• Skip to main content

Rogue Scholar

Just another ModFarm Sites site

  • Home
  • Books
    • Battle Ring Earth
    • Salvage Ops
    • The Blockade
    • NYC Expocalypse
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter

My projects

Introducing Chronicle Worlds: Legacy Fleet

May 23, 2019 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

In the twenty-sixth century, mankind has discovered the secret of Chronicle Worlds Legacy Fleetinterstellar 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!

Filed Under: Books, My projects, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: Future Chronicles, Legacy Fleet, science fiction, space opera, spaceships, speculative fiction

AetherCon VI

November 11, 2017 by Rob McClellan 1 Comment

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

Ral Partha Europe

 

2:00 PM

Guests: Chris Garland

Timeline, LTD.

 

Sunday Sessions

12:00 PM

Guests: Josh Harrison, Andrew Ragland, Mary Harrison

FASA Games

 

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!

Filed Under: Events, Meetings, My projects, News & Announcements, Sci-Fi Tagged With: AetherCon gaming news panels interviews discussion guests

My First Superhero Story

November 2, 2017 by Rob McClellan 2 Comments

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!

Filed Under: Books, My projects, Nerd Alert, News & Announcements, Writing Tagged With: Marvel, my stuff, superhero, writing, X-Men

Legacy Fleet: Colossus is Live!

February 14, 2017 by Rob McClellan Leave a Comment

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.

Take a look, and enjoy!

Filed Under: Books, Library Resources, My projects, Publishing, Sci-Fi, Writing Tagged With: colossus, Legacy Fleet, pew-pew, space opera

Introducing Chronicle Worlds: Feyland

June 29, 2016 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Chronicle Worlds Feyland CoverImagine if you will, a world of the future. A world where rich kids are chipped to run automated houses and fly in grav-powered limos while poor kids watch their families dissolve into poor health and struggle to manage the bare necessities. The only thing that brings these groups together is the VirtuMax corporation, an entertainment giant. Its newest hit is an immersive VR high fantasy game that is both addictive and incredibly popular.

But in this world, the veil between fantasy and mundane reality is beginning to shatter and admit the resurgent realm of the Fey. And they are looking to borrow whatever they must from the mortal world to maintain their existence.

Welcome to the world of Chronicle Worlds: Feyland, the latest installment of Samuel Peralta’s insanely popular Future Chronicles anthology series, and the first of his new Chronicle Worlds titles.

Chronicle Worlds: Feyland brings stories from leading authors to the crossroads where individual imagination and gamer sensibility meets author Anthea Sharp’s USA Today best selling Feyland series of YA fantasy books.

Twelve authors contributed to this volume, and every one of them brought exceptional story telling and skills and gamer sensibilities with them into the project. A brief rundown of the work is as follows:

“MeadowRue,” by Joseph Robert Lewis takes the story of an existing Feyland character: a de facto sea hag who must deal with a human girl who has courage and honor on the brain; “The Skeptic” by Lindsay Edmunds, shows how seeking to quantify the impossible but true can bite you on the butt. “The Sword of Atui” by Eric Kent Edstrom felt like a particularly gruesome episode of Sword Art Online, complete with server hacks and apparent game master cameos. “The Huntsman and the Old Fox” by Brigid Collins reminded me of my own experience as a parent gaming with a gaggle of teens and tweens.

“Unicorn Magic,” by Roz Marshal manages to take the story of a girl’s love for her horse and make it both gripping and uplifting.

My own contribution, “The City of Iron and Light,” tells the story of Sabine Jade, a lonely teen who has no idea just how far down the rabbit hole goes…but harbors a burning need to find out.

“The Gossamer Shard” by Dave Adams, shows what the World of Tanks might be like if its players blundered into the Unseelie realm; “The Glitchy Goblin” by K.J. Colt is a dark little tale of broken promises and crushed dreams that will actually make you feel for the goblins (no small task). In comparison, “On Guard” by Deb Logan, is the essence of the short story form: compact, compelling, and utterly without wasted words.

The two final selections, “An Artist’s Instinct,” by Andrea Luhman, and “Brea’s Tale: Passage,” by Anthea Sharp, share a mystical quality of presence. Both tell a story of a young woman struggling to transform herself into something new, but take very different approaches in the hows and whys. Read both back to back and you’ll see what I mean. In fact, you should real this entire book in order, front to back. Leave nothing out. Trust me.

But I think my favorite tale from this volume is “Tech Support” by James T. Wood. Consider: Ranjeet Nagar of Kochi, India is a young man with a strong work ethic and a family to support. He works as a tech support jock for VirtuMax, walking players of Feyland through their technical issues. Ranjeet is a compulsive puzzle solver and some of the wackier calls coming over the phone lately have got his creative juices running wild. But there are problems at work: his job is in danger of vanishing, the crazy calls describe things that cannot exist in the game, and Ranjeet cannot afford a proper VR set so he can’t even log into the game to see the weirdness for himself.

All that becomes irrelevant when Ranjeet finds a woman on the street being attacked by the same demons reported by players. Utterly disregarding his safety and prospects, Ranjeet enlists the help of a co-worker and his ex-fiance, who does have a full-D VR set and is an expert player, to track down the source of the incursions and set things right.

I think in several respects “Tech Support” is the most ambitious story in this set. It takes place entirely in India, flips the dominant theme of player vs game on its head, and manages to maintain a convincing level of engagement and suspense from the first sentence to the last.

That said–and the only thing really left to say here–is that at a launch price of .99 cents, and fifteen solid entries into the world of anthology fiction, Future Chronicles creator Samual Peralta and Feyland owner Anthea Sharp have created something genuinely new and compelling. Fans of gamerpunk, high fantasy, and science fiction will all have something to enjoy here.

Available Now

[books amount=”1″ size=”200″ featured=”chronicle-worlds-feyland” review=”0″ show_label=”0″]

Filed Under: Books, Free Press, Library Resources, My projects, Nerd Alert, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: anthologies, Chronicle Worlds Feyland, fantasy, Future Chronicles, gamerpunk, science fiction, shared universes, short fiction, short stories

The Expocalypse Arrives!

May 14, 2016 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Taste Makers_Cover4_titles“The Taste Makers serves up an apocalypse easily worthy of The Joker’s most diabolical of schemes.  Frater executes The Gotham/NYC food scene with a savvy panache and a spicy menace that, pardon the pun, cuts like a knife.  This is one weird serving of an Apocalypse that’s singular, and frightening, in vision.  Try a slice and stay for dessert… It’s deadly fun.”

— Nick Cole, author of The Red King

 

Buy it on Amazon!

Review it on Goodreads!

Filed Under: Books, My projects, Nerd Alert, Publishing, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: acpocalypse, Broadway Bull, dystopia, Expocalypse, fiction, food, Manhattan, money, science ficttion, Wyrd World

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 · Powered by ModFarm Design · Log in

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Accept