Jeff Edwards's Blog

Not everything I write makes it into print. (And believe me, that’s a good thing.)  Most of the stuff that ends up on my cutting room floor deserves to be there.  Characters who refuse to come to life, chunks of lackluster dialogue, and—occasionally—entire plotlines that weaken the story when they should be making it stronger.  In other words, crap that has no place in a finished novel.

But once in a while, I have to cut something for reasons having nothing to do with quality. For example: the original opening chapter of Sea of Shadows got the axe because it had undertones of espionage that weren’t quite right for the story.

I wrote this piece a long time ago, and it was cut from the novel before we did any line-editing. You’re seeing it as originally written, complete with clumsy usages and grammatical errors.  Despite any typos and other imperfections, I still think it’s kind of a neat piece of work.  (Your mileage may vary.)

And now, without further ado, I present the mysterious Lost Chapter…

The alarm in the back of Jay Gilbert’s brain went off the instant he saw the other two men assigned to his team. Shit. Not good. Not good at all.

Jay trusted the alarm. It had managed to steer him clear of serious trouble for most of his nineteen years. And the few times that he had really screwed up had all come as a result of ignoring that little warning signal in his head. Not that Jay was psychic, like that bullshit on the TV hotlines. The alarm was more like a built-in bad news detector, and right now it was pitching a bitch.

The sun had been down for nearly an hour, but the parking lot behind the WizardClean building was well lit. Jay tried to get a better look at the two guys as he walked across the lot toward them. They were standing under a floodlight next to a green van with the WizardClean company logo on the side: a cutesy cartoon of an industrial carpet shampooing machine wearing a pointed wizard’s hat with stars and moons, surrounded by a cloud of little sparkly bits of fairy dust.

The men were dressed in green WizardClean coveralls, just like Jay was; the WizardClean logo embroidered small above the left breast pocket and large across the back. Both men were about Jay’s height, a little under six feet, and both were about ten years older than him ⎯ say late twenties or so. Any resemblance to Jay ended there. Where Jay was wiry and blonde, the men were dark haired and solid looking. Their skin was darker than his. Not African, but dark. Greek maybe. Or Italian.

Jay stopped a few feet away from the friendlier looking of the two and stuck out his hand. They looked okay, as far as he could tell. So why were they making the hair on his neck stand up?

The man took Jay’s extended hand and shook it. “Mike Umar,” he said. He smiled, showing lots of white teeth. The smile didn’t seem to make it to his eyes. “You must be Jerome.”

Jay forced himself to return the smile. “I prefer to be called Jay.”

Mike released his hand and tapped the second man on the shoulder. “Jay, this is my friend Rafii. He likes to be called Ralph.”

Mike’s voice had just a touch of an accent, but Jay couldn’t place it. Jay extended his hand to the second man. “Good to meet you, Ralph. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Ralph ignored his outstretched hand. “We do not need a replacement. We have done this job a hundred times. We can do it with two men.”

Jay dropped his hand. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend. The Dispatcher said it was his appendix? Is that right?”

“Yes,” the man called Mike said. “He fell ill only a few hours ago.”

“You do not know how we work,” Ralph said in a quiet voice.

Jay felt the heat go to his cheeks. Hopefully they weren’t glowing in the fucking dark where this rude little bastard could see. Jay took a slow breath and said, “I’ll try to stay out of your way. I’ve got quite a bit of experience with carpet cleaners.” He grinned and made an effort not to grind his teeth. “I’m a Seaman Apprentice over at the Naval Yard. I scrub a lot of toilets, polish a lot of brass, and shampoo a shitload of carpets. In the big scheme of things, a Seaman Deuce is just above whale shit, and that lies on the bottom of the ocean.” He tossed off the last part like a punch line and threw in a little laugh. Neither of the men joined him.

“Let’s go,” Mike said flatly. He walked around toward the driver’s side of the van. Ralph opened the front passenger door, climbed in, and slammed it behind himself.

Jay pulled at the handle of the side door and the door slid open with a squeaky grind. He stared into the darkened interior of the van. He could make out the shapes of the cleaning machines, but not much else. His alarm was still going off like a madman.

Shit. What if he just walked away? It wasn’t like he really needed this job. He could leave these two assholes to whatever whack shit they were up to.

But what about Amy’s ring? An eighth carat diamond wasn’t big by anybody’s standards, but even that was more than he could afford on what the Navy paid E-2’s.

And he did want to give Amy the ring. Not that she would insist on it. She would marry him without any ring, he was sure of that. But he wanted to do it right. He had played it out fifty times in his head… He would be decked out in his dress blues, and crackerjacks were easily the sharpest uniform in the world. Dark blue tailored wool with crisp white piping and a tightly rolled neckerchief. Even a lowly Seaman Deuce with no ribbons or medals looked great in his jacks. He would go down on one knee, just like the romantic guys in the old movies. And then, the ring. Amy’s sea green eyes would go wide with surprise and then they would go bright with happy tears…

The engine of the van rumbled to life, jarring him back to reality. Mike’s voice came floating out of the darkened van. “Are you coming?”

Jay climbed into the rear of the van and pulled the door shut. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. He settled into the single seat rear seat and groped around in the darkness for his seat belt. The van smelled of strong soap and oiled metal. Maybe his alarm was wrong this time. He looked out the window as the van bounced over a pair of closely spaced speed bumps and rolled out of the parking lot into the night.

No one spoke. The minutes dragged on, the silence broken only by the rumble of the engine, the whine of the tires on the asphalt, and the occasional squeak of the suspension when the van ran over a bump or pothole.

They were giving him the silent treatment, but why? What had he done to piss them off? He hadn’t caused their buddy’s appendicitis attack. He hadn’t even asked to be assigned to their crew. Hell, he hadn’t done anything but offer honest work in exchange for honest pay. So, why were these guys pissed at him? Or were they pissed at him? Maybe they were just freaked out about their friend in the hospital. Maybe that was what his alarm was pinging on; they were stressed out about their buddy and it was fucking up their attitudes.

