fbpx
November 23, 2018
November 23, 2018

JR Handley soars while Chimera Company gears up

Breach Team breaches the top-100! I was so pleased last night to see Human Legion Universe alumnus, JR Handley, has broken into the top-100 science fiction bestsellers on amazon.com with a standalone novel collaboration with Chris Winder called Breach Team. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to typing this, the book’s slipped out again. That’s the way it goes, sometimes. Let’s hope it peaks once more. I’m about two-thirds through reading it myself and enjoying it very much. If you liked JR’s Sleeping Legion novels then you will like Breach Team. Reminds me of Demons of Kor-Lir. So, well done to Chris, but especially to JR because we know him so well from his Human Legion Universe stories. I’m […]
Do you like it?
0 Read more
November 4, 2016
November 4, 2016

Get yer Crimson Worlds ‘ere. For free

Military SF fans have probably heard of Jay Allan, who has been busy working on his new series for Harper Voyager recently (Far Stars) and most recently his new series Duel in the Dark that came out last week (kicking off at 99c). Jay started off with self-publishing the Crimson Worlds series, which I remember reading as they came out. Good fun and  a more strategic view of the military campaign he describes than most authors use. Last thing I heard, the series had sold 800,000 copies. Not bad! I mention all this because there’s a compilation of the first three books that’s free. At least, it is today and it is in the US and UK. I can’t speak […]
Do you like it?
2 Read more
March 25, 2016
March 25, 2016

Book 5. It’s there…

At some point over the next 12 hours, War Against the White Knights should pop up on Amazon. It will be Kindle-only initially, although the paperback will follow in about a week. I’ll make a big fuss about it next week, but I reckon my job’s done for tonight. Tomorrow morning I’m off to a science fiction convention in Manchester, England for the Easter break. Much more on this next week when I’m back. And future projects too! Enjoy the book.
Do you like it?
4 Read more
March 2, 2016
March 2, 2016

Book 5 releasing soon

Thanks for your patience, everyone. Here’s a quick update on the progress of Book 5: War Against the White Knights. I finished the first draft of the novel earlier this week, and it weighs in at just over a hundred thousand words. Now, first drafts can be a bit rough, but Ian and I have been editing each other’s chapters all the way through. I’m still waiting for Ian’s feedback on the last two chapters, but other than that the draft pretty tight. Normally, by this point I would have asked for volunteers to sign up to a Force Recon Team. The volunteers from previous books have given us sage advice, but running the Recon Teams takes time, and so I’ve decided […]
Do you like it?
13 Read more
December 18, 2015
December 18, 2015

Empire at War – a military SF box set

  More announcements! You’ve probably seen plenty of box sets in the Amazon Kindle Store in recent years. The idea is that several individual titles are collected into a single Kindle book, and usually presented at a bargain price. The books are connected by a theme, and the first Kindle military SF/ space opera themed box set that I’m aware of was Stars & Empire, which came out last year and did very well. These box sets are a very good idea, I thought to myself. So I decided to make one of my own. I wanted a strong theme, which took me a while to dream up. Then it occurred to me that I had discovered other British military […]
Do you like it?
9 Read more
December 11, 2015
December 11, 2015

Have a science fiction Christmas with Human Legion audiobooks

Tantor Media have been busy producing audio editions of the first three novels in the Human Legion series. Narrator Tom Zingarelli does a fantastic job of bringing Arun McEwan and the others to life. It is a strange experience for me to hear a voice actor speak the words I wrote in 2014.   You can hear a sample of Marine Cadet here and of Indigo Squad here. You can pre-order CDs or an mp3 download at the Tantor website (follow the links above to the audio samples). You can buy CDs from most Amazon stores too, though at the moment the purchase links seem to be for CDs only and aren’t available in Australia. The audio edition of Marine Cadet […]
Do you like it?
5 Read more
November 6, 2015
November 6, 2015

The Sad Puppies of Gin Street or Does a Hugo Award Boost Book Sales?

Until 2015 it had been decades since I’d paid much attention to the Hugos, which I’d say are still the most prestigious awards in science fiction. Like the Oscars, the Hugos have always courted controversy and always will. What’s been different over the past three years is that the most recent Hugo spat to emerge now has social media as both a battlefield to fight over and a way to whip up hatred for the ‘opposing side’ into levels of frothing madness that have at times brought shame upon the science fiction community. Furthermore the mutual recriminations on social media sparked a pamphlet war, as we shall see in a moment. I put ‘opposing side’ in quotes because we’re all […]
Do you like it?
11 Read more
November 6, 2015
November 6, 2015

War Against the White Knights: teaser#1

It’s been a tough week in the Human Legion writing shed (pictured). Ian and I had written 18,000 words for War Against the White Knights, the fifth Human Legion book, but we needed to meet to discuss the next stage. Unfortunately, I’ve been too ill this week to write books. Every writer is different, but for me I find it relatively easy to get my head in a place where I can come up with story ideas, but to get in the mental place where I can craft scenes effectively and efficiently is much harder. In a good working day dedicated to writing, I might write 5,000 words of story. Half of that will come in an intense 90-minute burst […]
Do you like it?
18 Read more
12