Moving!

I am moving my blog home, for various technical reasons, to the Wordpress platform.  You can find me at http://hpaulhonsinger.com/.  This blog will be left in place, for the time being, but not updated. 

Thrills, Chills, Excitement!

It’s been an exciting few weeks here in Honsingerland, and I’ll try to catch you up on most of the developments.

First, the 47North editions of my two extant novels are trundling along toward publication.  To Honor You Call Us scheduled to come out in paperback, Kindle eBook, and audiobook format on February 11, 2014.  It is available for pre-order in all three of these formats here:  http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-ebook/dp/B00DQUKZMY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-3&qid=1373102190

It remains available in the original self-published edition, in both paperback and Kindle formats here:  http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-ebook/dp/B00A1VFFVM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

For Honor We Stand is scheduled to come out in its various 47North formats on March 11, 2014.  You can pre-order the paperback, the Kindle eBook, or the audiobook here.  http://www.amazon.com/For-Honor-Stand-Man-ebook/dp/B00DU0NOP0/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_img_2

Similarly, the original self-published version of this book remains on sale, both in Kindle and paperback formats.  http://www.amazon.com/For-Honor-Stand-Man-ebook/dp/B00BFE6IOC/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

Fans should be aware that, shortly before the 47North versions are issued, the self-published versions of these books will no longer be available (except as used books).  If the 47North versions become popular, they could well become collectors’ items.  Discerning fans might want to order a set of the paperbacks now before they vanish from the Amazon catalog.

The third novel, Brothers in Valor, which has never been issued in a self-published version, and which is still being written, is due out in late Spring or early Summer 2014.  I will update readers of this page as soon as that is nailed down more precisely. 

Readers will have their first chance to listen to me talk about my work in a podcast/internet radio broadcast on the program Science Fiction Spotlight, likely to be aired on October 25.  I will fill you in on the airdate and time as soon as that information becomes available.  Here is a link to the show’s

Facebook page.  Fans of my work will recognize the graphic from the Military Science Fiction teaser.  https://www.facebook.com/sciencefictionspotlight

The cover design appears to be finalized for To Honor You Call Us.  While I am still fond of the original covers, this one is certainly exciting and probably more likely to result in broad, popular appeal.  I hope readers like it.

Podcast Interview In the Works

I'm in discussions with a fellow who does a science fiction author interview show for a podcast network. It's pretty firm that he will be interviewing me on his show on October 25. When it's official, I'll post the URL and other information. So, fans will get a chance to hear me talk about these books live for the first time. It's going to be exciting, at least for me!

47North Edition of "To Honor You Call Us" Available for Advance Purchase

As those of you who watch this space are probably aware, Amazon's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Publishing House, 47North, has acquired the rights to the "Man of War" Trilogy.  The first two volumes, To Honor You Call Us and For Honor We Stand will be re-issued in new editions, with professional editing, original cover art, and the other trappings of major house publication.  They are due out in February 2014.

Amazon has just made the first of these available for pre-purchase.  The new edition of To Honor You Call Us, can be pre-purchased on this page.

 http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-ebook/dp/B00DQUKZMY/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1373540728&sr=1-4. 

I am expecting the page for the next book to go up shortly.  As Book III, Brothers in Valor is still being written, much less gone through editing, I don't expect to see a page for it for a while.  It is still slated for publication in March 2014.

There are significant but not overwhelming changes in the new editions.  Most of the changes are aimed at giving these new editions a wider audience, and I agree that they make the books better.  Until then, the original editions will remain on sale, probably through January 2014.

Working With a Pro

It was with great pleasure that I learned Friday that experienced Science Fiction and Military Fiction Editor Michael Shohl will be working with me on the "Man of War" books.  Michael has worked for several major publishers and is now freelance.  Not only has he worked with David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson, he also edited at least one (maybe more, I'm not sure) of Joe Buff's submarine novels (which I really like).  The parallels between my work and submarine books are obvious, so someone who has submarine book experience is certain a welcome member of the team.

From my research, it appears that this guy is a real professional and is highly respected in the business.  It is flattering that the publisher would seek someone of this stature to work with a totally green author such as myself and even more flattering that he would consent (after having looked at some excerpts) to work with me.

Of course, we may hate each other's guts before we're done, but I'm optimistic about this.  I expected to be assigned to a bright and capable but inexperienced person, as befitting my relatively low status in the industry.

Of course, this could very well be a reverse compliment--on the order of, "boy, have you seen this guy's stuff; we need a really GOOD editor to get this crap into shape!"  I know this happens in other contexts because that's exactly what we did at the Louisiana Law Review.  The worst articles got assigned to the best editors.

I'm speculating based on the absence of evidence.  I've never done this before.  I don't really know how it works.  I'm looking forward to the process and am confident that the product will be excellent.  I hope you agree.

Got Contract?