Jay leaned forward. “The Dispatcher says we’re doing the British Embassy tonight, is that right?”

Mike glanced over his shoulder for a half a second. “Yes.”

“What’s it like?” Jay asked. “I’ve never been in an embassy before. Is it all rich and fancy like the White House or something?”

“It is a building,” Mike said. “It has dirty carpets.”

“Yeah,” Jay said. “But I’ll bet it’s like a museum, huh? All kinds of famous paintings and statues… Ever see any famous people there? Like princes or movie stars?”

No one answered him.

They stopped at a red light, and a street lamp poured enough light in through the windows to reveal the back of the van. The three carpet shampooing machines he recognized, along with a dozen or so green plastic five gallon canisters: the famous WizardClean carpet cleaning formula.

The light changed and they accelerated through the intersection, leaving the street lamp behind and plunging the rear of the van into darkness again.

Jay sighed. “Alright,” he said. “I know you guys don’t want me here, but you’ve got to know I didn’t dream this shit up.”

Neither of the men replied, and neither of them even glanced back at Jay.

“The Dispatcher laid it out for me,” Jay said. “The company bills for three men. So they have to send three men, otherwise the customers complain. You guys were short a man. They were gonna send somebody, and I don’t have a regular crew yet. Luck of the draw.”

The men continued to ignore him.

Shit. These guys were whack jobs. Jay’s hand found its way to the cell phone in his right hip pocket. Maybe he should he call 911. But what would be report? He tried to imagined how the phone call would play out.

“9-1-1. Is this an emergency?”

“Yes. I’m stuck in a van with two rude assholes who give me the willies.”

“Sir, did you say ‘the willies?’”

“That’s right, the willies. The creeps. The fucking heebie-jeebies.”

“I see. Sir, other than the willies, are you injured or in immediate danger?”

“No, I’m not injured. I don’t know if I’m in danger. These guys are armed with deep-cleaning carpet shampooers and they’re not afraid to use them…”

Yeah. That would bring the cops running. Or the van from the cracker factory. It sounded crazy, even to him. Hell, it was crazy. But that didn’t stop his alarm from pinging like a pinball machine.

What in the name of god was it? What was his brain picking up on that he was missing? Some kind of funny vibe, he knew that much. But what? Were these guys stealing something? He looked around the darkened van and wondered what could be worth stealing. They couldn’t be smuggling, because they weren’t even leaving town.

Could it be something to do with the embassy? Were they planning to rip off the Brits? A famous painting or something? A statue? That didn’t sound right either. They’d never get out the door with anything bigger than a paperweight, the guards would make sure of that.

Jay shrugged, the gesture lost in the darkness. He had no idea what the Asshole Brothers were up to. He half-smiled the second the name appeared in his brain. Yeah. That was them. The Asshole Brothers.

He sighed. Relax… Forget about the Asshole Brothers. Think about something else…

Think about… Amy. Jay smiled in the darkness. Amy, of the sea green eyes and the quick laugh. Amy of the ticklish feet and the cute little heart-shaped butt. Amy, who shared his dreams and believed him when he said that he wouldn’t always be a poor broke Seaman Apprentice.

Amy was pregnant. He knew that. She hadn’t told him yet, and she wasn’t showing at all, but he knew. He could see it in her eyes. She wanted to be happy about the baby, but she wasn’t sure how Jay was going to take the news.

That was why the ring was so important. He needed to propose before Amy told him about the baby. That way, she would understand that he wanted to marry her because he was in love with her. Not because she was pregnant with his baby. He wanted her to know that it was a bond of love, not of obligation.

His smile grew wider in the darkness. What would the baby look like? Would she — Jay just knew it was a daughter — would she have Amy’s eyes? He hoped so.

The van swung suddenly off the road and up a short driveway to a tall chain link gate. Mike leaned out the window to punch buttons on a key pad. The gate clanged loudly and began to roll to one side.

Jay stared through the windshield over the shoulders of the Asshole Brothers.

What the hell? This wasn’t the British Embassy. This was one of those mini-storage places. He caught sight of a faded orange sign on the side of one of the storage buildings:

The van rolled through the gate as soon as the gap was wide enough.

Jay leaned forward. “What are we doing?”

The Asshole Brothers ignored him. The one who called himself Mike steered the van between two long storage buildings, identical rows of gray steel garage-style roll-up doors sliding past on both sides. The stretch of pavement between the buildings was a corridor of shadows, lit only dimly by a series of half-assed floodlights strung way too far apart to make any real dent in the darkness.

Jay raised his voice. “I said, what the fuck are we doing?”

Ralph said something softly in a language that Jay didn’t understand. Mike replied in the same language.

Mike looked over his shoulder and treated Jay to another of his bogus smiles, his teeth nearly glowing in the dimly lighted van. “It is a little detour. Nothing more.”

Jay felt his fists begin to clench. His alarm. He should have listened to his fucking alarm. “What kind of detour?”

No answer.

Jay snatched at the buckle release on his seatbelt, and got to his feet, hunching over under the ceiling of the van. “WHAT KIND OF FUCKING DETOUR?”

The van braked to a stop in front of one of the steel garage doors. Jay grabbed for his seat back and managed to keep himself from falling over.

The man called Mike shut off the engine and both of the Asshole Brothers were out of the van before Jay had recovered his footing. The nearest garage door began rolling upward immediately. The Asshole Brothers stood in front of the opening door, apparently paying no attention to Jay at all.

Whatever the hell this was, it had to be bad. He had to get out of there. He had to get out of there now. Something really fucked up was going down, and he was not going to stick around to be a part of it.

Jay pulled the door handle as gently as he could. Quiet! Quiet! If he could get the door open without their hearing him, he might be able to get a decent head start. Just let the bastards try to catch him once he got going. The lock clicked softly. He pulled a little harder and the door began to slide open. Just a little more… Just a little…

The door squealed, a slow-motion version of the same squeaky metallic grind it had made the first time he’d opened it. Shit! Oh shit! They’d heard it!

