The Smithtown Unit is Now Out

I’m delighted to announce that my authorial debut at Sea Lion Press, The Smithtown Unit, is now out on Amazon.

It’s a short action-adventure[1] novella set in an alternate world where, among other things, the USSR still exists, there’s a “Republic of Oran” in North Africa, and (most importantly), weapons and vehicles that were only concepts/prototypes or limited in actual history end up being used en masse here.

[1]The biggest direct inspirations were the MIA Hunter and Cody’s Army series, although the intro is more based on the classic vigilante novels.

Thriller Character Names

Cheap thriller protagonists can have very “action-hero” names. Perhaps the most archetypal are Mack Bolan and Jack Reacher. Sometimes they can become ridiculously exaggerated, like “Dusky MacMorgan“. In the “middle” are these.

• Mark Stone (MIA Hunter)
• Luke Stone (Luke Stone)
• Blake Murdock (SEAL Team Seven)
• John Cody (Cody’s Army)
• John Rourke (Survivalist)
• David Saxon (Marine Force One)

But of all of these, my favorite character name has to be author Jon Land’s Blaine McCracken.

Where I’d Set a WW3 Story

If I wrote a conventional WWIII story, it’d probably be in…. Southern Europe. In a comment on a post depicting said theater in the WWIII 1987 TL, I described it as “an uncomfortable sideshow in rough terrain”, similar to the Italian front in World War II.

It’s not in spite of but because of this that the setting appeals to me.

• It’s different and I like less-traveled locations.
• It means I can slow the battles down, thanks to the terrain and the lower-tier forces. The CentFront is a little too er, fast. Not to mention deadly.

 

Fuldapocalypse Snippet Reviews

I decided that the best way to square the circle between “I want people to know about this obscure book” and “This book doesn’t seem like the type that can sustain a long review” is to just make the individual reviews shorter and bundle them in a “snippet review” collection.

The first such installment of reviews on Fuldapocalypse is here.

My Writing Influences

So, two of my biggest nonfiction writing influences are two contradictory people. The first is Shamus Young, a video game critic. I like his stepped-back style with a touch of wit that can really dive deep into literary analysis (particularly his longform analyses of Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto V).

The second is classic Bill Simmons, the sports commentator. I said “classic” [2000s] Simmons because he became a victim of his own success. But the sort of irreverent, “talks like a real fan attitude” in his early columns and The Book Of Basketball I read and loved growing up has also rubbed off on me.

Trying to balance the two influences can be tough. I can remember some Fuldapocalypse reviews where I was trying to be literary and analytical, and others where my mind was snarky and over-the-top. But they’re there, for better or worse.

Writing And Blogging

So, blogging has served me very, very well. Especially my Fuldapocalypse book review blog. However, I’ve noticed my reviews on there have been getting shorter and more off-the-cuff.

For the circumstances they were written in, they worked very well, and I’m proud of them. I got to broaden not only my own horizons, but also (hopefully) to share obscure books with my readers. If the convenient situation is “just read a soft ‘51%’ book, then give quick thoughts on it”, it works well.

But now-not so much.

First, I’m going back to long-form writing. I need (and it won’t be the easiest) to get in the mindset of writing 2,000 word or more chapters and not 200-500 word posts. Shifting from “sprinting” to “distance running” is tricky, and going back to the quick and easy posts may be a bad habit in that context.

Second, I’ve had this weird “mediocrity addiction” recently, where I read the first installments of a series, find them to be merely all right at best, then go to the later ones. Meanwhile, I read first installments that I significantly enjoy, and then, somehow, don’t follow up on them. My internal justification is “my brain is too busy to appreciate good fiction, so I might as well go for the outright mush”. That’s kind of self-defeating.

Third, I’ve been in a patch where I don’t have the most to say about my review subjects, and I’m sure the second part has something to do with it-what can you really say about “eh, it was all right I suppose?”

So expect less review blogging. I won’t stop it completely, but I do intend to slow it down, especially once I burn through my pile of “mostly finished” reviews. I’m nervous about going fully into writing long fiction, but I’m also excited, because there’s so much in my mind I want to get out.

