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And Now For Something Completely Different…
…a new web site!
It’s not, you know, completely new. But as 2020 dragged on to its ninety-eighth year and my Battle Ring Earth space opera series slated for a drop in early 2021, I was starting to feel like a bored teenage with a bottle of hair dye…I needed a new place to put my stuff. I had all the parts I just didn’t know how to put them together in a way that would stand out.
Enter the guys at Mod Farm Design. The result is as you see. Look at this thing. Look at it! New links, new graphics, new forms, and everything works. I’m especially happy with the sample frames for the books on sale: try before you buy a la digital pub.
Anyway, I’m learning all the new gear myself, so I’ll get back to that. Click around the offerings while you wait…
And Now: A Sci-Fi Bridge Summer Giveaway!
Heinlein said there’s no such thing as a free lunch but there can be free books. And the folks at Sci-Fi Bridge are offering you a chance to grab 30+ of them!
All you have to do is sign up to Sci-Fi Bridge for a chance to win 30+ Sci-Fi eBooks. All who enter will also receive 5 eBooks completely free. In addition:
- 5 Winners will receive a collection of 30+ Sci-Fi eBooks.
- 1 Grand Prize Winner will receive the eBooks along with a $100 Amazon Gift Card.
Prizes will be awarded after August 31, when the giveaway ends. Click on this link and subscribe now!
NYC Expocalypse, Book 2: Greenstreets, Arrives!
The story of ex-phone jock and current metaphysical warrior Julie Meyers continues, available on Amazon…
Julie Meyers is having a bad week. After defeating the Broadway Bull the former Hungry Corp. sales jock thought that fleeing New York City on a borrowed yacht with a few allies would be a quick path to freedom. Just head north on the Hudson River and leave the end of the world behind. But the Hungries neither forgive nor forget and Julie is still in their cross hairs.
Faced with an evil she can’t truly comprehend much less combat, all she wants now is to get home to her terminally ill mother and find some peace before the world ends.
Roving hordes of Slicers, opportunistic survivalists, and Black Hand soldiers stand in her way while a new player, hand-picked by Anatole Hunger, is gathering his power to wipe her off the board for good.
Now she must lead a ragtag band of fugitives—surviving co-workers, a wounded sea captain, a rogue NYPD detective, a fifth-grade gymnastics class and their helicopter parents—through the streets of New York City to safety.
If she fails, not only will she and her charges die, but the soul of the city she calls home will be lost forever…
Introducing Warrior’s Tribute: A LitRPG Gives Back Anthology
This collection of 12 short LitRPG / Gamelit / Wuxia stories came about as a labor of love and a desire to give back to those who serve and protect us all in the armed forces. Each of these stories is an original crafted by some of the best authors in the LitRPG / Gamelit community in response to the prompt “Stories of Sacrifice”. We all wanted to pay homage to those who’ve sacrificed for all of us.
All of the funds from this anthology go directly to the Wounded Warrior Project as part of our “LitRPG Gives Back” campaign. We hope you enjoy these stories just as much as we enjoyed writing them. Here is a short description of each of the stories.
The Eternity Stone
A level 1 cultivator has the opportunity to change the fortune of his entire clan and gain Imperial favor, or trade it all for an unexpected opportunity no one knew existed.
Last Stand
One knight and his squire take a stand as their kingdom begins to crumble, protecting refugees from those who have betrayed their sacred duty.
FOB’s, Fobbits, and Fear
In a changed world, a routine patrol in Afghanistan will bring a combat medic and his unit up against a creature from myth and nightmare.
Siren
Using the power of music, Lyra finds an unusual way to contribute to her team’s victory.
One More Day
Being a father is never easy. Serving, while being a father can lead to the impossible, when all you need is one more day…
Drunken Initiative
Friends, beer, phones, and an excellent roll of the dice.
Guardian of the Wild
Have you ever tried to please the demands of a Dwarven smithmaster? I certainly haven’t been able to. Join me on the day when this axe girl ran away from her duties, finding something deeper and more powerful than any forge fire can produce.