I've received the publishing contract from 47North.  The terms are confidential (according to the terms--but is the confidentiality of the confidential terms itself a confidential term?  I'm making myself dizzy here.).  But, I can tell you that, as far as your typical contract of adhesion is concerned, the document is not the outrageously unreasonable document that one typically encounters.  I am asking that the definition of one term be refined slightly and I think that my request will be accepted, then we sign, and I collect a sizable fraction of the advance.

Yee Haw!

And, to think, it was just in September that I was telling my wife, "Nah, there's no way that I could write fiction."  

 

Dick Deadeye Was Right

I had suspected this for some time, but it is now obvious—there is a concerted effort on the part of someone, possibly a competing author, to “review bomb” my books for the purpose of lowering their average customer rating. 

The practice is fairly widespread and is common enough to merit a write up in the New York Times not too long ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/business/a-casualty-on-the-battlefield-of-amazons-partisan-book-reviews.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here’s what “review bombing” is, how it works, and why someone would do it.

You see, over time, even the best book starts to slide down the bestseller lists.  Where a book gets more durable exposure is on the “Best Rated” lists, where books are ranked by some mysterious formula primarily based on the average “star” rating given to books by customers.  If a book is rated high on these lists, it will get exposure for many, many months, maybe even years, thereby providing the author with a steady stream of sales in the long term. 

Authors whose books are on these lists but who want a higher ranking can obtain it fairly easily by getting five or six of their friends to go online and to give “one star” reviews to the books with higher rankings.  Because of the mathematics of averaging, it does not take many one star reviews to cause a meaningful decline in a book’s rating. 

Here’s an example.  Take my second book, For Honor We Stand.  It has an average customer rating of 4.7 stars (it has been as high as 4.9).  If some troll comes along and gives it a 1 star rating, I will need to receive 15 five star ratings before the average of that one star rating and the subsequent 5 star ratings is equal to or higher than the 4.7 I had before the 1 star rating was issued. 

What makes me believe that this is going on?  There is one rater who gave three star ratings (Amazon is starting to look more closely at the one stars so if you give three you are safe from having your review erased) to my first book and to several other military science fiction novels on the same day, using the exact same language:  “It was an okay science fiction story but not a whole lot of interesting ideas or plots. Maybe it's aimed at a different target market.”  Six reviews.  The same day.  The same rating.  The same words.  Exactly.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm. 

Then, there’s the individual who trashes the first book in a series, saying that you have to “look for the story line between the inane drivel” and who then goes on to read and review the second book so he can trash it, too!   Do you finish a book, tell the whole world that it contains “inane drivel” and then spend $5.99 and a day or two of your life reading the sequel unless you have something other than entertainment in mind?  If you do, you need to find something more interesting to do with your life.  This person clearly has an agenda.  As if that were bad enough, he suggests skipping the chapter that provides the foreshadowing for the ending and comes right out and tells the despicable lie that neither book contains any sub-plots.  So, not only is he basically committing a fraud on Amazon’s rating system, he’s a lying piece of garbage, to boot. 

There are other examples, but these are among the worst.  These people are doing damage to the reputation and the sales of these books for no other reason than their belief that, by tearing down my work, they can build up the work of someone else by comparison.  This is a despicable and dishonest tactic.  The people who do it are not only the lowest form of contemptible slime, they are also guilty of Wire Fraud, which is a federal felony prosecutable by the FBI under 18 U.S.C. Section 1343. 

Now, gang, I know that there are people who don’t like what I write and that it is possible to hate every sentence I have ever set to paper without any nefarious motives of any kind.  There are unfavorable reviews that I recognize are clearly those of people who just don’t like my work.  I’m totally cool with that. 

For example, here's one.  The writer has legitimate reviews of lots of different kinds of books, many about science and scientific writing, and just doesn't like my book.  I happen to disagree--for example, there is a gripe about the boarding cutlasses, something which I think I explain quite convincingly (should people be shooting bullets in a closed, pressurized metal tube in the vacuum of space, jammed with pressure vessels containing toxic gases and radioactive elements?).  But reasonable people can disagree about such things.  It is clear that the writer simply is not wild about the book.  That's fine.  It is a genuine opinion expressed for non-malicious reasons.  THAT is what these reviews are for, not so that you can game them to push one product over another.  http://www.amazon.com/review/R23F7AO4J2X85I/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm


There are great works of literature that I can’t stand (can you say “Paradise Lost by John Milton” anyone?), and works of schlock that I adore (and, no, I won’t give you a title). 

What these review bomging folks don’t seem to get is that this is a kind of theft, and I don't mean theft as in stealing from Capitol Records by pirating a song. I mean like theft from a neighbor by stealing his pension check from his mailbox.  I’m not a millionaire.  I’ve enough in the bank to pay for a month of bills, maybe two.  I have tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid medical bills from my heart bypass surgery, and have a 17 year old daughter with braces I’m still paying for and who will be going to college in about a year and a half.  Writing is how I support my family (with the help of my wife, who also writes and does well at it).  This kind of attack is an attack on my livelihood and on my family.

