Pleased to announce Soul Cache has joined the ranks of my audio book offerings.
The seventh of my spec-fiction shorts available for your listening pleasure, the story of an aging homicide detective’s hunt for an elusive serial killer in a sci fi mega city is deftly narrated by Justin Hyler. Coming in just over two hours (normal speed) it’s the perfect way to make your daily commute more interesting or liven up a stretch of drudge work.
Available at Audible/Amazon, you can pick it up here at Audible or from the full list here at Amazon.
If you’re partial to the heft and smell of a paperback, Soul Cache is also available as part of the short story collection, Fits and Orisons.
“A rich and meticulously described setting makes for an undeniably immersive reading experience. Two (augmented) thumbs up.” – Kirkus Review
I paid a lot for those two sentences. I mean, there’s more to the review but that’s the blurb-able bit.
Yes, Kirkus reviews cost money. No, that’s not a guarantee of a good review.
So why spend the cash and wait 2 months? Because after ten years, three novels, four novellas, and five short stories I finally felt like I’d written something worth submitting, worth dropping the coin on.
That’s not to say I consider Soul Cache to be flawless or a short-form superlative example of the genre. Or even that Kirkus – respected as they are – is the definitive appraisal of my writing skill. I just remember finishing the story, after a much longer and more difficult process than I expected, and hearing in the back of my mind: ‘Here is something that could stand in the public market. Can hold its own. It’s actually pretty good.’
Meaning that it struck me I’d created something worthy of professional assessment and I wanted to hear that assessment bad enough to drop the money for a 321-word review.
Money well spent? Will this translate into sales and agents and movie options? Who knows? That’s another thing that is definitely not guaranteed. By life, the writer gods, or Kirkus.
Dumb, vanity move? Did I experience a surge of inspiration and creative confidence as I turn toward my next fiction project? Mmmmmm, not really. Honestly, I read it. breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t horrible, and thought, Well… Time to get back to work, I guess.
Which is what it all comes down to, emotionally exhilarated or not; putting my ass in the chair and chiseling away at the next story, trusting that by forging ahead and doing the work, the next one will be a little better.
Maybe even good enough to warrant another Kirkus Review.
That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by. Have an excellent day.
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If you’re interested, you can read the full review HERE
Soul Cache. A story from the streets of New Kowloon is available electronically for Kindle at Amazon HERE. Or in print as part of a collection of short stories, HERE.
I’m pleased to announce Soul Cache is now available for Kindle. A crime thriller novella set in future fictional New Kowloon, Detective Zeki Pemburu hunts a serial killer, his only leads the victims’ last moments illegally obtained from their neural chips. If you’re feeling a little technoir, this should scratch that itch. I’m also working on adding it to my catalog of Audiobooks. Watch for that announcement early next year.
For those of us who prefer print books, Soul Cache will be included in the upcoming collection, Fits and Orisons.
Once that is complete, I’ll be returning to the post-apocalyptic fantasy series, Shattered Worlds. Book One, Beneath the Broken Moon is available on Kindle and will also appear in print late in 2022.
Thank you for stopping by. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Feels like I was slogging through a fog, haunted by constant, low-grade anxiety from all the Huge, Bad Stuff happening around me. Sorta like seeing kaiju fighting in the distance everywhere I looked, knowing it was devastating and tragic no matter the outcome, and wondering what the hell I was gonna do if they stomped their way closer to my little house.
With 2021 drawing to a close, I have no reason to complain; I mean, I’m still alive, healthy, married. My family is good. I still have friends. Still chipping away at the To Do list, albeit in a slower, different way. And while I’m unconvinced we’re out of the Weird Woods yet, I have plenty to be grateful for.
FICTION
On the writing front, I finally finished another piece. “Soul Cache” is a cyberpunk, technoir, crime thriller. A short novella at 25K words/75 pages, it centers on an aging homicide detective hunting a serial killer in grimy, crowded mega-city. His only clues are the victims’ last moments, data he obtained by illegally hacking their neural chips. (it’s all fun and games until someone suffers Dissociative Identity Disorder. or gets brutally dismembered)
It’s slated for release 17 December and up for pre-order now at Amazon. Click HERE if you need a digital stocking stuffer this Christmas.
It will also be part of a print collection of short stories coming out early 2022. (for those who prefer holding a physical book.)
