Tag Archives: Military science fiction

All I Gots Time For Is Bullets . . . .

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– Hi!

– There’s whole bunches of stuff to catch you up on, so I’m turning down the effervescent charm and wit, turning up the maximum information flow (while still remaining effervescently witty and charming.  Handsome too.  It’s a curse).

– A Sword Into Darkness has now topped over 200 reviews on Amazon and sits at 4.5 stars overall with 123 5-stars and 58 4-stars, alongside a whole buncha real nice write-ups between ’em.  If you needed an excuse to get yourself a copy, that’s a pretty good one.  I’m still continually surpised about the folks that are reluctant to give it a try because of its indie-published beginnings.  It’s good, folks.  Trust the hoi polloi.

– Speaking of good, I just listened to the first half of the A Sword Into Darkness audiobook from ACX and Will Perez of Sci-Fi Publishing, and it’s like experiencing a brand new story.  It really comes alive, and even though I wrote the damned thing, it’s like I’m just discovering it.  If you’ve read it, but haven’t heard it, you gotta!  And if you haven’t read it or lent it to your friends, ummm, see the bullet above.

– REMO continues to chug right along, though it has not had the explosion of popularity that ASID had.  Is it because it’s short stories?  A relatively short collection?  Not as much advertising as ASID had from third parties?  I dunno.  It has gotten great reviews (4.8 stars in 6 reviews) on Amazon, but it has not made it above 7000 in sales ranking yet.  It has more than paid for the investment in its cover from 99Designs, so I’m happy about that, but I would love for it to do ASID numbers.  If you haven’t tried it out, I urge you to give it a shot, or to recommend it to your friends.  And I’m also producing an audiobook on ACX for it as well, with the talented Heidi Mattson of VO Hollywood reading.  It would make your perfect commute companion!

– REMO remains Amazon Kindle exclusive, but ASID has turned out to be a dirty little book that gets around to all the e-book sites.  Shameful.  But apparently the elder book has been a bad influence on the innocent story collection, and they will soon both cheapen themselves for all the world to see in an internet wide sale!  I am shocked and you should be too.  In fact, you should tell all of your friends about it and urge everyone to get their own copies during the sale so you can tell them youself how dissapointed you are that such good books would just put themselves on the streets for a mere 99¢.  More details to follow.

– In other news (and these are the reasons I’ve been so busy), I’m waiting on the approval draft of “The Rememberists” for Daily Science Fiction, I’ve gotten a commitment from Baen on “Bumped” if I make some revisions, and I’ve completed the first draft of “The Commuter” for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Short Story competition.  For Stealth Books, I’ve also reviewed and blurbed Graham Brown’s latest SF masterpiece, and I’m working through John Monteith’s latest Rogue sub-thriller.  On top of that, I’m still working on the ASID tabletop game and app with Nathaniel Torson of Jabberwocky Media.  Then there’s life (Don’t Talk To Me About LIFE . . . .) where my brave, strong, and beautiful wife keeps kickin’ cancer’s ass and staying busy, and my three kids are ALL in baseball and softball, each of which have both simultaneous and consecutive games in different locations.  Plus work at my unspecified Day Job, which eats about 14-16 hours a day.

– What this means is, I have not yet made progress on Lancers Into the Light or on Co-Pilot, but I pledge to!  Soon(ish)!!

– Congrats to Ancillary Justice for winning the Nebula!  I gotta read that one to see what all the hubbub is about.  Best of luck to it and all the upcoming Hugo nominees, though I’m pulling for a Larry Correia and a Brad Torgerson win.

– Final note about goings on, I got to spend an afternoon with Chris Kennedy, author of Janissaries and When the Gods Aren’t Gods,  at the Virginia Beach Central Public Library’s AMAZING event devoted to their new Local Author collection.  It was a pleasure to donate books both for the collection and to circulate, as well as to meet so many great local authors and small press publishers.  A good time was had by all and I really look forward to doing it again next year.  If you live in the Hampton Roads area, I urge you to go and check out ALL the books!

– And that’s about it.  I obviously don’t understand the concept behind brief, bulletized statements.  I have a problem.  Pity me!

– Toodles!

Happy Monday

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Morning, all!

I’ve made 3 kids’ lunches, baked fresh cinnamon rolls, approved the A Sword Into Darkness epubs for Kobo and Smashwords, and had a nice fresh cup of coffee.