The one called Ralph trotted over, covering the few steps to the van before Jay was all the way out of the door. By the time Jay was on his feet, Ralph was close enough to touch him.

Ralph’s face was nearly invisible in the shadows. “I am sorry,” he said. “This is why we did not want you along.”

Jay took a half-step to the side, trying to give himself room to run if Ralph tried anything squirrelly. “What the hell is this?”

Ralph pointed into the van. “The soap.”

“What about the fucking soap?”

“The WizardClean soap. It is very expensive.” Ralph’s voice was much friendlier than it had been before.

“So?”

“We substitute cheaper soap when we clean the carpets. The customers do not know the difference.”

The door of the storage unit was fully open now. A man emerged, pushing a dolly loaded with green plastic WizardClean canisters.

Mike walked over and grinned in Jay’s direction. “You see? We sell the expensive soap and make extra money.”

Ralph nodded. “We did not want to share our profit, so we did not want you along.”

The third man rolled past Jay with his dolly-load of soap canisters. Then he was out of Jay’s line of sight. That sucked, but he couldn’t watch all three of the bastards at once.

“Now we will have to share with you,” Mike said. “You know our little secret, so you will get one third. Do we have an agreement?”

Jay nodded. “Okay.” He glanced sideways, trying to catch a glimpse of the third man. No such luck. “Sounds good to me,’ he said. “I can use a little extra money.”

Yeah, right. Soap. Let these assholes think he was buying into their bullshit. Whatever this weirdo crap was all about, it sure as hell wasn’t soap.

Jay tensed his muscles, getting ready to make his break the instant they took their eyes off him. His right hand stole toward the pocket where his cell phone was hidden.

He’d be screaming for the cops as soon as he had a decent head start.

An arm seized him around the throat, squeezing his windpipe in the crook of a muscular elbow, cutting off his air supply. The third man…

Jay tried to reach behind himself, to gouge an eye, grab a handful of hair, anything. Something slammed into his back, just above his right kidney, and the pain shot through him like a nauseating wave of fire. Again the fist jack hammered into his kidney, and again. His stomach heaved and his vision narrowed crazily, strange blobs of light and color floating behind his eyes as he fought for breath.

He felt himself being dragged. Then, someone grabbed his feet and hoisted him off the ground. He tried to lash out with his feet, kick the second attacker, but the pain and lack of oxygen were robbing him of strength.

“In here!” a voice snapped. And then the speaker switched to another language.

A few seconds later, someone barked another command in the strange foreign language and Jay’s feet dropped to the concrete floor of the mini-storage unit without warning. His left ankle twisted on impact, and another explosion of pain ripped through him as something in his foot broke with an audible crunch.

The man behind him was not letting up on his throat. He half stood, half dangled from the pressure of that merciless arm. His throat flooded with vomit, but the crushing arm allowed it no escape.

“Look at me!”

Jay jerked wildly, trying to shake loose of the arm. Just a sip of air. Just a sip…

Someone grabbed his hair and yanked his head back. “Look at me!”

His eyes focused for a second and he saw the man who called himself Mike. There was something in his hand. Something long and shiny.

“Consider yourself privileged,” Mike’s voice said. It came from a million miles away, and the sounds didn’t seem to match up to the movements of his lips.

“You are the first,” Mike said in his impossibly distant voice. “But you are not — the last.”

Mike’s arm shot forward, and an altogether new sort of pain erupted in Jay’s groin. A white hot laser of agony. Mike’s hand jerked roughly upward, and the pain flared in its wake, tearing through Jay’s stomach and up into his chest.

He began to fall toward the floor in a crazy slow-motion glide that seemed to have no respect for time or gravity. His hands rose to cover the unexplainable/impossible rip that had appeared in his body. He felt his intestines and organs slither between his groping fingers in a hot rush of coppery wetness.

His head hit the cement, nearly driving the last light from his brain.

The ring… Can’t forget Amy’s… ring…

And the alarm in his head was silent.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Trident Media Group about the possibility of hosting an excerpt from the new Larry Bond novel on my blog.

My reaction was fairly predictable.

Larry Bond? The Larry Bond?  Military strategist extraordinaire?  Inventor of the Harpoon strategy game used to train Surface Warfare Officers?  The man who collaborated with Tom Clancy on RED STORM RISING? That Larry Bond?

Um… Yes.  Yes, I would be interested.  Sign me up.  Now.  Immediately, if not sooner.

I’ve been a huge Larry Bond fan since 1989, when his novel RED PHOENIX kept me tearing through the pages to find out just how badly the shit could hit the fan if the conflict in Korea went hot again. I’ve been waiting for a follow-up novel for about twenty-five years, and it’s finally here!

Larry Bond and his coauthor, Chris Carlson, are back with RED PHOENIX BURNING. This time, the North Korean regime has imploded, and the resulting power vacuum can only lead to a throw down of epic proportions.

I can’t wait to read it. Which brings me to the Bad News / Good News part of this blog.

The Bad News is that the excerpt they sent me is short. Really short.  As in short enough to be kind of frustrating.

The Good News is that the nice people at Trident Media are going to give away copies of RED PHOENIX BURNING to five of my blog readers.

So, check out a little slice of the book, and then stick around for instructions on how to win.

UPDATE:  Thanks for all the great comments!  Our five winners have been selected.  (The rest of us will have to buy our own copies.)

They were getting close, perhaps two hundred meters from the hill, when Guk reported, “We’ve found a body. It’s Chinese.”

That brought him up short. The others with Rhee had heard the report as well, and he signed for them to remain in place. “Confirm Chinese,” Rhee transmitted.

Guk responded immediately. “Digital pattern fatigues, weapon is a suppressed QBZ-03.”

Chinese weapon, Chinese uniform. The pieces fell into place instantly. Pathfinders, sent to seize and hold a strategic chokepoint, like a bridge, were a tactic as old as war. And the others must be Kim faction troops guarding the bridge.