There’s not much that can be done about it.  I report the abusive reviews to Amazon as “abuse” but nothing has ever been done.  I have never even gotten any correspondence from Amazon regarding any of my reports, some of which are many months old.  The only thing that you, readers and fans, can do is to write positive reviews if you can do so in good conscience.  As I said earlier, it takes 15 reviews with 5 star ratings to put a book with a 4.7 average back where it was before getting a 1 star rating.  With a 2 star review, it takes 14 reviews giving 5 stars to do the same.  The mathematics is relentless, which is why people do this—it works. 

Notwithstanding these attacks, sales are still pretty good on both books.  There are so many good reviews with so many people who say so many good things so articulately and so persuasively that, if someone who is interested in this kind of book takes a look, that reader is very likely to buy the book.  But, this is not the point where the low reviews hurt; rather, it is in lowering the books’ visibility on the “Top Rated” lists and reducing the number of people who take a good look at the books in the first place. 

As Dick Deadeye says in HMS Pinafore, “it’s a rum world.”

Twitter? I guess so.

I've caved in to the overwhelming social and media pressure to start tweeting.  Whether I will have anything worthy to say in 140 characters or less and whether anyone will want to read those same 140 characters remains to be seen.  But, let it not be said that I am doing what I am supposed to do to promote myself, particularly now that I've actually received the contract from 47North and will be actually signing within the next few days. 

You can follow me at:  https://twitter.com/HPaulHonsinger

I'll try to make it fun.

Terms Agreed To--Contract Next Week

I have come to agreement with 47North Publications on the terms of a publishing contract with them.  I expect to have draft contracts to review, comment upon, and sign sometime next week.  The exact terms of the deal are, naturally, confidential.  I can assure you, however, that so far I feel that I am being treated very fairly and being given the impression that my work and I are valuable commodities. 

All this stuff has been a tremendous distraction for the past few weeks and I haven't gotten much writing done.  I'm hoping that when I get the contracts signed, things will be back to business as usual and I can get back to what my new life as an author is all about:  writing.  Speaking of which, I have pretty much trashed what I have done so far on the first chapter and decided to do something totally different.  I'm excited about the new approach.  It's different from how I started the other two books and I do believe it will help the new book get off to a real roaring start.

Good News and Bad News

Other than the announcement that a book has been published, this is the biggest news that has ever appeared on this page.  We're moving to the "right side of the tracks."  Our self publishing days may well be over.

Amazon's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror "imprint" or publishing house, known as 47North (the latitude of Seattle, Washington, where Amazon is headquartered), has offered a three book deal.  We are currently in negotiations, and there are some small differences between what they are offering and what we want, but I can't imagine any of them being deal breakers.

Under the terms of the current offer, 47North will re-issue the first two "Man of War" novels, To Honor You Call Us and For Honor We Stand in early 2014.  The re-issued novels will be professionally edited and designed, with high quality cover art, hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio book versions, and all the other panoply of major house publication (including something that, for some reason, means a lot to me--justified right margins in the print versions).  So, those little homonym errors, the confusion of EMCON and EMCOM, and those other intensely irritating mistakes that managed to slip past three different proofreaders in eight different proofreads will be eliminated.  The third not-yet-written novel, Brothers in Valor will be written with the advice and guidance of a professional developmental editor and will receive the same treatment.

Meanwhile, the current editions of both books will remain available until shortly before issuance of the new ones.  We hope and expect that people will continue to buy them.

The bad news is that readers of the first two books will have to wait a bit longer to get the third book in their hands.  We were looking for a release of Book III in June or July of this year.  That will now be in March 2014, a delay of eight or nine months.  I know that many readers will find that delay frustrating.  We certainly do.  However, I'm sure you will understand the commercial necessity of issuing the third book under 47North's imprint after issuance of the first two books.  Those publication dates are as early as they can be made because, like any publisher, 47North publishes only so many books per month so that they can receive the appropriate promotion and other resources to make them successful.  The publication schedule is set many months in advance.

The compensation for you readers for this delay will be that you will have in your hands a much higher quality product.  That is not to say that what we have previously issued is not high quality.  We are very proud of the quality that we were able to deliver with the small but dedicated team who brought you the first two books in their self-published versions.  After all, look at the customer ratings--as of this writing both books are in the top 40 of all the Military Science Fiction and War Fiction books ever published in terms of their Amazon customer ratings.  Not a bad job for a 53 year old retired lawyer with heart problems, a retired Law Office Manager/Medical Billing Specialist, a retired teacher, and a retired school librarian.  We have nothing to be ashamed of and believe, along with many readers who have said as much in reviews, that the editorial quality of these books is as high as that they have seen in many professionally published works.  Going through 47North, however, will make the quality even better.  We are going to raise the bar and try to give you Military Science Fiction/Space Naval Fiction as good as anything out there in the market today.  We aim to blow your socks off.

