Pacifica

by on January 7, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The development of fabricators fundamentally transformed the Socialist Republic of Juneau. They had long relied on hard labor to grow the food they needed and mine the resources they required, but fabricators made generating life’s necessities far cheaper and safer. Fabricators were also far more reliable than sometimes sick or unhappy laborers, so the leadership of Juneau quickly arranged to obtain as many fabricators as they could from their friendly cousins in Pacifica. They also imported an increasing number of robotic laborers from those same friends, and those twin developments reinvented the very basic structure of life in Juneau. The entire Life Debt system was predicated on the need for some people to plow the fields and work the mines so the best of the people could live in comparative luxury. With robots and machines to replace them, Juneau no longer needed them. So Juneau made a great production of retiring the entire Life Debt system and replacing it with a far more equitable Social Credit system.

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The Mandalorian

by on January 6, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I will preface this by saying that I have not seen all of the Mandalorian. I don’t have Disney Plus so can’t watch it, though I did see the first one or three episodes with a friend who did have it. I have since watched reviews that showed clips of it and talked about it a lot, so I feel I can make a general statement as to my impressions of the show. In short, it is awesome. It is the kind of Star Wars I wish had been made for years, and I whole-heartedly endorse it. And when it comes out on DVD, I will buy it.

I have spoken.

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Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and All That Jazz

by on January 5, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I give to you…well…nothing really. Certainly no lords a leaping or any of that other nonsense from the song. I’m having an amazing pizza as my feast to end the Christmas Season. And I’m retiring the red trenchcoat and festive hat for another year. I’m going back to my Indiana Jones Fedora and leather trenchcoats for the remainder of winter. You have been warned. 😉

Also, while reading a couple of stories recently, I ran into some more typos that made it through EVERY round of editing, of course, and another story that I absolutely must tell. The aftermath of Angel War and some elements purposefully left open in Forge of War that call out to be addressed happen to…ahem…come together rather well. So there’s another story on my list to write. Outlining has been completed and the dialog is coming now. Once the dialog is completed to my satisfaction, then it will be time to write up the action that fills it out. Yippie ki-yay. You have been warned. 🙂

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Victory

by on January 4, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Jack's Defense Weekly

The Victory-class dreadnought is a rare example of a ship design I did not name after a World War II series of warships. Yes there were Victory ships, and there have been numerous classes of warships named Victory over the years. And there was a Victoria-class battleship back in the 1800s, but no big combatants from World War II. Still, I liked the name and decided to go with it.

As with other designs, Kir Alderfer did the original development for me, and it has hung around in my files ever since. I haven’t written any stories showing the British front and center, so I never had the excuse to spend the money to get it modeled up for a cover. But I’m currently working on publishing a story that does include the British, so I contacted Stephen and asked him make me a new Spitfire fighter. I told him the basic story and scene I wanted of three fighters plowing the road of enemies and he asked me which of the various ship classes the Audacious was. I had to tell him we hadn’t done that one yet, but he wanted to do the scene with that girl in the background. So I gave him all the reference files I had, and he ginned up an amazing cover showing all three fighters with this girl in the background.

You really need to check out Stephen Huda’s deviantart page. He’s got some good stuff on there.

But for now, here is a nice little long distance view of a ship that has not yet had the chance to show herself center stage on one of my book covers. She’s a little difficult to pick out, back there behind the explosions and lense flare, but that’s the way it should be in this case. After all, she’s got fighters acting all big and dangerous all around her, trying to keep the enemy from getting a good enough view of her to shoot her dead. You can see the bow of an Austin-class destroyer in the upper left of the image, but our Victory girl takes up most of the rest of the image.

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Liberator/Privateer

by on January 3, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Jack's Defense Weekly

We’ve established that I’m a visual writer. I like to keep pictures (renders actually) of the various designs and characters open when I’m writing about them. Some I’ve contracted other artists to do for me. Others I’ve done myself with some excellent 3D rendering software. I try not to reference my drawings much, beyond to bask in just how much better the final product is than what my sketchings started as. 😉

The Liberator/Privateer was an early idea I had for a starship. A small transport/warship designed to haul cargo or fighters like the old jeep carriers did in World War II. Something built specifically for the Cowboys so they could go anywhere they needed to without devoting large warships to ferry them around. It would become a standard small transport, marketed to everybody, after I continued writing its backstory. Something seen throughout Terran space, operated by just about anybody, which would allow the Cowboys to slip into systems without anybody realizing who they were. That was entirely coincidental, I assure you.

As with the Avenger, it was named after World War II military aircraft. And it was modeled by Kirk Alderfer. He did some fun mods for this design, with everything from extra carrier pods to a gunboat mod that has been depicted in Wolfenheim Emergent. And Stephen Huda did a more detailed model for use as a cover of one of my stories. Here it is, with and without the standard cargo pods it is most often seen throughout Terran space. I will note that even the Cowboys with their carrier pods tend to look like this as well. Holoemitters can do an amazing job making them look just as harmless as all the other ships around them.

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