anthology called Urban Allies to be published by Harper Voyager sometime early next year. The idea was to create an anthology of stories and partner two writers with their own universes together to create each special story. I've been partnered with the cool-as-hell David Wellington. We decided to cross-over Jack Walker from Triple Six and Laura Caxton, Pennsylvania Vampire Hunter. You can visit him at his website if you click this sentence.
This Be David WellingtonWe don't have a title yet, but this will entice you.
And oh yeah, this takes place right after the events in Reign of Evil (SEAL Team 666 Book 3) so if you haven't read the book, don't read this paragraph.














URBAN ALLIES STORYBy Weston Ochse and David Wellington
     Grief can take on many forms. Sometimes it’s a granite headstone in a cemetery. Sometimes it’s a shrine by the side of the road. There’s a noble sort of grief in the elderly man sitting alone on a park bench. There’s the respectful grief for a soldier, his boots resting atop his coffin as his unit files by, reverently saluting. Grief can be a source of fuel someone can tap into to accomplish something they wouldn’t have ordinarily been able to accomplish. Grief can actually be a power for good. Or grief can simply be a crazed man wielding a bloody coat hanger, beating the shit out of a ghost hanging on the wall who won’t stop moaning in the voice of his dead girlfriend.


So are you caught up with SEAL Team 666 or David's Vampire Hunter Series? You better be by the time this anthology hits the streets or you're going to feel left behind. (And no, not like Nick Cage in The Rapture)

Phoenix Comiccon This Weekend

Yes!

Going to Phoenix Comiccon this weekend. It's one of the premier events in the American southwest. My lovely wife, Yvonne Navarro, and I have tables. When we're not there hand-selling books and talking about everything creative to whomever wanders by, we'll be at panels and other events. My complete schedule can be found here (CLICK THIS). I really hope I get to see all you all there.

First Look at FUBAR A Collection of War Stories

This is my second collection. My first was Multiplex Fandango, which contained all of my best published and original work to date. The collection was a Bram Stoker Finalist and extremely popular. I think it's still for sale over at Dark Regions. I still get a lot of requests for autographs on Multiplex Fandango, and frankly, I thought it would be twenty years before I had enough material to publish a second collection.
Then came the idea of collecting war stories; not just fiction mind you, but non-fiction also. The editor of Cohesion Press, who you might remember from his SNAFU series of anthologies, and I spoke about the possibility and came up with a solid idea. You see, I'd recently been to Afghanistan on an all expenses paid vacation, so I had several essays which I felt were powerful enough to be included. I also had quite a few military-themed stories which I felt had something to say. Some you might have read before, some others are just now seeing the light of day.
FUBAR went on sale yesterday in a very reasonable paperback. To celebrate this, I'd like to share the introduction and the table of contents. I'll also be at Phoenix Comiccon this weekend and will have about 20 to hand sell if anyone is interested. For those who can't come to Phoenix, the link down and over to the right will take you to the promised land.


INTRODUCTION
Welcome to FUBAR. As most of you know, FUBAR stands for Fouled1 Up Beyond All Recognition and is one of those military terms which has invaded common speech. Like the acronyms SNAFU2and REMF3, FUBAR finds the most use when bad things happen. And in the military, bad things are always happening. We’re ether doing bad things to other people or planning to do bad things to other people, or other people are doing and planning to do bad things to us. We often find that it’s our own kind. I can’t tell you how many times a drill sergeant or platoon sergeant has exclaimed that either me or my kit was FUBAR. There were times when the word was used so often I considered changing my name to FUBAR. It certainly would have made things more interesting. I can see it now.“Who’s that over there?”“That’s Private Fubar, sir.”“Ah, finally a fitting name.”You see, because although I was athletic, I was also prone to accidents. I didn’t pay attention to things and in the military, it’s all about paying attention. Just look at the claymore mine. It was architecturally engineered for people who don’t pay attention. It has the words FRONT TOWARD ENEMY emblazoned on the deadly side for a reason. If one were to ignore that specific guidance and place, arm, and fire their claymore, they’d be FUBAR’d for one brief magnificent second, right before seven hundred ball bearings flew through them at twenty-six hundred miles an hour.Thus the idea of creating a collection of war stories called FUBAR was born.As I searched for pieces to curate for this collection, I struggled to find a theme. I didn’t want the works placed randomly. I wanted them to mean something. My desire was for you the reader to experience this in a way that would give you the most benefit. For those of you with little or no military experience, it was to give you a little insight, a peephole, if I may, into the life of a warrior. For those of you with experience, I wanted to provide stories that I know will resonate. In a crazy trick of Schrödinger time, I can see you in the future, nodding and chuckling as you read, acknowledging and recognizing something I’ve written, while remembering in your own past, how it had been for you in a similar situation. Then when I saw Welcome to the War Zone, I knew that it had to be the first story. I wrote that within hours of landing in Kabul, Afghanistan. I wrote it in such a way to get your adrenaline up, to demonstrate the immediacy of the danger, and to raise you pucker factor to eleven. The essay fittingly sets the stage for the rest of the book.Then I set about trying to curate pieces that would represent me as a lifetime warrior. Long ago, I set out to determine what type of warrior I wanted to be and what kind I refused to be. Looking at my history, I can trace my warrior lineage in every American conflict and war dating back to the Revolutionary War where Captain Michael Motz of the Northumberland Militia attached his men to the 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line in order to fight for the independence of a new nation.  We’ve had all sorts of warriors in my family. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Indian scouts, Indian fighters, cavalry officers, WWI grunts who were mustard-gassed in the trenches, Civil War regulars who fought against each other, infantry men who fought island to island in the Pacific, and sailors aboard the USS Arizona, now resting beneath the azure waters of Pearl Harbor. As I learned of them, I also learned about what sort of persons they were. When I could, I sleuthed what they believed in. The one continual theme I encountered as I searched my own past was that they were all humanists. So what is humanism? Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence over established doctrine or faith (Wikipedia).
…the value and agency of human beings…Yes, I sang cadence about nuking people until they glowed.Yes, I dehumanized my country’s enemies by calling them names.Yes, I played the Us vs Them game.And of course I inculcated a hatred for those who would do despicable things to my fellow warriors.But I never ceased realizing that these enemies of mine were once children with their own dreams, born from mothers and fathers with their own dreams, and with families who had their own dreams.
I never ceased believing that these enemies of mine weren’t as deep and thoughtful and as intelligent as myself. In some cases this task was extraordinarily difficult, but I strained to be the humanist I was determined to be.I felt the same way about the minority groups within my own military. Part of being from a family of humanists, I was raised to treat everyone with respect. Black, white, brown or yellow, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or Atheist, straight, gay, bisexual or transgender. Everyone. Respect. All the time. So this idea of humanism and respect was front and center as I curated these stories, because I believe that a keen-eyed, blood-covered warrior can be a humanist at the same time they’re fighting for those guys and gals in the foxhole next to them. Not only are there blood, guts and bravado war stories in this collection, but we also have thoughtful pieces about PTSD. You’ll find works about gay soldiers and about spousal abuse. You’ll find stories about the ultimate cost of responsibility and the terrible toll of war. I included a broad spectrum of my works because if you’re going to read a collection about me, I want you to understand me. This collection you’re holding in your hands or listening to, for all intents and purposes, it is me. I’ve even included a piece I originally created as performance art on the web. Inspired by the inestimable Coeur D’Alene American Indian poet and story teller Sherman Alexie, I created a twenty minute piece that has never been in print until now, but has been viewed hundreds of times on military holidays. I wonder if those who saw it got that it is meant to be both patriotic and protest. Just as Welcome to the Warzone was meant to get your heart kicking and your blood pumping, Doctor Doom’s Guide to the Universe and Special Rules for the Burial of Christian Insects is meant to show you the complete immersion and indoctrination basic training can be.

Which is sort of what this collection is.So welcome to FUBAR.This is my journey.And now it’s yours.
1 – Alternative word for Fucker2 – Rear Echelon Mother Fucker3 – Situation Normal All Fucked Up




FUBAR Table of Contents
Welcome to the Warzone ©2013 Living Dangerously
When I Knew Baseball ©2013 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.
Family Man © 1999 At the Brink of Madness
We All Wanted to Be Heroes When We Were Young © 2012 Soldier of Fortune Magazine
The Last Kobyashi Maru © 2010 Crossroads Press (Originally titled Butterfly Winter)
Fugue on the Sea of Cortez © 2010 Multiplex Fandango
Rhythm © 1997 Cochise College Literary Magazine
PTSD in Fiction ©2014 Living Dangerously
Righteous © 2012 Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane
Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore © 2010 Multiplex Fandango
My Daddy’s Private Things © 2015
Every War Has A Signature Sound © 2015
On Tranquility Tides I Ride © 2015
The Importance of Building Your Own Shadow © 2013 Living Dangerously
The Road to Painted Rock © 2015
Hiroshima Falling © 2007 A Dark and Deadly Valley
Doctor Doom © 2015
Finishing School © 2014 Living Dangerously

