What's (Space) Opera, Doc?

When we we first had the idea for writing a series of books set on a warship in outer space, the words "Space Opera" were absolutely no part of our thinking process.  In fact, we were really not focused on "genre issues" at all.  Instead, we started talking about writing a series of novels (series novels being a really good market these days).  What to write?  Well, we really, liked Science Fiction, and we both know a lot about space, spacecraft, and astronomy, so that might be good.  And we are both military buffs, so, maybe some kind of military story set in space.  But we had not been happy with the way the military aspect of Science Fiction as it was generally handled:  the ships, the combat, the tactics, the depiction of life on board ship, the traditions and courtesies of the military, the satisfactions and rewards of a naval life, etc.

We also really, really liked the Aubry/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian which we thought did an absolutely splendid job of depicting all of those things in the British Royal Navy during the early 19th Century.  Wouldn't a series of Aubry/Maturin books in space be grand?  Or Alexander Kent.  Or C.S. Forrester.  Well, not exactly, of course, our characters and situations would have to be unique creations from our own heads and hearts, but if we could take a careful look at what makes these books such enduring tales to which people come back again and again and translate them into tales set in outer space we thought we might have something.

So, that was the starting point, a series of Napoleonic War British Navy Sea Tales, but set in the year 2315.  We looked at a few other literary successes.  We love Tom Clancy and from him we learned that readers really do care about the nuts and bolts of how weapons systems and sensors and communications apparatus works.  They want gritty details about what what makes these systems tick and what they do.  The reader doesn't just want to be in the CIC and in the Wardroom, but in Fire Control and the Missile Room and even in the warhead when it goes off.  We also really like Patrick Robinson and his strong naval characters and detailed discussion of strategy and tactics.  In fact, we discerned a common thread between O'Brian and Kent and Forrester and Clancy and Robinson:  detail.  How people live.  What they eat.  Where they sleep.  What they do for enjoyment.  What songs they sing.  How and with what do they kill their enemies?  What are their traditions?  So, we decided to throw out a lot of the common wisdom about how to write Science Fiction--don't bore your reader with too much detail; don't turn them off with too much technical stuff.  Now, we didn't and won't turn these books into fictional technical treatises, but we will continue to show readers how this stuff works, and how the people make it work.  It exists in our minds at that level of detail and we aren't afraid to share that detail with readers in a content-appropriate way.

We didn't know or care whether this approach made what we write Military Science Fiction, or Space Opera, or Space Navy Tales.  You could call this stuff "Banana Pudding" for all we care.  What we knew was this:  we wanted to tell exciting tales about fighting men at war in outer space.  We wanted the discussion of their ships, weapons, technology, strategy, and tactics to be detailed and within the realm of reason.  We wanted the people to be recognizable military personalities with recognizable military motivations, operating within a recognizable military system of rank, hierarchy, organization, and method, and--for the most part--exemplifying what we regard to be the defining military/naval virtues:  honor, courage, loyalty, toughness, competence, sacrifice, resourcefulness, humor, and resilience.

And, none of this nihilistic, pessimistic, "people are lousy and nothing you do matters" crap.  So, maybe we borrowed from Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and even George Lucas as well.  We wanted to tell stories in which individuals act with honor and courage and in which their laudable moral choices bring about good results.  In our stories, individual human beings and their moral choices, for good or evil, to be loyal or disloyal, to face danger or to flee, all matter.  No, perfect justice is not meted out in the end and all endings are not ideally happy, but in our stories the wages of courage and resourcefulness and resolve are not despair and dishonor.  Overall, these books are and always will be upbeat and optimistic.  Virtue is never pointless.  Resistance is not futile.  We, and our choices, matter.  Every hour of every day, we engage in acts and make decisions that have consequences, and we are responsible for both the decisions and the consequences.

There are people who say that books written along these lines are not "serious literature."  So what?  If readers enjoy them, have fun reading them, and are uplifted and strengthened by the experience, then we are happy.  That and, of course, we would like these books to find a large audience.  We've made a good start with To Honor You Call Us, finding readers in the thousands when we thought we would be lucky to find them in the dozens.  All we know to do is to keep writing what we set out to write in the first place, and to hope that readers continue to find these stories, to enjoy them, and to want us to write more.

Look for the next book in the Man of War trilogy, For Honor We Stand in three weeks or so.  We hope you like it.  We've certainly had fun writing it so far.

Can You Say "Ninety Thousand Words?" Sure, I Knew You Could

Hard work over Christmas when everyone else was hanging mistletoe and drinking egg nog has gotten the rough draft of For Honor We Stand to a few hundred words shy of the 90,000 mark.  Things are coming nicely and we have a clear idea about where we are going with the rest of the book, so it's not like you or we have to worry that we're going to hit some huge dry spell for a month where we don't know what to do next. 

So, we still expect to release around January 21.  If it is ready sooner, we will release sooner. 

As we continue to write and read correspondence from fans (that's really, really cool by the way) and watch the development of this story line and these characters on the page and in our minds, we think that this project is looking more and more like a series of trilogies.  Our storytelling style seems to lend itself to detailed narratives of fairly brief periods of time, so we are thinking that each trilogy will cover a fairly short period--a few months or so--but be separated from one another by longer periods so that we can advance the larger story arc of the progress of the war against the Krag by reasonable increments. 

But, this is still sort of fuzzy right now.  We tend to make these people and their ship and their situation very real in our minds and then let the story and the people go where they "want" to go.  We think that this is where they are going to take us, but we aren't quite sure yet. 

I will keep you up to date in this space as we get closer to publication.

I can let you in on a little secret.  Until now, you have never met a commissioned officer in the Union Navy whom you are likely to actively dislike.  You are about to.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. Please accept my best wishes for a happy new year.  Hang in there, people. 

Per laboram ad victoriam. 

Paul

Amazing Reviews!

Today, Christmas Day, To Honor You Call Us got its 31st positive review from an Amazon.com customer, which was also its 23rd five-star review (there are 7 four star and one three--and even the three star is extremely complimentary).  There is only one word to describe my reaction (speaking only for myself here, not for Harvey), to the customer reviews we have been getting on Amazon:  stunned.  A few people have a few quibbles, but other than that, the reviewers have been very positive and almost all say they are eager to read further books in the series.

What particularly surprises me is the number of people who say that this is one of the best books of this kind they have ever read.  Remember, we have not published so much as a short story.  Between us, we've published a Law Review Note, some judicial opinions, lots of legal briefs, editorials for a college newspaper, and some movie reviews.  Not one word of fiction.  Not.  One.  Word.  Making a decision to spend a few months writing a novel with such a profusion of inexperience behind us was a tremendous leap of faith (not to mention a rational acquiescence to our wives who were adamant that we had the talent to do this and that we sit down and start to write that very minute). 

So, with this novel we chose to boldly go where these men had never gone before.  Hmmm.  Something about that has a familiar ring.  Hmmmm.  The reviews have been creating the sales and the sales have been good.  There is nothing to do but keep writing and to try to make the second novel better than the first. 

January Release Still Likely for second "Man of War" Novel

Yes, dear readers, we do so love following the adventures of Max and Bram and all the rest of our friends on board the USS Cumberland that we have been writing assiduously over the holidays.  About 83,000 words of rough draft are done so far, so we are still looking very good for release in the third week in January.  As I have mentioned before, if the book is done sooner, we will release sooner.  That's the case with everything we Honsingers publish--we don't sit on a finished book waiting for some magical release date to come along. 

We have also been doing a lot of thinking about the books to follow.  Given all the encouraging things people have said about the first book and how well the second one is coming together, we are very strongly committed to writing these books so long as we are able and as long as there is an audience for them.  We love this stuff, and we love writing it.  We can't imagine a better enterprise to which we can devote ourselves for our remaining days in this world

"Stand" at 75,000 Words--Still Looking Good for January

Yesterday, we crossed the 75,000 word mark on For Honor We Stand, the sequel to To Honor You Call Us.  We are making rapid progress now--things are going a lot faster now that we have worked through some of the more difficult sections of the book.  Things still look good for a release around January 21.  It is also looking as though this book will come out a little longer than the first one, although we could be mistaken about that.  After all, this is only our second novel. 

We will keep you apprised of how we are progressing and will update you in this space, especially as we get the manuscript finished and get to a point where we can more accurately predict the release date.

Be aware that our philosophy about such things is that books are released when they are ready.  We don't keep them on the shelf to wait for some arbitrary period of time to lapse between books (we know some authors produce one book a year no matter how fast they write them) or to reach an arbitrary date (as in when a book is slated for "Summer release" because it is a good "beach book.").  So, as soon as there is a book to be published, we will publish the book.  We won't make our readers wait.

Now, back to Max and Bram, who are dealing with a complex issue involving the still-troubled crew of the USS Cumberland . . . .