“Engage the Chinese,” Rhee ordered. “Self-defense only against the other side.”

Rhee had barely finished speaking before Ban’s rifle boomed. Even with a muzzle brake and a suppressor, it sounded like a thunderclap. Rhee kept the glasses to his face long enough to see what was likely a Chinese soldier fall, and brought his own weapon up to cover Ban as he hurriedly shifted position forward. Oh was firing as well.

It was another two bounds before they saw any return fire, coming from the Chinese positions. It struck close to Rhee, who was in front, but Ban’s rifle boomed again and Rhee heard Ban report, “Target down.” The Kim side of the firefight was silent, but Rhee could hear the fire from his men, and Guk reported, “Engaged, two down.”

They kept moving forward, up the hill slope, team members staying low and bringing a lethal crossfire down on anyone that shot back.

Finally, they were near the crest, and Rhee saw a dead Chinese soldier, one of Ban’s victims, given the size of the hole in his chest. He switched back and forth between the IR goggles and the night vision binoculars, looking for enemies. All the nearby heat sources belonged to his men or freshly dead Chinese.

Guk’s voice warned, “Coming in from your right,” and the lieutenant and Corporal Dae joined the other three.

What do you think? Pretty damned cool, huh?

All you’ve got to do to win is write a non-SPAM comment on this blog, telling us a little bit about your favorite Larry Bond novel. Or, if you’re new to his work, go ahead and say so.  (Every Larry Bond fan has got to start somewhere.)

The first five people to comment will receive a free copy of the book from Trident Media Group. The rest of us will have to pick it up when it hits the stands in two days.

So… I’m working away on Steel Wind Rising, happily tapping out a chapter about the nuclear fast attack submarine, USS Albany, when I come across a highlighted note-to-self in my story outline.  It’s the kind of prompt that I often leave for myself: a simple reminder that more research is needed before I can finish writing the chapter in question.  In this case, I need to alleviate (at least some of) my ignorance regarding radio antennas aboard Los Angeles class attack subs.

I know I’ll eventually have to make a phone call to someone who actually knows about submarine antennas, but I want to prepare for the conversation by reading up on the subject ahead of time. Basically, I’d like to ask good questions and avoid wasting the time of my expert.

I start with my usual stack of reference books: Combat Fleets of the World, Jane’s Fighting Ships, Jane’s Submarines, the submarine edition of Weapons of War, and even The Complete Idiots Guide to Submarines.  Despite the excellence of these resources, I learn very little of interest beyond the fact that the hardware I’m interested in is designated as the ‘AN/BRA-34 High Data Rate Antenna’.

And off to the interwebs I go. I type ‘AN/BRA-34’ into my search bar, and Google immediately does three things:

First, it actually provides some potentially useful links to web pages about submarine radio systems. Good.  That’s what I came here for.

Second, Google offers suggested revisions to my search terms, just in case I accidentally conjured up dumb old attack submarine antenna hardware when I was actually looking for some cute and sexy brassieres. Did I perhaps mean ‘BRA SIZES 34’?  Or maybe ‘BRA 34C’, ‘BRA 34 DDD’, or ‘BRA 34 DDDD’?  (I’m curious as to why the keyword algorithm skips over cup sizes A, B, D, and even DD.  It’s like anything beyond a C-cup requires at least three letters to be interesting.  But that’s another blog for another day.)

And third, Google AdWords floods my search sidebar with links and photos offering lingerie for sale. The ad contextualization software is so determined to put some kind of merchandize on my screen, that it burrows into the middle of alphanumeric military nomenclatures to find the only fragment it can hang an advertisement on.

I’m so put off by this intrusion of crass commercialism into my legitimate research that I only click on three of the bra advertisements. You know…  for purposes of accuracy and authenticity.

So far as I’ve been able to determine, none of the featured brassieres can access EHF SATCOM from periscope depth. I guess that means I’ve still got a phone call to make.

PS:  Steel Wind Rising is flowing quickly now.  A finished first draft is not very far in the future, if I can stop clicking on lingerie ads that is.

Lately I’ve been searching for the title of a particular book.  It’s a fish-out-of-water story about a family who moves from (I think) Manhattan to a small town in New England, where they struggle to acclimate to life away from the big city.  The style is humorous, with occasional moments of drama and poignancy.  I believe the title has something to do with crickets, but I could be wrong about that.

I read the book when I was about 16, and I’ve wanted to re-read it for a while now.  The problem is that I can’t find the damned thing.  I have no idea who the author might be, and my attempts to conjure up the title via Google have been pathetic.  (Try Googling various combinations of book+Manhattan+New England+humor+crickets.  You’ll get plenty of search results, but none of them have anything to do with the book I’m struggling to identify.)

On a whim, I just tried the same keywords on Bing, with no better results.  Although Bing did come up with an entertaining Huffington Post article about students who got caught releasing hundreds of crickets in the halls of their Pennsylvania high school.  A nice five minute diversion, but it got me no closer to my goal.

It’s not Google’s fault, or even Bing’s fault that I can’t find the book.  It’s my fault for typing in crappy keywords.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anything better to offer.  Those are the best clues I’ve been able to come up with.

Until about a year ago, I had a better search engine for half-forgotten books.  One that could summon up titles and author names from the most tenuous of hints.  One that knew how to ask intelligent questions to help me zero in on my literary quarry.

It was my mom.

One phone call to my female parental unit could solve nearly any book-related puzzle.

“Hey Mom, remember the paperback you loaned me, about the convent that inherits an abandoned house from a mobster?”

“Let’s see…  That would be The Nun in the Closet, by Dorothy Gilman.”

Or…

“Mom, what was the title of that book about the two Renaissance-era ghosts who pretend to be actors, and play themselves in a biographical movie about their own (past) lives?”

“Hmmm…  I think that’s The Far Traveller, by Manning Coles.  Or maybe it was Coles Manning.  One or the other…  Either Coles Manning, or Manning Coles.”