What the heck have you done, lazy?

🙂

Still on the agenda for today: track the sales for last week, set up a new business account, finish some Honey-Do list yard work, kiss my beautiful wife, pay bills, edit and send out “Bumped” to a new market, write “The Commuter” for the Baen contest, and work out.

Bets on how much of that I’ll actually get done begin . . . now!

 

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!! *

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Emergency, Loyal Readers!  A Sword Into Darkness has escaped the confines of the Amazon Kindle and has been seen getting some Nook-ie over at Barnes and Noble, but no one over there knows ASID like you or I do.  To them, ASID is just this mysterious stranger, perhaps there to increase the quality of their catalog, perhaps there to punch out the literary fiction bestseller, have its way with the romance blockbuster, and steal the children’s books’ lunch money.  They just don’t know how awesome and deserving a time ASID is, and I need your help to tell them!

So, if you’ve been waiting to get A Sword Into Darkness when it became available on epub, or you’re a die-hard Barnes and Noble supporter, or you love the Nook devices or apps, NOW is the time to buy and read and enjoy some hard SF, military sci-fi, space opera, technothriller adventure goodness!  (And then leave a review to let all the more timid readers know.)

Or if you’ve already read ASID when it was exclusive to Kindle (there’s about 15,000 of you, tee-hee!), and you want to share your experience with the purveyors of that Other Big Book-seller, then by all means, log into Barnes and Noble and leave a new review, Or, for those 171 reviewers who have given me an average 4.5 stars on Amazon, if you are an uber-fan, you can re-review me all over again for the competition (a forlorn hope, I realize).  Honest reviews are appreciated, effusive praise is adored.

ASID is also available on Smashwords now as well, but the file transfer and formatting over there is just NASTY.  I don’t recommend that one yet.  The use a file converter they call the Meatgrinder to turn your manuscript into an ebook, and it is notoriously un-user friendly.  I would pull it completely, but they offer dire warnings against doing that.  I’m trying to get the file fixed and replaced, but work/life has intervened, so I’ll get to it when able.  Soon, though.  I promise.

In other news, REMO has enjoyed modest sales over on Amazon Kindle Direct.  It’s been up for about a week, sold about a 100 copies, and until late last night, had not gotten any reviews.  Mr. Tom Walsh so loved “Dogcatcher Blues” that he left a little 5-star care package for me on that story alone!  Thank you, sir.  I’m so glad you enjoyed it.  But I do need more reviews there.  It is harder, I think, to sell people on an unknown author’s short story collection or anthology than it is to just sell ’em a full novel.  So:  buy REMO, read REMO, review REMO.  Purty please.

Aaaand, lastly, Baen Books has announced a new Fantasy Adventure Short Story contest to coincide with GENCON, so I’m a-gonna enter!  This will be my first try at fantasy in YEARS, but I think I have a good and unique story idea.  We’ll see if they agree!

Until later, Happy Reading, y’all.

* Yes, I am fully aware that this is posting on May 2, and not on May Day as originally intended.  Life — in the form of a 16 hour work day and a signing appointment at the car dealership THAT WOULD NOT END — conspired to upset my plans.  I am, however, committed to the bit, so please, just roll with it.

New Military Sci-Fi, Now Available From Stealth Books!

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Greetings, Readers!

For those of you out there who are visiting for the first time, Hi, my name is Thomas A. Mays, or just Tom, and I write stuff.  You might (but probably haven’t) seen a short story or two of mine out there, or you may have seen or picked up a copy of my book A Sword Into Darkness, which — for an indie — has been selling like hotcakes and garnering a lot of praise from readers just like you.  A lot of those Amazon reviewers have been clamoring for more, and while the book is going wide, out on Audible and going to e-pub devices here in the next couple of weeks, the sequel is still several months off.

I do, however, have some actual new material for you!  Launched late, late last night, you can now check out and purchase REMO for Amazon Kindle.  This themed collection of short stories is a mix of military sci-fi, AI existentialism, critique of empire, analysis of honor and duty, and examination about consciousness, includes five tales that I hope will thrill you, humor you, and make you think.  Three of the stories revolve around REMOs or Remote Operators, essentially the UAV pilots of the future, who find that the remove offered by engaging in combat through a remote AI may not be as “removed” as they thought.