Great Reviews Continue to Sell Novel

Lots of really wonderful books never get noticed by anyone, never get sold, and never get read.  My late father's novel, Firehair:  A Novel of the West is an example--a fine book, but it was a tree that fell in the wilderness and made no sound.  It is still for sale on Amazon, and I still hold out the hope that eventually its merit will be recognized.  So, I recognize the element of luck that has certainly played a role in To Honor You Call Us getting noticed, getting read, and getting good reviews.  For an independent author, reviews are key to getting seen.  People don't recognize the name and say, "Oh, H. Paul Honsinger--he's great!  I bet this book is gonna be good."  People don't look at the publisher and say, "Oh, Ace" or "Oh, Tor" or "Oh, Pocket Books" and say "their stuff is usually pretty decent at least, so I'll give this one a try."

People know that they are taking a chance with a self-published novel.  It was not vetted by a publisher's editorial department for general quality, the literacy of the author, the coherency of the plot, basic readability, or any other index of quality.  All you know is that someone wrote it and that he or they think highly enough of their own work to offer it for sale.  Hardly enough to inspire confidence.

But, when you have twenty-five reviews, none below three-star, and a majority of them five-star, and when what the reviewers say is really, really enthusiastic, people are more willing to take a chance and invest $5.99 for the download or $13.50 for the paperback and give it a try.  So, to the people who read the novel and then took the time to go on the Amazon site and tell other people that they thought it was good, I will forever be grateful and thankful.  You people made the success of this book happen.

And, if you think that authors don't care about reviews, think again.  I read my reviews eagerly, and often respond to them in "comments."  I don't always follow the suggestions (especially since some reviews contradict each other), but I always think about them carefully and take them seriously.  They mean a lot to me.  Every one of them.

Kathy's Fantasy/Romance YA Book now available on Kindle

The e-book version of Kathy's new fantasy/romance for young adult readers is now available from Amazon.com.  This is one YA book that folks who read such things should like AND that won't make you cringe when you think of your 16 year old daughter reading it (I know--we have a 16 year old daughter).

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Kept-Mixed-Blood-ebook/dp/B00AOBOL28/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1355538070&sr=1-1

Wife Publishes YA Book

My extraordinarily talented wife is the author of two successful adult/fantasy/romance series under a pen name.  While she has not abandoned those projects (and is, at this moment returning to them), she has conceived and written the first volume of a Romance/Fantasy for the Young Adult audience.  The book is called Secrets Kept.  I've read it (and, in fact, helped edit it), and I've got to tell you, it is head and shoulders the overwhelming majority of the drek that forms most of what is published in that market.

I realize that most readers of this blog are not into female-oriented YA novels, but this might be just the thing for those of you with teenage or slightly older daughters.  Not only is the story exciting and interesting, with well-developed characters and a good plot, it is something that you can put into your daughter's hands (or load into her e-reader) with no worries.  No profanity.  No drugs.  No alcohol.  No self-destructive behavior.  No sex--nothing more than kissing and hugging.  The heroine is a responsible, hard working, well-adjusted young lady (unlike the heroine of a certain glittery vampire series that comes to mind) who makes a good role model.

I'll put a link up when it becomes available.  You might want to be on the look out for it.  Seriously, it's an exciting, entertaining read with a good message for young people. 

Houston, We Have 60,000!

The word count just crossed 60,000 on For Honor We Stand, Book Two of the "Man of War" Trilogy.  We are now working our way through some serious issues on board ship--the problems from the "Cumberland Gap" days are not all behind us.  The rot runs too deep to be cut out in just a few months.  And, Max is about to run into a superior with whom he has--shall we say--a frictional interface.  No, it is not smooth sailing for Max.  Not smooth sailing at all. 

In case anyone is wondering, we are still looking at a January release.  The target is January 21, 2013.  Why January 21?  Max took (takes?  will take?) command of the Cumberland on January 21, 2315.  But, if it is done before then, we will publish before then.  That's one of the benefits of being independent--we publish when we like and, if we want to publish when the book is ready instead of holding out for some sort of artificial deadline, then we publish. 

Now that we are in Novel Writing Mode, our brains keep running ahead to the future books.  We are wondering whether readers would prefer that the books be written as a series of trilogies with long but distinct story arcs that are closed out at the end of each three-book cycle while maintaining one overarching story arc or whether readers like a series like the Aubry/Maturin books of Patrick O'Brian where there is simply one continuous narrative told in a series of individual books.  There is time to make your views heard, and we are listening.  Paul is leaning toward the series of trilogies and Harvey likes following in the footsteps of O'Brian. 

No rush.  We have committed to doing the first three books as a trilogy and that is what we are going to do.  We still have about one and a half books to write until the issue of what to do with Book 4 is something we have to deal with. 

Twenty-two!!

A twenty-second Amazon customer review, and a very nice one, too!!  It is very flattering to have our writing compared to that of one of our favorite authors, Patrick O'Brian.  The customer reviews have been very, very good to us, and for that we are very grateful. 

Twenty-one!!

As of this morning, there are twenty-one reviews of To Honor You Call Us on Amazon.com.  All of the reviews are favorable and the overwhelming majority of them are five stars out of five.  Even the "worst" review, a three star, has a number of very, very nice things to say.  I'm sure that it is these reviews that are selling the book now--as sales continue to be very good all things considered (unknown author, first novel of a series, written in a genre that demands a lot of its readers).  We could not be more pleased.

We know that there is lots of good work out there that never gets noticed and never gets recognized.  We are very thankful that readers have noticed this novel and chosen to express their approval where other people can see it.  We wish we could thank all twenty-one reviewers personally, because we are truly grateful.

One reviewer even compared the book to the works of Heinlein and Doc Smith.  As this was the stuff on which I cut my teeth as a science fiction reader (the first SF novel I ever read was Heinlein's Between Planets) and as one of the things we wanted from the start for these books to do was to evoke the sense of excitement and adventure that those books called forth, this is high praise indeed.  We are very grateful to all those readers who took the time to write reviews, not just because they sell books (and, make no mistake, they do absolutely sell books!) but also because they let us know that we might be on the right track with these books.

We wanted to strike out in a direction that was new, but that had its roots in the adventure literature of the past.  We loved where those old Heinlein and Doc Smith book took us.  We also loved where those Aubry/Maturin and Horatio Hornblower books took us.  We concluded, on careful examination, that those places really weren't that far apart.  Also, we liked the grittiness of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and enjoyed the techno whiz bang of Clancy's The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, not to mention Patrick Robinson's Nimitz Class and its sequels.  We thought that these were the ingredients of the perfect Military Science Fiction/Space Opera novel or series of novels, and started looking for something like that to read.  We didn't find what we wanted.  Maybe, we thought, these books had yet to be written.  We began to entertain the radical notion that we were just the guys to write them. 

Will You Guys Read 20 Robichaux/Sahin Books?

I sat down the other day and just wrote one line descriptions of future books set in the same universe as "To Honor You Call Us."  I came up with about 20.  I have a clear idea of what I'm going to do in Book Three, "Brothers in Valor" and about how I'm going to bring the major plot lines to conclusions while still leaving the door open for further stories. 

I'm not sure whether the books starting with Book Four are going to be another trilogy or whether I will simply issue them singly as a more or less continuous narrative like Patrick O'Brian's Aubry/Maturin books.  Right now, I am leaning toward the latter, but I am sticking to the trilogy concept for the first three because the first book was sold as a trilogy and I don't want to mislead anyone. 

Book Four is likely to be called "Our Courage Defiant" with the fifth "Sons of Ares," and the sixth,"Offspring of Mars."  This is, of course, very, very tentative, given that I am only about a third of the way through Book Two. 

50,000 and Counting

We just got past the 50,000 word mark on "For Honor We Stand" and are happy with the progress versus the time line we have set for ourselves. As things are going we are still on track for publication in January 2013. We are still having the sense that this is going to be a slightly longer book. Book One was 137,000 words, whereas this one is looking more like 150-160,000. Just a guess, of course.

We are still very pleased both with the sales and with the reviews of the first book. Folks seem to like what we did the first time around. Of course, we haven't perfectly pleased everyone which, as we did not perfectly please ourselves, is not a surprise. As we have said repeatedly, not only was Book One our first novel, it was our first effort at any kind of meaningful fiction writing of any kind, ever. That we did not get buried in one star reviews saying "You suck--you couldn't write a decent excuse to get your kid out of PE class," was not a given, as far as we were concerned.

But, mostly, we try to ignore the sales numbers and the reviews while focusing on story telling. The chapters continue to come out of the computer and we aren't having any problems producing them. The ideas are there, and not just for this book, but for the next, and the next, and the next. Seriously, the more we work on this stuff, the more it is looking as though we have material for at least ten, if not thirty, books. Our universe is deliberately constructed to permit open-ended story-telling. And, if Max gets too old, we can continue with the adventures of Captain Shepherd or Captain Park, who are Midshipmen in Book One.

