Honorverse

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Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole is here.

Posted by dougdandridge on October 23, 2015
Posted in: Alien Invasion, Alien Life, Conferences, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Intelligent Life, Kindle, Magic, Military, Plotting, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

ExodusMW2

I released Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole on Wednesday night to Amazon, which meant it was up for sale by early Thursday morning.  The second book in the spinoff series, this volume deals more with the death machines built by the humans three centuries before that had gone beyond their programming, to kill the enemies of the Empire, to the much broader mandate of kill all life.  I loved being able to put out this series, but from the comments and reviews of both the first book, and soon after the release of this book, not everyone agrees.  I think Bolthole is one of the best novels I have ever written, filled with action, chock full of life or death situations.  The machines are not as advanced as the current Empire, but have several advantages, such as not having to worry about the effects of inertia on frail organic passengers.  They can brute force a lot of weapons that Imperial ships simply don’t have the space for.

Supernova was really a book intended to introduce another species I felt was vital to the war effort without just saying that they were found under a rock.  The machine aspect introduced itself to my imagination about halfway through the first draft, and I ran with it from there.  I had wanted to explore the old scifi trope of the civilization threatened with extinction by a supernova, an idea that seemed out of date now that we know that blue giant stars are very short lived, and don’t possess a half dozen habitable planets in their life zones as once thought.  The idea of having a blue giant near enough to threaten a more standard solar system was one I couldn’t resist.

One comment on the first book was that most authors finish a series before they start a new one.   I love reading David Weber, for all the faults of his writing he tells entertaining stories.  David has Honor Harrington as well as several Honorverse side series, Safehold, and some stand alones.  I’m prolific, and I have no idea how he puts out so much.  But it made sense to get the second series going while the first was still doing well.  There were ideas I wanted to explore in the Exodus Universe that would run concurrently with the main storyline, and I couldn’t see any other way of doing those stories in the future.  Storylines could give away aspects of other storylines.  For example, if I finished out the Empires at War storyline, then all of my readers would know that whoever survived that narrative would be in no danger in the Machine War tract.  The other factor has to do with coming up with new ideas.  I have received reviews that pointed out how the Empires at War series keeps getting better, with fresh ideas in each volume.  One of the common tropes of writing is that ideas are easy to come by.  This is partially true.  I have enough ideas to write a hundred books if given the time to complete them.  But not in the Exodus series.  New ideas in a series that is now over a million words do not come all that easy, and two or three books a year are about all I can do now and keep up the quality.  Machine War gives me another outlet to write in that Universe, and also helps to generate ideas that might not go into that series, but instead into Empires at War.  If all I wanted to do was put out five Exodus books a year my income would double, but I would eventually run the series into the ground, which is something I don’t want to do.

I have other plans for the Exodus Universe.  I will put out several more Tales of the Empire books.  I have theme ideas for two or three more collections of novellas, and for a couple of stand alone novels.  Two ideas are Constance, about the Admiral who revolted against a mad emperor and became empress, and The Chase of a Thousand Years, detailing the contact with the Cacas that led to the destruction of Earth and the thousand year run to a new start.   I talked with an artist friend of mine at my class reunion, and I hope to have the Cacas I envisioned gracing the cover of a future Empires at War book.  I also have some other books, including another Deep Dark Well novel that is a start to a second trilogy, that I wrote before I embarked on an independent career.  And I am currently working on a submission for Baen books, and maybe some other publisher if they don’t like it.  The plan is to become a hybrid, using the tradition avenue to grow readership for my independent works.  As I told one fan recently, I intend to keep putting out the independent books in the same price range, but a traditionally published book can’t help but gain exposure.  And then there are the Refuge books.  I owe it to those readers to at least come to a closing point on that series, though I am also hoping that the new covers I have commissioned might breath some new life into a fantasy world that is close to my heart.

So Bolthole is out, and I hope my fans will enjoy it.  Supernova didn’t sell as many copies as my recent Empires at War offerings, but still enough to make it worthwhile.  And I plan to continue that series to a conclusion as well.  If you are a fan, and Machine War isn’t one of your favorites, I hope you will stick with me through Empires at War.  Thanks.