They include the-not-what-it-sounds-like “Tinker Bell Unbound” about a troubled rear-echelon maintainer suddenly thrown onto the front lines without the tools she needs to survive, “Strategic Deployment” (my second pro-published short story) about a retired REMO forced back into action in an impossible and possibly unethical situation, “Dogcatcher Blues” (possibly my favorite story of the whole collection) about a disgraced REMO sent to fetch a wayward Hellhound, “Identity Crash” — a non-military sci-fi story — about an Emulated Intelligence betrayed by his own creators and denied what it is that makes us self-aware sapients, and lastly “ILYAMY”, a difficult tale about long deployments that I wrote when I was cut off from all contact with home during one of my own military deployments.

To check out the permanent product page here on The Improbable Author, click the cover pic below or the pic at the top of the sidebar.  To go directly to Amazon and get it for your Kindle device or app, either as a purchase or to download a free sample, click here.  Act now, and REMO is free to borrow for Amazon Prime customers with a Kindle device from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library!

Enjoy!

Full_Cover

Hello, World (REDUX)!

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Last time I did this, a whole lot less of the world was colored in.  But now? 

BOOYAH!!  Check that out:

ImprobableAuthorHitsApr14

You could almost circumnavigate off that map.  The Improbable Author has now had over 10,000 views, which I realize are merely a single afternoon’s numbers for John Scalzi, but I’m geeking out about it pretty hard nonetheless.  Most of my readership (and most of my ASID sales) are in the ol’ USA, naturally, followed in a distant second by the UK, then Canada, Australia, and Germany.  Sweden is next, which is a bit of a surprise, but then you’ve got Brazil, which is a HUGE surprise.  My wife is Portuguese-American, but not the South/Brazil brand of either of those ethnicities, and I’m a northern European – Native American mutt.  No ties there other than a love of kick-ass science fiction and pithy blogging, one supposes.  Either way, I’ve got a strong and loyal worldwide following, so THANK YOU to all the multitude of countries too long to list that have become devotees of my blog and, one hopes, readers and fans of A Sword Into Darkness.

Regarding ASID readers, my Kindle Daily Deal was . . . somewhat successful, in that I gained 3200 new ones in a single day!  That is satisfying both financially and in terms of milestones.  I’ve now sold over 15,000 copies of the book worldwide in three months, which makes me an Amazon bestseller at the very least (in the short term) and an honest mid-list professional (where I’m likely to settle out).  I was briefly ranked on the bestselling author list right behind Jim Butcher and Orson Scott Card (awesome), found myself in a George R. R. Martin sandwich (a weird way to express how ASID got stuck in the rankings between various compilations and editions of A Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire), and have begun to realize I REALLY need to talk to a tax accountant (bad).

Also, the excerpt reviews from the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards are finally in.  Mine were quite short, but positive (obviously, since I’ve moved on to the quarter-finals).  There’s a lot of stiff, well-written competition on the road to the semi-finals, though.  Everyone should check out Morgan Richter’s competing novel Lonely Satellite and John L. Monk’s Kick.  Both are very different works than ASID, but equally enjoyable companions under the umbrella of Sci-Fi Fantasy and Horror.  Between those two writers and 97 others, my chances look slim for proceeding to the next round, but if I have to lose to writers of their caliber, I won’t feel so bad.  Either way, I get a free Publisher’s Weekly review.  Here’s hoping it’s as positive as these Amazon Vine reviews of the excerpt:

“The science of this fiction was well done even though some of the terms I read I had no idea if they were real or not. The frustration of Gordon was well written as well as his interaction with Lydia. How it ties in to chapter 2 would keep me reading into chapter 3, although chapter 2 was a bit weaker than the first.” –Vine Reviewer

“Generally, the excerpt is well-structured and flows well. The writing is characterized by some excellent descriptions: “You’re an idle-rich tech wizard with an over-funded amateur astronomy bug, so some eccentricity has to be expected, I guess. In the dusking skies of evening above USS Rivero , the sharp boundary of the eastern horizon had already merged with the night, while to the west a wash of orange and red still set the water afire. These descriptions are not only well-written, they enable the reader to visualize the scene or setting more clearly. Another strength of the excerpt is the pacing. The story flows well and smoothly at a steady pace. I expect the story to be action-packed based on these preliminary chapters, which should make for an engaging read.” –Vine Reviewer

And, lastly, the keen-eyed blog reader may note a new panel at the top of the sidebar.  That is my button for REMO which will be here very, very soon.  I love the cover done by Peter Schuller of ARMS Design, Budapest.  Check out the full cover by clicking the link and stay tuned for updates on when the anthology launches!