40,000 Words and Counting

My second novel, For Honor We Stand is coming right along.  I just crossed the 40,000 word mark today, which is something between one third and one fifth of the way to the end.  As I have mentioned, this book is going to be a bit more ambitious than the first.  If we don't keep reaching for the stars, what's the fun, right?  I am in the middle right now of the second battle scene and this one is both big and complex.  I won't say much for fear of spoiling the fun, but I will tell you that the engagement is the Battle of Rashid V B and involves twenty-five Krag Dervish Class Destroyers, three squadrons of Rashidian SF-89 Qibli fighters, our heroes aboard the USS Cumberland, and a great big surprise. 

I've gotta say, this stuff is hard work, but I'm having a blast.  I am literally working 12-18 hours a day, seven days a week and it tires me out less than four or five eight hour days practicing law.  It wouldn't be so hard but for the kind of attention to detail I bring to this kind of thing.  I can't just say that there were a "bunch of Rashidian fighters."  I have to give them a model number.  I have to find a reasonable Arabic name for them (Qibli = the Arabic word for the Sirocco wind).  I can't just say that the fighters engaged the destroyers and the destroyers won, I have to explain what each group did, why, and how that tactic lead to victory for the winning side.  I can't just say, "Captain, sensors show that the target is a Vaaach ship," I have to explain which sensors, and how what they show leads to the conclusion that the ship is Vaaach rather than Pfelung or some other race. 

And, then, there are all the lame cliches and tropes and other Science Fiction pet peeves that I have stored up over the years that I have sworn a thousand times that I will never commit myself but that take a lot of thought and creativity to avoid.  Try it sometime yourself, and see what I mean.  Write a chapter that doesn't have a Mr. Spock who knows everything, who can look into his special blue light sensor thingy and tell you whatever it is you want to know about what's out there, and who can calculate the odds of a successful outcome down to the last decimal point.  I dare you. 

And then there's the issue of trying to concentrate on writing the new novel when there is so much interesting stuff going on with the old one.  It is so easy to stop work and just bopp on over to the Kindle Direct site and see how many copies have sold in the last ten or fifteen minutes, or to jump over to the Amazon site itself and see what the book's overall ranking is or where it stands on the three bestseller lists in which it is currently in the top 100, or--even more fun--look at where I (me, H. Paul Honsinger, personally) stands in the Amazon Kindle Top 100 Science Fiction Writers.  Me.  A top 100 Science Fiction Writer.  I can watch my little number go up to 71 and then drop to 85 and then go back up to 79 and then down to 91 and up to 78 and so on almost full time all day long.  Stop that.  Satan calls you to watch the numbers.  Retro me.  Or something like that.  Never actually took Latin, I just sort of collect words and phrases. 

As if that's not bad enough, there are the reviews.  If you don't know what I mean, go over to the Amazon site for the book and read them.  On the whole, they are amazingly, fantastically, mind-numbingly wonderful.  You've got to understand that when I sat down to start writing this stuff a few months ago, I had no idea that I might be a good novelist.  Now, I knew I was pretty good at argumentative, essay, and exposition type writing, but novels?  I had never even written a serious short story.  So, when the reviews started coming in saying that people really enjoyed the book, that it was one of the best things of its type they had read, etc., it took a lot of getting used to.  It was truly, truly an enormous surprise.  Even the "worst" review is a three star and says things like:  "Harvey Phillips and Paul Honsinger both understand _and_ deftly depict the real basis of shipborne combat effectiveness. They know what motivates men in combat. That alone pulls To Honor You Call Us: Man Of War (Volume 1) way out of normal for space operas, and makes it a Buy This Book, but they also understand human weakness and redemption. Their knowledge of people marks them as authors to watch."

If that's the worst, I think I can take criticism.

Work, Work, Work

Got about 3,000 words written today.  We are moving into the middle of the second phase of the novel (there are approximately seven "phases" planned for this one--Book One had five).  Things are progressing a little more slowly than in Book One, but my wife has been sick these past three weeks and that has been a substantial distraction.  She is on the mend now and I think I will be able to focus better. 

And, of course, there are the delays involved in checking to make sure that we have the science right.  It takes more time than you might suspect to be sure that what we are writing about Alfven Waves and the Synchrotron Maser effect is right, or at least right enough that the guy who took a few Physics classes in college doesn't snort his coffee out his nose when he reads the relevant paragraphs. 

I wish the International Astronomical Union would read the appendix to my first book on how to name planets in other solar systems and get with the program.  Their absurd method is counter-intuitive and totally contrary to what people who grew up watching Star Trek have come to expect, not to mention tons of other Science Fiction.  Do you want to go against Star Trek if you can avoid it?  No.  I thought not. So, the third planet orbiting Tau Ceti should be Tau Ceti III, not Tau Ceti c.  Let's get this right, people, or we're going to be stuck with a goofy system for the next thousand years.

Sequel Progressing

I've been working diligently on the sequel to the surprisingly well-received To Honor You Call Us.  I'm about 20,000 words deep into For Honor We Stand and it is going well.  I have the first three chapters written and the basic narrative structure of the book planned.  I am trying to build into this book the same elements that people seem to like in the first book, but with a bit more ambition.  Don't be surprised if this book comes out a little longer than the first one.  No promises, but that's the way it's looking.

I don't want to give away too much, but I can tell you that the book opens with a rip roaring battle--the Cumberland is running for its life from two Krag Heavy Cruisers (Crustacean class) and becomes locked in a life or death struggle in the complex system of moons, magnetic fields, ion streams, and other phenomena around a gas giant planet known as Mengis VI.  You will see more of Max Robichaux's wily cunning in that chapter than you saw in the whole first book. 

There is also high level diplomacy involving the doctor, a return appearance from the very dapper, refined, and honorable Mr. Ellington Wortham-Biggs, lots of Chief Engineer "Werner" Vaughn Brown, an interesting new XO in the person of a the brilliant Brazilian tactical prodigy Eduardo DeCosta, more from old friends Kraft, Kasparov, Bartoli, Chin, LeBlanc, Shepherd, Park, Wendt, and, of course, Vice Admiral Louis "Hit 'em Hard" Hornmeyer.  The Cumberland receives a highly secret mission critical to turning the tide of the war against the Krag, and the war enters a new and perilous phase.

That's what we have planned for you.  We're working twelve to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, to try to bring it to you by mid to late January.  In fact, we remember that Max took command of the Cumberland on January 21, 2315.  So, we have set January 21, 2013 as our deadline.  Maybe we'll make it, maybe we won't (after all, we've only written one novel so far, so it's not like we are deeply experienced in this process), but that is what we are shooting for. 

Until then, hang in there, readers.  Keep telling your friends about this book--the more interest there is, the more sequels there will be.  Seriously, I've been thinking about this stuff since 1966, so I've got enough material in my head and in my notebooks to write fifteen or twenty books.

"To Honor You Call Us" Sales Outstanding!

Sales of the new novel, To Honor You Call us have been outstanding--far above expectations.  Part of the reason has to be the amazing customer reviews the book has been getting on Amazon.com.  So far there are six reviews, three five star (out of five) and three four star, all highly complimentary and most mentioning that the reviewer is anxious to read the sequel.  One reviewer, in fact, commented that:  "This novel is the best independently published military sci-fi book that I have read and ranks, frankly, among the best professionally published ones as well."

Wow!  And I don't even know the guy.

Reviewers have also commented on how realistic and believable the book is, and how interesting they found the characters.  We worked very hard to make the book as real as possible, often spending hours sketching battle maneuvers and calculating time, distances, and velocities of the ships and weapons in order to be sure that they all worked geometrically and mathematically.  We also strove to make our characters real people with real human characteristics.  It appears that our efforts are bearing fruit.  We are very pleased that people seem to like the book and grateful for the favorable response it has enjoyed. 

We are working very hard to make the next book, For Honor We Came, just as good, if not better.  

Paperback is Live on Amazon

The paperback version of my new novel To Honor You Call Us just went live on Amazon.com.  So, those of you who may have wanted the book but who don't do e-books, can now get your hands on the hard copy.  The sale price is $13.50, which is at the low end for paperbacks of this length (about 370 pages)

Here is the link. 

http://www.amazon.com/To-Honor-You-Call-Us/dp/1480283088/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1352744647&sr=8-8&keywords=to+honor+you+call+us

Paperback Available

Although it is not yet on Amazon.com (look for it in about four days) the paperback edition of To Honor You Call Us is available on Createspace.com for 13.50.  Here is the URL for the order page:

https://www.createspace.com/4054570

We actually do a little better on the royalty if you order from Createspace, so if you are holding off to buy until the book is on Amazon thinking you are doing us some sort of favor, don't wait.  Just go get it now, if you are so inclined. 

Tally Ho!!!

About one sixth of the sales of the new novel "To Honor You Call Us" are from Great Britain.  This is not a surprise, as there are a great many residents of that island Kingdom who are reputed to be able to read the English langauge (that IS intended as a joke, people).  Indeed, as these books are, in some ways, patterned as "English Sailing Ship Novels in Space" it is not surpring that we have found some British readers.  We hope our friends in the UK enjoy these books, and that you find Lieutenant Brown, our character with a British heritage, to be true to life.  If we get anything wrong, let us know, in a comment here or by emailing us at honsingermilitaryscifi@gmail.com.