Persistent Request
Two champions, strangers to one another, get teamed up in Darvonstone, where they must find the cure to the Wasting. But why does one of them seem to know more than they should about this strange world?
The Hive
How far would you go to protect your own?
How hard would you fight to defend your guild?
How much are you willing to sacrifice to avenge your hive?
Guarding the Pass
Krim is a player. That means he’s special. NPCs are just lines of computer data, capable of only doing what they are coded to do. Or are they?
What is Real, Anyway?
Two corporate headhunters watched their careers run aground after losing a fight with a brilliant tech recruit. Three years later, they’ve located her and vow revenge. But when they see she’s protecting far more than they imagined, will they help her succeed…or risk losing everything?
A Fairy Tail In Reverse
Who says that princesses always need saving?
Introducing MOHS 5.5: Megastructures!
“Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests,” wrote the celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
In these pages, a spectacular collection of science fiction authors – newcomers and veterans, bestsellers and debuts—clash thusly over one of Clarke’s most famous motifs: extreme feats of engineering.
Curated by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Mohs 5.5: Megastructures echoes a journey through hard science fiction that inspires, entertains, and, quite possibly, explores. From Sri Lanka, India, Australia, and North America come five-minutes-into-the-future efforts to detect alien life, great colonies in the void, homophobia in space, and a one-man army being endlessly 3D-printed and sent out to do battle among the stars.
Download this free glimpse into the future now and stimulate your mind.
Introducing Chronicle Worlds: Legacy Fleet
In the twenty-sixth century, mankind has discovered the secret of 
interstellar travel and colonized scores of worlds hundreds flight years from Earth. But in the 26th century, an alien race–a microbial collective known only as The Swarm–brutally attacked Earth and her colonies. Humanity barely survived and vowed to never let it happen again.
Now, 75 years later…it’s happening again. And Humanity has a lot to learn about the use of the word “never.” As the United Earth fleet loses its best and strongest ships to the Swarm onslaught, only the older Legacy Fleet ships and their experienced, driven commanders are up to the task of defending earth and her colonies.
This is the world of Legacy Fleet, a new anthology based on Nick Webb’s Legacy Fleet trilogy: Constitution, Warrior, and Victory, an amazingly popular science fiction series. Into this universe comes Samuel Peralta, creator of the well-known Future Chronicles anthology series. Together, they’ve combined their writing talent and publishing experience to create a whole new treat: the Kindle World: Legacy Fleet series.
Links to this great work are here and in the sidebar. And it’s still at the launch price of .99 cents, but that won’t last forever. Enjoy!
Moving Around Again
Hi there. You’ll notice the blog looks a little different, which would be because we moved to a new website by way of BlueHost.com. I’m figuring out how to manage the blog’s appeareance now and I’ll be adding more links to books and so on as the days progress. Bear with me…I’m getting it done.
AetherCon VI
A neat bit of news: I’m moderating some guest Q&A panels at AetherCon VI, which is in full swing now.
AetherCon is an all-online convention where participants can roll from one panel room to another, visit events, and partake in moderated gaming sessions with game masters from every time zone.
In my case, I’ll be talking to representatives from some really neat game manufacturers. There will be five separate Q&A sessions:
Saturday Sessions
1:00 PM
Guests: Mortis Logan, Paul Reid
2:00 PM
Guests: Chris Garland
Sunday Sessions
12:00 PM
Guests: Josh Harrison, Andrew Ragland, Mary Harrison
1:00 PM
Guests: Rodney Sloan, Bob Storrar
Rising Phoenix Games (South Africa)
2:00 PM
Guest: Justin Andrew Mason
Paths to Adventure (Big Book of Maps)
I’d love to see you there!
My First Superhero Story
Disclosure: I’m a rabid fan of the MCU. I love the acting, the writing, the sets, the costumes, the whole shebang. But other than a brief flirtation with the New Mutants in the late ‘80s, I’ve never really collected Marvel’s comics. I know the characters and I followed the grand story arcs, but I’m not feeling the burn the way I did when I was in college.