Seriously.  We are huge fans of Timothy Zahn, Tom Clancy, Patrick Robinson's modern naval fiction, and Patrick O'Brian's naval fiction set in the early 19th Century.  And, let's not forget the Olde Tyme and Newe Tyme Greats of Science Fiction:  Asimov, Silverberg, Clark, Heinlein, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Spinrad, Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Robert L. Forward, David Brin, Greg Bear, etc.  Huge.  Fans. What we are aiming for is something very simple, yet hugely ambitious:  to forge a new genre--Space Naval Fiction.  There are glimmers of it elsewhere:  David Weber's Honor Harrington Series, the naval and shipboard business in The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (God, what an amazing book that is!).  But we want to put together in one package something that we have never seen anywhere else.  We aim to give readers from the perspective of a space warship in the year 2315 the nitty gritty of the maneuvers, the "how to," the lives of the men, and the "feel" of shipboard life that Patrick O'Brian gives of a British Frigate in 1815.  We want the believable future technology and future tactics of Timothy Zahn, the techno-thriller razzle dazzle of Tom Clancy.  Plus the believable naval characters and grand strategy of Patrick Robinson.  And the hard science validity of Robert L. Forward.  Plus the compelling stories, the energy and the vividly, plausibly-realized alien races of Niven and Pournelle and David Brin, wrapped in the vast sweeping galactic scope of Asimov and the rest.

Not much to shoot for, is it!  Arrogance?  Maybe.  But, we hope not.  Rather, we like to think of it as aiming high.  We know we're not Asimov or Zahn or Clancy or O'Brian or any of these other folks.  We've got two novels under our belts and that's it.  We've got a lot of sweat and long hours and elbow grease until we can even remotely approach that level. Only by making the attempt will we learn whether we have anything like the talent required to accomplish such an undertaking.  Nevertheless, we refuse to aim low.  That is our target:  Space Naval Fiction.  Exciting.  Scientifically and militarily valid.  Gritty.  Epic.  Stories as big as the galaxy in which they are set.

Game on.  

But, we digress.

Back to business.  This offer also includes an "option" on the fourth book, which would be the first book of the second Max Robichaux/Ibrahim Sahin trilogy.  These publishers will have thirty days to accept or reject the manuscript.  If they reject it, we can go back to publishing it as we did the first two novels, or we can shop it to other publishers.  We don't think either of those things is going to happen.  Rather, we are confident that these books will do quite well under the 47North imprint and that you will be reading Robichaux/Sahin novels issued by them for many years to come.

We look forward to a long and mutually profitable association with 47North, and we ask that readers be patient until we and our publishing partners can bring to you a truly excellent reading experience that will keep you coming back for more swashbuckling adventures in the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Galaxy in the early 24th Century.  We will work night and day to be sure that these new books are worth the wait. 

We have Liftoff!!!

Work has officially begun on the third novel in the "Man of War" series, to be entitled (unless something radical happens to change our minds) Brothers in Valor.  The action picks up about eighteen hours after the Cumberland delivers the response to the Krag ultimatum and is returning to Union space to rejoin Task Force Tango Delta.  But something very strange is going on . . . .

Some of the correspondence we get from folks indicates that some people have an extremely inaccurate idea about how we write these things.  Unlike lots of writers, we do not write from a detailed plot outline.  Most of the time, we don't know very far in advance what's going to happen, so we are as much in suspense about how things are going to turn out as you are.  When we started the last book, we knew what the first chapter was going to be about and how it would end, but almost nothing of what happened in the middle.  With the first book, we watched the plot coming into focus usually about a chapter or two ahead of where we were actually writing.

Right now, we have an idea about what we are going to do in the first two chapters and we think we know what the situation will be at the end (plus a really cool idea about the last image to leave in the mind of the reader) but that's about it.  One of the reasons we were so impatient to start writing again was that we were eager to see how things come out.  The suspense was killing us!

Oh, and for those who care about such things, the picture is the launch of Apollo 8 on December 21, 1968.  Apollo 8 was the first time human beings ventured beyond Earth orbit into deep space.  This was the memorable mission in which the astronauts, orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve, read aloud from the Book of Genesis and closed with "good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."  In 1968, we sure needed all the blessings and luck we could get.  

Stupid is as Stupid Reviews

Normally, I just blow off negative reviews, but sometimes a reviewer says something that is so staggeringly ignorant or blindingly stupid as to make me beat my head against the wall.  This stupidity is particularly irritating when it is combined with a one star rating that meanigfully affects the average rating of the book, lowering its ranking on the top rated books page, reducing its exposure, and reducing my ability to support my family through my writing.

Here's the review I'm talking about:

1.0 out of 5 stars Aubrey and Maturin meet alien bats from outer space, March 16, 2013

By 

mikhalych - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: To Honor You Call Us (Man of War) (Kindle Edition)

The recipe of this book is quite simple. Take O'Brian's work, dice and mince it, add a little bit of C.S. Forester, mix together with 15 pounds of military sci fi cliches, sprinkle with young adult flavor and freeze in deep space.