Happy Easter!

 

A Sword Into Darkness – Kindle Daily Deal for 17Apr!

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Retweet! Forward! Share! A Sword Into Darkness is only 99 ¢ in the good ol’ US of A today!!!  Go there now, buy it for yourself, buy it for a friend, buy it as a hedge against inflation, buy it for someone you don’t even know and Pay It Forward! Then after you’ve bought it for that reason, BUY IT FOR ALL THE OTHER REASONS AGAIN.

I’m basically not gonna stop until Amazon’s servers are all tied up, everyone has the book, and I have all the money.  Simple enough goals, I think.

Kindle Daily Deal

Today Was A Good Day to Kick Ass

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First of all, I need help picking the winning cover for REMO from all the outstanding final entries.  So click on the picture below, VOTE, and then come back here, because you ain’t gonna want to miss this.

REMO Winner

Don’t you just LOVE proportional voting?  Now, to task!

Today was a pretty awesome day.  It started off with an e-mail at the crack of dawn, from the editors of Daily Science Fiction, who told me that they’re buying my flash (under 1000 words) soft-SF short story “The Rememberists.”  It’s a weird little tale, but thought provoking, and they’re buying first serial rights to it!  While the money off a 1000 word tale isn’t life-changing, even at professional rates, it does mark my third sale to a paying, professional science fiction market.  That — technically — makes me a pro-science fiction author, at least according to the Science Fiction Writers’ Association, the SFWA, our professional guild.  Folks have a lot of mixed feelings about the SFWA, which is currently undergoing an ideological purge of sorts, but I like writers on both sides of the divide.  Will I join?  I dunno.  But its still damn nice to be able to.

Matter two, which was why I had been thinking about the SFWA and professionalism, is the fact that I now have sold over 10,000 copies of A Sword Into Darkness (and at a royalty rate that does NOT suck).  Though it is self/indie published, selling 10,000 copies allows you to classify yourself as a pro, and as a new pro, begins your two-year countdown clock for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction.  It would be AMAZING to get a Campbell nod, like one of my favorites, Larry Correia.  Of course, there’s a few hiccups to getting that nomination and attending the Hugo Awards:  namely, the Best New Writers get nominated by the attendees of the past and current WorldCon, where the awards are handed out.  Thing is, I don’t know any WorldCon attendees, and i really doubt they just happened to be browsing Amazon, saw my cover, and said THAT is my next read!  And then there’s the matter that I may be ineligible.  “Dreams for Sale — Two Bits!” was published in Jim Baen’s Universe, a pro-level magazine, in 2009.  Since you have only two years in which to be eligible, I could sell 1,000,000 sales, and not be eligible as the Best New Writer (though I think I could handle the pain).  JBU is now defunct, and I’m not sure if the records will support there being sufficient subscribers to hit the size necessary to start my two-year clock.  Am I eligible?  I dunno.  But I’d really like to be afforded the opportunity to turn down the nomination.

And finally, after working in the yard all day, putting in a stone firepit and landscaping, I got another e-mail.  This one was from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, or ABNA 2014, announcing that A Sword Into Darkness had made it through the second round and is now a quarter-finalist.  In the first two rounds, they start off reading a 300 word pitch, choosing 2000 out of 10,000 entries on that alone.  Then in the third round, 2000 are whittled down to 500, 100 of which are Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, by reading a 3000 word excerpt from the beginning.  In the fourth round, the editors of Publisher’s Weekly write an actual reveiw of your entire manuscript, and then pick 25 books out of 500 to go to the semi-finals, and so on.  Why?  Well, in the offering is a $ 50,000 publishing contract through Amazon Publishing, and five $10,000 contracts, putting real books in real physical bookstores.  What are my chances of winning?  About 1 in 500 against, but as contests go, it’s one of the best out there.  I’m amazed to still be in competition!

