It only goes to show how out of it I've been recently that I forgot to post this. Dirtbaggery Book Reviews invited me for a live chat, which I've shared elsewhere, but I thought it might be good to also link to the explanation of Quantum Mechanics that I mentioned during our talk.
The part I referred to starts around the 7.30 mark.
As I said, this illuminates how our understanding of reality is at odds with Quantum mechanics.
That's all for now, catch you all on the bounce.
Today I discovered, quite by accident that Waterstones have a page for my books. How cool is that?
I must be a real writer now.
Another YouTube book reviewer has put up a post on my first novel. If only the trilogy had gained more traction, but that's down to luck. You can write a good book, but it doesn't guarantee it will go big.
Still, it makes me want to finish writing Two Moons, if only because I get the chance to revisit the Gate Walker universe for one more adventure.
Sharing another super positive review of my MilSF novel Bad Dog, which stands in illustrious company with the likes of Kameron Hurley.
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| Review from Amazon |
Two authors have reviewed Bad Dog, which is a great compliment. Neither of them were sent complimentary copies, which means they bought it on their own dime, and neither did I ask them to write me a blurb to promote my novel.
The review above is from Blaine Pardoe, who has written some of the core canon novels for the BattleTech universe, and is currently writing the Land & Sea SF series that runs to eight novels covering the invasion of Earth's ocean by underwater aliens.
The review below is from Tim Taylor who has written a whole bunch of great Mil-SF books.
Excellently handled, this novel of near(ish) future mech combat starts off as a gritty military sf tale with plenty of realism and dark humor. It carries that through to the end too, but also slices it through with something completely different: the holographic multiverse and a day that won't let the main character complete. I didn't know how this was going to finish until the last pages. Recommended for fans of Cole & Anspach's Galaxy's Edge and the Four Horsemen Universe.
Consider this post proof of life, as Real Life (TM) has diverted me from blogging. I'm working on my next post reviewing the books I've read this year which I'll publish over the Christmas period.
That's all for now. Catch you all on the bounce.
Okay, I have an old scenario of mine, Body & Soul, featured in Dark Places published by John Curry.
You can get your copy from Amazon.
What can I say, go buy a copy.
Sci-Fi Odyssey on YouTube asks Are We Losing The Essence Of Science Fiction? The answer is probably no, but I'm sharing to discuss.
A Rod Sterling quote sums up my position, "It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different thing. Science fiction is the the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the the impossible made probable."
So a lot of SF/Sci-Fi/speculative fiction meets that criteria. What we are then left with is taste.
My SF is better than your SF because mine has maths/literary merit/deals with serious issues etc. And here is where Sturgeon's Law comes into play, 90% of everything is trash.
My perspective is that human beings are not capable of being rational about subjects (see Professor Sapolsky's lectures for the gribbly detail). To simplify, the ideal may be infinite diversity in infinite combination, but humans can't handle an infinite number of diverse combinations.
My conclusion led me to write my own SF books, and I can say that what I like to write is not necessarily what people like to read.
A hundred tons of steel and more firepower than the devil himself…
they should be invincible, but armored combat is brutal and mistakes
are fatal.
Within, mech jockeys and tread heads take on the world one powerful blast at a time, risking it all for duty, fame, and glory.
But deep down, they fear a savage contradiction:
Armor can be your salvation.
It can also be your worst nightmare.
Which
will hold true? Climb into the commander’s hatch and find out. Buy a
copy of this amazing anthology today. You deserve answers!
I'm honoured to be in this anthology, along with some rather famous writers. My contribution is an 8000 word short story set in my Gate Walker universe called, Indian Summer Rain.
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| A joke about progress on Two Moons. |
On occasion I find myself checking my books rating on Amazon and Goodreads, and find another review. In this case I found two reviews, one totally by accident, but both of which pondered why I wrote so much or didn't write more about certain elements of story.
First the short Goodreads review by Donald Mclean. Thank you Donald for taking the time to write.
The review starts with describing military SF as a weird genre, and that I had used every acronym and bit of jargon I could find. Absolutely true. Guilty as charged.
My training emphasized the role of the nurse as being able to follow the jargon of al the doctors and other medical professionals, and also being able to talk to the patients too. So I don't find jargon and inter-professional language a problem. Obviously, I need to work on making that less didactic.
The other question is repeated in the other review from Frigid Reviews by Garvin Anders and Dr. Ben Allen whose comments were highlighted in red. Thank you both for an interesting discussion.
The review starts with a brief bio, and with regards to being Ashley Watkins and now Ashley Pollard: I wrote OHMU Warmachine thirty years ago, marriage is a thing.
The first question is around the setting, and how and why I didn't go into any great depth about the changes from the United States into the North American Confederation made up of Confederated States.
The reason I didn't delve into the background changes was simply that I wasn't interested in writing about it. Another reason was simply to signal that this is a story in a science fictional future. I would also add that the subtitle for the series: Military SF set in a Holographic Multiverse.
Similarly, what does it mean that China now the Democratic People's Republic of China? I refer everyone to the answers above.
My assumption is that change is a thing, and change is hard to predict. So I just ran with my imagination to make a setting that was interesting. As for the world building feeling a bit slim, the story is not about politics, or at least not directly. It is about conflict, this is just the way I wanted to tell the story I told.
The next point the review raised was about focusing on NCOs and officers and not talking about the junior enlisted.
It's a good question.
I would say that a story has to have a character that has some agency and I'm probably not a good enough writer to tell the story from the point of view who has no power to influence the outcome.