So when editor Steve Beaulieu asked me to write a story for his superhero anthology, Collateral Damage, I accepted.
[book_cover not_author_book=”collateral-damage-superheroes-and-vile-villains-3″ align=”right” size-keyword=”medium”]Then, I panicked.
I thought: what am I doing here? I don’t know superheroes! I can barely read the print in a comic book any more. How do you write a story about…?
Wait a minute.
As I thought about it, I realized something: Maybe I can’t write about a superhero. But I can write about the people who deal with them. The normal people. The humans. Even the supers who never made the grade.
And that’s what I did.
My story is titled “Fixing Sniper Girl” and it’s a bit of X-Men meets Gunslinger Girl. A dude with language superpowers retires from active duty, to be called back when his old team—a real super-group—is unable to deal with a high tech assassin. It was terrific fun to write and it’s available from the Amazon store right this minute. Pick up a copy of Collateral Damage if you feel so inclined, and a review would not go amiss. And if you’re really looking for a good time, pick up a copy of HaHaHa! the supervillain companion volume. Above all, enjoy!
Ref Desk: Keeping Your Data While Border Crossing
Since the subject of international border crossing shenanigans for travelers has come up in the news, I found this tidbit on Boingboing.com:
How to legally cross a US (or other) border without surrendering your data and passwords
The combination of 2014’s Supreme Court decision not to hear Cotterman (where the 9th Circuit held that the data on your devices was subject to suspicionless border-searches, and suggested that you simply not bring any data you don’t want stored and shared by US government agencies with you when you cross the border) and Trump’s announcement that people entering the USA will be required to give border officers their social media passwords means that a wealth of sensitive data on our devices and in the cloud is now liable to search and retention when we cross into the USA.
On Wired, Andy Greenberg assembles some best-guess advice on the legal and technical strategies you can deploy to maintain the privacy of your sensitive data, based on techniques that security-conscious travelers have arrived at for crossing into authoritarian countries like China and Russia.
The most obvious step is to not carry your data across the border with you in the first place: get a second laptop and phone, load them with a minimal data-set, log out of any services you won’t need on your trip and don’t bring the passwords for them (or a password locker that accesses them) with you, delete all logs of cloud-based chat services. I use POP mail, which means that I don’t keep any mail on a server or in a cloud, so I could leave all my mail archives at home, inaccessible to me and everyone else while I’m outside of the USA or at the border.
Call your lawyer (or a trusted friend with your lawyer’s number) before you cross the border, then call them again when you’re released; if they don’t hear from you, they can take steps to ensure that you have crossed successfully, or send help if you need it.
One thing Greenberg misses is the necessity of completing a US Customs and Immigration Service Form G-28 before you cross the border. This form authorizes an attorney to visit you if you are detained at the border, but it has to be completed and signed in advance of your crossing. It also should be printed on green paper. The current version of the form expires in 2018, so you can complete it now, file it with your attorney or friend, and leave it until next year.
Remove any fingerprint-based authentication before you cross and replace them with PINs. Greenberg’s experts recommend using very strong passwords/PINs to lock your devices. I plan on a different strategy: before my next crossing, I’ll change all of these passwords/PINs to 0000 or aaaaaaaa, so that I can easily convey them to US border officials and they can quickly verify that I have no sensitive data on any of my devices. Once I have successfully crossed, I’ll change these authentication tokens back to strong versions.
Legacy Fleet: Colossus is Live!
It’s up! it’s live! It’s for sale as part of Nick Webb’s insanely popular Legacy Fleet series on Amazon’s Kindle Worlds!
As I mention in the Author’s Notes section of the book, Legacy Fleet: Colossus was of a universe that I spent a lot of time in many years ago: Palladium Books’ Robotech RPG. While writing those books was a ton of fun, I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters and situations I’d built after we parted ways. I wanted to write more, introduce new characters, cooler ships and gear, and come up with extended stories. Sadly, that door closed. But the ambition never stopped.
So when Nick Webb made his Legacy Fleet series available for new contributions via Kindle Worlds, I knew I could finally bring all those ideas back to the front burner. Colossus is the result.