So, very, very cool.  And to close out the day in an appropriately badass way, we christened the fire pit by burning our Christmas tree, which has been drying outside since January, and is thus — essentially — explosive.  And semi explode it did! I stacked paper and bone-dry, needle-filled branches high (too high). When I lit it, people inside the house could actually hear it as it sucked in all the available oxygen and shot up with 30 foot flames. My neighbors were un-pleased. Thank goodness I hadn’t just lit the entire tree at once like the Pyro within me wanted to. I then ripped off my clothes and danced around my fire spirit while I fed in the rest of the tree (it made for some very awkward smores with the kids afterward). Now the stones of my firepit are fused together and I truly understand why natural trees end up burning down homes.

Goooooooodnight, loyal readers! . . .

REMO Crowd-Sourced Editing

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Ooooor, what do you think of the following goodies.  First is my proposed back/sale page copy for REMO.  Then are my finalists for the cover.  Lemme know whatcha think in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, or by email.  Looking forward to your suggestions!

Back Copy Draft:

Man and Machine. Soldier and Drone. Where does One end and the Other begin? 

With the advent of reliable AI, the UAVs of today will only become more ubiquitous, more autonomous . . . but would Man ever allow himself to be totally removed from the equation? Enter the world of the REMO, Remote Operators leading squads of autonomous, intelligent combat units in the air . . . on the ground . . . beneath the waves . . . and to the furthest reaches of outer space.

War is hell, even if you’re not pulling the trigger directly . . . .

From the acclaimed author of  A Sword Into Darkness  comes five tales of military and AI science fiction that will remain on your mind long after the pages are done. Includes:

“Tinker Bell Unbound”
“Strategic Deployment”
“Dogcatcher Blues”
“Identity Crash”
and “ILYAMY”

REMO Finalists

The Art World vs. Tom Mays

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Damn you, Jeff Edwards, you insidious voice of reason, you.

So, if you’ve been following, you know I’m launching an ebook anthology with a bunch of my military AI short stories, called REMO.  And since the last cover I did was 96-ish % successful, I started off doing my own for this one as well.  And I’ve got a cover I like, but Jeff reasoned that hey, it turns out you are NOT a graphic designer, so you MIGHT just wanna get some options rather than commit to something developed on the fly, with a kind of art you’re unfamiliar with, and which is not necessarily evocative of a military SF anthology.

Damn correct bastard . . . .

So, on advice, I’m opening up the cover design for REMO to some actual graphic artists via the 99Designs website.  I’ve offered up a $200 bounty to the designer that can beat what I already have:

REMO Cover 1

We’re looking for a cover that is more immediately recognizable as military SF, and which looks more compelling as a thumbnail image.  All the subtle sci-fi-isms of my design seem to vanish at that size.

If you’re a graphic artist and want to compete for the bounty, go HERE.  You’ve got four days to present a proposal, so no dawdling!

Sci-Fi Anarchy in the UK!!!

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No foolin’!  This weekend, from March 29th to April 1st (April Fool’s Day), the Amazon Kindle edition of A Sword Into Darkness is only a pence less than a POUND STERLING!!!

It’s the United Kingdom’s turn to have a Kindle Countdown Deal, so you can spend a mere 99 pence … 99 p … £ 0.99 … less than tea and crumpets … less than fish and chips … yes, for far less than her Majesties’ tinder of snuff, you can have my acclaimed, bestselling novel in handy electronic format.  Guvnah.  Here’s the Amazon UK link.

Is that racist/statist?  I dunno.  For less than a single Amazon Instant download of an episode of Doctor Who from the Beeb (the BBC, not Justin Bieber, I have no idea how much he charges for quirky sci-fi), you can have hours to days (depending on reading speed and available time on the loo) of kick-ass American outer space imperialism adventure.  Adventure which features a British space warship squadron in the awesome climax (spoiler!).  C’mon, you can’t beat that with a riding crop (which you have because you’re going fox hunting).

Let’s see, let’s see, what other stereotypes can I shoehorn in here . . . OH!  I would be honoured if thou wouldst try mine novel!  Hmmmm.  That was kind of a mix of the Queen’s English and bad faux-Shakespeare.  Anyways, Big Ben is ticking, my dear Scots, Brits, Welsh, and N. Irish.  Don’t let the deal of the century, year, month, long weekend pass you by!!!

Spread the word!  How do you say “viral” in English?

ASID Front Cover UK

Note:  Everything I know about the UK is from CGP Grey: