Goodreads asked Mark Brendan:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Mark Brendan It started with rail guns. I unashamedly love sci-fi weapons and tech porn, so that was my world building start point--there'd be rail guns. My initial thoughts were for a Rail Gunner character, "have rail gun, will travel". That guy turned into something very different, ending as Ares, the kid who commands rail gun equipped tanks with his mind. Next up came the setting, which I quickly decided would be Mars, featuring a near future off-planet colony. As I thought more about Mars and conflict, the word Martiangrad popped into my head. At that point I had enough to set to it and started planning the structure, the support characters and the beats

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