New Release: Adventure Constant

Available for pre-order now at Amazon.com, Adventure Constant: A Tale of the Planetary Romantic.  Clear your calendar for the August 1 release date, because you're not going to want to put this one down until you hit the last page.

Jack Dashing thought being a rocket test pilot was the most exciting career his world had to offer.  He was right, but he had no idea it would also open the door to a world where action and adventure always lay just around the corner.  Within 24 hours of crashing the experimental FYN-X drive, Jack finds himself swept up in a race across the Pacific Ocean to rescue a kidnapped princess from the hands of the Red Collective’s most dangerous agent.  So begins a world spanning voyage across two oceans in a world a lot like ours – but one where daring rescues, thrilling chases, and secret plots aren’t just the stuff of novels, they are a part of everyday life. 

Particularly for a man of action like Jack Dashing, the Planetary Romantic.

Available Now: A Moon Full Of Stars

With only a month left in the hunting season, a young man faces the final days of his rite-of-passage.  Rome always dreamed of being a hunter for the village.  The hunters are daring men who get to explore the world beyond the small mountain valley that shelters the village, but to become one a boy must prove his skills by consistently returning with sufficient meat to earn a permanent place among the hunters.  If he fails, then he will be consigned to work the fields as a humble farmer.  For an adventurous youth like Rome, that would be a fate worse than death.

But fate is fickle and one day while returning with his best kill ever, Rome discovers that monstrous raiders have ransacked his home and carried off his friends and family.  Now, with only the aid of his chief rival, Rome must head west into the irradiated lands to seek out powerful artifacts that might give him the power to rescue his kinfolk from the hands of the mutant slavers.  And so Rome embarks on a journey that takes him farther than his dreams of being a mere hunter ever could.

This post-apocalyptic story features the sort of action and heart you've come to expect from my stories, including a healthy dose of adventure, exploration, romance, and the sort of bonds of brotherhood that are so often overlooked in today's sci-fi literature.

The official release date for A Moon Full of Stars is May 23rd, but you can pre-order your copy at Amazon.com today.

Work In Progress - An Excerpt

My latest book is coming along swimmingly. The tentative title is "The Adventure Constant", and it features a man flung into a far future (or is it an alternate earth?) by a malfunctioning FTL drive. Here's a little sneak peek:

It didn’t work.

That was all Jack could think during the long, blistering journey back through the Earth’s atmosphere. His small capsule burned its way down into the depths of Earth’s gravity well, battering him worse than any opponent ever had in the boxing ring. The heat grew stifling, the tiny capsule began to glow red with the heat, and the roar of his passage deafened him.

Doctor Abduraxus had gotten something wrong, probably for the first time in his life, and now Jack was paying the price for it. It was all Jack’s fault for volunteering to test Earth’s first faster than light space drive, but damnit, the rest of the firsts were already taken. Other astronauts had claimed first bootprints on Mars, Venus, all of the better moons of Jupiter. His college roommate, the Hermit, had even survived the three year flight to the last planet in the solar system. He had returned from Pluto alive and no more crazy than the day he had left. 

Which left the first FTL flight as pretty much the last frontier left for NASA’s problem child. Jack had leaped at the chance, the only one willing to trust the calculations and designs of NASA’s eccentric wunderkind, Doctor Abdurax. The old Egyptian engineer had almost single handedly reinvigorated NASA with projects so revolutionary that few other scientists even understood the underlying principles that he utilized, let alone decipher the strange fractal designs that seemed to lie at the core of all of his breakthroughs. No one could argue that his designs didn’t work – they had put men onto every extra-terrestrial body worth naming or mapping. Thanks to the good Doctor, humanity had finally spread out, establishing small permanent stations on the earth’s moon, Mars, on a few of Jovian satellites, and in large stations latched onto the larger asteroids.

Squeezing his eyes shut tight and clenching the armrests of his crash couch, Jack cursed the Doctor and his bad luck. Had it not been for that coincidental meeting in the late night hall, he wouldn’t even be here praying for a landing he could walk away from.

His body jerked forward as a boom sounded. The first chutes had deployed, and only the six point harness kept him from being flung headlong through the front of the craft.  