Paperback is Coming Soon!!

We are cleaning up the manuscript for uploading to Creatspace to make the paperback version of "To Honor You Call Us."  We expect the paperback to be available by sometime this weekend.  We are also picking up a few typos that we will fix in the digital file people are downloading from Kindle and Nook, so new purchasers will have a corrected version and old purchasers can delete the book from their device (but NOT your account!!!!!) and redownload the book and you will have the most current version.

Reviews and Update

Today we got a nice four star review saying that the story was "solid" and saying that the reviewer is eager for the next installment.  We also got a five star rating, no review though, from someone on Barnes & Noble.  The sales continue to be encouraging with some high rankings on Amazon.  We are working on getting the paperback made available.  Our plan is to get our end of that done tomorrow so that the book will be available for purchase late in the week.  Once that is done, I will start work on the next book in the series "For Honor We Came" which will continue the adventures of Captain Max Robichaux and Doctor Ibrahim Sahin on board the U.S.S. Cumberland.  I can tell you that all your old favorites will be back (except, of course for those who perished in the Battle of Pfelung), including more of the Vaaach and the Pfelung, as well as romantic interests for at least one of our heroes. 

Nook Version Now Available

The Barnes and Noble version of To Honor You Call Us has just gone live.  So, those of you who have Nook readers can now enjoy what your friends with Kindles have been reading since last night.  I hope you like it.  Here is the link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-honor-you-call-us-h-paul-honsinger/1113741463?ean=2940015939903

It's HEEEERRRREEEE!!!!!

Well, folks, it's here. My first novel, To Honor You Call Us, just went live as an Amazon Kindle e-Book last night. It should be available as a Barnes & Noble Nook e-Book in a day or two, and as an Amazon/Createspace print on demand paperback within a day or two after that. I'm very excited and, yes, nervous about this offering. I started out to write a sort of generic "Space Opera" shoot-em up that just happened to be more scientifically and militarily valid than most books in this genre. What I wound up doing was investing a great deal of my heart and soul and humanity in this thing, giving my characters complex back stories, psychological conflicts, and nuanced motivations.  Of course, I stuck to my guns about writing something that made a reasonable amount of sense from a scientific and tactical perspective. 

There's still lots of action with several exciting space battles, but the book turned out to be more about the people than the maneuvers and the hardware. I hope people like it.  

Here is the link to where to buy the e-Book on Amazon. 

http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-ebook/dp/B00A1VFFVM/ref=tag_stp_s2_edpp_hard_s20on 

Sales are actually off to a reasonably good start, considering that I am an unknown author publishing in a very crowded genre.   

If you read the book and would like to comment on it, this is a good place to do so.  I am going to create a Facebook page separate from my personal one for my activities as a writer.  When I get that set up, I’ll post the URL here.

 

Novel Sneak Preview

This is a sneak preview of the upcoming Military Science Fiction Novel from Paul Honsinger, To Honor You Call Us, due out in October 2012 as a Kindle and Nook e-book and as an Amazon paperback.  The version you see here may differ slightly from the one that finally appears in print, due to editorial revisions.   

To Honor You Call Us

Book One of the “Man of War” Trilogy 

by

H. Paul Honsinger

© 2012 by H. Paul Honsinger

All Rights Reserved

The Man of War Trilogy

To Honor You Call Us (October 2012)

For Honor We Stand (Early 2013)

Brothers in Valor (Mid-Late 2013)

Hearts of Steel

(The Official Anthem and March of the Union Space Navy, with new verses for the current war, sung to the tune of the “Heart of Oak,” the official Anthem and March of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.)

To Stations my lads, 'tis to glory we steer,
Oh, sons of the Union, we fight without fear;
'Tis to Honor you call us, for Honor we stand;
We brothers in valor await fame’s command.

            (Chorus)

            Hearts of steel, that’s our ships; hearts of steel, that’s our men.

            We always are ready; steady, boys, steady!

            We'll fight, not surrender, again and again.

We’ll take payment in blood for the debt Krag must pay,
And carve them with cutlass when they come to play;
Our courage defiant ennobles the stars,

Stalwart sons of Ares, strong offspring of Mars.

            (Chorus)

We still make them bleed and we still make them die,

And shout mighty cheers as they fall from the sky;

So, to Stations me lads and let’s sing with one heart,

We will win this war if we all do our part.

             (Chorus)

Prologue

04:13Z Hours, 11 November 2314 (General Patton’s Birthday)     

            Lieutenant Max Robichaux, Union Space Navy, stood in the crowded boarding tube breathing the scent of fear-acrid sweat from the thirty-four other men he had been able to round up from the Emeka Moro.  With over fifty Krag boarders on his own ship, it seemed nothing short of insane to be counter-boarding the enemy vessel instead of defending his own.  Except that his shipmates were losing the battle for their own vessel.  Except that, unless the Krag ship could be disabled and the two vessels separated, the more numerous crew from the enemy Medium Battlecruiser would continue to flow into the Emeka Moro overwhelming the less numerous compliment of the smaller Frigate.  Except that, unless this desperate gamble worked, his own ship would be taken, refitted, crewed with Krag, and sent back into battle against the people who built her.  And, of course, there would be the small matter of the enemy brutally killing Max along with his shipmates and dumping their mutilated bodies into interstellar space.

            Call it an incentive to succeed.

            Max adjusted his gloves which not only chafed his large hands, but trapped his own nervous sweat against them.  “Five seconds, brace yourselves,” yelled the Engineer’s mate.  Every man covered his ears and opened his mouth to help prevent his eardrums from rupturing.  “Three, two, one,” Just as Max could see that the young man’s diaphragm was beginning the contraction that would allow him to utter the word “now,” the slowly telescoping boarding tube struck the outer hull of the Krag warship, triggering the breaching charge with a deafening THOOOOOOOM blowing a nearly two-meter opening into which the boarding tube penetrated just under an arm’s length.  Within a second, a polymer collar around the exterior of the tube folded out and adhered to the inside of the hull, making an airtight seal.  Just as the seal formed, the door at the end of the boarding tube dropped to form a ramp and the men under Max’s command stormed into the Krag ship. 

            They found themselves in a large cargo hold full of assorted containers, at least thirty meters square with a hatch on the far wall.  Immediately three men slipped off packs and pulled out three components which they assembled into a device, about a meter and a half square, which they activated.  Max noted that both the blue and green lights came on, indicating that, for now, the Krag ship’s internal sensors and coms were offline until their computer managed to decrypt the scrambling algorithm, which typically took from fourteen to twenty-three minutes.  He hoped it was long enough.

            A quick hot wire job by the Engineer’s Mate (what was his name, Tumlinson?, Tomlinson, Tomkins?) and the hatch slid open admitting the boarding party to a corridor.  Max was the first one through the door, sidearm in hand.  “After me,” he whispered hoarsely and the men followed him at a trot.  The Union had captured enough Krag ships in the decades’ long war for Max to know the general layout, and he was leading them to the Main Engine and Power Control Room.  The boarding party made its way quickly and without encountering any Krag up about sixty five meters of corridor and then turned a sharp corner into a short corridor that ended at the entrance to their destination. 

            There to be met by a hail of gunfire.  Ducking quickly out of the way of the bullets, Max pointed to three men behind him, then made a fist and a throwing motion, indicating that the three men were to use grenades.  They pulled the fist-sized devices from their web belts and yanked the pins while holding down the safety levers, then looked back at Max.  He held up three fingers and counted down silently:  “three, two, one.”  A full second after the “one,” and in unison, all three men threw their grenades hard against the far bulkhead of the corridor to land at the guards’ feet in a banking shot.  The three grenades went off about a tenth of a second apart.  Max and his men stormed around the corner shooting as they came, in case anyone was left standing. 

            No one was.  Four dead Krag lay bleeding near the door, pulse rifles in their hands.  “Remember men, once we get in, no shooting.  Boarding cutlasses only.  There are too many things in there that can kill us all if they get punctured by a bullet.”  He turned to the Engineer’s mate.  “Ready, Tomkins?”  That was his name.  Tomkins.  “Blow it.”

            Thomkins pressed and held two buttons on the side of his Percom, the green light on the small breaching charge he had just stuck on the hatch changed from green to red, and with a sharp BANG, the charge shredded the door.  Max led the way, his 63.5 centimeter boarding cutlass drawn, his men immediately joining in scores of separate one on one and three on two engagements with the twenty-five or so Krag engineers who had been manning stations in that space.  Spotting the panels that he needed to reach near the far end of the room, Max strode in that direction.  Immediately three Krag converged to block him.  The closest drew its own sword, a short, straight affair resembling a Roman gladius and stabbed at Max’s midriff.  With a powerful downward swipe of his own, longer, heavier blade, Max blocked the blow and struck his opponent with the back of his hand hard in the snout.  Stunned, the Krag staggered allowing Max to bring his cutlass back up and chop into the Krag’s neck, cutting about three quarters of the way through, severing its spine, and dropping it to the deck.

