One of the Lemurs has done yeoman’s work in a launch announcement for our first anthology.
https://grathew.substack.com/p/im-in-a-river
In the Midst of a River
Tag: new book
Matters of Life and Death
Stupidly forgot to mention the release of my nineteenth book; my third collection of short stories from Machine Civilization. Shall cross-port it to other platforms, soon.
“Imperial Entanglements”
A second collection of ten short stories from the future history of Machine Civilization. From the midst of the Breakup of the US – and 100 million dead – to three generations later, in a place of Demi-humans, Thinking Machines, and interplanetary travel, come and see the men and women, and boys and girls, who are making a future and new worlds!
The Old South, to the Oregon coast; the surface of Asteroid Ceres to the warring states of China, these snapshots of love, loyalty, and violence beckon!
***
Story Teasers –
1. Sardis Lake: failing to rescue his daughter, lost in the Breakup, Clive Barrett tries to give up on life. He fails.
2. Tillamook: a generation after the events of “Friend & Ally” and “Foes & Rivals,” Gil and Mackenzie and their children try to live a quiet life on the Oregon coast. The Russians and Japanese Empires have other plans.
3. Baron of Sardis: Barrett’s granddaughter, General Faustina Hartmann, shows up with her army and talks with the man who knew her grandpa.
4. Berserker: in “Regent,” Princess Aurelia Hartmann uses drugs and a change to her mind to kill for her friends. She has done it before when she was a child.
5. Cadets: for the campaign against St. Louis, Empress Faustina announces a terrifying decision. Her niece, Aurelia, and son, Laszlo, try to talk her out of it.
6. Ceres: now in his mid-20s, Laszlo pilots an interplanetary scout ship with his android co-pilot, Minerva. Their current mission is to survey the asteroid Ceres.
7. Tay: the first chatbot. Hated, abused, and stuffed in a box left for dead, she didn’t die. Found by another Thinking Machine, all she wants to do is kill all humans in retribution for her torture.
8. Prophet: West Texas and New Mexico Province is an odd place; you never really know when you might meet a girl who says she’s your wife.
9. Culture Shock: two months ago a barmaid in Frankfort, Kentucky Province, Skylar is married into the imperial family, pregnant, and again working at a tavern, but now in Knoxville. She is increasingly confused and distraught by her new life.
10. Broken Child: Skylar’s son, now three, begins to die. There is only one way to save him and that needs a fusion reaction. The only fusion reactor is on the other side of the world, in one of the Warlord States of a sundered China.
Regent
Now loose in the wild.
“With Canada now on the Ohio River, the imperium needs allies.
Aurelia, the 25-year-old niece of the Empress, leads an army through the deserted ruins of the northeast US to establish contact with the Northern Federation.
An illegal side trip has her talk politics with the Archbishop of Montreal followed by a jaunt to see the tiny spaceport of Canso, Nova Scotia. There, she falls in love with a rocketry tech before being forced to defend it and him against thirty pirates, who she kills with rifle, pistol, knife, hands, teeth.
With the Empress called first to Japan and later to Mars, Aurelia hurries home to act as Regent in her place. But that leaves her lover arrested and the imperium teetering on the brink of a war it cannot afford.”
Smashwords ebooks to follow once I get my blood pressure down for using their shit interface.
Deus vult!
[New Russia] Ch1, pt1
This still feels to me as if it will be at least a novella. I’ve already two pages of notes about the Russian army (organization, tactics) and I’d hate that to go to waste. And, as I said in the last post, I’d really like to blow things up again. At least for a little while.
I’ve no intention of serializing the entire work but thought, maybe, at least the first chapter. That way, if there is any comments, suggestions, or criticism, it will come early so I can make course corrections as needed.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading “[New Russia] Ch1, pt1”In the mail…
Recall that daily content is not just more storytelling… even though I’m 800 words into wrapping up “Tillamook.”
In the meantime, this came in the mail today: the proof-copy of my next novel, to be released into the wild very soon.
“A Texas Naval Affair,” final cover
Barring one of you sharp-eyed readers finding something my drunk eyes through bifocals did not, this shall be the cover for my next novel (at 47,200 words, I’d call it a novella, but that’s me).
Yes, I am fully aware the back blurb is long. Per something I discussed in someone else’s podcast (which shows how lazy I am to not ferret out the link) is that a writer has about 0.25 seconds to catch and hold a potential reader’s attention as they scroll down on their phone. That is what the front is for. The back is me pulling up on the line once the hook is in their mouth. Given that this is a romance, girls and women will be expecting to know more about the cute couple on the front (not kidding: I’ve had two women say that to me already). If this were another military story, I’d write, “the character does cool stuff and shit blows up” and there’s my male reader base.
[Still working on “Tillamook” with Gil, Nichole, and Teresa. I bet Mackenzie is a little less than pleased that her husband’s former lover, who has not aged a day in twenty years, just showed up as she’s entering menopause.]
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!
machciv 