At least the noise dialed back from a deafening roar to a low rumble. He checked the displays and found them all dead. Every screen and every light was dark. He flipped a few switches at random, to no effect. He didn’t even bother fiddling with the control stick. With the capsule jettisoned free of the FYN-X, he never did find out what those stood for, the stick wasn’t connected to anything anyway. 

He folded his arms and slumped back into his crash couch. There was nothing to do but wait for the –

The bottom dropped out of the world, as the initial deceleration chutes burned up in the upper atmosphere. They had done their job, though, slowing him down enough for the Earth’s gravity to welcome him home. Jack’s last meal made a break for it, but Jack swallowed hard and tightened his gut. A few seconds into free fall the secondary chutes deployed with a loud thump, and gravity reasserted its mastery over his tiny craft. The capsule grew quiet, with only the occasional creak of the chute’s straps reverberating through the capsule.

Jack knew that the ship would drift for a few minutes before splashdown. That gave him a few minutes to draw the revolver Dr. Abdurax had shown him just before the FYN-X lifted off. It had been stashed inside a small compartment along with a knife and scabbard. Why the Doctor had designed such a space inside an experimental craft was a mystery that Jack had no time for. The mission occupied all of his attention for the next four hours, and it wasn’t until just now that Jack had time to even think about the thing.

Turning the revolver over in his hands, Jack checked the load, six bullets, spun the cylinder, and checked the safety. It was a good quality hand gun, but why on God’s green earth had Abdurax felt the need for such a thing?

His thoughts were interrupted by a long, low tearing noise. The capsule lurched to one side. 

That wasn’t right.

Another Round

A Teaser for my next release

Things are really starting to cook here at Chateau Seagull.  The first draft of my next novel is complete.  It's going to simmer for a while before the second pass through, but it should be available before the end of the month - mid May at the latest.

In addition to that big announcement, I've also written two more Karl Barber short stories.  Those have been submitted to editors for consideration to be included in collections of one sort or another.

I've upped my game for the Hugo Nominated Castalia House Blog (run by Hugo Nominee Jeffro Johnson) to posted a short review every week.

As if that wasn't enough, the audio files for the audiobook presentation of Forbidden Thoughts, by Superversive press are in the can.  They need to go through editing and polish, but you can expect that to hit the market in the next month or so as well.

Which leaves me with a little free time at just the right time.  The Puppy of the Month Book Club is reading and discussing Souldancer this month and at 500+ pages, it's one of the longest we've ever read.  It's such a great book, I have a hard time stopping to write, as I'd rather just keep reading it.

It's a good time to be a fan of sci-fi.

Sudden Rescue - The Cover

My next, and first full length, novel is scheduled for release some time in March.  It's in the revision process right now, and as mentioned previously, that allows a window for the preparation of a cover.  This was the first time I've ever commissioned artwork in my life, and it was a lot of fun from start to finish.  The artist, Rapha Pinhiero (on Facebook and Instagram), took a brief description and ran with it.  He prepared four thumbnail sketches and together we settled on the one that best captured the threat, action, and sense of wonder that the book hopes to present.

This is the description I sent him:

I need an action shot of a space trucker in leather jacket and black baseball hat saving a pretty space princess in full ball gown from a vaguely knight looking robot. The action can take place in the halls of a spaceship or set on the wilds of an alien planet, whichever you're most comfortable with.

How did he do?  You be the judge:

The palette Rapha chose is bold and bright, and allowed me to use a high contrast yellow for the title that reads well at any size, and neither the art nor title overwhelm the other.  It's not a color pair that I would have chosen, but it works well, and it's just that sort of creativity and experience that makes the money so well spent.

 

Here's where everything gets even more fun.  I didn't realize that the titular space trucker - his name is E. Z. Sudden - had a full 'stache and goatee.  In my mind he didn't until I saw this picture.  Now, as I revise the work, that's how I'll picture him.  Better yet, there's a log on his shirt that serves as an Easter Egg for the fans of the cover artist.  On questioning, Rapha admitted its a burning pyramid taken from a comic book he created called Tomes of Tessa.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am that he included that in the art work.  I specifically left things vague to allow him room for just that sort of personal touch, and he came through like a champ.