            The second, more skilled with a sword than the first, held its weapon in front of it like a fencing foil, ready to duel.  Max charged, leading with the point of his own weapon as if to accept the Krag’s invitation to a fencing match.  At the last moment, Max lunged forward and grabbed the end of the Krag’s sword in his gloved left hand, pushing the point away from himself while plunging his own weapon deep into the Krag’s abdomen and out its back.  Apparently, the Krag had not been looking for a point attack, as the Cutlass was primary regarded as a slashing weapon.

            Sensing rather than seeing the approach of the third Krag, Max quickly pulled his sword from the second and pivoted to his right to fend it off just as the one Marine Max had been able to find for the boarding party caught it from behind, stabbing swiftly into the Krag’s right lung with a distinctly non-regulation dirk.  The Krag fell to the deck on his back, gasping as its lungs collapsed from the air filling its chest cavity.  The Marine silenced the sound with a savage stomp to the Krag’s throat.  The way to the panels was now clear.  Max took a quick look around the compartment, seeing that all the Krag were out of the fight, except for four who were standing back to back mounting a last ditch defense.  Twenty or so lay dead or badly wounded on the deck, along with seven of his own men.  Confident that the remaining boarders would shortly overwhelm the four hold-outs, Max reached the panels he sought in three long steps, struggling briefly with the unfamiliar labels on the controls. 

            He pulled a small cylindrical device from his web belt, ripped off a piece of plastic film exposing an adhesive strip, and gave the end a quick half twist.  Max pressed the cylinder, adhesive side down, to the panel and stepped back.  He then repeated the procedure, attaching a second cylinder to a second panel.  A few seconds later, each made a loud, high pitched whine that started out near the top of the musical scale and rapidly ascended beyond the range of human hearing all the while emitting a brilliant red-orange glow that became brighter as the pitch became higher.  When the noise and the light both stopped, Max saw that all the displays in that entire area of the Krag engineering deck were dark, the delicate micro-circuitry of their components hopelessly fused.

            Until the Krag could bypass those units, a process that might take hours, their ship’s grappling field was off line and its motive power limited to maneuvering thrusters.  “Men, her claws are cut and her legs are broken.  Now, let’s get away before we overstay our welcome.”  Max had always been amused by the idea of boarding with a nuke rather than sabotage gear, but the thought of what would happen if the boarding party’s exit from the enemy ship were delayed didn’t bear contemplation.  Being caught inside the fireball of a nuclear explosion may be a quick and painless way to die, but it was also awfully damned certain.  Boarders always took or crippled the ship they boarded, but never destroyed it. That was best done at a safe distance from your own vessel.

            Max led the men the way they came, turning into the main corridor only to be met by about two dozen Krag marines, probably drawn by the sound of the earlier gunfire.  Each side fell back from the intersection too startled by the sudden appearance of its respective enemy to get off a shot.  Knowing he had only a second to act before the Krag got the same idea, Max pulled two grenades from his own web belt, one in each hand, extracted the pins with his teeth, and tossed them both around the corner.  As soon as they went off, he charged around the corner, his men behind him, the front rank of five men shooting from the hip and taking out about half of the Krag who were not felled by the grenades. 

            The two clumps of combatants merged in a close order melee, shooting at point blank range with side arms and hacking at each other with swords.  Max shot one Krag through the bottom of the jaw and was turning to meet another when he felt an odd tug at his left arm.  Turning, he saw a Krag sword slicing the back of his wrist, just as Crewman First Class Fong shot it through the back of the head.  As both groups started to thin from casualties and room between the fighters opened up, what had been an even balance between shooting and stabbing turned more and more to shooting with the advantage going to the slightly more numerous boarding party.  The remaining Krag ran with the Union crew shooting at their fleeing backs and bringing down four more.  Stepping over the bodies of friend and foe, Max led the remainder of his men, now numbering only nineteen, back into the cargo hold, down the boarding tube, through the airlock, and onto the Emeka Moro. 

            Tomkins pulled a large blue and yellow striped lever, sealing the boarding tube airlock then slapped a red button.  A loud WHUMP marked the detonation of the explosion that blew the tube cutting the near end loose from the Emeka Moro. 

            Max gave himself the luxury of half a minute—five quick breaths—to savor the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of being back aboard his own ship.  The boarding action had been a success, with the bonus that Max and most of his men were still alive. There were Navy crewmen left behind on the Krag ship, probably all dead by now, and there they would stay.  Sentimental notions about retrieving bodies of comrades had perished in the first weeks of this desperate war for the survival of the Human race.  But, if things continued according to plan, the fallen would receive the most thorough cremation known to Man.

             Leaning against the nearest bulkhead, Max hit the orange SND/ATN button on his Percom.

            “Robichaux to CIC.”

            “CIC,” the voice from the ship’s Command Information Center responded over the tiny device strapped to Max’s wrist.

            “Boarding party is Romeo Tango Sierra.”  Max said, informing the command crew that the boarding party had “RTS” or Returned To the Ship.  “Enemy Main Sublight Drive and grappling field disabled for estimated one hour minimum.  Nineteen effectives remaining.  Rest are Kilo India Alpha.”  Killed In Action.  Dead.  Almost half. 

            “Excellent work, Lieutenant.”  Max recognized the cool, well modulated voice of Captain Sanchez.  “Make your way to Auxiliary Control with your party.” 

            “Heading for Auxiliary Control, aye.”  Auxiliary control?  With enemy boarders to be fought?  Fighting the desire to shake his head at the order, he turned to the ragged remnant of his command.  “Men, we are ordered to Auxiliary Control.”  Down a corridor Max led his men, now huffing and puffing, up an access tube, down another corridor, up three more levels, and into another corridor that led about a hundred meters to yet another access tube that would let them climb two more decks to the level on which AuxCon was located.  Then CRACK-BOOOOOM.  A sharp blast followed by a long, deep rumbling shook the ship.  Max knew that sound.  It was the detonation of an implosion charge array collapsing a heavy spherical pressure bulkhead.  Like the one that surrounded CIC.

            Now the order made sense.  The Captain must have known that the Krag had taken the spaces surrounding CIC and were setting the carefully calculated arrangement of charges that, when detonated together, would crush the CIC pressure bulkhead like an eggshell, instantly killing everyone inside.  Everyone in CIC, which included every officer on the ship senior to Max, was now dead.  Captain Sanchez had just issued his last command.

            Max and his men poured out of the access tube onto Deck 8 and ran toward Auxiliary Control.  Dead men and dead Krag littered the corridor.  No one was left alive, save one Krag with a shredded right arm trying and failing to set breaching charge on the hatch.  Setting a breaching charge is a two-handed operation.  Max drew his sidearm and shot it cleanly through the head, absently kicked the body to the side, put his palm on the scanner, and keyed the access code. The hatch slid open admitting Max and his men to the room from which the ship could be fought if CIC were destroyed. 

            Only two Petty Officer Thirds were manning stations.  The rest of the crew who would ordinarily been there had probably been sent out to fight boarders.  Max threw himself into the seat at the Commander’s station and divided his attention between pulling up the displays he needed and putting people to work. 

            “Tomkins, Woo, and Lorenzo, take maneuvering.  Adamson, Tactical.  Marceaux, Weapons.  Fong, SysOps.  Montaba, Sensors.  Everyone else cover the rest of the stations as best you can—keep an eye on what’s going on and go where you are needed.  Don’t be afraid to sing out if you see anything, need anything, or have a question.  You’ve all got your Comets, so you know how to run every station in the ship, but you’ve never worked together doing these jobs, so you’ll just have to talk to each other, pitch in, and be flexible.”

            “Sir, you’re bleeding,” observed Montaba quietly.

            Max looked at his arm. His uniform sleeve was soaked with blood and he could see deeply into the muscles of his forearm.  The slash was deep, and yet, Max felt strangely distanced from the sensation of pain.  He pulled a First Aid Kit from an Emergency Equipment Bin, stuffed a volume bandage into the arm of his uniform, and then stuck his whole forearm into a compression sleeve, pulled the cinch, and tied it off.  The sleeve inflated to put pressure on the volume bandage and slow the bleeding, while a medication ampule in the bandage was ruptured by the pressure, releasing coagulants and an antibiotic cocktail into the wound.  Maybe Max would not bleed to death in the next few hours or die of an infection before he got to a doctor.  Just maybe.

            This took only about a minute.  People were moving quickly but efficiently to their assigned stations, getting their displays tied into working data channels and controls online.  Max stabbed a com button on his panel.  “Attention all hands, this is Lieutenant Robichaux in AuxCon.  CIC is gone and I have assumed command.  Ship is being conned from here.  All DC and Boarder Repel stations report your status by lights. I need two Marines to AuxCon.  Carry on at Condition One.  That is all.”  How the Marines in the ship were supposed to determine which two were to respond to this command, they would have to figure out for themselves, because Max had his hands full. 