I can’t count the number of times I called Mom to ask a question about a particular book, and she nearly always had the answer.  That woman knew books.  Her memory was a bit iffy on subjects like basic cooking, phone numbers, and where she parked her car.  But ask a question about fiction, and she was a superstar.  She could remember author names, story lines, titles, and all the fiddling little plot twists that most of us forget.  She was a walking card catalog.  (If you don’t know what that means, go look it up.)

Mom and I were light years apart on politics, childrearing, and a hundred other topics.  But we were in sync when it came to books.  She didn’t just love them.  She was obsessed by them.  And she managed to pass that lifelong obsession on to me.  We could both talk for about books for hours, and we frequently did.

I loved the literary search engine hidden inside of my mother’s head.  It was always there when I wanted it, just a phone call away, and most of those of those calls led to delightfully rambling conversations about reading, writing, and the nature of storytelling.

But all of that is gone now.  Or rather, my mom is gone, and that wonderful library of memories is gone with her.

Even now, a year after her passing, I find myself forgetting that the number stored in my phone’s speed dialer doesn’t belong to her anymore.  If I hit the call key, the person who answers won’t know anything at all about the pirate adventure story I read in eighth grade.  The new owner of Mom’s phone number won’t remember the book about the fish-out-of-water family that moves to New England.

So I make do with Google as best I can, even when I don’t remember enough about an old book to summon up a decent set of search terms.  And I try very hard not to think about the incredible resource that’s suddenly missing from my life.

It’s official!  The Kickstarter is now live, and the Fountain War Book project is a go!

The rumors are true.  I’ve been invited to write a military science fiction novel based on the computer game EVE Online.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about this.

EVE is a fully-realized virtual universe…  Nearly 8,000 unique star systems, swarming with asteroid belts, mining ships, research facilities, industrial complexes, pirates, and starships armed to the teeth.  Imagine sweeping stellar empires, backstabbing politics, enormous fleets of warships, and battles of massive proportion.

Someone recently referred to EVE as “the largest collaborative work of science fiction in existence.”  I’ve played the game, and I’ve seen what goes on there.  That statement is not an exaggeration.

Below is the first sample piece I wrote for the project.  If you like what you see, drop by our Kickstarter page.

It’s going to be amazing!

It was coming apart now.  All of it…  The plan…  The months of careful preparation…  The whole fucking thing…

Captain Darius Yaaah lowered his body into the pod, feeling the warmth of the semi-liquid amniotic gel enfold his limbs and torso. He gave a final encouraging nod to his bridge crew as the door of the armored capsule swung down to enclose him.

The interior of the pod was dark, but there was no need for lighting here. He wouldn’t be using his eyes to see.

With a series of muffled whines, the manipulator arms of the pod brought the slender interface cables into position, aligning platinum connector ends with matching jacks at the supraclavicular nerve bundle and five other key points in his cervical and thoracic spine.

Nano-fine connections mated, and the familiar ice water sensation rushed through Yaaah’s arms and legs as the mainframe’s neural interfaces synchronized with his central nervous system. The HUD projection unfolded itself in his brain, an ever-changing latticework of tactical symbols, tattletales, and sensor feeds, flickering and shifting in the blood-lit darkness behind his eyelids.  Targeting data, engineering data, weapons statuses, crew reports, available power levels, heat loading, and a thousand other details.

This was usually the part he liked best—feeling two and a half million metric tons of Caldari Leviathan come alive—the enormous warship merging with his mind and his nerve endings—ready to jump the void between stars, or blaze into battle at the merest twitch of his whim.

That long-held pleasure was absent today. Soured by the knowledge that the whole situation was about to go to hell.

When it came (when the shit started to fly), even the massive armor and weaponry of his ship would not be enough to save him.

On the HUD, he could see last-second maneuvers as the fleet prepared for transition to hyperspace. Over fifty capital ships and supercaps, jockeying for position within the formation before jumping out of this star system to the midpoint cyno.

This was supposed to be a combat Op. The Imperium’s fleet sallying forth to rain havoc and destruction in some stellar system owned by the TEST Alliance.

But Yaaah knew that the mission brief was a sham. This entire fleet operation was a giant fucking trap, designed to lure a single ship to an ambush in the deep and trackless gulf of interstellar space.

The target was Yaaah himself. His ship too, but mostly Yaaah.

When the fleet came out of jump at the midpoint, every vessel in the formation would turn on him. More than fifty Dreadnoughts, Titans, Carriers, and Super-Carriers—all coming after his single Titan.  Incalculable destructive power, focused on removing Yaaah and his ship from existence.

They knew.  He had no idea how they’d found out, but after all of his caution and subterfuge, they had finally penetrated his cover.  The bastards knew…

The Imperium’s intelligence branch had identified him for what he was: an infiltrator and a spy for Pandemic Legion.

Now it was time for the Imperium to plug their security leak. Eliminate the traitor in their midsts.

Yaaah had played the game well, but it was nearly over. He had, at best, a few moves left to make.

On the HUD he called up a window showing the bridge of his ship. His crew was practically vibrating with pre-combat jitters.  Their faces wearing that strangely tense half-smile that signals the human body’s internal preparation for anticipated danger.  Limbic systems ramping up for the coming fight with heady cocktails of dopamine, cortisol, and adrenalin.

His crew was expecting a battle, and they were going to get one. Just not the kind of battle they had in mind…

I re-watched Sleepless in Seattle a few weeks ago.  I was flying home to Georgia to visit my family, and it was one of the complementary selections on the in-flight entertainment system.  (The choices were Annie, Frozen, a straight-to-video Tinkerbelle flick, or Sleepless.  I chose Sleepless.)

I enjoyed the movie—as I enjoy all Nora Ephron films—but about halfway through, I noticed something I’d never picked up on before.  Whenever Annie (Meg Ryan) needed to park, there were always four car lengths of open curb in exactly the right place.