The book is bad. To understand how bad it is just two samples:
1. Pitch and yaw of a presumably advanced space ship is controlled from the bridge by a specially dedicated crew member. I'm wondering if he uses a rudder to do the controlling part. How did 1st WW pilots managed the same task without an extra helper? Yeah, and commands are passed by voice, just like on Sophies's bridge.
2. The said advanced space ship (you know, anti gravity, superluminal travel, etc., etc., etc.,)keeps wood "to shore up bulkheads and build temporary compartments and fixtures".
When I stopped laughing after encountering this fixture, I quit reading.

P.S. The number of 5 star reviews of this book is mind boggling. I know, there are some worse Sci Fi books around, but one will have to look very hard to find them. 

Now, let's examine in detail what a blithering idiot this guy is.  First, he is incredulous that the ship is steered by a dedicated crew member in the ship's control center using some kind of hand controller  (the snarky joke about the "rudder" is just idiotic--the ship's maneuvering thrusters, reaction control system, and inertial guidance system are all clearly described in one book or the other).  I just love how people give two seconds' thought to something and think they know more than someone who has researched it and thought about it for months.

Think about it this way.  What's the closest analog to the Cumberland in our world?  Simple--a nuclear submarine.  It's a large, heavy vessel steering in three dimensions through a hostile environment.  Submarines often need to make extremely precise maneuvers under control accurate to within fractions of a degree, just like a warship would be in space.  The Cumberland is much more like a submarine than the light, nimble, one man airplane that the reviewer refers to.  How are nuclear submarines steered?  Well, here's a picture taken in 2008 from the Control Room of the USS Ohio, a high-tech, nuclear powered warship that moves in a three dimensional environment.  




Look familiar?  It should.  The way the ships in our books are controlled is patterned on the way one controls a nuclear submarine, except that on Union warships the controls are connected to a fly by wire system that translates the crewmen's movements into appropriate actions by maneuvering thrusters, propulsion thrusters, intertial control mechanisms, etc.  It is reasonable, though by no means certain, that the control interface will be no different in ten years, or in three hundred.  The same function needs to be performed, under tight control from a chief (who normally is positioned where that silver bar is between the two guys at the controls).  The point of structuring our control interface the way we did was to establish continuity between the Navy you see in this picture and the one in the books.  While our prediction of the future in this regard is not guaranteed to be accurate, it is reasonable both technologically and dramatically.  It is certainly not a decision that is worthy of scorn and laughter from the ignorant.

All of which is not to say that Chief LeBlanc doesn't have the capability to enter a course change directly into his console, command the ship to come to a new heading by clicking on a box that says something like"Come to new heading" and then enter something like 145/212 on his keypad and have the ship come about.  Or, that he couldn't program a series of course changes that could be executed at a keystroke.  However, just because he can do that doesn't mean that, in a service that reveres tradition and that is suspicious of change, most course changes wouldn't be made by human beings under human control.  Again, course changes could easily be entered digitally on submarines and aircraft carriers today, but we generally steer them with yokes and big brass wheels.  Tradition.  If you don't get that, then you don't get Navy.

Second, he gets a laugh at commands being passed by voice.  Huh?  These guys are only a few feet away from each other--what are they going to do, send an email?  Voice commands are easily given, require no computer inteface, easy to understand, and easy to verify.  Using a voice link to speak to people in distant parts of the ship is also reasonable.  We have computers, email, text, and other means of electronic communicaiton on our naval vessels, but orders for immediate execution are passed by voice channel.  Why?  It's easy, clear, immediate, and provides a means for an instant acknowledgement.  Further, it doesn't require interfacing with a keyboard or similar input device--you just punch up the channel and start talking.  Why is it unreasonable to assume we would be doing that into the indefinite future--I note that virtually every science fiction book I have ever read of this type has people talking to each other over some kind of intercom.

Third, he guffaws at the idea that the ship would keep wood on board "to shore up bulkheads and build temporary compartments and fixtures."  Given that the most advanced ships in every navy in the world do just that right now, including the high-tech Virginia class attack submarines we are building and launching at this very moment, I don't see why this is so laughable.  With what are they going to use to do these things in 300 years rather than wood?  Metal, which requires special tools to cut and machine and fasten?  Polymer that is brittle at low temperatures and melts at high?  Carbon fiber that requires special tools to work and needs to be assembled with special fasteners and adhesives?  Or wood that any idiot can saw and nail together in the dark or the cold or in any other emergency?  Hmmmmm.  While it is possible that wood may not be used in the year 2315, it is not an implausible or laughable decision.

Essentially, this review writer demonstrates that he knows nothing about how things are done on high-tech naval vessels currently, so he is spectacularly ill-equipped to make any judgment about how they will be done in 300 years.  I'm also amused that the reviewer didn't finish the book.  I find it hard to imagine the kind of staggering, Olympian arrogance that it takes to write and publish for all the world to see a review of a book that you haven't even read completely, much less to offer views on the technology discussed in the book when you don't know squat about the current technology on which the book is based.  Why would someone who knows so little and who hasn't even read the whole book think that any opinion he has on the subject would ever be of any value to any other person under any circumstances.  He suffers from delusions of relevance--he thinks his opinion carries some weight when it carries none.

