Chris Almeida's Blog

For the last two years, Cecilia and I have been under extreme pressure. While writing the first Countermeasure novels had been easy to both of us, and I had used my background in IT to draw some aspects of that world into the series, Alternate Connection created a dilemma. It veered into a very political conflict and took a dip into military service, something none of us was too familiar with other than our fathers having both served in wars in the past and Cecilia having grown up as a military brat, moving around a lot.

When the story gave us an opportunity to create a spin-off about the A.W.E. Crew guys, the cadre of special operators brought in to run the rescue in Alternate Connection, we decided to do our due diligence, as always, and learn about the Service. As much as authors do take artistic license in their fiction, and we can’t possibly know exactly what these men and women experience in their lives at war, we wanted to be able to explore some less talked about parts of the service respectfully and in a way that would not undermine or demean their purpose.

Being a pacifist my whole life meant I couldn’t fully understand what drove those men and women to join the service in the first place, and to write these books, I felt I NEEDED to understand their minds and hearts if the characters were to feel real to me and to those who read the books.

With that in mind, we researched. A LOT. I talked to veterans and active soldiers online about their feelings, their emotional state. We watched documentaries and read a lot of non-fiction books. LOTS.

It wasn’t until we came across Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell that things started falling into place for me. Hundreds of hours of documentaries couldn’t achieve what that one book did. In documentaries, you get the chaos of what they have lived outside the wire, the live fire, all its gruesome carnage, but it’s in that book that you get to dive into their psyche and their hearts.

While I still don’t see wars as the sole solution for the problems in the world, I can now understand the drive behind the men and women who volunteer to join it. There’s a different sense of purpose, of love, of selflessness in them.

I’ve read the last several books since Outlaw Platoon with a completely different mindset and view of their lives, their path to joining the Service, and their sacrifice.

Lieutenant David Grossman, in his book On Combat, says that there are three types of people in the world. The sheep are the regular folk, living their lives, going about their day, working, going to school, etc. Then there are wolves. Those are the ones who feed on the sheep, who are capable of violence, create chaos, and do evil things without a thought to the consequences of their actions, without any care for the sheep.

And then there are sheepdogs. While capable of violence themselves, sheepdogs have a deep empathy and love for the sheep, who will put their lives on the line to face and fight the wolves to protect their fellow citizens.

The warriors I got to meet through Outlaw Platoon and the many other books I’ve read are these sheepdogs. Men and women who go through the hardest selection process and training on the planet to go to war and defend not only their families and loved ones, but total strangers.

I am thankful to the writers of those books, particularly to Sean Parnell, for telling the stories which made that difference clear to me. And thank you to all service members around the world for being the sheepdogs looking after us, the sheep.

Sláinte,

Chris

Amazon added some privacy settings to user accounts a while back. The settings included the option to hide all personal content (reviews, wish lists, questions, etc) from the public pages by default. Once the change was rolled out, many readers who were also avid reviewers noticed that their reviews were missing from the books they had reviewed.

Since Amazon also removes reviews it views as going against the review guidelines, many feared their reviews had been deleted for good. After some digging, it became clear that, while some people had indeed had reviews removed, a good number of the missing reviews were simply due to the change in the privacy settings.

Those settings can be easily turned off to allow reviews to be public once again. If you are also one of those reviewers with sudden missing reviews, you can check your account for the correct settings.

Check the FULL SIZE INFOGRAPHIC for the steps to correct the problem.

Sláinte!

Chris

Cecilia will arrive in Canada on December 26. Although we will be busy with writing, we decided to open the virtual signing for Alternate Connection since this is the perfect opportunity to get the books signed by both of us.
If you are interested, please fill the form below with your details and we'll invoice you the cost of the book and shipping. Due to the high cost of shipping, we have not included options for overseas shipping. The price of shipping shown below is only to US addresses. If you are abroad and would like to inquire about shipping prices to your country, please contact us directly before placing the order. 