I Bitch-slapped the Universe with my Apocalypse Weird Book

I was asked to play in the Apocalypse Weird Sandbox and dove in head first.
What is Apocalypse Weird, you ask? 
From an article that appeared in The Guardian: "Think of an apocalypse, and Apocalypse Weird has it covered. Zombies? Yes of course. There’ s clearly a little inspiration from The Walking Dead here, but Apocalypse Weird takes things much further. Cannibal hordes, cities sinking beneath the waves, genetic mutants, electric fog, frozen arctic winds and gojira are the backdrop for this shared world, in which some dozen or more established indie authors are each creating a standalone book series." You can read the full article here.  
The first book in the shared world is Red King, which is still available for free! You can get it here.

“The Red King is something of a literary seed, the first chapter in an innovative collaboration between bestselling indie authors that sees the creation of an entire world for them to play around in. The creators have ambitious plans for this sandbox series and there are a huge number of popular authors involved and already busy writing new episodes in a huge interconnected world. A clever viral marketing campaign has attracted readers like moths to a floodlight with the promise of something big…” ~ Eamon Ambrose, Eamo the Geek Reviews

And then came MY BOOK!

Book 1 of The Red Palm

Once a warning whispered to bad children, the Black Bishop is all too real. With armies of Black Monks to seek out new recruits and a select coterie of self-amputeed nuns, his power is spreading like a plague, both in the real world and in the astral plain.

The great windmills on the plains of Palm Springs are now home to the crucified; I-10 has been shut down and is used as an asphalt strip where 'the staked' live their last joyous hours in a chrysalises of pain; and in Cathedral City cutters try and outdo themselves, slashing and cutting into their skin in epic contests against each other.

The problem is that these people aren't being forced to do these things... they beg to do it… they ache to do it…

And things are only getting worse.

Notice it says Book 1. In this universe, each author will establish his or her area, the players and what's happening. Other authors can come in and write, taking over your piece of the sandbox. They can send you characters anywhere, do anything, be totally crazy. They can cause the troubles in your area to interact with the troubles in another area. There is no limit to the destruction one can do. After all, we're kids throwing sand in the air. How much fun is that.
At the very least get Nick Cole's Red King for free. You're crazy not to. Then pre-order mine. You can read all the books in whatever order you want. There is no order at this point. Or you can just read one. For those fans of mine who are completists, it's perfectly cool to just read my book and move on. The Apocalypse Weird gestapo will leave you alone. I know they will because I arranged it that way. 

If you're interested in getting Red Palm for the introductory price of 99 cents, you can grab it here.

How I Destroyed the World - A Day's Log

Upon writing the novel Red Palm for the Apocalypse Weird Universe I was asked how easy or hard it was to destroy the world. Here's my answer:

I'm an expert at breaking things. Just ask my parents. Or my grandparents. So when I was asked to destroy the world I hardly broke a sweat.I mean, look at me (if you could). I have scars all over my face. By the time I was five I had over a hundred stitches. I was a one kid demolition machine. God save you if you were anywhere near my wake.

So when I destroyed the world it went something like this.

Here's an average day.

7 AM - Woke up. Picked up dog poop. Watered the plants. Googled missile payloads on UAVs. Drank cofee and ate yogurt.
8 AM - Created  charismatic character that encourages people of all ages to self mutilate themselves as a sign of individual freedom. Lots of blood. Preaches like a traveling revivalist under a big tent with a rock band. Hmm. Maybe use this character later too. He's like the Good Rob Lowe but Evil.
10 AM - Commented on dog pictures on Facebook. Checked Twitter to see what Sam Sykes was doing. Googled random thoughts. Turns out that the The pleistocene epoch is the geological timer period which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. Google glaciations next.
1030AM - Brainstorm. I decided I want giant worms to eat people and things. A montage of Tremors footage flashed through my mind. I bow my head to Dune. Then I create the Sonoran Death Worm.
NOON - Damn folks over at Apocalypse Weird say they're doing a cookbook. Whatever? Now I have to come up with a recipe. Luckily I have one handy. Chupacabra-stuffed Clams. Wrote and email, attached it and sent it out. Now to find lunch.
1 PM - Ate a Shrimp Burrito. Had to change shirts. Thought about the giant windmills near Palm Springs. Wondered if anyone is cruscified on them? Wondered if they were if anyone would notice?
2 PM - I require more blood. For a book about cutters and self-mutilaters, there isn't enough blood. Time to flip the novel and change the reality. Now my blood runneth over. I think I'm going to hell. I giggle as I respond to an email from my agent.
3 PM - Doorbell rings. Wine delivery. A box from Club W. I unpack the wine, put it in my winerack, and place a bottle of Little Sur Chardonnay in the fridge to cool. Then I remember I forgot to give my main character extra razor blades.
4 PM - Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick! I've been on Facebook for the last hour. Where did the time go? You were supposed to be writing, you knucklehead! All I know is that even with a face full of dirt and blood Charlize Theron is hot, puppies like trampolines, don't ride your bike off the roof into the pool, and there should never be any memes ever about the People of Walmart.
5PM - To make up for the distractions I destroyed an entire town. Sonoran Death Worms and giant crows are even now consuming the populace in great greedy gulps. Children are running, screaming down the street. Houses are on fire. Men and women are being cut in half, chewed up, and spit out. I find myself singing the theme song from Sesame Street and laughing. Oh Joy! This is what it means to be a writer.

