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.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, February 15, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, February 11, 2013
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.
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.
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