Alternate Connection - Cost of 1 signed book + shipping to continental US States = $20.50

Filling the below form authorizes us to submit an invoice to the email listed in the form for the total amount of the order.

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Ceci and I love a tight deadline. It usually triggers our fight or flight reflexes and we are good fighters. You may be asking yourself, what does a tight deadline has to do with the blog title? The answer is everything.

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The TRICK OR TREAT GIVEAWAY HOP is coming up!!

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Since Sunday, we have added two more chapters to Alternate Connection. Being the Plotsters (Plotter+Pantster) we are, although we have a direction and know the plot of the story in detail, we still allow the characters to dictate the course so we went with the flow. Well, the characters wanted a bit more alone time… You get the drift.

With that said, since last Sunday, we also completed seven chapters and have only two more to write to finish the story. All others in yellow are already in snowflaking/editing/revision phase.

Current count with the finished chapters and without our wonderful editor’s pass is 103,345 words. The expected final number should be around 120,000. With the editing and final revision, we should tighten it to about the same count as Countermeasure.

We’ll report again on Monday!

Sláinte!

Chris

For those who have been following our first series, you may have noticed a gap between the releases of To Russia with Love and the upcoming third novel, Alternate Connection.

Alternate Connection was plotted and scripted in 2012. Long before the current conflict in the Middle East erupted. At the time, we had little to go by but our gut. We interviewed people who'd been there, who'd lived in Palestine before the Intifadas, and researched our asses off to write the best action book we could.

Then life happened and some of the drive to write the story died down. It took a lot of love for the story, love for the characters, and a lot of encouragement from friends to get the ball rolling again, but alas, here we are, only a week or so away from completing one of our most rewarding books so far.

Our methods being stranger than our fiction, we need color coded tables to keep track of what each of us is writing each day. Everything is labeled, what's in the snowflaking/editing/critique stage and the chapters waiting to be claimed by each of our muses.

We are happy to show where we stand with Alternate Connection's development today.

We are writing, editing and revising two to three chapters daily and have no doubts we can finish the book this week. We'll even have plenty of time to read the full manuscript a couple of times before it's shipped to our editor for review.

Mark the day. Alternate Connection will be in stores on October 06, 2015. Or in your kindle at 12:01 AM if you've pre-ordered your copy.

Sláinte!

Chris

Some twenty years ago, I visited Ireland for educational purposes. While I was there to enhance my English skills and prepare for a pretty important test, I also made sure to travel and check out the many fantastic places around the country.

One of the places I had the pleasure to visit while in Ireland was Howth Head. I was in Ireland for several months in the winter of 1992-1993 and even with the cold and unforgiving weather the view from the train was impressive.

A walk on the beach, even under cold temperatures and blasting winds was mandatory. The pier was packed with docked boats waiting for better weather to pepper the dark sea with colorful sails. The angry waves crashed against the rocks with purpose, spraying white veils high in the air.

My walks around the peninsula took me all the way to the lighthouse before I made my way back to the village for some food and to catch the train back to Dun Laoghaire.

That day's adventure imprinted in my mind and has always teased me to go back to Ireland for another visit. The images I carried back with me were painted in my memory and it is what I drew from to write the beach scenes in Ecstasy by the Sea.

The hotel described in the book is a real hotel, often used to celebrate and officiate weddings. Although I never made it inside the hotel, I walked on the beach and admired the same view seen from its balconies.

It's our personal belief that drawing stories and scenes from personal experience makes them richer and more colorful, almost life-like as they should be. We only hope that the experiences and emotions we both brought forth in writing the book are as vivid to readers as living the moments we drew from were for us.

Do you enjoy reading about places you haven't visited? Do books make you want to travel and see with your own eyes the locations described in the stories you read?

Sláinte!

Chris

 NOTE: This blog post was originally created and published at participating blog hosts during Hot Beach Romance's blog tour. 

When I checked my email this morning, my inbox had been inundated with “Happy Father’s Day” emails. Most of them tried to sell me something, but a particular one caught my eye and made me want to write this post.