I've looked at this guy's reviews on Amazon.  He seems to make a habit of giving one and two star reviews to books that are rated highly by other readers, perhaps to gratify his contrarian impulses, and also of reviewing books that he hasn't finished reading.  I have reported the review as being "abusive" given that he didn't finish the book.

Oh, one more thing, there aren't any "bats" in the book.  People who can't tell bats from rats shouldn't be writing book reviews.   

Bottom line, if you don't like the book, you don't like the book.  Tastes differ.  Given readers might not like the way the plot develops, or they way the dialog is written, the writing style, the tone, or any number of other things about the book.  I get that, and dealing with that reality is part of what one goes through when one publishes a book and makes it available to literally the entire world.  Fortunately, it seems that many thousands of people love these books (given that the second book is selling as briskly as the first--telling me people like the first one and are buying the second).  But, I don't get why a reader would simply jump to the conclusion that we're stupid and that basic things like how the ship is controlled weren't the subject of serious through and mental development.  We've been thinking about this stuff for years.  I have been mentally working on the issue since 1966 and, over the decades, have even talked with pilots, submariners, aeronautical engineers, two men who worked in NASA mission control Staff Support Rooms in the Gemini and Apollo programs, "human factors engineers," and James McDivitt (Gemini-Apollo Astronaut and former head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office)(McDivitt is a U of Michigan alumnus and spoke on campus when I was a student there) about how a future large space warship would be controlled in three dimensions.  The UNANIMOUS answer was something along the lines of "I'm sure it would be something like the way submarines are controlled now" or, "given the difficulty in precisely controlling pitch, yaw, and roll with the same controller, you'd have to put two guys on two different yokes."   They all said that small fighers would probably be controlled with a stick like current fighter aircraft but that large "space battleships" would be steered like submarines are today.

So, we might be wrong about this, but the answer we came up with isn't stupid.

Frustration Unbearable . . . Must . . . Write

We thought we would take a little more time off and do some more reading and research, but isn't going to happen.  We've been edgy, irritable, absent-minded, not sleeping well, and haven't been able to put our fingers on the reason.  Then, miraculously, it occurred to us--we're not writing.  We've been writing continuously for six months, enjoying the hell out of it, and suddenly stopped for a few weeks.  Our brain can't take it.  It needs the stimulation of being in the year 2315, standing in CIC right behind the Command Station, watching what Max and the rest of the gang do in the next crisis in the lives of the crew of the USS Cumberland.

Having created that universe and populated it with interesting people and races, we have found that we are supposed to spend at least some of our day there every day.  So, we've cleared our calendars ahead of schedule and will begin writing of Brothers in Valor, the concluding volume of the "Man of War" Trilogy tomorrow.  We still have some reading and research we want to do, so we'll probably split our time between writing and those activities, instead of writing 10 to 18 hours a day as we did for the first two books. 

Strange, how this activity of which we never thought we were capable has so quickly become such an integral part of our lives that we find ourselves miserable if we aren't doing it. 

There's also the beginning of the germ of an idea for another series, set in the same universe, beginning in the year 2034, telling the story of the formation of the United Earth Space Force in the face of the emergency posed by the Ning-Braha's occupation of the moon, followed by the acquisition of stardrive technology as a result of the war and Man's first tentative steps into interstellar space.  But, don't worry, we have no intention of writing that until we have finished this next book and probably not until we are done with the next trilogy of Robichaux/Sahin novels. 

In other news, we're under some pressure to start tweeting.  I'm very ambivalent about the idea.  I mean, who cares what I have to say in 140 characters or less?  The people who write about how us independent authors are supposed to promote our work all say that we should tweet.  We'll think about it.

Paperback now available

The paperback version of For Honor We Stand is now available in the Createspace store.  Here is the link:
https://www.createspace.com/4194358.

It will be available on Amazon.com in a few days.  There is no difference in the product as purchased from the two different sites, or in how your order will be fulfilled (Amazon owns Createspace).  Although the price is the same in both locations, we make a slightly higher royalty on Createspace than Amazon so, if you're thinking of buying, there is no reason to wait for it to be available on Amazon.

Here's Something for You Nit Pickers

Spent much of the day with my new white board working out a fairly detailed map of the Union and surrounding space. I shot a picture of it with my camera phone and it came looking pretty good. Coreward is at the top, rimward at the bottom, spinward is to the left and anti-spinward to the right. The approximate border of the Orion Cygnus arm of the galaxy is just below the top of the board and just above the bottom. The Rendezvous point marked is the rendezvous at the end of Book II. I reserve the right to refine this significantly as we write.

The picture is offset in order to get the glare from the flash off of one of the most critical parts of the sketch.