 

Think about.  That means that either Sudden is a fan of independent comic books or that the burning pyramid is a local in Sudden's universe, and he not only visited it, but bought a t-shirt at the gift shop.  Either way, it makes me laugh every time I think about it.

 

Anyway, the point is, commissioning artwork is a blast.  It was so much fun, it has me motivated to write another book as fast as possible just so that I can go through the cover process again.

 

Writing Pre-Post-Christian Stories

My alpha-friend and beta-reader asked if the name of the protagonist of my next novella, Father Abner Holyoak, was chosen as a reference to St. Boniface and his conversion of the Germans by cutting down the Thunder Oak of Giesmar.  He wasn't. My beta-reader is more learned than I am. I just like the strength and goodness the name conveyed. He asked if sliding a story featuring a priest into the mix was a Trojan Horse for evangelization, and so I explained the nature of the nascent movements dedicated to returning fantasy and science fiction to it's pre-post-Christian roots.

If you need a primer, you can't do any better than this John C. Wright post on how his elves are different.

We are in the Dark Ages, and the darkness influences all things in society, including speculative literature. I mean the term not as an exaggeration or a metaphor: the technological products of our enlightened forefathers spring from the worldview which says science is a proper way to discover the mind of God by studying His works. Eliminating that God from one’s worldview eventually eliminates the respect for human life, free thought, and reason in law and custom which are necessary precursors to scientific endeavors, and eliminating science eliminates technology. Once the lamps go out, the darkness is everywhere, even in the little corners of society where children read books about spacerockets or elves.

The moderns have been taught to hate and loath their own country, their ancestors, their parents, and been told everything written before the current day is racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transcismophobic, and pure evil. These nutbags think that their own standard bearers of the Progressive movement, the founders of their genre, were not Progressives like themselves.

Looked at one way, every story is a Trojan Horse - only the allegiance of what's inside changes. The post-Christian fantasy stories were specifically designed to infect people's operating systems with damaging software like nihilism, Marxism, and atheism.  (But I repeat myself.) The pre-post-Christian fantasies naturally and organically carried the worldview and understanding of heroism, nobility, and truth of a people who still accepted God's plan for mankind.

Every one of my stories is deeply rooted in a Christian world view - even those that clearly take place outside of the real world.  As I explained to my beta-reader: I actually don't consider this most recent story all that different from the first three dragon stories.  All my heroes desires revolve around God's plan.  They want to serve their fellow man, protect their family, have a family, unlock the secrets of His plan through study and the collection of knowledge.  Those are Christian ideals, and are therefore human ideals.  Even if you take man out of this world where God explicitly exists and plonk him down in a world where other gods roam, they don't stop being men. That means they don't stop being built according to His design.  People that try to remake their characters absent that critical spark of life wind up with cheap cut-outs and weak stories.

Devil's Drake might be the most nakedly spiritual, but that's baked into the very nature of the last chapter of the fighter-thief-wizard-cleric cycle.  And if I'm going to write a story about a religious man fighting evil, tapping into the Christian world allows me to reach people on a more visceral level  - the best fantasy is rooted in reality, and using a made-up religion would have carried the weight of a paper-mache idol.

 

But then, I don't hold the belief delusional belief of a John Scalzi that my writing skills or ideas are so utterly brilliant that they can overthrow the collective wisdom of 2,000 years of thought and study by the most learned men in the world, so perhaps my decision to 'borrow' cachet from Christian theology is a cheap ploy to appeal to readers.  If it helps the reader understand how the world really works and brings them closer to God's plan, that's a criticism I can live with.

Coming Soon: Wyrm's Bane

The second novella in the Five Dragon's series should be hitting Amazon with the next few days.  This one features an unlikely dragon slayer - Corbie, a mere slip of a girl who survived a childhood on the streets of a city ruled by vicious and conniving sorcerers.  Her speed and her wits guided her through countless troubles, but they are taxed to their utmost when she is caught between the most powerful army her world has ever seen and the dragon summoned to destroy it.

Corbie sees a narrow path through the two threats that might carry her to her dream of a home far away and a family of her own, but she'll need help from some odd quarters exact her revenge.