            Indeed, Max had never commanded anything larger than a 350 ton System Patrol Vessel.  Now he was commanding a heavily damaged 25,600 metric ton Frigate in combat with a much larger and more powerful capital ship, light years from any hope of reinforcement or support, with virtually all of his officers and much of his crew dead.  The expression “over your head” didn’t even begin to cover it. 

            The crewman at the Damage Control Station sang out.  “Getting damage reports, sir. Relaying them to your board.”  It would take a few minutes before a complete picture developed.  

            “Boarders?” Max said to Lewis at the On Board Defense Station.

            “Only green lights so far, sir.  They are pretty well distributed throughout the ship.  Maybe we got them all.”

            “Maybe so.”  And maybe not.  Max stabbed the com button again.  “AuxCon to Engineering.” 

            A somewhat reedy but precise voice answered instantly.  “Engineering here.  Brown speaking.”

            “Werner!” Max responded gleefully, relief flooding through his every cell. He gave the name a German pronunciation, even though Engineer Brown’s accent was decidedly British. “Do you have any kind of engines working down there at all or am I going to have to order ‘out sweeps’ and have the crew row us home?”

            “Leftenant,” the Engineer exaggeratedly gave the rank the archaic British pronunciation, contrary to Naval procedure, “since your meager training still doesn’t encompass reading the Master Status Display, it is my duty to inform you that the Main Sublight Drive is available at up to 39.5 percent power, but I suggest you endeavor to keep that lower than 25. Compression Drive is available but no higher than 220 c.  Again, my strong recommendation is to approach that speed only in grave need—150 would be much more prudent.  The Jump Drive is nothing but scrap metal and molten pieces of abstract art.  Oh, and if I were you I shouldn’t want to pull anything more than about eight Gs because I don’t think that the inertial compensators are capable of more than 7.8 Gs.  That is, unless you wish to kill what little crew you have left.”

            “Understood, Werner.  If anything else of any importance breaks, let me know by com.  Master Status is down.  Would be nice if it worked.  Of course, it’s not like I expect you to fix it.”

            “I shall attend to it in my copious free time.  And, Leftenant, if you find yourself unable to remember the route to Lovell Station, feel free to ask me for directions.”

            “I’ll bear that in mind, Werner.  AuxCon out.”  Somewhere between a third and two thirds of the crew might be dead, one of the two star drives was gone for good, a vastly more powerful enemy vessel was just yards off the starboard beam, but Gallows humor was alive and well in the Union Space Navy.  Good thing. 

            He jabbed the com key once again.  “AuxCon to Casualty Station. . . . Anyone in Casualty, please respond.”  Nothing. “Anyone up here not insanely busy?”  An Ordinary Spacer Second Class stepped forward. “Shaloob, run on down to the Casualty Station, see what’s going on down there, and report back from the nearest working com.  With CIC gone, your Percom might not work.  And, we’re not sure the ship is clear of Krag so watch yourself.  Draw your sidearm and make sure you’ve got rounds in it and a spare mag.  Or three.”

            “Aye, Skipper,” the man said automatically.  He checked his weapon, drew two spare magazines from the AuxCon weapons locker, and went out the door, pistol in hand. 

            “Skipper,” Max thought.  “Maneuvering, open up some range between us and the Krag ship, in case they have any more ideas about boarding or they get their point defense weapons working again.  Get us out to 400 kilometers.  Course and throttle at your discretion, but take it easy on the old girl, she’s had a rough day.”

            “Aye, sir, 400 kilometers, course and throttle my discretion, taking it easy,” said Tomkins who apparently was the senior of the three at the maneuvering stations—one for yaw and roll, one for pitch and trim, and one for throttle. 

            “Tactical, what weapons do we have?”  Dear, God, please let there be some.       
            “I’m not getting any status, good or bad, from any of our pulse cannon. No lights at all. My opinion is that we should assume forward and rear batteries are out.  Number two and four missile tubes are available.  Tubes loaded, crews standing by, reloads at the ready.  But, I’ve got a red light on the main coils and amber on the auxiliary with the output driver showing at five percent, so it will almost be a dead tube fire.”  The magnetic coils that normally would accelerate the missiles out of their tubes at 61% of the speed of light were showing barely enough power to push them out of the ship at a hundred meters per second.  As a result, propelled only by their on board drive systems, the missiles’ speed would top out at about .30 c, making them far easier to shoot down.  “Tubes one and three show red lights across the board.”  Short pause. “I think their crews are dead, sir.”  Marceaux responded quickly and precisely, but his voice was shaking.  The Adrenalin was wearing off. 

            “God rest their souls,” he said softly.  “Good job, Marceaux.”  Then, in what the Navy called an Officer’s Order Voice, “This is a Nuclear Weapons Arming Order.  Arm missiles and warheads in tubes in two and four, and target the Krag ship.”

            “Nuclear Weapons Arming Order acknowledged and logged, sir.  Arming warheads in two and four, arming missiles in two and four, and targeting the Krag.”  Marceaux repeated his part of the time honored litany.

            “I plan to fire two while holding four in reserve in case two does not destroy the target or another target presents itself,” Max announced.  “Maneuvering, sing out when we get to 400 kills then turn to unmask the number two and four tubes.

            WHAM.  A hammer blow struck the ship rattling the teeth of everyone on board.

            “The Krag just fired one of their projectile weapons, sir,” Tactical observed.              “We noticed.   Mr. Adamson, give me a read on the projectile’s velocity.”

            “It was just over a thousand meters per second, sir.”

            “So, about ten percent.  Most of their acceleration coils must be out.  It will take a hit at the optimal angle for them to penetrate the hull.”

            “Unless they can zero in on one of our hull breaches,” Adamson muttered.

            “Glad you thought of that, Adamson. DC, do we know where our hull breaches are, yet?”

            “Affirmative sir, reports are tolerably complete.”  This from Arglewa.  Somehow he had acquired a nasty burn on his shaven scalp.  “We have two right together in Frame Eight at azimuth 205 and 212 and one in Frame Sixteen at Azimuth 223.” 

            “Thank you, Mr. Arglewa.  Get some burn foam on that shiny head of yours.  The glare is distracting me.  Maneuvering, do your best to roll the ship to present an azimuth of about. . . .” he took a rough average of the three azimuths and subtracted it from 360, “seventy five degrees to the enemy.”

            “Just passing 400 kills, sir, yawing to unmask tubes two and four and rolling to present seventy-five degree azimuth,” said Tomkins.

            “Very well.”

            Max’s comm. buzzed.  “Robichaux here.  Go ahead.”

            “This is Shaloob.  Casualty station is gone, sir.  I think the Krag blew the hatch and tossed in a satchel charge.  Looks like the place was full of wounded when they did it, too.  Nothing but debris and body parts now.  Nurse/Medic Salmons and Pharmacist’s Mate Cho have got a makeshift casualty station set up on the RecDeck.  I count fifty-three wounded there, thirty two look serious.  Salmons and Cho are performing surgery on someone right now so I didn’t interrupt them to get more information.” 

            “Good call, Shaloob, and good report.  When either Salmons or Cho get a second, ask them if they can use you there.  If so, lend a hand, if not hustle back here.” 

            “Aye, sir.”

            “AuxCon out.”

            WHAM.  Another Krag projectile slammed into the hull, this one causing two of the panels in the compartment’s false ceiling to fall to the deck.  A pre-pubescent Midshipman who had appeared in AuxCon without Max noticing calmly picked up the two panels and stacked them with the other debris he had quietly been arranging near the inoperable waste disposal chute, the look on his face as blasé as if he were policing a park for candy wrappers.  The boy had a short barreled shotgun slung over his shoulder and powder deposits on his face and hands proving he had made extensive use of it in the last few hours.  They grow up fast in the Navy.

            Max and Arglewa looked at each other and Arglewa shook his head.  The round had not penetrated.    

            Two marines with blood on their uniforms and fire in their eyes stepped into the compartment.  “Lance Corporal McGinty and Private Nogura reporting as ordered, sir,” said the older of the two. Both saluted smartly.

            “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Max, returning the salute with equal precision.  A Marine felt insulted if you gave him a sloppy salute.  “Take up station outside the hatch to this compartment.  You see any Navy, get ‘em in here.  You see any Krag, kill them.”

            “Aye, sir.”  The Marines did a perfect parade ground about face and took up their stations in the corridor. 

            “Tubes two and four unmasked, enemy targeted,” Marceaux reported.

            “Very well.”  Max responded.  “Mr. Marceaux, enable drives in missiles two and four.  Release warhead safeties.  Set for maximum yield.”

