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.