The Veil War

I have come up with a scheme to combine alternate history, the civil war, steampunk, planetary romance novels and the singularity in one cohesive whole.

There will be aerial ironclads. A global war. Victorian spaceships. (Well, Late Victorian shading into Edwardian Spaceships.) Venusian jungles, the Dying World of Mars and the mysteries of the Jovian Moons. North Polar Adepts. The Ten Thousand Worlds of the Martian Old Ones. And one small boy.

You may applaud.

Fabulous feedback on the last post, thank you all.

In response to Ian and Allison, especially – my thought about Kickstarter was not that it would replace all the hard work and relentless progress you discuss (and exemplify) – but rather purely as an adjunct to it. As an additional means of advertising, rather than purely a means of making money off my writing directly. Between the hundreds of readers here on this site, plus facebook, twitter, boards, etc – it was my thought that I could, potentially, gain enough traction on a modest kickstarter campaign to achieve some success.

Also, looking at successful (and unsuccessful) kickstarter campaigns – it seems that Tobias Buckell has the right of it:

I think there are three things that make for a Kickstarter success:

1) An intriguing product

2) Created by an entity that has proven it can deliver it

3) Created by an entity that has a following (or publicity reach)

Any two of those create an atmosphere where I think success is more likely. Hit all three, you’re likely to see something interesting.

To which I would add that being able to create a compelling kickstarter campaign is a necessary fourth thing. A lot of the less successful campaigns have decidedly non-compelling awards. I would argue that I have #1 and as soon as I finish the novel, #2. I certainly do not have an internet-scale following, but it’s not exactly zero, either.

As for the campaign itself, here’s what I tentatively imagined as a Veil War kickstarter project:

$5 Mention in the credits (included in all bigger awards)

$10 eBook (included in all bigger rewards)

$25 Trade paperback

$35 Signed trade paper

$50 Limited edition signed hardcover

$75 Artwork – nicely matted and so on

$100 Red Shirt – you will be named, and then killed

$150 Red Shirt + Signed Hardcover + Artwork

$200 Minor Character – you appear, as yourself, in the story.

$250 Minor Character + Signed Hardcover + Artwork

$500 Bonus Story – 2000+ word story, all for yourself to do with as you choose

$750 Supremely grisly and/or heroic death

$1000 Super double-plus mega pack – all smaller rewards in one awesome package deal

I’d also thought that perhaps some other things could be worked in:

• various types of merch, the sort that is easily created on CafePress or similar sites and based on the artwork.
• access to background information and projected storylines.
• meet with the author personally or via internets

Don’t want to overload it, really – but it seems that there are a fair number of people who like being patrons, and will actually pull the trigger on the larger awards. The big question of course is whether any of those people read the Veil War.

My thinking is that if it works, fantastic! I get money, additional publicity, feedback, and a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart-cockles. After it’s over, I go on and put the book up for sale on Amazon and proceed as normal. If it doesn’t work, so what? I finish the editing and so on and put the book up for sale on Amazon anyway. It seems perfectly complementary, and wouldn’t in anyway interfere with what I would be doing regardless, and might actually help it along.

What say you?

Beyond thinking about the weapons and techniques of destruction we might aim at the invader, how would we organize? A civilian resistance army might be composed to a large extent out of veterans, and to be sure there are many civilians who have served in combat over the last ten or more years. But any ad hoc organization will not have the traditions and structure of a regular army unit.

People caught, away from home and threatened with death will fight back. How will they organize? Will they use the internet? The infrastructure of the United States outside the areas of enemy control will remain largely intact – and even in areas they have overrun, communications and power may remain operational for days or even longer depending on a variety of factors. Smart phones and laptops with cellular data links will still be functional. Twitter and Instagram could be an enormous source of valuable intelligence should anyone be able to handle the firehose of information that would be uploaded in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.

Could services like twitter be used to organize not flash mobs, but flash armies? (or at least flash platoons or companies, conducting flash-ambushes?) Would wiki pages located on servers out of harm’s way be useful ways to aggregate intelligence? Forums with upvoting tools, like reddit, could allow crowd-sourced sorting of raw intelligence and insight both. Geocaching games could be adapted to means of supplying troops on the run safely. Armies could be dispersed until almost the moment of battle, organized by sms, email, twitter and googlemaps.

What else can you think of?

Seeing as the remake of Red Dawn looks to be leaning toward the suck – North Koreans? Srsly? Let’s consider what would happen if something entirely more plausible happened: Goblins invade.

The story we’ve been telling here is only half the story. The men that Captain Lewis commands in the Middle East are highly trained members of the United States’ armed forces. Marines, for the most part, but also USAF, Army and Navy. (No coasties, as yet.) This is one advantage that they have in their fight against the forces of darkness – their discipline and training has allowed them to keep fighting in the face of the powerful magic that the invaders have at their fingertips. And of course, uniquely they have had the assistance of friendly forces who also have access to magic.

The invasion is world wide, of course. While Lewis fights in Iraq and Saudi Arabia; Europe, Asia and North America are also under attack. The Veil crosses the northern tier of the United States – starting in Washington and moving east across to Chicago, then dipping down to West Virginia before moving across the Maryland panhandle and heading up just inland of the coast to meet the Atlantic in the neighborhood of Boston. For the most part, there are not large numbers of military units in these areas. There are no fortresses or walls. Each state has its national guard, but many of those units are deployed overseas, or located out of state for training or other purposes.

What weapons could a resistance employ against the invaders? What sort of improvised munitions could be readily devised from supplies obtainable at the local Lowes, Walmart or Farmer’s Exchange? More to the point, how quickly could these weapons be created and deployed?

If the Veil went right by your house, what would you do?

Ian asked me to spin up some post-hoc rationalization for Chapter 24, and I was glad to oblige. The result can be found over at Action!, Ian’s blog for advice on writing good action scenes. He wrote the book on it, after all. Check it out.

In the comments to my crude, hand-drawn map DMRGrimes asked where exactly this so-called “real terrain” actually was.

It’s right here.

You’ll have to scroll out a bit, but all the key locations are there.

Just this week I got an advance copy of Ian Healy and Allison Dickson’s upcoming novel The Oilman’s Daughter. Steampunk adventures in space, with pirates and – I am told – atomic steam forklifts. How awesome is that? Pretty damn awesome. As a beta reader, it is my understanding that I am to resist my temptation to make edits and only make general comments on the story. Nice ones, so Ian’s feelings aren’t hurt. Should be fun, and this will be only the second novel I’ve read since last fall. So I guess I’m coming at it fresh.

And speaking of Ian and Allison – if you haven’t, check out their Really Big Idea posts. (And all the others. And then buy all their books.) Click here for the series list. Lots of good stuff in there, and a long reading list for me once I finish Veil War.