            “Enabling drives in missiles two and four.”  The weapons’ propulsion systems were switched from Off to Standby.  “Releasing warhead safeties.”   The safeties which inhibited ignition of the detonators in the compact H-Bombs at the core of each of the two warheads went inactive.  Once fired, and a last safety detected that the missile had traveled at least 10 kilometers from the launching ship, the warheads would become capable of exploding if properly triggered.  “Setting for maximum yield.”  Each warhead was dialed in for its maximum explosive power of 150 kilotons, more than ten times the power of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, three hundred and seventy years earlier. 

            “Open number two missile door,” said Max.

            “Number two open.”

            “Verify missile target.”

            “Sir,” Marceaux responded formally, “missile number two is targeted on the Krag vessel approximately 400 kills off our Port Dorsal Bow.”

            “Very well.  Weapons Officer, you have a Nuclear Launch Order.”

            “Confirmed, sir, I have a Nuclear Launch Order.”

            “Fire Two.”

            “Two away.”  The ship shuddered as the missile was accelerated marginally by the damaged coils in its launch tube and then continued to accelerate under its own power.  “Missile on course and homing on target.”  Marceaux sounded relieved.  He probably had never fired a live missile before.  “Impact in seven seconds.”

            There was an optical feed of the Krag ship on four displays strategically located around the compartment.  Every eye was glued to one of them as every man silently counted down the seconds, watching as the Krag ship slowly yawed, probably to unmask a just-repaired beam weapon battery and fire what was likely to be a killing blow to the frigate.  No one breathed, as it was always possible that the damaged Krag point defense batteries might pick up and destroy the missile, notwithstanding its own extensive countermeasures designed to prevent that from happening. 

            Three, two, one . . . Right on the mark, all four displays flared into almost painful brightness as the Krag ship disappeared in an incandescent sphere of rapidly expanding plasma slowly fading from a brilliant blue-white through the color-temperature spectrum into dull red and vanishing into infrared frequencies invisible to the human eye.  At last, there were only the cold distant lights of the stars set against the infinite dark of space. 

            Max spoke into the silence, just loud enough to be heard at the weapons station.  “Disable missile drive and Safe the warhead in tube four.”  Marceaux confirmed the order.

            To the whole room, “All right, people, the bad guys died.  We didn’t.  Excellent work.  Now, let’s see about getting the old girl back to Lovell Station.”  

"Graveside" Remarks for Harvey G. Honsinger

These are remarks I prepared to be delivered at the burial of my father, Harvey G. Honsinger, at the Mont Belvieu Methodist Cemetary at Mont Belvieu, Texas (also known as Barber's Hill).  Due to the threat of rain, the graveside ceremony was moved inside, to the Fisher Chapel of the Mont Belvieu United Methodist Church.  The text here is what I wrote for delivery at the graveside--obviously I changed what I actually said slightly to take the new venue into account.  


The chapel was a very fitting site--it is a beautiful white frame church with a beam ceiling and lovely stained glass windows, many bearing inscriptions showing they were donated by Harvey's ancestors and other relatives.  


Graveside Remarks for Harvey Honsinger

April 2, 2012

Good afternoon.  Thank you for coming.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Harvey Paul Honsinger, everyone calls me Paul, and I am Harvey’s son.  

   

I feel certain that my father is pleased that you are here, each of you, because everyone here is special to him.  I know my father’s mind and his heart well enough to believe that he is especially happy to see the faces of his brother, Brian, of the folks he called “the Cousins,” that is the grandchildren of Q.K. and Clara Jane Barber who used to spend summers at the Bay together, along with Cousin Bruzzie—because from what I hear, you folks were in many ways more like brothers and sisters than cousins—plus his dear friend and hunting companion Bruce Jester, as well as all the other family, friends, and anyone here who grew up with him here or who knew him as a young man.  He loved you.  All of you.

I am confident, too, that Harvey is pleased that this place, of all the places on this Earth, is where he is being laid to rest, and that is not just because he left written instructions to that effect. For, even though he lived from 1958 until last Friday in Louisiana, he always considered himself a Texan. And, not just a Texan, but someone with a particular connection to this community, this town, this place.

Barber’s Hill was much more than just a place he was from.  He cherished growing up here, in this town, where everyone knew everyone else, where people looked out for one another, and where the town was, in many ways, simply an extension of the families of which it was made.   

He also valued very highly that he had deep roots here—that his ancestors had come here before the Texas Revolution and built their homes, and helped build this town, the schools, and the church that stood here, creating a community of families and fellowship and faith, where once there was nothing but a gentle hill surrounded by a sea of grass.

In fact, this spot is practically in the back yard of the very home in which he grew up.  It stood right over there, just yards away.  “Spittin’ distance,” you might say.  This place is so close that a pecan that fell from that tree right there—the same one in Harvey’s yard that he and his brother used to climb, the same one that made the nuts from which his mother, Vera, baked cookies and cakes could—almost—roll over here and come to rest against his headstone.

And the church that stood on this spot was important, too him, too.  Not just because his forebears donated the land and helped build the chapel with their own hands, but also because generation after generation worshipped here, received the Good News of our Lord here, were baptized here, were married here, and found their final rest here.

And, finally, I know it is of deep meaning to him that he will find his eternal rest here, surrounded by his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, other family members and friends, many of him he has missed so keenly these past few years.

  

Indeed, this spot, this very spot, is what we might call a “spot of his childhood.”   At the memorial service held for him at Lake Charles, Louisiana, yesterday, we sang, according to one of Harvey’s final wishes, the old hymn—“The Church in the Wildwood.”  This was, I think, a very meaningful choice, and a choice made with this final resting place in mind, because here are the last words of the last verse, right out of the old Cokesbury Hymnal:

“When day fades away into night,

I would fain from this spot of my childhood

Wing my way to the mansions of light.”

The unchained soul of Harvey Honsinger has found his way, from this spot of his childhood, to the mansions of light.  We commit to the soil of Texas the body of this proud Son of Texas.  And, we ask that God accept Harvey’s loving spirit to wait with Him—to wait until Harvey can be joined there by all of those who knew and loved him and we are, all of us, joyfully reunited--reunited in the mansions of light.  

Eulogy for Harvey G. Honsinger

My father passed away from liver cancer at about 10 PM last Friday.  Here is the text of the eulogy I prepared for his memorial service.  I deviated from the prepared text slightly in a few places, but this is pretty close.  Perhaps some of the friends and family who were not at the service may wish to be able to read these words.

Memorial Remarks for Harvey Honsinger

Delivered by Paul Honsinger at Lake Charles, Louisiana on April 1, 2012

Good afternoon. Thank you, all of you, for coming here today.

Summing up the life of a man in a few minutes, particularly when that man is your own father, and even more when that man is someone as multifaceted as Harvey Honsinger, is not easy. It is like trying to tell a relative what the Grand Canyon is like by talking to him about it over your cell phone, or describing a beautiful symphony by just humming a few bars. Nothing I say will do justice to the man. So, please bear with me while I try as best I can to hum a just few bars of the symphony that was Harvey Honsinger. If the way I do it sounds a little strange to you, I’m a lawyer. I can’t help it. Consider it a handicap.


The hymn just sung, “The Church in the Wildwood,” was one of his favorite hymns, and it says a lot about him. It’s about a simple country church remembered from childhood. He loved it because, even though he was highly intelligent, well-educated, and widely read, he was, in many, many ways a simple, old fashioned man, marked by simple, old fashioned virtues. He loved, was faithful to, and cherished very deeply his wife and family. He was a caring and involved father to my sister Kathlene and me, and was very devoted to his grandson, Austin, and granddaughter, Sarah. He worked hard. He paid his bills and saved his money. He had strong faith. He was scrupulously honest and honorable in his dealings with everyone. He was unfailingly courteous. He said “please” and “thank you” and even called seventeen year old waitresses “ma’am.”

He was, in every way, a gentleman. I hear everywhere that chivalry is dead and that gentlemen are out of style, but that never stopped Harvey Honsinger from being that way.

You can’t talk about Harvey Honsinger without talking about his fifty-three year marriage to the love of his life, my mother, Judy Honsinger. They met on a blind date in 1958. He was working at Channel 10 in Lafayette and had noticed her when she had visited the station with a boyfriend that she was breaking up with. On the day of the visit, Harvey looked scruffy and Judy was NOT impressed. He, though, had been very taken with her from the beginning. The ex boyfriend called my mother on behalf of dad and said something about going out, meaning going out with my father. She misunderstood him, thinking that the soon to be ex was asking her out himself, and she said that she would go out with anyone but the boyfriend. So, he said that he had a friend named Harvey who thought she was nice looking and wanted to go out with her. Well, mom had kind of painted herself into a corner and even though she wasn’t really hot on the idea about going out with this Harvey guy, she reluctantly said yes.
       
But, aha, Judy had a plan. Yes, she was going to go to a movie with this Harvey guy, but her younger sister, Norma, was going to go to the same movie and sit in the back. If he so much as held her hand, she was going to go home with Norma and that would be that.

