As in, the SF Subreddit. To which I submitted the Veil War in a fit of unreasoning social media optimism. Go here and upvote and/or comment and see if you can get me a movie contract like the Marines v. Romans guy.
Update:
Added a question in AskReddit, for which I am genuinely interested in seeing what sort of comments appear. “If the earth was invaded by aliens, how would you use reddit (and other tools) to organize resistance and fight back?”
It’s Veil War Thursday, and that means Chapter 25 is here. Your teaser:
The black cloud sent tendrils of smoke like questing fingers toward the shimmering dome that Jerome had manifested. They touched and Jerome cried out in pain, bent over like he’d been gut shot. The apprentice slowly straightened. His dome stretched inwards, compressed not by force but by pure ill intent. There was a buzzing in the air, almost inaudible but unnerving.
Van Buskirk’s men were looking around for the source of the sound. Seeing nothing, they ducked their heads like they were expecting incoming fire. The malevolence in the air raked Lewis’ nerves. This was no magical version of artillery, lethal but senseless. He could feel, though he had no idea how, that something conscious and evil was outside that fragile shield. It was hungry and it wanted in.
Things are starting to heat up. As always, use the comments to point out errors, make critiques or just say random things to annoy people.
One other request: if the spirit moves you post links on your blogs and facebook wall. Pitch the story on your tv show. Incorporate it into your next movie. Ask your local representative to mention it on the floor of the House of Representatives. The audience for the Veil War has already grown far beyond what I expected. A huge part of that has been word of mouth (thank you all) and I’d like that to not only continue, but expand. Look at this way: the bigger my audience is, the easier it will be to sell this book. And the quicker I can become a full time writer and kick this stuff out even faster. So really, it’s in your best interest. 🙂
I’ve also added another page, a cast of characters. I can’t guarantee that the information on this page is entirely accurate, because I created my original cast list way back at the beginning and successive edits may have changed things in subtle and hard to remember ways. Hard to remember because I totally failed to keep updating this past about chapter 12.
So, there might be some inaccuracies. Also, there may be some characters you don’t recognize because they appeared in some early drafts of chapters 9-11 and then magically disappeared when I brutally edited those sections. I still have plans for those characters, and I may yet reintroduce some of the text I excised.
(If you’re new to the Veil War and weren’t around for that confusing yet exciting time, you can still see the original versions: chapter nine, chapter ten, chapter eleven.)
I’ve created a page to serve as a single home for all the maps that I post. Right now, it’s just what I posted earlier – the map of the Battle of Rafha and the link to the googlemap satellite view of the same terrain. However! I have more maps, and as the spirit moves me, I’ll post them as well. Insomnia will probably be a necessary precursor for that sort of spirit-moving as it was for this…
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.
Here we are, and it’s Chapter Two Dozen already. You know, in base 12, that would only be 20? Teaser:
Odo neither jumped nor dove, but charged straight in. The sword came down and Odo twisted, spinning like a shot-putter to dodge the blade. He came out of the spin, planted his left foot and lunged, his sword arm to full extension as he thrust up to the giant’s waist.
The giant’s thick armor took the blow, and Odo’s sword shattered. The giant chieftain stood there, unmoved and gazing down at the tiny man before him, stunned and disarmed. He raised his sword.
As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome. Please join in the fun of pointing out my mistakes and errors – it’s fun for the whole family! The person who points out the most errors wins a prize.
Veil War Thursday has returned! Chapter 23 is now revised, updated, and rather seriously lengthened. This one’s a monster chapter at over 3000 words, so Merry Christmas! Ooh, I almost forgot the traditional teaser:
Once on the ground, the knights became a blur. Moving so fast that Lewis could barely follow their movements, the crusader knights spun, twisting through goblins who appeared almost frozen in place by the inhuman speed of their attackers.
Swords reached out, blurred fans of silvered metal to Lewis’ eyes. The power behind the strikes made them seem effortless, yet every time blade intersected with goblin, blood and limbs flew. Lewis had once watched a bird sucked in to a jet engine with less violence.
My lovely wife wasn’t available to do her normal copy-editing, so this one is likely a little rough with the goofs and typos and grammatical infelicities. Your help in ferreting those bastards out is of course greatly appreciated.
After my little break, I’m trying to move as quickly as possible through the rewrites of this battle. There’s lot’s more cool stuff coming – I think you’re going to like where it ends up. And of course, I am also working on the rest of the novel – the part that you aren’t seeing, and that takes place for the most part back in the US. I might have some questions for you all on that – some feedback might be a useful reality check for some of what is happening there. But more on that later.
Chapter 23, revised and completed, will go up later this evening. I got called in to the office, and that’s put a bit of spoke in my wheel.
Here is an interesting, if annoying article: Ecce Orcus! An Argument for Humanizing the Orc. Hidden behind a morass of politically-correct fog, there is there a good point. Orcs shouldn’t be nothing more than evil minions.
In Tolkien, Orcs were perversions of the elves and inherently evil – or at least thoroughly predisposed to violence and badness and therefore easily harnessed by evil. In most fantasy literature that orcs or goblins appear in, they tend to follow Tolkien’s pattern as they do in most other ways even as they fail to give them as much personality as Tolkien did.
Among other things, I read a few books – the first books I’ve read since last Fall.
Right now, I’m reading Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis, and next up is Liminal States by Jack Parsons and The Thousand Hour Club by George O’Har.
Update: Well, Devil Said Bang came out, so I read that. Pure awesome. I have rarely had as much fun with a series as this one, and the level of quality has, if anything, gone up with time not down. Finished Bitter Seeds, which is grim but fascinating. An alternate WWII with British sorcerers and Nazi cyborgs. Will have to read the sequel. Liminal States is loaded up on the Kindle, and that means I need to buy George’s book.
The Veil War 