6 PM - I do Yoga, then chase it with some Chardonnay. I sit outside afterward watching the sunset and wondering if I've killed enough people. Part of me wants to go kill more.
7PM - I'm chopping onions and crying. Robert Irving is screaming at some poor southern couple on television because they have no idea how to run a restuarant. My iPad is open before me. I've gone back to kill more people. Blood runs in the streets. Now that the death toll feels appropriate, I think I can make Lamb Marquez Sausage Pasta for dinner now.
9PM - Damn bottle of wine had a hole in it. Throw away the empty and get another.
10 PM - I stand in the backyard screaming, Unleash the Dog's of War into the starry night. My neighbor shouts for me to shut up. I scream back at him like a mad man. I am the conqueror worm. I am the devourer of worlds. Nothing can stand in my way.
10:01PM - My wife calls me back inside.
11PM - I'm in bed. The walls are slightly swimming, my stomach is a bit uneasy, but I smile, knowing that I've destroyed enough for this day and that what's left can be destroyed tomorrow.
1101PM - I dream of unicorns farting rainbows. All is right with the universe until tomorrow I start all over.

If you're interested in getting Red Palm for the introductory price of 99 cents, you can grab it here.

How In the Hell Did I Write 25 Books?

It's hard to believe I've had 23 books published with two in the queue. It seems like just yesterday that Darktales published Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. David Whitman and I didn't even know what we were doing, but we somehow managed to outsell many of the mass market books with this thin horrific tome of 21 short stories. And now here I am with book 24 - Red Palm and book 25 - Grunt Traitor. Wow. Just Wow. I guess this is what happens when you keep your head down and just write.
Let me see if I can remember the books in chronological order.

1. Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors
2. Natural Selection

3. Appalachian Galapagos
4. Scarecrow Gods
5. Recalled to Life
6. The Golden Thread
7. Blaze of Glory
8. Empire of Salt
9. Velvet Dogma
10. Babylon Smiles
11. Vampire Outlaw of the Milky Way
12. Lord of the Lash and Our Lady of the Boogaloo
13. The Loup Garou Kid
14. Redemption Roadshow
15. Blood Ocean
16. Nancy Goats
17. Multiplex Fandango
18. SEAL Team 666
19. Age of Blood
20. Border Dogs
21. Grunt Life
22. Halfway House
23. Reign of Evil

24. And very soon Red Palm
25. and this summer Grunt Traitor

Someone will have to correct me if I made a mistake, after all, it's math. If you want to see the covers for all these, they can be found on my website at www.westonochse.com
And to think that I was once 32 years old, sitting in military housing on Fort Bragg, dreaming I could become a writer. And then one day I started writing and would you look at me now. I'd like to point out that not a single book was self-published. Each one was bought and paid for by publishers ranging from the small press to the Big Five. It was a hard row to hoe and it took longer for my first novel to be published (7 years), but it gave me time to refine my craft.
Yes, I'm proud, but it's more than that. I am that guy who wanted it, went for it, learned the craft, and got what I wanted. I'm you. I'm your brother-sister-cousin who wants to be a writer but doesn't know how. 
I could be anyone. 
It just takes time.
I definitely feel like a winner.

Now enough of this bullshit.

Time to get back to writing.

I think the number 50 sounds good!

Look for me in the stacks!

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(A funny note about that picture. That's Brian Keene and Norman Partridge holding up my arms. It wasn't planned. We had like fifteen seconds to do as many poses as we could to get these free pictures. Somehow I got in the middle and they just jerked my arms up. So crazy. Good times.)