Ghost Dog Hardcovers

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.

Ghost Dog Print Pre-Order

Print editions available next week.

Amazon US isn't showing the ebook link, I don't know why, but I've queried them so hopefully this should be fixed soon. If US readers go to my author page the ebook link does appear there when you click on Ghost Dog.

Ghost Dog – Now Available

Story Summary

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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Ghost Dog Cover Reveal

At last I'm getting to the point where the end is in sight. I've been doing the final copy edits on Ghost Dog and here's the cover sans typography. As you can see it's another great piece of artwork from Elartwyne Estole.

Meanwhile, I've been watching USMC shooting videos on YouTube. One of my Beta readers pointed out some procedural mistakes in how my main character was teaching another character to shoot. Since there's the right way, the wrong way, and the Marine Corps way, I'm revising the scene.

Hopefully, the electronic version of Ghost Dog will be up on Amazon by end of next week. 

Ghost Dog Cover Teaser Two

It has been a tough week for me, and the technical edits are still a work in progress on Ghost Dog, so here's another teaser for the cover.

This last week I've spent time working through The Bureau, which is weird. I'm re-reading my unfinished first novel with the intention of finishing what I started. Heinlein's rules of writing; finish what you start. Having written three other novels in the meantime, I can truly say it’s like reading another authors work.

I'm also evaluating a writing technique that was brought to my attention on this blog, called deep third POV. I'm still mulling it over. It could be the best thing since sliced bread, or just another tool to be used as and when.

Serendipitously, I began reading Dare to be a Great Writer by Leonard Bishop. And guess what, I found him discussing the pros and cons of using deep third POV, except he addresses under the title: the false limitations on first person narrators.

So, I learnt something new.

At the weekend I met up with some friends. The son of one of them was a song writer, and we had an interesting discussion on writing, comparing song writing process to novel writing. One thing that came out of it was that it made me think about grammar.

Grammar is the glue, not the work. The work is made of words that convey meaning, and grammar is just the glue that holds the story telling together. That may not be the worlds best metaphor, and probably only means something if you're at the stage where your ready for it.

And another observation from talking about how to write a novel.

The advice a beginner needs to hear is not the same as someone who has written a few novels, and is again not the same as a professional author who makes a living at writing.

My insight in all this comes from is the fact that as a former cognitive behavioural therapist my job was rooted in learning theory. Therapy is how do you get people to change habits that aren't working for them.

But like a lot of things in life, knowing something has to change is not the same as knowing what or how to change.

Ghost Dog Cover Teaser

And here's a sketch to tease while you all wait for Ghost Dog to arrive. Copy edits are done, and I'm just waiting back on my Beta reader's technical edits (so far one omission found, a couple of technical edits, and no doubt more to come).

This week has been another one occupied by copy editing. This time on Mission Two, and it's taking me longer to do as I'm thinking about how I want to market the series, and how many episodes I want to write.

But the good news is that after some hard reflection on my failings, I'm still managing to produce new words in what some people might describe as difficult circumstances. I shall take that as a win.

However, half of my day today was taken with a hospital visit, which left me exhausted. I also have a series of blood tests to go to over the next three and a bit months too. So, onwards because words don't write themselves.

Ghost Dog Teaser

This is a picture I took after seeing the sketch for the cover of Ghost Dog. It features Captain Tachikoma's CASE-2XC-Mod 2 Dog standing back-to-back with Master Sergeant Ferretti's Air Force security Buster CAS-C4P.

Just a tease.

I've just received back the copy edit of Ghost Dog and my plan for the week is to go through and review all the edits. Once done, I'll send it off to my specialist Beta reader, because no matter how good my research is, a real US Marine knows the gribbly details far better than me.

Health wise, things are improving, slowly.

Realistically, I'm faced with taking medication for more than a year. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that before the treatment ends, there will be days when it will feel like two-steps-forward and one-step-back. Other than that, things are good.