TOY SOLDIERS
Tabletop gaming has been taking the lion’s share of my creative attention. Echoing Willie Sutton, the audience response to my games is, well, a helluva lot more than my fiction, so… yeah.
Adding to the Exploit Zero and Nightwatch family of wargames is Insurgent Earth, a tabletop tactical miniature adventure game where players fight against alien invaders. Designed with Solo and Cooperative play in mind, you and your friends will band together, form a resistance cell, gear up and take back our home planet.
Even though the core dice mechanics are well established, our game group is running extensive play tests to smooth out the additional, RPG-lite elements for the player characters, and the command-and-control of the game-driven alien invaders. Everything needs to be as smooth, solid, and simple as possible; hate it when rules get in the way of an enjoyable game. Insurgent Earth should be out mid-2022.
In the meantime, you can drop by Stalker7.com for battle reports and other cool toy soldier stuff.
OTHER THAN THAT
The foreseeable future comes down to getting through Christmas and New Years celebrations. My kids and grand kids should be here Christmas morning, so I thank God for that.
Oh and The Witcher Season 2. That’s cool too.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep my head down, keep praying for God’s peace, paint some toy soldiers, and start pecking away at book two of the Shattered Worlds series, Scorned Lands.
First off, I want to thank everyone who still follows HSSJ and drops by. It’s been a hectic and strange couple months on top of a year-plus of the same, and I’m grateful for people’s support and encouragement.
Next, I apologize for recent lack of content on my part. Not my intention but Real Life business has picked up on top of everything else I was juggling. Out of my control, but I genuinely enjoy writing and the writing community.
So, to give an update:
Things must be tough at the Williams homestead..
The legal snafu over the word ‘hardwired’ is getting settled. I think. Unfortunately, not reasonably. I know there was no IP infringement or market confusion. My attorney knows. Anyone moderately familiar with the cyberpunk genre and the war game hobby knows. But that’s not how this is getting played, so there are changes coming. I’ll release details as lawyers finalize and specifics resolve. Timeline is vague though, because… lawyers.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, early this past March I was contacted by lawyers claiming my self-published table top war game HARDWIRED – offered free online in 2018, commercially released in 2019 – infringed on a trademark and caused market confusion with a 1989 RPG supplement co-written by their client, Walter Jon Williams. It was the usual C&D, along with threats, demands, and several ridiculous claims. (he practically invented cyberpunk, the new PC game is based on his 1986 novel… ) Also, they contacted Amazon and initiated a take down of two of my Hardwired game supplements: The Tsim Sha Tsui Expansion, and the latest, Hostile Takeover. But not the first, core book, Hardwired Cyberpunk Espionage and Mayhem. Make sense? No. Then again, this experience has been a little surreal.
More lawyers, some legal back and forth, a genuine effort to be reasonable all came to naught. At the end of the day, it would cost too much for me to go to court to prove the obvious. (my miniature war game has no reference or relation to Mr. William’s work, the out-of-print 1989 supplement, or the now outdated version of the RPG it was written for.) So, I’m getting shaken down for cash on a technicality.
Welcome to the Big Time.
The Miniature Post-Apocalypse continues, however
Pressing past that steaming pile, my latest miniature war game, KONTRABAND, is coming into it’s final stretch. The illustrator has promised me the images by the end of the month. (today, right?) Once I have them in hand, it’s another couple weeks for proofreading and layout, then I’m kicking it out the door. This will be a Solo/Cooperative supplement for Zona Alfa, the war game I hammered out for Osprey Publishing.
On the Spec Fiction Front
Several fiction projects that were abruptly shoved to back burners are coming around, slowly. My goal is to finish the TechNoir short , Soul Cache, next. (You can read the first ten chapters here.)
Next, I plan to move back to the Shattered Worlds series. Part One, Broken Moon, is available at Amazon. Part Two, Scorned Lands, will follow with a Kindle release before the end of the year. To put spurs to the project, I had some cover art made for a combined, part 1 and 2 printed version.
If you’re interested in the story of a half-breed outcast journeying through a weird and fractured world after a war between gods, then this post-apocalyptic fantasy might be the thing for you. Think ‘Lord of the Rings’ meets ‘The Road’, you’ll be in the right neighborhood. Again, the journey starts here.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Thanks for your patience. Appreciate all of you.
