Category: Crusade

Winter quarters

Where an army or units of it would go once campaigning season was over. Often for the purpose of making sure a subdued people stayed subdued. Faustina needs to make a tour of her dispositions before riding back to Knoxville to play politics* and I realized I was unsure where her legions and auxiliary units are. So… another map! Cannot talk history without a map and that includes future history!

*Besides general opposition to what she has done, there is specific opposition to her recruiting Legion Six.

Deep history

I call Machine Civilization a future history for a reason. All parts of every story connect in hundreds of ways, some I do not see, to every other story. I first met Karl in The Fourth Law; one of the orphans seen to by Lily Barrett. A tendency toward fat but also one of her karate students. He makes another appearance in “Empire’s Agent,” the long short story which lends its name to the book’s title. There, he meets Arpad Rigó from the newly remade Habsburg Empire. “I have to get this boy into the army!” Rigó thought. In trying to make an end of Goddess’ Crusade, I find, years later, he did.

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Princess’ Crusade… released!

Very pleased to announce the release of the paperback and ebook version of the first of the American Imperium trilogy, Princess’ Crusade! Book two is already copyedited and only needs a front cover – under development – before it is released, as well. For those of you who have been following along, the third manuscript is nearly complete and hopefully no more than six weeks out. Cheers!

Making an end

Didn’t mean to go dark again. “Princess’ Crusade” is, God willing, about 48 hours from release. The front cover of “Empress’ Crusade” is being hammered out. I am 9000 words further on in the MS of “Goddess’ Crusade” from my last post. One major change: Holo just never sounded right; Faustina’s copy – her very active, independent copy – is renamed Helena.

And the repercussions of that new version of herself begin to manifest in Faustina Hartmann almost immediately. I am getting a little concerned about what comes next.

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Pole Position

Trying to play around with some of WordPress’s new features for the cover of “Princess’ Crusade.” Ideally, y’all will be able to vote on which one of the two front covers you like more. Let me see if this works… Please recall these are still in development but I hope release PC no later than Thanksgiving in the US. Better than just voting, if you’ve any suggestions, please do so in the comments. Cheers!

Two-in-one

In which I sneak in two references to Herbert’s Dune in less than 2k words. After showing up at Owens CP, there’s a chapter where Gen’l Hartmann makes her way – with the proper escort – onto Fort Benning to seize her so-called sister, demi-human Alexandra Hood. It’s technical and time consuming and was a pain to write, literally, with my diseased eyelids. Below the fold is an interesting exchange as all of us, including me, are older as to the copy Reina made of Faustina.

PS Hands and eyes are slowly less bad. Had an IM shot of Kenalog-60 into my butt and am applying hydrocortisone cream to all my leprose bits.

PPS Not politics but common sense: for any of my readers in the US, make sure you have full fuel tanks in your vehicles and seven days of food in your home in case of “supply chain disruptions” following the election. This is not the 21st century I was expecting.

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Progress on two fronts

Finally got off my ass (arse for those of you in the Commonwealth) and signed a contract with Labelschmeide for all three cover of the American Imperium trilogy. She has done fantastic work for me before and I highly recommend her.

The mixed news is that the first, “Princess’ Crusade,” will not be out on Halloween. Sometimes, irrational deadlines are just that: irrational. I’ve the copyedited version of it and book two (with thanks to SZ Services), but as I just said, the cover is still under development. And, I’ll need to add an extended stemma of Faustina’s family as well as non-copyrighted maps to aid in understanding her campaign against Savannah. A delay, but not a long delay.

I also had an idea last week, after being at a standstill for five days, as I mentioned. That idea blossomed into the two chapters I wrote over the weekend; having two main characters now is a great amount of work for me to keep track of things. Nonetheless, the Battle of Opelika is nearly over. With a chapter to mop up, it will take 1-2 chapters to evacuate the feral population of Atlanta. Or kill them.

Below the fold is General Hartmann getting back into the fight after nearly dying from the 105mm artillery.

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Transitioning

No, no, not like one of those emotionally disturbed who should be looked after and prayed for rather than being pumped full of chemicals and abused by surgeons who were the second-to-last in medical school (last being abortionists, of course).

This transition is having had my moment of clarity mentioned in the last post and moving from the second day of the Battle of Opelika to its immediate aftermath. Rather than recapitulate the entire chapter, below the fold is the last third of it, featuring acting legate Chesney – Faustina’s ‘court jester’ – seguing into… a dream? A vision? Or is it real?

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“Hey, y’all! Watch this!”

That is very typical statement in the US South and parts of the Midwest, followed almost immediately by a call for an Ambulance or a Coroner. It’s usually uttered by males but the worse-than-cancer that is Feminism has made many women just as stupid. Think of it as evolution in action.

In my case, as I mentioned in my last post, I thought I knew what theme I might use for part two of book three of my “American Imperium” trilogy: the Pius XIII quote: “absence is presence.” That was followed by several days of DayJob and being too tired to write, then five days of writing no more than three paragraphs. Total.

On Day Five I realized my mistake. The story in general and Faustina in particular, did not want things to unfold that way and refused to show me anything. I backtracked. Talked to friends and acquaintances about my trainwreck and finally got back to work this morning. The first two chapters of Part Two (and I now wonder… a part three?) are on Faustina’s legates and the physical aftermath of the Battle of Opelika, but the next has my main character back in the limelight: did Reina really rip her soul out of her? How did she subdue or at least disconnect Alexandra Hood? Is she alive or dead? Little Fussy has become Schrodinger’s Cat and I have no choice but to open the box.

“How do you hurt a man with nothing? Give him back something broken.”

Part One of Goddess’ Crusade MS is complete. A hectic excerpt below. Part two is one chapter complete and another started. I’m… thinking about things. For 2.5 books of this soon to be published work, the camera has been fixed on Faustina. Sure, that includes interaction with her army, family, adversaries, and brief lover, but still her.

I’m not sure what to think of this idea, but as Pope Pius XIII said: “absence is presence.” That, coupled with the title of this post, is how I am carefully approaching Part Two. So carefully that I think there might be a Part Three and that “GC” will NOT be ready by 31 December 2020. *sigh*

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