Reviews of Bad Dog

The latest review of Bad Dog up on Amazon from a 20 year Navy veteran has prompted me to post it here. I felt honoured to have had this man take the time and effort to write something about my work. Thank you sir.

Good sci-fi read with one foot planted solidly in the real world

Ok, I'm not a professional book reviewer. If you are looking for a critique on the art of writing, move along. I'm just a reader, and a retired military member and all of my thoughts start from there.

Truthfully, it is a pretty good story. I think it reads a bit like a short story, which I can appreciate. Don't get me wrong, I like a good Lord of the Rings style epic as much as the next guy, but now and again I like something shorter and to the point. This book scratched that itch. I found it pretty compelling from start to finish, and I can't wait for the next book to come out in print (I think it is already out in electronic format, but I like paper). I love a good near-future story where things are just different enough to make your imagination kick into gear, but not so foreign that I'm sitting around thinking "What's a flingledorp and why on Earth is this one attached to the hangwopper of a flogtrud?" Look, I want to follow the story without too much confusion. Pollard succeeded for me. I'm a 20 year veteran of the Navy and I'll say that about 99% of all the jargon, personalities, and events feel dead on which really added to my enjoyment and the believability of the story. For those of you with less military experience, Pollard does include a nice glossary in the back of the book so you don't get lost in all the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms... military loves them).

I don't know if I have any downsides to relay, but I'm pretty easy to please. I'm hoping there is more to come soon.

And here are three more reviews...

No gung-ho and serious SF Military reading

This the author first novel and I got totally absorbed from the first page to the end.

This is SF Military but don't expect finding super-uber soldiers or extraterrestrial advanced enemies fighting each other in remote galaxies, no "Starship Troopers" rehearsal at all. On the contrary, set in in the last quarter of the XXI century, the book provides a glimpse of what could be a very realistic progressive evolution of modern tactical warfare and weapons... in a geopolitical context that will also be familiar to the reader, where a reconfigured US (called "Confederated States" but not yet explained in the book what happened) is challenged by an increasingly assertive China in a remote region in Afghanistan.

The book focuses in a Marine recon unit and the pace of the action is truly good.

The atmosphere is very realistic thanks to the extensive and thorough(full) military research undertaken by the author that you can follow in her personal blog.

After I finished reading the novel, I really eager for more. Luckily a second part is very close to publication.

I can strongly recommend the book and if the sequels are as good as the initial work, I can see Ashley Pollard becoming a reference in this writing genre.

 

Excellent book. A fresh view on near future power armor warfare

Excellent book. A fresh view on near future power armor warfare. I felt that I was reading a good story and not the writer's opinions on how they live their own life, which is hard to find these days in any genre.

Ambushed!

This book caught me pleasantly by surprise. I had settled into the near-future military action and begun to suspect that powered suits were the extent of the Science Fiction, but then it took off in a totally unexpected direction which I won't spoil for you. I ended up thoroughly gripped and unable to put it down until I knew how it played out. I love SF and it's great to find a new writer with ideas as well as genuinely good writing. I look forward to more.

Strike Dog: Proof of Print

My printed copies have arrived.

Available to buy here:

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Strike Dog Hard Cover

The layout for the hardcover dustjacket.

As I said before, InDesign is one of those indispensable programs that is a bit of a bear to get to grips with. If I were a cover designer, then daily use would make things go a lot smoother. As it was, just getting my subscription re-enabled was a run-around to find the right link on Adobe's site.

It should be easier to renew than they make it. There again I suspect they don't get many people like me who only subscribe for the minimum period of a month and go without until the next time I need to make a cover.

After all that palaver, then it was down to figuring out all the correct metadata, to make sure that if you find Strike Dog you'll also find Bad Dog. Then converting the image from JPEG to PDF for Ingram Sparks. It all took a lot of time, time I didn't spend writing new words.

Good news is that the covers for Strike Dog were finished, files uploaded to Ingram Spark, and therefore the print versions should now be available.