Got a newsletter recently from one of the Indie Writer groups I lurk around, asking if/how the Covid-19 lock down affected my writing. Have to say ‘Quite a bit” if I’m being honest.
It’s not just the Covid-19 though. That was tough. Weird. But do-able.
Nope. In short order, global pandemic was at the bottom of a pig pile of deaths, crises in leadership, international strife, economic uncertainly, racism, political and social animosity, demonstrations, looting*… and then I got sick and spent a month in an out of the hospital.
It felt like I was breathing smog. Gasping, every time I sat down at the computer. It was hard to think straight, let alone relax and get creative. “Flow Space, anyone?“
I pushed on. No props to me, really. It was some combination of prayer, grace, and mule-headed desperation. Had to keep busy with something and I didn’t have the energy for anything new, so I stuck with the familiar.
Felt like I was clawing at granite with my fingernails but things got done.
At the top of the fiction list, the first portion of my post-apocalyptic fantasy saga was polished and kicked out the door. Finally. Beneath the Broken Moon. Shattered Worlds, Book One is currently available as an ebook at Amazon.
Rachelle Stewart Ramirez of the Story Grid and Leonora Bulbeck over at Reedsy were both invaluable. A debt of eternal gratitude to them both. I can only hope I did justice to their hard work and excellent advice.
While we’re getting post-apocalyptic, I should mention my writing for the table top wargame hobby is still going strong. Zona Alfa has been available since late January, courtesy of Osprey Publishing. (Thanks, guys) The S7 Facebook Group is approaching 800 members and is filled with some very cool, creative, and inspiring war game comrades. I’m quite grateful.
It’s not limited to a Soviet-style apocalypse either. Gamers from all sorts of interesting places also seem to enjoy my solo/cooperative cyberpunk skirmish game, Hardwired, and the expansion, Tsim Sha Tsui Expansion.
I was encouraged enough by the support to build on the same game mechanics to hammer out a set of Fantasy-genre, monster hunting rules. Titled, Nightwatch: Terror and Treasure in the Dark Corners of the World, it’s nearing completion and should (God willing) be out in August, 2020.
It’s been a slog, I have to admit. I feel like I’ve been tunneling out of a POW Camp with a soup spoon; cramped, sweating, panting in the dark, measuring progress inches at a time. Not quite the artist’s life I imagined, buoyed by a supportive community of like-minded creatives and a brisk, tail wind of the Spirit.
Erm… nope.
Still, stuff got done. There’s more stuff to do. Forward motion – even in inches – is still progress. We’re all going though it, getting through it. That’s the season we’re in. It’ll turn. Until then, we persevere and keep doing the next right thing.
Dissonance is produced by any landscape that enchants in the present but has been a site of violence in the past. But to read such a place only for its dark histories is to disallow its possibilities for future life, to deny reparation or hope – and this is another kind of oppression. If there is a way of seeing such landscapes, it might be thought of as ‘occulting’: the nautical term for a light that flashes on and off, and in which the periods of illumination are longer than the periods of darkness.
That’s all for now. I hope and pray you are all safe and well.
Until next time, take care.
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*what happened to the Murder Hornets? Are they still around?
I hope you’re safe and well in the midst of what increasingly resembles a plot from a dystopian sci fi novel. Despite this present strangeness, I’m pleased to announce Shattered Worlds Book One, Beneath the Broken Moon is now available.
“Took long enough,” you say. Yes, it did. There’s a story behind that too, but I’ll spare you. It’s done now and the ball is rolling again.
Book Two, Into the Scorned Lands is slated for release later this year, also as an ebook. If sales merit, I’ll combine both in a print version.
In other writing news, the table top war games , Hardwired, the TST Expansion, and Zona Alfa all continue to do well. In fact, the Stalker7 Facebook Group for Zona Alfa has grown to nearly 550 members since its inception in January, 2020. If you’re a miniature painter, table top gamer, or interested in narrative war games, feel free to drop by the Stalker7.com site for more information. If you’re into those things already and the idea of cyberpunk or Russian-flavored post-apocalyptic skirmish wargames appeals to you, request to join the group and mention you saw it here.
Thank you all for your patience and support. More news as it comes.