No need for parallel parking.  No backing and filling.  No circling the block and hoping for someone to vacate a spot.  Always an empty parking space precisely where and when she needed one, and always four car lengths long.  Enough room for Annie/Meg to zip right in on the first pass.  No muss, no fuss.

It was a simple bit of movie magic, and one that made perfect sense for that genre of film.  In the context of a romantic comedy, the ever-ready parking slots were both expedient and completely understandable.  When you have less than two hours to create and resolve the complications of a human relationship, you don’t want to waste precious minutes of screen time having Meg Ryan search for a place to park.

I get that.  If I had directed the movie, I’m sure I would have solved the problem the same way that Nora Ephron did—by leaving four car lengths of open curb at the end of every driving scene.

But I’m not in the business of writing and directing romantic comedies.  I write techno thrillers.  In my genre, the goal is not to simplify the world.  As I see it, the goal is to show the world in all of its gloriously messy complexity.  Military hardware and tactics?  Complicated.  The international balance of power?  Damned complicated.  Global Geopolitics?  Unbelievably complicated.  The frailties, ambitions, and prejudices of flawed human leaders? Insanely fucking complicated.

Given the kind of books I write, it only makes sense that at least some of those complexities should be reflected in the stories I create.  Anything less would amount to spoon-feeding my readers, which would be an insult to their intelligence, not to mention a complete waste of my time.

I suspect that most readers of techno thriller fiction would agree with me on that point.  So you might be surprised to learn that the mainstream publishing industry does not agree with me at all.  It turns out that acquisitions editors for the major houses don’t want any of that nasty complex stuff in the novels they publish.  At least not in my experience.

Over the past ten years, I’ve been asked variations of the same question from editors representing nearly every major house.

Is there any way to sort of “streamline” the political arc of this book?

Do you think the readers will be able to follow all of that technical information?

Aren’t all these subplots a bit confusing?

Couldn’t we get to the meat of the story quicker if we left out the historical underpinnings?

What do you think about drawing your protagonist and antagonist in sharper contrast?

Every one of those editors was doing his/her best to communicate through wink-wink-nudge-nudge circumlocution.  Trying to ask the real question without ever having to speak the actual words.

The real question is this…

Can you please dumb this book down?  You’re completely overestimating the intelligence of the book-buying public.

My answer to this carefully-avoided query has always been the same.  No.  Not at all.  Not ever.

If an editor wants to talk to me about pacing, I’m all ears.  Character motivation?  Lay it on me.  Dialogue?  Description?  Theme?  Readability?  Language?  Absolutely!  Any of those. All of those.  Whip out that blue pencil and let’s edit the hell out of this thing.  I’m willing to rewrite.  I’m willing to polish.  I’m willing to rip out twenty-five chapters and rework the whole damned thing.

As long as the goal is to weave a tighter, better, and more meaningful story.  But if the intent is to dumb the book down, on the (false) assumption that readers are idiots, my answer is not just no.  It’s hell no.

I happen to believe that the world we live in is complex, chaotic, and utterly fascinating.  The politics are not cut-and-dried.  No real person has the purity of good or evil depicted in cartoon heroes and villains.  Sometimes cultural conflicts fester for decades (or even centuries) without reaching any kind of lasting resolution.  And we can’t expect every detail to be tied up in a neat bundle by the time the end credits roll.

I also happen to believe that readers are smart enough to understand all of those things.  That they can sift through the chaff to find the kernels of wheat.  That they enjoy a story that isn’t written for the lowest common denominator.

And when they come to the end of the book’s journey, they don’t expect to automatically find four car lengths of open parking at the curb.

For most of my life, I’ve been judging Herman Wouk’s authorial Kung Fu on the basis of his 1952 novel, The Caine Mutiny.  That always seemed like a pretty good yardstick to me.  It was the only one of his books to win the Pulitzer Prize, so it must (logically) be the high water mark of his writing.

I was so confident in this assumption that I never bothered to read anything else written by the man.  Instead, I contented myself with re-reading The Caine Mutiny every ten years or so—reliving the tribulations of the spoiled and callow young naval officer, Willie Keith, and the spectacularly-flawed Captain Philip Francis Queeg.

If you’ve never read the book, you should.  It takes a hard look at the complexities of military politics and the pressures of wartime leadership, then goes on to examine the razor-thin boundaries that separate privilege-of-rank from abuse-of-power, personal interpretation from simple deception, and reasonable caution from outright cowardice.  It also happens to be a rollicking good sea story, with enough saltwater action and human drama to keep an old Sailor like me flipping pages long into the night.  (The movie is great, by the way.  Humphrey Bogart gives a masterful performance as Queeg, and Fred MacMurray is wonderfully despicable as Lieutenant Keefer.  But—as fine as it is—the film is no substitute for the book.)

I’ve always regarded The Caine Mutiny as one of the best novels ever written about the U.S. Navy, so I spent something like three and a half decades avoiding Mr. Wouk’s later work.  I knew instinctively that his other books would only disappoint me.  He couldn’t possibly equal the power, tension, and insight of that one book.  No writer is that much of a badass.

Do you know what’s worse than being stupidly and stubbornly wrong?  Taking thirty-something years to figure out that you’ve been stupidly and stubbornly wrong.  Because it turns out that Herman Wouk really is that much of a badass.  His authorial Kung Fu is far greater than I ever imagined.  After ignoring his subsequent books since the Carter Administration, I recently decided to take a chance on The Winds of War.

That book is not just good; it’s fucking brilliant.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s better than The Caine Mutiny.  Don’t ask me how such a thing is possible, because I don’t know.  What I do know is that War and Remembrance is next in my reading stack.

Maybe it’ll be as good as The Winds of War.  Maybe not.  At this point, I don’t even care.  Mr. Wouk—who celebrates his 100th birthday this month—has given us two astoundingly good novels about the United States Navy.  It’s probably too much to hope that he managed to make lightning strike a third time, but I’m damned well not waiting thirty years to find out.