Summary

Writing output has been reduced, in part because I had a steroid injection into my right wrist, which after the anesthetic wore off felt like someone had driven a nail through my hand. Still, I've managed to write 3,061 over the last two weeks.

Covers from Models

I make models, I just do. It's my thing.

I've also been known on occasion to play games with them. Above is the model reference picture I sent to the artist who drew my cover for Bad Dog. I have made up several models of my CASE-2X Dogs, each of them a representation of one of the characters combat armour suits in the story.

As I made the models, I found ways to make each a little more interesting through slight variants in the pose or choice of weapons. The Dog here is the second attempt of capturing Sergeant Tachikoma's ride in Bad Dog.

And this is the picture I sent my artist for the cover of Strike Dog.

Because Tachikoma is now a Lieutenant she gets to ride in a CASE-2XC command variant. As you can see, I added antennae to the back of the Dog, and changed the head of the suit too. I added the shoulder mounted missile pack to match the description in the book.

Things got changed for the cover, but I'd rather have a dynamic cover to sell the book than a precise representation of the model.

Below is one of the pictures I've sent to my artist as reference for making the cover of Ghost Dog. On the left is Master Sergeant Ferretti's Air Force security Buster CAS-C4P. It's a glorified mobile command-and-control center for running combat androids.

On the right is Captain Tachikoma's upgraded CASE-2XC-Mod-2, special forces command variant. Making this has given me ideas for CASE-2X-Mod-2 models I could make.

I can't wait to see what the cover will look like.

Summary

Last week was taken up with things other than writing stories. For example, I spent two days writing an article for the Galactic Journey blog. They always take time, because of the research I have to do, and finding suitable pictures.

I then drew up a brief for the Ghost Dog cover, and started talking my artist about what I wanted. Which is what inspired this blog.

Despite all that, I manage to produce 1,275 words in the spaces between doing all the other stuff. I didn't keep a precise record of the time, but about two hours typing, so an average of 633 words per hour. Mostly done in fifteen minute segments.

NB: For those of you who my be interested in my model making you can see more here.

Strike Dog – Available to Pre-Order

Strike Dog is available for pre-order.

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Celebrate the Year of the Dog Read Bad Dog

You will die like a dog for no good reason.

—Ernest Hemingway 

Story Summary

In 2071, Sergeant Tachikoma leads a Marine combat armor squad. She knows the Corps never promised her a rose garden, only the chance to fight for her country.

Now, she faces her greatest challenge, two terrifying alien pillars that trapped her into reliving the same day again. The day she dies.

Today, she needs every ounce of courage to save her people from annihilation.

Based on cutting-edge theories on the nature of the universe, this white knuckle military SF thriller contains drama and mystery.

“This story is great, with a very firm grasp of the Marine Corps lifestyle.”


– Sgt D. Barrow, USMC

More About The Author

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Writing Log 2018-01-05

Another awesome sketch by Elartwyne Estole for Strike Dog

At the end of week one I've managed to write 727 words.

This was down to me not being able to protect my writing time. I'm trying to be mindful of the WIBBOW: Would I Be Better Off Writing?

My attempt at getting Bad Dog into print was also a complete and utter shambles. To say, I made every newbie mistake I could, is to say that this was a rich learning outcome. Printed On Demand may look easy, but there's an awful lot that can go wrong.

The good news is that everything is now sorted or in the process of being sorted, and I won't be making those mistakes again.

I hope.

I've also spent a big chunk of my week reviewing the copy edits for Strike Dog, and commissioning the art for the cover. So it's all coming together.

As part of my schedule self discipline I logged my time last week. Over the four days I worked 44 hours, which is not a complaint, it's just the time it took me to do all the tasks I set myself; and when I say do all the tasks, I mean do some of them–others still remain to be done.

Mostly I enjoyed myself.

Mostly.