It seems Cyberpunk is making a comeback, what with CD Projekt Red’s upcoming game causing a huge nerd buzz in the PC and console gaming worlds. On the table top, the venerable RPGs, Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 are getting new editions. And then there’s my fast play, miniature wargame rules HARDWIRED and Osprey’s upcoming mega game, Reality’s Edge
Coincidentally, it wasn’t until very recently I started to receive a lot of feedback and questions about the books. Juggling a full-time business and all-time Real Life means fiction writing gets dropped from the To Do List . Obligations, everyday emergencies, and plain old end-of-the-day exhaustion pile up so fast – which is why I’m only now getting back to the next installment. My apologies and gratitude to those who wondered if it fell off the edge of the map – I’ll do my utmost to make it worth the wait.
I’ve resurrected the old notes, files, and assorted scraps of inspiration, and begun hammering the next set of stories. Things are getting ugly in Kepler22, and Seeb, Detectives Lynch, and Junior-Inspector Sarin are about to get stuck in the crossfire.
In case you’re interested, here are links to books one and two:
For those who enjoy their post-apocalypse flavored with AK-47s, vodka and salo, my latest short story, ‘Strange Treasure’ is available at Amazon.
Written with my upcoming war game rules – ZONA ALFA – in mind, Strange Treasure follows Zone Guide, Yuri Bonyev as he leads Russian mobsters on a search for prime real estate inside the world’s largest and most mysterious quarantined area.
Kindle only for now, I’ll add it to a print collection once I’ve accumulated several more shorts. Thank you all for your support. It’s very much appreciated.
In the 22nd century, the ethnic Uyghur in Western China still dream of independence. Decades of discrimination, surveillance, and repressive policies by the Chinese government have only strengthened their resolve. Frustrated with the separatists , the Beijing enacts a final solution: the forcible deportation of all dissidents to Mèng Tiān, a desolate mining colony in the Kepler system, five hundred light years from Earth.
When the relocation program backfires and a full-scale insurgency erupts, the elite operators of Zombie Six arrive as part of the U.N.E. Peacekeeper force. Ordered to kill or capture the Uyghur leadership, the team finds itself in a deadly crossfire of corruption, deceit, and drone-borne IEDs. To survive, Zombie Six must first remember Truth is still the first casualty of war.
“Enemy of my Enemy” is a stand-alone novella from the author of the Eshu International novels, the ongoing Clar1ty Wars cyberpunk series, and other spec-fiction works.
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Enemy of my Enemy – A Zombie Six Mission is now available at Amazon, both in print and for Kindle. I wanted to take a moment to let folks know and thank everyone for their support, both online and in the real world. That anyone takes the time to read my stuff still amazes me. So… a few words about how ‘Enemy of my Enemy’ came about:
There’s always that initial something that pushes a story into motion. A spark that gets the creative gears turning or a seed that takes root and grows. Enemy of my Enemy was born out of a hard kernel of news concerning the Chinese Government’s treatment of the ethnic Uyghur in their western provinces. It didn’t show up on my radar all at once, mind you. It was more jigsaw puzzle pieces, assembling over a year or so to form a genuinely disturbing image of relentless, hi-tech coercion, forcible assimilation, and repressive policies.
My eldest son was the first to bring the situation to my attention, and to be honest, I filed it under a Communist administration’s usual rigid treatment of dissidents. Remember, these are the same folks who brought us the crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests back in 1989.
It wasn’t until I read This article.This one.And this one. that I began to grasp just how pervasive, insidious, and invasive the PRC efforts were. The more I thought about it, the less I was able to sleep.
Yes, I added elite spec-ops, gun drones, firefights, and a high body count on top of it all to make a typical Mil SF action story, but the foundation is a picture of real-world authoritarianism made frighteningly more wicked and effective by advanced technology. This part, tragically, is not made up.
‘Enemy of my Enemy’ is a spec-fiction action piece set in the next century, but perhaps, in some small way, the mention of this real life, present situation can do a little to raise awareness – not only of the Uyghur’s treatment, but of the rise of ubiquitous, invasive monitoring and surveillance, and the corresponding erosion of human rights and dignity.
Because if history is anything to go by, this trend and this technology will only grow and spread. We need to be vigilant and proactive against it in every form.
If you want to do more, take a look at Human Rights Watch. They deal with these kinds of issues and have an excellent rating at Charity Navigator. In fact, I plan on donating a portion of the first 6 months of ‘EomE’ sales to them.
Hot Space Station Justice 