Happy Birthday, Mr. W.  You sir, are a Mark-1 Mod-0 Badass.  I bow three times in the direction of your writing desk.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my first experience with writing military fiction was also my first experience with plagiarism.  I was seven years old, and my family had just moved from Marietta, Georgia to the nearby town of Austell.  Our new house was only a dozen or so miles from our old apartment, but the distance was enough to put me in a different school district.

Before our change of address, I wasn’t even aware that other schools existed.  Park Street Elementary in Marietta wasn’t just my school.  It was the school.  The only one I’d ever seen.  How could I possibly go to school anywhere else?

But it turned out that there were other schools in the universe.  I discovered this when I found myself sitting at an unfamiliar desk, listening to an unfamiliar teacher, in a classroom full of complete strangers, in a preposterously round school building called Richard B. Russell Elementary.  (My mom said my new school looked like a donut.  My dad called it the circus tent.  I preferred to think of it as Hell.)

A few months later, I would learn that there are worst things in life than changing schools in the middle of the year, but if you had told me that back then, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Except for my brother who was two grades ahead of me and avoiding me like the plague, I didn’t know a single person in that school.  No friends in the classroom.  No familiar faces in the lunch line.  No one to pal around with at recess.  No seat buddy on the school bus.  Even the textbooks and assignment sheets were strange and alien to me.

So when my new teacher announced that she would be holding a story writing contest, she had my attention immediately.  As she laid out the rules, I began to smile.  The stories would be submitted anonymously, and the class would vote to select the best one.  (Good…  Good…)  Illustrations would be permitted.  (Even better, as I considered myself something of an artist.)  And the grand prize was to be an ice cream cake, which the winner could take home to his or her family.

I nearly stood up and cheered when the teacher revealed this last part.  This was my chance!  It was the perfect setup!  I would write a dazzlingly brilliant story, brought to eye-popping life by my full-color art work.  My classmates would not even realize that they were acknowledging the glory and talent of the new kid when they selected my entry as the obvious winner.  And then, when I was basking in their collective adoration, I would have an announcement of my own.  Ice cream cake for everyone!  The frozen delight would not be going home with me on the bus.  I would be sharing it with my fellow students.

No longer would I be the new kid.  I would be the story master.  The artist.  The provider of icy confections.  All would love and admire me.  And best of all, I already had the ideal story in mind.

My favorite song back then was Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, by the Royal Guardsmen.  If you’ve never heard it, you can take my word; that was a pretty cool song.  In addition to having a catchy tune, it told the story of a beagle who takes to the skies atop his dog house, to duel with the infamous World War I flying ace, Manfred von Richthofen.

To my seven year old mind, that song had everything a story could possibly need.  It had a flawless balance of military action and humor.  It had history.  It had a life-and-death struggle against superior odds.  It had blazing machine guns, and a flying freaking dog.  With that much literary goodness going for me, how could I possibly lose?

I sharpened my number two pencil and got to work.  After a bit of deliberation, I decided to change the title.  I was certain that none of the other kids in the class were cool enough to listen to the Royal Guardsmen, but there was a slim chance that one of them had heard the song in passing.  To be on the safe side, I changed Snoopy to Spot.  This was, I judged, a sufficient injection of originality.  For the rest of the story, I could rely on the actual contents of the song, along with a couple of illustrations depicting my visual interpretations of aerial combat between a murderous flying ace and a cute cartoon dog.

I paraphrased the plot line of the song.  “A long time ago, after the turn of the century, in the cloudless blue skies above Germany…”

When it came time to extol von Richthofen’s impressive record of kills, I quoted the lyrics verbatim.  “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more.  The Bloody Red Baron was rolling out the score.  Eighty men died trying to end that stree of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany.”*

*The word “spree” was not part of my vocabulary at age seven, and I assumed that I would learn all about the mysterious term “stree” at some point during the second grade.  Or possibly the third.

With such a powerful source to draw from, my story was finished in no time.  Away went the number two pencil, and out came the felt-tipped markers.  I was determined to make the art work every bit the equal of the literary tour de force I had just penned.  And so I did.

My first drawing depicted the deadly Baron in the cockpit of a bright red delta-winged fighter jet.  (I apparently didn’t have a good handle on the state of the art for World War I aircraft in those days.)  Streaking from the Baron’s jet toward some hapless Allied aircraft were at least thirty missiles, each trailing black curly smoke and long tails of orange fire.  The Allied plane—not nearly as badass as the Baron’s delta-wing—was already pockmarked with black dots that represented bullet holes.  The pilot was clearly done for.

My second drawing showed Snoopy…  I mean Spot…  astride his dog house, flying straight toward a head-on collision with the Red Baron’s jet.  Guided missiles and machinegun bullets (represented by dashed lines) screamed across the page in both directions.  It was a snapshot in time, captured a mere fraction of a second before all of those lethal projectiles struck home.  Chaos and disaster just one heartbeat away.

The finished product exceeded my wildest expectations.  Looking over my story and drawings, I knew instantly that I was going to win.  No one could possibly compete with the lurid high-octane excitement of Spot vs. the Red Baron.

I left my name off the pages, as instructed, and carried my masterpiece to the teacher’s desk where I laid it face down.  (Also as instructed.)

Then I had to sit at my desk and wait, while all of the slower kids in class struggled to complete their doomed entries in my contest.  I passed the time by mentally practicing my acceptance speech, and imagining the taste of ice cream cake garnished with victory.

At last, the final story was turned in.  The teacher shuffled through the pile, pulled out a story at random, and read it to the class, holding up the attached drawings for examination by her students.  I didn’t think much of the story or the illustrations.  They were adequate, I supposed, but definitely not in the same caliber as my work.

Teacher read another story, and another, and then another.  I sat waiting for mine.  And waiting.

She finished off a lame tale about a purple horse who could turn invisible, and then proclaimed the voting period open.

I was stunned.  What about Spot vs. the Red Baron?  Had she overlooked my story?  Was such a thing even possible?

My hand shot up.  The teacher ignored me.