Obviously, it's a good thing that the books are selling as I would clearly starve to death as a stellar cartographer.

Paperback Edition of "For Honor We Stand" About Three Days Out

We've had a few issues formatting the paperback version of the new "Man of War" book, For Honor We Stand for publication as a paperback.  It should be available in three or four days.  We apologize for the delay to all the folks out there who don't use e-readers.

In other news, the new book is succeeding beyond our wildest expectations. It is the Number 2 Amazon Hot New Release in two categories and #5 in another and is a top ten bestseller in three categories.  As of this writing, it is #4 in Kindle Military Science Fiction.  The new book's visibility has resulted in a boom of sales in the first book, To Honor You Call Us,, which is now a top ten bestseller in two categories and is in the next ten on the other.

Further, based on customer ratings, To Honor You Call Us is now the #12 top rated Kindle Military Science Fiction book and is #11 in Kindle War Fiction, right behind Uncle Tom's Cabin and four slots above Monsarrat's classic, The Cruel Sea, and several places above the H. G. Wells genre foundation book, War of the Worlds.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not suffering from the grandiose delusion that this means my first effort at writing fiction is actually better than these books in any kind of serious, critical, literary sense.  I'm sure people will be reading Uncle Tom and The Cruel Sea long after everything written by H. Paul Honsinger has faded to obscurity, but this rating does say that the book generates a great deal of enthusiasm and approval from readers, which is what I am aiming for, anyway.  I'm not trying to write anything like a "Classic of Modern Literature."  Good thing, too, because I'd fall flat on my ass if I tried.  What we are trying to do is write books that are entertaining.  We want the reader to be engaged, to feel the anxiety and anger and relief and triumphs of our characters.  These ratings say that we are succeeding in that regard.  We will work very hard to get better and better at the craft of novel writing so that we can deliver a progressively better product to our readers.

This has been an exciting journey for us. We hope to entice a great many readers to come along, and that they will feel like they are sitting at the Commodore's Station as Max unleashes his next dazzling ploy against the Krag.

It Has a Great Beat and You Can Dance to It; I give it a Ten!

We're still new at this and there is a lot about being a novelists that we don't know.  One of the biggest of those is that we really have no idea whether the projects into which we are pouring our hearts and souls and intellects are any good or whether they are total crap.  Our wives tell us they are good, but then again they also tell us that we are handsome, a conclusion about which we are extremely skeptical.

So, it is with great pleasure and no small measure of relief that we see that there are already eight reviews of the new book on Amazon.com and that they are all five stars.  Not only that, they are universally complimentary.  Now, there are a few reviews that say that they have small quibbles here and there, and we certainly look at all of those things very seriously (actually, we were already conscious of every one and had planned to do certain things a little different as we go along--mainly as the situations will be different and the characters more mature in their relationships), but certainly nothing major.  In fact, the reviews are better than the first wave of reviews were on the first book, and they weren't bad at all.

And, of course, based on our experience with the first book, we know that good reviews sell books.  Particularly, when people give good reviews on book number two or book number three of a series encourages people to start a series of which they might otherwise be skeptical.  No one wants to invest the time to read the first book in a series and find out that the series fizzles. 

Series die more often than you might think.  I've seen it several times.  Sometimes the writer simply has no new stories of any interest to tell about these characters.  Or, more often, the characters go through exciting and meaningful experiences and emerge from them completely unchanged--they learn nothing, they don't grow, they don't develop, they don't mature. 

Anyway, when people see that the second book is as good as or better than the first, then they have reason to believe that the writer can sustain the series over time.

So, now that there is a second book out and people can see that it is as good as, if not better than the first, we are hoping not only that everyone who read the first book will read the second, but also that people who might have passed on the first will give it a second look now that we have proved we are capable of producing more than one book that is worth reading.  Frankly, this was something about which we, ourselves, were worried.  After all, we didn't know we had the ability to produce ONE good book, much less two.

There is, of course, another dimension to reviews.  They are an emotional pay off.  Sure, if a book is good and if it catches on with an audience, it makes money for trivial stuff such as food and health insurance and car payments.  We like those things. We like them very much.  But, after working twelve and sixteen hour days, seven days a week for three months to produce a novel, it is very gratifying to read good things that people might have to say about it.  We put an extraordinary amount of effort and work very, very hard to develop the battle scenes and tactics, conceive of the maneuvers and the weapons and the back stories, and to get all of the little details just right.  We spend many, many hours sweating the small stuff, and there is lots and lots of small stuff.  These reviews are a reward for those efforts, and it does feel very, very good.

So, to the people who write the reviews, thank you.  They do mean a great deal to us.

Error! Error! Ster . . i . . . lize!!

I am not NOMAD.  I am not perfect.

Of course, neither was NOMAD.  That's why it blew itself up and got some of its parts recycled into the Romulan Cloaking Device from "The Enterprise Incident."  