I'm probably wrong but I thought that a sergeant was probably the lowest rank that could influence the battlespace that the story required. I'm happy to be corrected, and this has certainly made me think about a junior enlisted point of view.
The reviewers were not 'crazy' about the title. I wonder if they linked the play between the title and the Hemingway quote? If everyone dies like a dog, then the title is a play of the theme of the novel; as in dying on the same day every day is a bad day.
More Brandon. Go Faster. Write! Write! Write!
Putting this here as a thank you to Brandon Sanderson, who I don't know, and who I've only ever read one story of. He doesn't write in my wheelhouse (rockets, robots, and ray-guns), but this promo is just so much fun to watch.
Not only that, but has helped me focus on my current work in progress on Two Moons.
Now up on YouTube a podcast that I appeared on (can be heard on) from the Blasters and Blades Podcast with: Doc Cisca (Uber Book Fan and Army Medic); JR Handley (Author and Grunt); Nick Garber (Comic Book Artist and Super Grunt).
They're talking with me Ralph Kern and Tim C. Taylor. Check it out.
I caught this on Zepp Jamieson's 's blog. Found through David Brin's blog that hosts very lively discussions on everything SF. Both are worth checking out if you're into science fiction. Anyways, here's a snip of the review. Click on the link for the full review.
I’ve mentioned Groundhog Day, Russian Doll and Haldeman in this review, but in the end, Bad Dog wound up reminding me of something far grander and more ambitious: The Expanse. The blurb on the cover promises that Bad Dog is only the first novel in a Gate Walkers series, and if Pollard’s first novel is the metric to go by, she’ll give The Expanse a run for its money.
I look forward to the next installment.
Rendered unconscious by an explosion, Lieutenant Morozova woke to a vision of a crystal mountain. Now caught between life and death, she must not only survive the rigors of war, but also the challenge of the mythical world of Russian legends.
The fourth episode set in the World of Drei universe, "Mission Two," a brilliantly ingenious vision of future war deepens the human story behind those who face an unrelenting opponent.
As the above picture shows, the hardcover copies of Ghost Dog have arrived. I've done the Library of Congress registration and sent copies out to them, and my Beta readers.
As the Star Trek song says, "It's been a long road getting from there to here."
And this being real life and all, there have been some obstacles along the way that I couldn't foresee. But, while the learning curve has seemed steep, I've come a long way in understanding and being able to do the things necessary to bring a book out.
And I've had a lot of fun whilst doing so.
OK, not all of it has been fun, but seeing my books in print and the reviews of the first have all substantiated my belief that I can achieve my goal.
Newly promoted, Captain Tachikoma nows lead her team to another world. Now they must through a portal that only opens once every six months.
Her mission. Retrieve unimaginably advanced alien technology that could change the world. Keep her team alive with only one chance to return.
Nothing could prepare her for what waits on an alien planet.
This gripping addition to the Gate Walker series, humanity expands its exploration of the galaxy to reveal more secrets, in "Ghost Dog" Tachikoma needs all of her combat armor skills to get home.
“This story is great, with a very firm grasp of the Marine Corps lifestyle.”
– Sgt D. Barrow, USMC
"High concept, high calibre character-driven Mil-SF. Compulsively readable."
– Alex Stewart aka Sandy Mitchell author of the Ciaphas Cain series
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"After weeks of arguments over which of the three worlds to go to, One-Nine-Six won. Mostly on the basis that a desert environment would be easier to drive out onto. That, and the fact that we could retrieve our robot teams that had either broken down, gotten lost, or fallen into a hole."Which I judged as being all she would care about the things discussed in said meeting.
The Magnetic Anomaly Project is the name I've given to the organization that discovers two alien pillars beneath a mountain in the Cascades. By the second book MAP has morphed into MAPCOM, a unified combatant command as a subsidiary of the North American Confederation Special Operations Command.At the end of the first three novels I still have a lot of story to tell.
The organization for MAP was inspired by NASAs The Mars Science Laboratory. So like them, I have five groups as follows:
Organic Geochemistry & Bio-SignaturesAs part of the backstory I created the Strategic Science Operations Team consists of the five following people, one of whom goes onto play a larger part in the storyline.
Inorganic Geochemistry & Mineralogy
Atmosphere & Environment
Geology
Mathematics & Physics
Dr. Carlyle: Organic Geochemistry & Bio-Signatures
Dr. John Cameron: Inorganic Geochemistry & Mineralogy
Dr. Carpenter: Atmosphere & Environment
Dr. Samantha Emmerich: Geology (alpha science team leader)
Dr. Linda Scott: Mathematics & Physics
Sergeant Sergei Rozhkov chose to face adversity with stoicism. He was Russian and held to a simple truth that everyone dies in the end.
Besides, there was always vodka if things went really bad.
Rozhkov had lost good people in the war. But, he didn't think that the war could get any worse than it already was.
Now, faced with a tank controlled by an artificial intelligence, Sergeant Rozhkov learns that life holds frightening surprises.
Mission One, sequel to Terror Tree, unfolds the setting of The World of Drei series. This is military science fiction that asks, what will humans have to do to survive on the cyber-battlefield of tomorrow?
Defeated, Lieutenant Morozova and Sergeant Rozhkov get the chance to rest and recuperate. Refitted with state-of-the-art equipment they must be the eyes of a newly formed battle group. The point of the spear.
The third story of a future Russian civil war set in the World of Drei universe, "Break Out" delivers combat-grade military action revealing how human camaraderie grows in the face of terrifying adversity.