My father, however, had a different—and better--plan. At the appointed hour, he showed up at Judy’s door in Lafayette, immaculately groomed, surrounded by the aroma of cologne, wearing a suit and tie, complete with a French cuff dress shirt and silver cufflinks.
       
Judy still has the tie.

Harvey asked her to go dancing with him. In Abbeville. Judy, who was a bit weak in the knees at this point, forgot completely about her sister Norma back at the movie theater, and floated out the door with him. To his dying day, Harvey remembered exactly how Judy looked and what she wore that night. It was a blue taffeta dress.

She still has the dress.

When my mother described that night to me, she sounded as though she felt she was flying. Maybe she was. In fifty three years of marriage, the air might have occasionally been turbulent, but the plane never landed.

Harvey and Judy were deeply and passionately in love from that night until death parted them. He treated her with unfailing and consistent gentleness, honor, respect, and love every day of his life, and he never stopped telling my sister and myself how lucky he was to be married to such a beautiful and patient woman. He cherished and adored her every day, and there was love and adoration in his eyes for her until the very, very last moment. She was his beloved, his treasure, his heart of hearts.

He was a big man, always larger than life in the minds and hearts of so many who knew him. He was big, not just in physical dimensions, but in every other way. He had a loud, warm, boisterous laugh, a strong, commanding presence, a resolute will, firm opinions, and a big, booming voice. Stage performers they talk about an actor “filling up his space.” Harvey Honsinger filled a lot of space. His departure leaves a huge, cavernous void. The passing of his voice and his of his laughter leaves an eerie stillness.

Speaking of his laughter, it would be a great injustice to talk about my father without talking about his sense of humor. In particular, he had a fine sense of how to bamboozle the credulous. When my sister bought her first car, a Mazda with a transverse drive train—you know, the kind where the drive shaft goes from left to right instead of from front to back--she proudly lifted the hood to show him the engine. He immediately pointed out to her how the engine was aligned and he told her “little girl, they put your engine in sideways.”

My bright, accomplished, beautiful sister was the apple of his eye, but she occasionally can be a tiny bit gullible and so, she was a frequent target for this kind of humor. One time when she was about ten, he had been fishing, and he put a little croaker, a fish that makes a distinctive noise, in his shirt pocket, and said to her, “Kathlene, listen to my heart.” She put her head right by the fish, which went “bwaaaap.” She nearly passed out.
       
In case you think that he was anything but soft hearted about his little girl, you should know one amazing thing that he did out of his feeling for her. When Kathlene was about five, America finally woke up to the fact that cigarette smoking caused cancer. Dad was a smoker. I don’t mean he smoked cigarettes, I mean he was a smoker—nicotine had its claws deep, deep into him. One day, she came to him crying inconsolably. When she could finally talk, she said something like, “I don’t know what I would do if my daddy died of cancer.”

That day, he flushed every cigarette he owned down the toilet and quit cold turkey. Forever. On the first try. This was before nicotine patches. Before nicotine gum. Before pills to help with the cravings. He did it with nothing but Tootsie Pops and iron determination. For his little girl.

Back to his sense of humor, he loved duck hunting, and often hunted with his brother and Mark Baker, an outstanding gentleman who is in all but name the adopted son of dad’s brother Brian. Dad and Mark often disagreed over which of them had killed a particular duck. Dad told Mark that he had solved that problem by buying for Mark special shotgun shells: according to Harvey, the pellets were coated with a high-tech concentrated dye that would color green the blood of any duck hit with them. So, if the blood was not green, then Mark had not hit the duck. Obviously, there was no such thing as the special marker shotgun shells.

For years, if there was a question about who had killed the duck, they would cut into it and Dad would say, “no green, Mark, it must be my duck.”
       
When we were little, one time after it had been raining a lot, there were lots of mushrooms popping up in the yards of our neighborhood in Oak Park. Mom noticed the neighborhood kids peering carefully and minutely under every single mushroom. When she wondered aloud to Dad what they were doing, he told her that he had told the kids that the mushrooms were fairy umbrellas and they were all trying to find the fairies.

My father is probably best known here in Lake Charles for the 20 years he worked at KPLC. He had many professional accomplishments there, but I like to remember him as Santa Claus. Every year around Christmas, in the afternoons the station had a Santa Claus show where, sandwiched between the regular programming, they would feature Santa with local children. Dad got the part because, well, he looked the part.

Anyway, Harvey’s Santa was jolly and warm, but with a stern side. Sure, he asked the children what they wanted for Christmas, and had a merry HO HO HO but he didn’t just take their word on whether they had been naughty or nice. Oh, no. Instead, he asked them if they helped their parents with chores around the house, what those chores were, and whether they did them right away or whether they had to be asked again and again. He asked whether they did their homework and if they were kind to their younger brothers and sisters. Whether they fed their pets. Whether they were respectful to their teachers. Santa was tough. And he had an agenda.

For years he directed a program called the Lee Janot show. As many of you remember, Lee Janot was a local personality who had a powerful ego and who considered herself very much the star of local television. Well, she may have been the star, but Harvey Honsinger was the Director, charged under FCC regulations and station policy with full and absolute responsibility for everything that went out over the air during his shift. It was inevitable that they would butt heads.

It was a live show and the program had to be planned in a fair degree of detail. Lee was a free-wheeling soul, and liked to do things out of order or to improvise, which was not acceptable to my father. Finally, he put his chips on the table and told her he was in charge and she would have to stick to the script. Lee raised. “What are you going to do, Harvey,” she said, “cut me off and show a test pattern.”

“No,” he replied, upping the ante, “I’ll cut you off and for the rest of the time slot I’ll run Deputy Dog cartoons.” (Y’all remember Deputy Dog, right?).

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Just try me.”

Well, one day, thinking she was calling his bluff, she went way way off the script. Bam. Harvey punched the button killing the show. Whack. He punched the button to start the film running and Zoom, out over the air waves went Deputy Dog.

From that point on, they had a friendly, respectful relationship. If you remember the show, you may remember Lee asking frequently, “Harvey, is it OK if we do whatever?” “Harvey, can we do this, that, or the other thing?” She knew to ask, because if she didn’t there was a Deputy Dog cartoon set to roll on a moment’s notice.

[Addendum:  Since the service, I have been reliably informed that the correct spelling of this particular cartoon is actually "Deputy Dawg" not "Deputy Dog."  Of course, where I grew up, the difference in spelling was NOT audible.]

After KPLC he had a second career as a Probation and Parole agent, later supervisor, later District Manager/Administrator for one fifth of the entire state. It was a major change but he didn’t seem to have any trouble. When the man who was doing the hiring at Probation and Parole called one of my dad’s references, a man who used to work with him at the TV Station, the supervisor asked this man whether he thought my father could do the job. He replied, “did Harvey say he could do it?” The caller told him yes. “Well, if Harvey Honsinger said he could do it, you can bet your last dollar that he can do it.” He was very happy in his second career as a law enforcement officer and was very, very proud to carry the badge.

And, after his retirement in 2002, he devoted much of his time to writing. Finally, in October of last year, he was published. Firehair: A Novel of the West by Harvey Honsinger is available for sale worldwide. In his last days, he delivered another manuscript, which will be published and available in a few months. As his editor, I can tell you that he was a gifted storyteller, he had an ear for dialogue, and a marvelous ability to bring to life the way people lived their daily lives in a bygone era. He was an extraordinarily talented novelist.

He wrote those books on the same computer that I used to write these remarks. He loved what the computer allowed him to do, but had many frustrating hours trying to get it to do his will. It was a love/hate relationship, and somewhere in the stratosphere over Moss Bluff, there still is a cloud of ozone and thunder from his battles with the evil forces that lurked inside that machine. He is getting the last laugh now.

There is so much more that could be said about him and so much more that deserves to be said. But, he left specific, written instructions that the remarks at his service be brief. I am very concerned that if I go on too long, he will find a way to make me go away and put Deputy Dog in my place. So, I think it appropriate to leave you with this.

He was a good man. He loved his wife, his family, and his country. He strove every day of his life to do the right thing, and to do injury to no one. And, when he learned that the end was coming, he faced it with absolute courage and determination. He made his final arrangements, saw that his beloved Judy was provided for, and went gently, quietly, and without complaint.

God has now unchained Harvey’s spirit from the weight of his earthly body. Tomorrow, he will be laid in the soil of his beloved Texas, at the site of the church built by his family and where they worshipped for more than a hundred years, just yards from the house in which he grew up, and surrounded by the departed family members he has lately missed so much.

That place is a “spot of his childhood.” And, I think that maybe he had that somewhere in mind when he picked the “Church in the Wildwood” hymn to be sung today, because here is the end of the last verse:

“When day fades away into night,
 I would fain from this spot of my childhood
 Wing my way to the mansions of light.”
       
Harvey Honsinger has found his way to the mansions of light. We are left with the emptiness created by his all-too-swift departure. Yet, we who loved him and are left behind are sustained by glowing memories of his love, his humor, his almost bone-crushing bear hugs, his warm smile, and above all, his laughter.