There were a lost of frustrating things that were a result of me not knowing what I was doing. And, I didn't sleep all that well, due to anxiety over what I had to do and, had I done it right? Still, Strike Dog cover commission done, and as you can see, it's going to be another awesome cover. So, I'm now laying out the text in Vellum and everything is good, so far.

But, I need to write more new words.

New stories don't write themselves, and I have some great stories I want to tell.

Projects in Progress

Strike Dog – Being readied for publication
Ghost Dog – Third book of the Gate Walker Trilogy, out later this year
The Bureau – Lovecraftian Urban Fantasy novel
New short story, sequel to Terror Tree, set in the World of Drei universe
Two Moons – A sidequel story about Mr Anderson from Bad Dog
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy

Bad Dog – Now Available

You will die like a dog for no good reason.

—Ernest Hemingway 

Story Summary

In 2071, Sergeant Tachikoma leads a Marine combat armor squad. She knows the Corps never promised her a rose garden, only the chance to fight for her country.

Now, she faces her greatest challenge, two terrifying alien pillars that trapped her into reliving the same day again. The day she dies.

Today, she needs every ounce of courage to save her people from annihilation.

Based on cutting-edge theories on the nature of the universe, this white knuckle military SF thriller contains drama and mystery.

“This story is great, with a very firm grasp of the Marine Corps lifestyle.”


– Sgt D. Barrow, USMC

More About The Author

Buy This Book

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon CA
Amazon DE
Amazon FR
Amazon AU

Bad Dog Finished Art

Here is the completed artwork by Elartwyne Estole.  Wow, it's exciting to see this finished.  Obviously I'm biased, but the art is stunning.

So now I've enrolled on a cover design workshop run by Dean Wesley Smith, and my first assignment was to show them what little I know about cover design.

Bad Dog

The reason I started writing about Sergeant Lara Atsuko Tachikoma, of the Confederated States Marine Corps 1st Combat Armor Reconnaissance Company, Second Platoon, Bravo Squad, came after a phrase popped into my head one day, while I was stuck writing something else.  The phrase was: 

It’s all Big Dog’s fault that I died yesterday under a mountain in Afghanistan.

I say this, but the truth is that I wrote the idea down and put it to one-side as I was in the process of writing another story.  The good intentions to put it aside and finish the novel I was then writing it didn’t work out so well.  

As a cognitive behavioural therapist I know the difficulties around changing behaviours that are triggered by beliefs, and where behaviours are functional, there is little benefit in trying to change the beliefs that drive them.  In this case I wanted to write, so whether or not I continued writing the other novel, or changed to the new one didn’t matter, because neither was being written on commission.  I'm not yet a professional author under the yoke of meeting a deadline for a commission, which is probably a very good thing, as I had neither the experience nor skills to meet such a task while writing fiction. 

However, the first thing I do when I have an idea for a story is to sit down and write a pitch line.  The one line pitch for Bad Dog was Starship Troopers meets Ground Hog Day.

Except that Bad Dog is not really a homage to either, in spite of the shared surface similarities they have.  Heinlein’s novel is a story about service and citizenship, while Bad Dog discusses military service from the implications arising from putting all your troops in power armour, and the social implications where gender equality in war becomes a practical reality.

While Sergeant Tachikoma repeats the same day throughout the story, as in Groundhog Day written by Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin, the McGuffin driving the story is based in Buddhist philosophy.  Whereas, in Bad Dog the McGuffin I used for the story is based in the idea that we live in a holographic multiverse where all possible outcomes from any event can happen.  

This SF geekery draws heavily on the theories of Professor Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is also the scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute.  On reflection I thought while the pitch line was certainly high concept it didn’t really describe what my novel was about.

So I came up with a new pitch line that was closer to other sources of inspiration, namely VOTOMS meets Stargate SG-1.