A reader just pointed out a rather embarrassing time/distance error in For Honor We Came.  At the Cumberland's stated speed of 10 c, the distance between Radhid IV and Rashid V B, approximately 4 AU, would take just over 3 minutes to cross, not "just over half an hour" as I the book originally said (this is just before the Battle of Rashid V B).  I can see what I did.  I went through the steps to compute the time to cross at the speed of light (1 AU = about 8.1 light minutes, then multiply 8.1 minutes times 4 AU) meaning then to divide the result by 10 because the ship is traveling at 10 c, and then forgot to divide by 10.  Duh.

Well, one of the great things about e-publishing is that we have already corrected the error and uploaded it to Amazon and B & N.  Anyone who buys the book from a few hours from now on will get the corrected version.  If you have already purchased, you should be able to delete the book from your reader (but not, please, from your account!) and then download it again, which should give you the corrected version.

No telling yet whether we will be able able get it fixed in the print version, which is in process but not yet final.

This stuff just makes me buggy.  Time/distance errors are one of the things that annoys me the most in science fiction, especially in movies.  Remember in Star Trek V when the Enterprise goes to "the center of the Galaxy," in about one and a half reels? Well, given that it is about 27,000 light years to the center of the galaxy, and even if we assume that the ship can go 1000 times the speed of light (Warp 8 in the Original Series was 512 c) that's a 27 year trip.  I practically banged my head on the seat in front of me about that one (that and the business about a Klingon ship being picked up on sensors but going unnoticed because no one happened to be looking at the right screen at the right time--as though Spock didn't have something like the "Back Room" on my ships where other people are looking at the sensor data to back him up).

So, anyway, it's fixed.  Thanks to reader RxScram for pointing out the error.

It's HERE!!!

No kidding.  This is not a teaser.  The second volume of the Man of War Trilogy, For Honor We Stand is now available as an Amazon Kindle e book.  The Nook edition on Barnes & Noble and the paperback edition will be along shortly.  It was a good pregnancy, but a difficult birth.  We really like the way the baby looks.  We hope you do, too.

Here is the link to the  book on Amazon.

 http://www.amazon.com/For-Honor-Stand-Man-ebook/dp/B00BFE6IOC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1360786484&sr=1-1&keywords=for+honor+we+stand

And here's a look at the cover.  It should look pretty familiar.

It's Still Coming . . . Still . . . Coming . . . Really!

First the news that people care about:  the new book should be out by the end of the week.  Cover:  done.  Blurb:  done.  Reformatting:  done.  Three edits by authors:  done.  Kathy is on her second edit now.  When that is finished, we will upload it.  It could be as early as Wednesday, but having dashed people's hopes before I'm not going to say we expect it then.  I can't see how, though, it would not be sometime this week, and almost certainly before the weekend.

This book has been a lot harder than the first.  First, it's longer by almost 20,000 words.  That may not seem like much, but it is a big jump in the complexity of the book.  Second, speaking of complexity, the battles, especially the first one, are much more intricate than anything in the first book.  The second battle is no slouch, either.  This stuff has to be checked carefully.  Bearings, ranges, times, distances, weapons deployments, sensor displays all have to be correct and consistent.  This is hard, tedious work and is one of the reasons that there are very few authors in this genre who write battles the way we write them.  Third, there is an inherent issue with sequels.  The first book need only be consistent with itself (and with what is plausible).  The second book must not only be internally consistent, but also must be consistent with the first book.  What deck are the Mids' classrooms on?  What is the order of the maneuvering stations from right to left.  How many status lights are there on the weapons console and what are they?  What's Chief LeBlanc's first name?  If we mess up stuff like that, readers catch it.  All this stuff has to be obsessively checked.

But, we're past that.  The third book should be easier, if only because we are learning from our mistakes.  We're going to compile a "Bible" of names, positions, control configurations, specifications, etc., to use as a reference in future books to keep it all consistent.  The formatting error that took more than a week to root out of the manuscript won't happen again, etc.  Anyway, we are hoping that For Honor We Stand turns out to be worth the wait.  It has been a labor of love.  It's our baby and we don't want it born prematurely or with any birth defects.

It's Still Coming

Well, gang, the new novel is still coming--it may just be a few more days than I planned.  Essentially, I made a big mistake in formatting the manuscript that is requiring literally thousands of individual corrections before it can be uploaded for publication.  I won't go into the details, mainly because it makes me look rather stupid. 

Anyway, the book is written.  We are just dealing with the manuscript issues and with inputting editorial corrections.  It is looking as though it is not going to be ready before the end of the month, but early February is a good bet.  I apologize for the delay--it is my own damn fault. 

I am truly eager to get this one out.  Once I get the book written, I sort of mentally move on to the next one.  So, I really want this novel out of the way so I can start working on Brothers in Valor.  I have very little patience for this part of the process.  It is no fun at all.

But, I am working literally 12-16 hours a day to get the book out and it will be in your hands as fast as it can humanly be done.  I think it's going to be worth the wait.