Meeting David Weber at Honorcon

Posted by dougdandridge on December 9, 2014
Posted in: Conferences, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Intelligent Life, Kindle, Military, Movies, Plotting, Proofreading, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy, Tropes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments

This post actually should have been done weeks ago, since the Honorcon convention in Raleigh was over the last weekend of October of this year.  Thanks to moving and other commitments, it was not.  Sorry.  This was either the first or second Honorcon, depending on who you listen to.  There was an Honorcon 2013, run by a for profit company which didn’t turn a profit, and so dropped it.  This year it was fan run, and according to the organizing committee this was really the first Honorcon, which will run yearly in Raleigh along with Manticon in Minneapolis.  I really didn’t know much about the con, and thought it had been a much more established event.  This year they had 150 attendees, not at all like DragonCon, my last con before this one.  But they actually made enough money to put some forward for next year.  It wasn’t a bad con, and there is something to say about not fighting the crowds.  And they had David Weber as the Guest of Honor, so to speak.  It was announced that he would not be a yearly guest, so this was a good one to get to for me.

Now I know some people that I know do not like the work of David Weber.  I like most of his stuff, though sometimes the info dumps can be a little much, as are the use of some phrases over and over.  But he has developed a wonderfully detailed Universe, the Honorverse, and he is a great story teller, in my humble opinion.  I did not start writing because of reading Weber, though I am often compared to him.  I had been writing for about four years when my stepdaughter’s best friend’s father introduced me to On Basilisk Station.  And from there I was hooked.  I have read Space Opera for ages, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein.  But, since knuckling down in college, getting my BS in Psychology, and getting into a PhD program, I really hadn’t had time for reading, and Weber was a cool new writer who wrote in an original Universe.  I still read him, and am in fact rereading the Honor Harrington books.  I now realize where some of my ideas come from, without even realizing it, though I do believe my style is nothing like his.  I also like his Safehold series, and his March series done with John Ringo, and loved that series about the people of magic fighting the technological society through gates between dimensions, though it was cancelled before completed.  It kind of reminded me of my Refuge series, though I had started on that series almost ten years before I read the first Weber/ Evans book of that one.  And I have read his collaborations with Eric Flint and Timothy Zahn (Zahn was also at Honorcon, being introduced as the co-author on the new series about Manticore before it became as powerful as it is in the Harrington series.

So, what was Honorcon like?  Lots of people in uniform, Royal Manticore Navy and Marines, even some Army.  And the Grayson Space navy.  Most were high ranking, Captain and above.  Good panels, though a couple were cancelled when the presenter called in sick.  I saw my friend and fellow author Jason Cordova, whom I met at Libertycon, and author Ian Malone, a Tallahassee native and current resident of North Carolina I met this year at Altcon in Tally.  And I learned how David gets much of his research done. He has minions who volunteer to look up information and work on concepts.  Maybe someday.  There was also a presentation about the planned Honor Harrington movie based on The Honor of the Queen.  From what I heard, there was a CGI presentation of Nimitz last year that drew boos.  This year it got an ovation.  It’s looking like the movie will instead be a miniseries, since they are having trouble translating the book into a two and a half hour script.

Friday night was a meet and greet with David Weber and Timothy Zahn.  I really haven’t read much of Timothy’s work other than the collaboration, so I didn’t have much to talk about with him.  Weber, a big bear of a man, was very gregarious and talkative (no surprise there), and regaled us with stories about all kinds of things.  His wife was his time keeper, and got him out of the room in time for his autograph session.  The only complaint I had about this event was it was too short for what it cost, and one guy monopolized David’s time near the food table.  Still, it was a treat to meet the man whose success I want to emulate.  I did get a first edition hardback of On Basilisk Station autographed to add to my collection.

Weber will not be there next year, and I’m not sure who the guest of honor will be.  Will I go again?  Not sure at this point.  Raleigh is a bit of a drive from Tallahassee, and there are lots of other cons to explore.  But I might return a few years up the road.  Only time will tell.  Meanwhile, David Weber will be the guest of honor at LibertyCon next year, a con I will be attending as an author.  Will I get to sit on a panel with him?  Doubtful, since there will be bigger name authors there. Many from Baen, such as John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson and others.  But who knows.  And wouldn’t that be a trip.