Father’s day. The day always brought inner conflict during my childhood. You see, my father passed away when I was two and I barely remember him. My pseudo-memories come from many stories my mother relentlessly told me over the years. She kept him alive for me. My own memories of him come from observation of the world he left behind.

I know of his humor and high spirits because I was privileged to have read his writing. I know of his musicality because I inherited his well-loved and played guitar. I know of his love of Japan’s rich culture and history because he left a shit-load of books on the subject, all clearly read multiple times.

During the first half of my elementary school life, I used to dread father’s day. I was the only one in class who would be making a gift without a recipient. I didn’t have any male family member who could have taken the father-figure role in my life and my mother wasn’t looking for a new husband. In fact, she never did find someone who could take my father’s place in her heart (and you wonder how I ended up writing romance, eh?).

Half way through elementary, I began to realize that the gifts we made for father’s day every year were unfair to those in the same situation as me. Not because they were gender specific or even promoted a bad habit (yep, we made ashtrays) but because they failed to acknowledge those women who have taken dual roles in their households.

The reverse happens on mother’s day, I know, but the reality is that there are way more women than men filling in both pairs of shoes in their homes.

Which brings me back to the email from this morning.

To most, it would appear very well crafted and joyful, but to me, it had an intrinsic flaw. It celebrated fathers and boasted a list of things we would not have learned without having fathers. Throw a curveball (in my case, kick a mean soccer ball), change a tire, fix things around the house, honor and ethical behavior, etc. All those things and many more, I learned from my mother.

Teaching your child life skills and how to have fun doesn’t come attached to gender. This doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate your father or the things he’s taught you, or the many amazing moments you’ve had with him. Please do. Cherish every moment—on Father’s Day or any other day—you have with him because you never know if that will be the last one.

But most of all, for all fathers and mothers out there, don’t limit the memories you can have with your child to those traditional gender-specific roles. Bend the rules. Teach your daughter to bake a cake, but also to change a tire and fix an engine. Let her use you as a make-up sampler, too for fun. Teach your son to throw a ball, but also to cook and clean up after himself. To respect others independent of their life choices. Make your children rounded individuals so they can create the same memories with their own children, thus propagating the habit. And that’s the true gift of parenthood.

Sláinte!

Chris

Last week we came across a post by a fellow author that stroke a chord with both of us. She was talking about how, once she had published her books, her days were spent more in promotion and interaction on social media than writing. She also mentioned that she had less pleasure from writing than before publication.

When we started writing together, we wrote solely for the joy of writing and for pleasure. Creating stories on the fly was effortless and natural. We wrote Countermeasure and To Russia with Love in 3-4 months each and they are 110K and 140K, not serial-length books.

After publication, our output decreased drastically. We have a LOT more on our plates now. We also care a lot about our friends and readers. We worry that disappearing from social media for months can potentially hurt our still fragile relationship with new readers, yet being present is not doing us, our stories, or our readers and friends any good.

We know many people are tapping their feet, waiting anxiously for a few (if not many) of our already announced books to be released and we do want to deliver them sooner rather than later.  

Knowing more readers (and friends) are enjoying our books and wanting more of our stories is thrilling, but we won’t make that happen if we’re not writing as much as we can, all day, every day.

For that reason, we have made the decision to reduce our presence on social media to a minimum. Starting now, we will be frugal with the time spent online. The goal is to focus on the characters and stories and worry less about rankings, likes or views. Those numbers have lost their meaning.

We’re also taking a brand new step (and some major pressure) to force ourselves to tackle writing with the old vigor. We’ve placed Alternate Connection up for pre-order on iTunes, Kobo, ARe and Google Play. We set a date and we will make sure the book is finished, if not long before, at least by that date.

The above means we’ll be hiding in our writing caves for the new few months. With that said, we may pop in once in a while or post once or twice a day so the pages don’t slip into nothingness, but that should be all for a while.

We hope you’ll all appreciate the outcome. 

Sláinte!

Chris