Uncategorized – Page 4 – The Human Legion

November 7, 2015

War Against the White Knights: Teaser#2

They’re so powerful that they dominate this region of the Trans-Species Union. The White Knights are in charge. The masters. Or mistresses? Do they even have a gender? After all, we’ve already seen Pedro who is fascinated by the whole concept of gender because it’s so alien to him [see the Trog novelette, ‘My Extended Death’ if you haven’t already]. Who are the White Knights? How did they get to be so powerful? What is their civil war all about? What do they even look like? The next book is called War Against the White Knights, and I didn’t just grab the name because it sounded cool. That cover image is taken from their world. Way back in Marine Cadet when […]

October 18, 2015

Human Empire launch update

Busy, busy, busy! That’s the situation, as usual, at Human Legion HQ. Work is underway properly on Book5, in so far as we’ve written the first chapter. Doesn’t sound like much, but we know most of how the rest of the book works, just haven’t written it down yet. And we’re very good at writing words. I’m not saying we write good words, but we can type and dictate. Our thanks to everyone who’s helped out by buying or borrowing the new book. Having a whole bunch of folk buy the book over a short period wakes up the Amazon algorithms and gets us visible in the charts so that those (rather sad, if I may say so) people who […]

October 14, 2015

Promoting the Human Legion and cases of mistaken identity

I’m hard at work promoting the new Human Legion release, though I’ve taken time to look through the casting options for the forthcoming audiobook editions, which is great fun. When the Human Legion was at the very top of the military sf charts on amazon.com (#1 and #2) the book that knocked me off the top slot was Warship by Joshua Dalzelle. Not one to take a grudge, I read Joshua’s book and loved it. It felt good to give way to another book at least as good as mine. Some of the early reviewers likened it to Christopher Nuttall’s Ark Royal books, even calling it a copy. Well, I don’t agree. There are some surface similarities, but then the two […]

October 9, 2015

Who should we recruit for the movie?

The Kindle version of Human Empire is working its way through Amazon’s servers. While I’m waiting, I’m going to take up a suggestion from Sergeant Mike. Now that the movie version of the Human Legion is inevitable (see my last post) let’s have some fun and figure out who we need to play the characters. I’ll set the ball rolling with some actors who remind me of various characters. Some of the hair, skin color, age, and body shape doesn’t quite match, but something about these actors or their portrayals reminds me of some of the characters. For Zug I definitely had Laurence Fishburne in mind. As in this pose. For Springer, I think of Josette Simon as Dayna in Blake’s […]

October 5, 2015

Human Legion Publications

When I published Marine Cadet last Christmas, I decided to do so under an imprint name of Human Legion Publications. I liked the name, but didn’t expect to use it to publish anything other than my own books. I still run Greyhart Press, which is a bona fide publishing business, just largely on hold right now. At least with regard to publishing new books, though I’m still working on selling the existing books. But Human Legion Publications was just a name. I never pretended the Human Legion was anything other than self-published. My best sales day came late January when I sold just shy of 1,500 copies of Marine Cadet and Indigo Squad. Some people urged me then to turn Human Legion […]

October 5, 2015

This week’s science fiction bestseller charts

Here’s my latest trawl through the science fiction top 20 bestseller and bestselling author charts on amazon.com The point of these posts is twofold: it’s an opportunity to celebrate what’s hot right now in science fiction in books and beyond, and I write it in chunks to give me a few minutes at a time to rest my brain from my day job of writing my own science fiction books (and with a book launch later this week, I need that occasional break). My last trawl through the charts was here, and a long-winded mission statement here. Authors who caught my eye this time include Andy Weir, Margaret Atwood, and Kameron Hurley. Chart positions were captured on 2nd October 2015. Top […]

September 28, 2015

Human Empire coming soon

As you’ll see shortly, I’ve gotten a little carried away writing blog posts today (which is why I don’t write that many: I always have a lot to say!). But I wanted to let you know that tomorrow I’ve an all-day summit with Ian Whates where we’ll set a release date for Human Empire and develop the outline for War Against the White Knights and The Battle of Earth. When Human Empire gets its release does depend on the reports coming back from our Force Recon Team (which is already performing an outstanding service) but I’m hopeful it will be the middle of next week. I think I must be related to the Night Hummers because I always seem to be […]

September 24, 2015

Announcing the Human Legion Wiki

Today I’m very proud to announce the Human Legion Wiki is officially open. No doubt you’ve seen Wikipedia, but you might not be aware that there are tens of thousands of other sites based on the same Wikia platform. In a blurring between real life and the worlds of the Human Legion five centuries hence, the Legion Infopedia is now available for you to explore in the present day. Not only that, but you can go and contribute yourself. My thanks go out to the Legionaries who traveled time to construct our Human Legion wiki. These brave individuals are known only by their codenames: Homo Helveticus, and Porkchop NCR. Take a look, enjoy, tell me what you think is missing, and […]

September 22, 2015

A map is discovered of the planet of Tranquility

Many thanks go out to humanlegion.com regular, Sgt Mike, who has painstakingly restored this alien map of Tranquility, and helpfully added some English labels, while preserving the alien text in the border. The timing is most excellent because we’re not yet done with this planet! There will be a special announcement about further background material later this week.

September 17, 2015

Human Empire Force Recon Team: recruiting now!

Update: the sign up period has now closed, and initial Recon Team candidates are being contacted. Stay sharp, though, in case we need to call up the reserves 🙂 Human Empire is the fourth book in the Human Legion series. If real life behaved itself, the book would be available to buy now. But no plan survives contact with reality, as you know. Ours certainly hasn’t, but we’ve never stopped re-knotting our plan in a way that would make the Duke of Wellington proud. And it’s worked! We pulled some time back, and we’re just days away from finishing. We’ve had some wonderful messages of support from fans, but I’m sure for some that it’s been such a long time since […]