I waved my raised arm from side to side, in the time-honored gesture used to capture the notice of inattentive pedagogues.  The teacher made eye contact with me, gave her head a single shake, and proceeded with the mechanics of soliciting votes for the contest.

This was appalling!  I was being cut out of the contest!  Denied my rightful chance at victory!  But no matter how long I kept my hand in the air, it was clear that the teacher was not going to call on me.

Finally, the prize was awarded.  I think it went to the purple horse story.  I honestly don’t remember.

I lowered my unacknowledged hand in defeat, and sat through the rest of the school day in disbelieving silence.  My master plan was in tatters, and I didn’t even know where I had gone wrong.

When the final bell of the day rang, I joined the scrum of kids shuffling toward the exit.  The teacher intercepted me at the door, and handed back my story.

She had circled the word “stree” in red ink, along with an annotation to check my spelling.  In the margin was a note which read, “Nice drawings and good penmanship.  Look up the word ‘Plagiarism’ when you get home.

I did look up the word, and then I understood why my story had been disqualified.  It had never occurred to me that stories and even choices of phrase might actually belong to the people who created them.  I took that lesson to heart, and I’ve spent my life as a writer trying to avoid making that same mistake again.

And—to this day—I don’t know what ice cream cake tastes like.

A few years ago, a retired literary agent and long-time friend of mine made a rather interesting comment about my naval warfare books.  He remarked that I was rapidly becoming the first military techno-thriller author in history to build a successful career out of writing anti-war novels.  Before I could respond, he went on to compliment me for weaving the anti-war message into my stories so subtly that no one had ever caught me in the act.

I honestly didn’t know how to respond.  I’ll admit that I’ve explored certain themes in my writing.  For instance, Sea of Shadows explores what might happen if an unprepared president takes military advice from his political cronies, while ignoring the counsel of the people who are actually qualified to guide him.  The book also examines the dangers of becoming a slave to established doctrine in situations where it clearly doesn’t apply.

In my opinion, both of those concepts are worthy of discussion in real life, and they happen to double nicely as complicating factors in the story.  But I wouldn’t consider them messages.  In fact, I don’t consider them messages.  I’ve never intentionally set out to imbed messages in my stories.  I write thriller novels.  My job is to entertain readers.  Period.  Not to educate them.  Not to influence their opinions.  Not even to broaden their horizons.  If I can keep readers turning the pages and smiling, I’ve accomplished my entire mission.

So I was surprised (and frankly a bit upset) when this wise and trusted literary guru congratulated me for the clever subversiveness of my anti-war message.  I asked him to explain.  He did…

“You’re writing combat action thrillers,” he said, “but your stories are never about crushing the enemy.  In your books, the U.S. military units fight until their objectives are satisfied, and then stop.  The Soldiers and Sailors don’t wave the banners of victory and proclaim American supremacy.  They do their jobs as quickly as possible, and then they go home.  No fanfare.  No parades.  No grandstanding about the glory of war, or moralizing about how the bad guys had it coming.”

Listening to my friend speak, I started to get a glimmer of where he was coming from.  Most of what he was saying was true, but I don’t think any of that qualifies as a secret message.  It’s more like my basic view of military action, formed over many years of life in uniform.

War sucks.  So does open heart surgery, and so does chemotherapy.  Military intervention is never a good answer.  But sometimes—for all of the attendant horror and suffering—it ends up being the best of all the bad options available.  When that happens, like cardiac surgery or chemo, your best course of action is to get it over with as skillfully and quickly as you possibly can.

If you know anything at all about me, you’ve probably realized that I spend a lot of time talking about the nature of heroism.  I keep coming back to this topic because I think it’s vitally important.  Our very way of life depends upon people who are willing to face risk and bear the sacrifices required to keep our nation safe.

I recently came across a book that explores heroism from an angle which is too often overlooked.  Heart of a Military Woman by Sheryl L. Roush and Eldonna Lewis Fernandez is a collection of stories, poems, musings, and sayings, by and about military women.  Sometimes funny, sometimes profound, and sometimes heart wrenching, these are the thoughts and experiences of our women in uniform.

Sheryl Roush has kindly agreed to let me reprint one of the stories here…

The Price to Pay

I am a mother, wife, nurse, and an Army Master Sergeant.  In February 2003, as a Reservist, I was mobilized to serve my country when my daughter was only three years old.  If I had to think of the hardest event in my life, it would have to be the day I left.  The front page of the Dallas Morning News said it all in a picture.  It showed my daughter being ripped from my arms as I boarded the bus to leave.  I have a love for my country and if everyone said, “Military life is not for me,” there would be no one to keep us safe at home.  That heartache you never really get over it – and your child never forgets it.

It became a way of life for my daughter to have her mother leave.  At age five, In December 2004, I was mobilized again.  The sadness I felt was relived all over again.  This time my daughter was more understanding.  In her Kindergarten class she would say, “My mom is serving her country so we can live here free.”  I do not know if she truly understood what she was saying, because it was so far beyond her years.  But living the life as a military child teaches our children values others never really achieve.

I trained soldier medics, who were on their way to Iraq, the skills they must possess to stay alive and help others who were in need of medical help on the battlefield.  The pride I felt – and still feel – to get an email back saying lives were saved from what I taught is beyond words. 

As a woman and mother of three, I have a fear after 15 years of serving my country, I will get that call again.  But it is a price I must pay to make sure my children will have a safe place in which to grow old.

—Angela Perez, Master Sergeant, USAR

I don’t know about you, but that short little piece speaks to me as a parent, as an old ex-warrior, and as an American.

Valentine’s Day is nearly here, and I’m willing to bet that three-quarters of the gifts exchanged in this country will fall into the same tired categories.  (Chocolates, flowers, jewelry…)  Do something different this year.  Share this book with the person who shares your heart.

Before you know it, the last of the sweets will be gone and the roses will all have wilted, but these stories of love and heroism will remain in your minds and hearts.  Click here to order your copy.  You won’t find a more lasting gift than that.