Boom Boom Goes The Tank: Plotnukes

In my latest Sea Lion Press column, I finally have the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite technothriller pet peeves-“Plotnukes”.

Plotnukes are a kind of “I know it when I see it” term for the use of nuclear weapons in a highly contrived way. The Birmingham-for-Minsk “trade” in Hackett’s The Third World War and similar events in imitators is what I consider the poster child of such a thing.

The Forward Detachment Protagonist

The “Forward Detachment” seems effective as both a tactical formation and a storytelling one. The Soviets (understandably) formalized it to a greater extent, but the basic concept has been used in any army with a fast-moving component. In oversimplified terms, it’s a task force (often a reinforced battalion) used for racing ahead of the main body and seizing/destroying something to aid its advance.

And I think a unit like it is an ideal place to put a protagonist (or antagonist, if the goal is to stop the forward detachment). At least in theory, it solves a lot of issues. It’s small enough that the component characters can be developed without fading in, but is big enough to have a large conventional battle. It can be dramatic and have a clear MacGuffin/goal without sacrificing too much in terms of plausibility.

 

My Book Backlog is Done!

So, every book on my big backlog I’ve read or at least sampled and then put aside to read later. Some of them made it to Fuldapocalypse or are in the review ‘stack’, others did not and will not.

Perhaps the most famous entry is Heinlein’s original Starship Troopers. The most charitable things I can say about it are that it probably aged poorly and that I understand how it can scratch a “he gets it” itch for veterans because of its realistic depiction of boot camp drudgery. Otherwise, I didn’t like it. It has this overly “bouncy” and somewhat rambling writing style that I found to knock down both the boot-camp-coming-of-age main plot and the modest amount of actual action.

My military sci-fi itch is pretty much subsided-of the four remaining books, three were military sci-fi. I did find Jonathan Brazee’s works good for my current ‘cheap thriller’ tastes and will be checking out more of them, but I think it best to put the remaining “guy in armored space suit” books on the back burner until the genre fatigue wears off. Those made up the bulk of my holiday purchases, so returning to the delightfully technothrillery Thunder of Erebus was a good ‘grand finale’.

Going forward, I have two general priorities. One is slightly more highbrow works of fiction-I love cheap thrillers, but think going a little higher would be helpful. I definitely plan on reading and reviewing the classic Forever War, for one example. The other priority is tanks, because while some of the books had tanks in them, none were really in a starring role. So I’m planning on reading more tank books (and yes, that includes sci-fi tank books).

This whole experience was fun, and I hope to encounter more literary gems.

My Creative 2018

I had a good 2018, all things considered. Were there bad parts in it? Of course. But on the whole, and especially in my creative endeavors, I had a good 2018. And I’m not just talking about the two Command LIVE scenarios I made or Paint The Force Red.

I’ve said it before, but starting up Fuldapocalypse was amazing and one of the best things I’ve done all year. First, I’ve had a lot of fun writing some of the reviews. Second, it’s been a huge eye-opener and horizon-broadening device for me. I was expecting to get variations on Hackett/Clancy/Bond, but the path took me to outright science fiction and more. I’ve had to throw aside the preconceptions and stereotypes of my past “Iceland Scale” and rework my entire review setup because of it. It’s fun.

But I’d argue a better part of Fuldapocalypse is getting me to write positive reviews. I have an instinct to be critical even of things I like. Peters’ Red Army remains my single favorite World War III story, yet I was prepared to write several paragraphs about its weaknesses and only one or two about its strengths. I’ve found that blog has helped me a lot. It’s also helped me become more selective-if it’s not review-worthy or if I’d just repeat myself for better or worse, I generally don’t review it.

Because of Fuldapocalypse, I now know how broad the “cheap thriller” genre is, and how much broader the military action subgenre is than I thought. I’m not complaining. And I think I’ve approached even works I still am highly critical of better.

So in creative terms, I had a pretty good 2018.