However, the problem with this is that VOTOMS is a real niche show even by the standards of SF fandom, which means that it will probably fly over the heads of most people who read Bad Dog, with the likely response being huh?  While those that know of VOTOMS will no doubt be going why is she ripping off our favourite show?  And while Bad Dog shares with the well known Stargate franchise, the idea of the military travelling to other worlds, the limitations imposed by the physics behind the pillars in Bad Dog make for entirely different stories; as I have to account for the lack of control over where the pillars go, and when they allow the characters to go there.

So again the pitch line didn’t hit the spot, no matter how zingy it might sound.

The importance of a pitch line, or what is called in the film business a logline, is that it encapsulates the concept of the story in one easy to understand sentence.  So I went back to the beginning, and thought through what my story was about and constructed a pitch line that was less high concept, but more authentic to the voice of the novel:

When an American Special Forces Detachment crashes in Afghanistan, Sergeant Tachikoma's Company of Marines are sent to discover what happened to them.  But the local Warlord fears the evil Afrite will be unleashed evil into the world if the Americans find the ancient, alien pillars under the mountain, and he has conspired with the Chinese to destroy Sergeant Tachikoma's Company with a nuclear bomb.

For me this encapsulates everything that was in the high concept one-liners I had written before, but made Bad Dog a separate thing in its own right.  In the process of doing that I came up with a short synopsis that could be used on the back cover.

For Sergeant Tachikoma aboard CSN Hornet it was just another day in the Corps.

Then an order came down the chain-of-command proving the truth of the old adage that the only easy day is yesterday.  Now the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Company is preparing to fly into Afghanistan and rescue an Alpha Detachment of Special Forces Snake-Eater that had crashed their Ares sub-orbital space-plane during a Top Secret mission.   

After dying in a nuclear explosion, she wakes up the next morning to find herself going crazy reliving the same day all over again.  She decides it's better to get even with those who blew her and the rest of the Company up.  Her plan is simple; stop the bomb going off, and get on with the rest of her life. 

How hard can it be? 

While I was writing the above, thoughts started to unfold in my mind, about why I was driven to explore why I wrote Bad Dog in the first place.  The answer being it’s complicated, but the bottom line is that I was telling a story by running my character through a gristmill, and throwing problems at her to make her life as miserable as possible, because as an author that's the way we roll. 

What About the Writing?

I have been remiss in doing diary updates of my writing progress.

I've heard back from one of the Big Five publishers who have rejected my novel. They said, it aroused interest, but the narrative wasn't straightforward enough. I've been processing that feedback and thinking about my writing.

Bad Dog is an overcoming the monster plot: the monster being the atomic bomb planted to destroy a pair of alien pillars found under a mountain in Afghanistan. Said pillars being the equivalent to Arthur C. Clarke's monoliths.

I have mentioned that one way of looking at my first novel is that it's like John Ringo was writing in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with Armored Trooper VOTOMS.

It could also be described as Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day directed by Harold Ramis.  Except that while it has more action than Starship Troopers, it doesn't have Bill Murray being funny.

So, I'm working on re-writing/editing of my second novel Strike Dog.

The plot of which is a voyage and return, as described by Christopher Booker in his work The Seven Basic Plots, which is actually seven traditional plots plus two modern plots (mystery and rebellion being the new plots that only appear in modern novels - where modern means anything post Jane Austen).

My third book, Ghost Dog, is a quest.  This has come back from my Alpha reader with informative feedback that it needs more tension in the first third of the book.

So my plan, if you can call it that, is to have a different plot for each book in the Bad Dog series.  This is assuming I can sell my trilogy which is in serious doubt at this point, but I'm not intending to give up.

Still, given my age, time is not on my side.

If I can sell either my first or second book, then I have to think of a rags to riches story, a comedy (what Booker calls a comedy is really a plot revolving around mistaken identities and confusion), a tragedy (all too easy in the world of Bad Dog), a mystery and a rebellion. The latter probably being the hardest plot to fit into my overarching story arc.

However, the main try-fail cycle I face at this point is writing characters who each have a different voice and who don't come across as complete jerks. Wish me luck, I may be some time.