The Veil War

Just an update – the Veil War is, as of 7:30 this morning, at exactly 2000 followers. Also, traffic for January is already up over December.

So all of you just need to slow down because at this rate we will have 256 billion followers in just months.

In other news, @veilwar is still in second place for the Shorties. Which is total bs. Those slimy bastards have clearly rigged the contest for this Sean T. Poindexter – no matter how many people nominate @veilwar and despite Ward’s best efforts to single-handedly swamp their servers, I stay one below that guy. Can he even type? Outrageous.

Thanks, everyone.

The bonus story is moving to back burner. I haven’t forgotten it – in fact, the adventures of A-10 pilot Chris “Paco” Croninger have evolved and improved. But the tactical publishing situation is also evolving somewhat – so right now I’m focussing on the Part one (chapters 1-8) rewrite and keeping pace with copyediting Part two (chapters 9 and up) for posting on Veil War Thursday. Doing the bonus story rewrite is still high on the agenda, and…

I am taking another author experience vacation early next month.  This time, I’m going full hermit and borrowing a friend’s house for a week. No interruptions. In the immortal words of Loo, “What was that? This is not a chawade. We need total concentwation.”

Paco’s wingman is callsign, “Batman.” Can you guess how he got that nickname? The poll function isn’t working for some reason, so vote in the comments.

• He looks and sounds like Adam West
• He carries with him, at all times, a Louisville Slugger
• There was this one time with two prostitutes in a bar in Thailand…
• Whenever he gets your voicemail, he says, “I’m Batman!”
• This one time, he smuggled a live bat into…
• Or suggest your own…

I just sent out an an email to everyone who subscribed to the Veil War, and to everyone who is a friend of the Veil War on Facebook. The bonus story is being delayed – the short explanation is that I want to make it better, and it’s not better yet.

The system in place now is less than optimal, I think. I don’t have emails for everyone – so it is difficult to communicate with the nearly one hundred people who have become official™ fans of the Veil War. Some messages were sent with Facebook’s messaging system – but for some reason I couldn’t message two of the people who friended the Veil War. (Bob Davis, Daniel Zazitski – drop me an email and you’ll get my personal groveling apology. If you feel that you should have gotten a groveling apology, and didn’t; let me know and I’ll create a special groveling apology just for you.)

Before the Christmas break, I was talking with my friend Chris about setting up a better system for communicating with you, the reader. It is clear that now that is a real necessity. So over the course of the next couple weeks, expect to see some changes on that front. Once we get that in place, we’ll have more information.

In the meantime, enjoy these videos of the A-10 blowing shit up:

Sometime over the last couple days, the Veil War’s total following crossed into four-digit territory. As its stands right now, we’ve got 1295 followers. I think that’s awesome.

In other statistics news, we’re over 5,000 cumulative site views. And nearly 200 of you have gotten as far as Chapter 8. I think that’s awesome, too.

Thanks, everyone, for reading. You are all beautiful and unique snowflakes, no matter what Chuck Palahniuk says.

To those of you who may be wondering, “Where is my goddamn bonus story?” I have a variety of excuses/explanations/red herrings/non sequitors for you:

• It really is almost done.
• I haven’t forgotten
• I was drunk until mid afternoon Sunday. Not because I kept drinking, but because it took that long for what I drank the night before to wear off.
• Hey, look, squirrel!
• Two words: Minecraft. Did you know that with the zeppelin mod and some clever usage of window panes, you can make a really awesome ghostly sky-galleon?
• Your bonus story is going to end up being a bit longer than I initially planned. In fact, probably four times longer. Longer than a normal chapter, even.
• My family is relentlessly incapable of understanding that when I sit down to write, I am not to be disturbed. I plan in the very near future to move my office to a much more inaccessible location. Like Mars.
• Your regularly scheduled Veil War Thursday chapter is already ready.

I hope that this post reassures/distracts/ameliorates your pain as appropriate.

This would also be a good time to email subscribe (scroll down to the bottom of the page) or befriend the Veil War Facebook page so as to get the story.

Welcome!

Since Twitter only allows 140 characters to express the deep longing in my soul, the… Wait, I don’t really have a deep longing in my soul. But 140 characters is still not enough to describe the indescribable awesomeness… Wait, it is describable!

The Veil war is a serial novel, and I’d like you to read it. Why?

It’s the Great American Goblin Invasion Novel. Think, “Lord of the Rings meets Tom Clancy.”

The Veil War

The Veil is a door between worlds, long closed. One day, it opens. Through the door come creatures half-forgotten, creatures of legend and myth. We feared them once – for a reason.  They want blood, dominion, and power. And they have the power to take it.

One company of Marines is trapped in Iraq, pursued and hunted by the invaders. This is their story.

Okay. You’re right. We’re fucked.”

Captain Lewis spat on the dusty floor. He looked up from the map, and out the window. Outside, the company was looking to the North, at a cloud of dust. The dust cloud got closer every time he looked. Off to the right, around the corner, was another dust cloud. He couldn’t see it, but one of the last predator drones still up had tracked it for the last couple hours. It got closer, too.

Sgt. Pethoukis looked up from his tablet. “Captain, lost the predator feed.” His lean face had a grimmer than average cast. “I saw fire right before it cut out.”

“Dragon?” the captain asked.

“Most like.”

“Shit.”

A hundred miles south of Ramadi, he thought. Three times we’ve tried to turn east, and each time we’ve been blocked.

Start reading right here. New chapters post every Thursday. You can get a little more information on how things work around here by reading this.

While you’re here, you can look at a wide array of interesting blog posts. And read the comments left by our widely-read and intelligent commentariat. Another nice feature is that every Tuesday, we have the Really Big Idea. This is where an Indie author explains to you what ideas they wrestled with while they were writing their book. Modeled after the Big Idea series at John Scalzi’s Whatever – well, frankly, stolen from John Scalzi because Indie authors don’t meet his persnickety requirements – this is truly one of the best ways short of reading the book to decide whether you’d like it. (If you are a Indie speculative fiction author yourself, and would like to participate, feel free to contact me.)

So, there it is. Read the story. Consider yourself encouraged to comment, email and communicate with me and your fellow readers. Also consider yourself strongly encouraged to share the Veil War with your friends, acquaintances, enemies and total strangers. Veil War social media info can be found here, or you can click on the pretty, pretty share buttons right below this post.

And again and always, welcome.

Stephen Gustav

Not really. But his irrational prejudice for completed works has scotched my plans to post in his non-traditional writers pimp thread. Actually, I can see where he’s coming from – the whole idea is that the posts are a Christmas gift guide. And I admit that telling someone, “Hey, go read this great free story on the internet!” and then adding, “Merry Christmas, that’s your gift!” would be edging into douchebag behavior.

Thanks for the feedback on the bleg – much appreciated as always. But you lurkers and others, please chime in on the fabulous prizes – what would you like me to do?