This 25,000 word novella is a light, fun read for less than a buck.  Give it a shot, because if you like it, there's plenty more coming down the line before the year's end.

Edit to add:  Kindle moved faster than expected.  This thing is available for purchase right now:

Available for Pre-Order: King's Dragon

My latest novella is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com:

Jason Tavener is an old soldier gone to seed.  He just wants to live out his days raising a daughter and schlepping drinks for the humble farmers and tradesmen of a high mountain village.  His battlefield experience and the friendship of a king make that a more difficult proposition than it should be.  Four villages the dragon has razed, and the King believes Jason is the one man who can stop it.  On its surface this is a story about a king, a hero, and a dragon, but beyond that it is the story of a man and his duty to his family, his country, and his friends.  Sometimes the hardest part of doing the right thing is knowing which of the right things is most important.

If you love solid storytelling with a strong theme, fast action, and compelling characters, and you miss down to earth fantasy tales featuring good and evil, and epic fights for survival against all odds, then The King's Dragon is the book for you.

This is the first in a planned five part series of novellas centering on the theme of big damn lizards that need a good killing.  No ancient wise  mystics or misunderstood races - just the big scaly atomic bombs of fantasy literature - and the men and women tasked with ending their threat to the kingdoms of man.

Coming Soon: More Karl Barber

Thank you everyone who purchased my first independently published short story, Hot Sun, Cold Fury.  The second title in the series is available...now.

Pennies on a Scale follows Karl Barber on a planned expedition to a remote corner of Cambodia where he finds himself outnumbered, outgunned, and almost out of time.

This time Karl has more time to prepare, more time for romance, and more time to get himself into trouble.  The world may be too big for one man to save, but Karl knows that small actions can have big consequences, and so he sets out through the remote jungles of Cambodia to tip the scales back towards the side of the good guys.

It's been available for pre-order for a while, but now you can purchase it here today, and look for the third title in the series, Bring Back Our Girls, coming in the next week or two.

Where You From, Baby?

My page view recently experienced a significant spike, due mainly to my review of a little thing called Cirsova.  Driven mainly by links from the Lead Editor, and Hugo Nominated author Jeffro Johnson*, it may be time for a quick, but more detailed introduction to Seagull Rising.

This is the personal blog of a guy starting a second career as a writer.  My writing seeks to fill a void left behind when the publishing houses adopted a business strategy dominated by a hunt for the female dollar.  To better understand how fiction of the past was written to appeal to us menfolk, I’ve recently been inspired by/stolen a plag from Jeffro’s book, and undertaken a mission to read more pulp magazines.  Where Jeffro’s focus has been on the fantasy, sci-fi, and weird fiction side of things, I’ve been targeting the more grounded real world adventure marked by seedy detective and man-against-the-wild stories. 

Men’s adventure magazines have a bad reputation in today’s world, but it is possible that the same sort of dry-erase version of history applied to sci-fi has also been applied to men’s adventure magazines.  The only way to be sure is to read some of them for myself.  It’s a journey I’ve only just begun – I haven’t even figured out the traditional place to put the apostrophe in the phrase “Men’s Magazine” – so definitive answers are still a ways off.  Despite that, reading these old tales is shaping up to be a fun adventure in its own right.  You’re welcome to join me.
Eventually, I’ll have a library of my own titles, but as a guy just starting out, you can count on my early work being a bit rough around the edges.  This is a marathon, it’ll get better over time, but you have to start somewhere.

Be warned, I’m a lifelong tabletop gamer who occasionally flirts with the lovely Vivian James, so you’re likely to encounter some digressions into the realm of gaming nerdery.  I’m also heavily influenced by this weird amorphous thing metastasizing out of the intersection of the manosphere and the alt-right, so regular readers are probably going to be exposed to the cheeky sort of Platonic rhetoric and casual disdain for the Overton Window that drives the tubby rainbow haired brigade back into their safe spaces.  I try to dump the worst of the political stuff onto my alter-ego, but it’s part of who I am, so some of it will inevitable bleed through to these posts.

Consider yourself warned.

*If you guys are reading this, thank you for the free publicity!