Hello, my name is Jack

by on December 6, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’m not a big fan of fighting. Yeah, I know, I’ve spent a lot of my life doing it. And I must say I do enjoy doing it while I’m doing it. There’s a real rush to coming out the victor in a battle of fisticuffs and wits. But at the end of the day, I’d be happy if I never had to fight again. There’s always a cost to it. Someone always looses something important when a fight decides anything. And when it comes down to it, I just don’t like taking things from people by force. It’s hard to keep your hands clean when you spend all your time fighting. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I wear white.

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Lucas Cats

by on December 5, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

One of the important things to consider about the cats of San Lucas, is that they originally came from Earth. The genetics is quite clear on that. The Albion took them off Earth many thousands of years ago and began a long experiment to turn them into loyal soldiers. They used heavy genetic modifications to give them hand-feet, and human-level intelligence. The Albion abandoned the experiments and the world when they proved unsuitable for Albion needs. I’ve often wondered why they ever thought they could take cats and turn them into loyal soldiers for the defense of Albion interests. My best supposition is that the Albion were capable of just as much hubris as Earthborn humans, and thought that their science was up to the task of making the “perfect” cat that would obey their every whim. News flash. They failed.

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The Future of Jack

by on December 4, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

This is a fun little cover I asked Stephen Huda to create for my next short story. It’s an early draft of the cover art, and the final one will be subtly different, but I rather love it and wanted to show it off for all of you fine folks.

The working title is “Thunderbirds,” though I’m certainly trolling around for other title ideas. It’s the first appearance in fiction of the Thunderbirds of Betelgeuse, the descendants of an old, failed Albion genetic engineering project to create superior aerial warriors. Though the eagle-eyed among you who pay attention to my daily posts may have noticed some of my past writings on the race in the diary formats. The story is complete at this time, though will probably go through another round of edits or two before it is published.

I’m also working on the next Wolfenheim story, while my muse keeps kicking me to work on A Family Affair at the same time. So I’ve been dabbling in three different stories lately, in three totally different locations in time and space, all depending on what the muse wants each day. 😉

The Wolfenheim story takes us out of Earthspace for the first time in my fiction. Thousands of lightyears away. It will have the first appearance in fiction of the Arnam and the Aesiran, and will show how the Wolfenheim Project affects The War in unexpected ways.

A Family Affair takes place after The War, as those who’ve read the abortive attempt at a first version of that story I started years ago. It didn’t work back then. Partly because I hadn’t written enough to have a clear understanding of what the characters were going to want to do. Both Angel Flight and Wolfenheim Rising have given me that clarity on the characters. So I look forward to getting to that little gem in the future. And so does my muse…

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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San Lucas

by on December 3, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

We found the Lucas Cats on two of San Lucas’ major continents. The first was a tall and relatively narrow continent reaching from the warm equator up to the cold polar regions. It has a wide range of landscapes, starting with the rain forests in the south. A vast mountain range bisects the central region from coast to coast, and thick forests run to the rainforest in the south or the arctic wilderness in the north. The mountain peaks are year-round frozen wildernesses of their own, with the last of the trees dying off far down their flanks. The only easy travel from south to north goes through the deep mountain passes under cover of thick evergreen forests. Only a few large rivers and lakes break the nearly constant tree cover, and powerful tides caused by San Lucas’ large moon create wide and beautiful sandy beaches thousands of kilometers long. And the powerful hurricanes that often hit the continent’s southern half make the first hundred kilometers or so of land virtual no-go zones for the more intelligent of the Lucas Cats. We simply built hurricane-resistant buildings and enjoy the beautiful vistas as long as the planet is not trying to kill us. And even then. San Lucas hurricane parties are legendary for a reason.

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Erik Torson

by on December 2, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Torson is one of the more common Aesiran names out there. So is Erik. That makes Erik Torson the equivalent of John Smith or Jose Ramirez back home in America. It would be a mistake to think that the Erik Torson I met at Arnami Prime was as common in Aesiran circles as his name would suggest. The truth I would learn is that he has other names. A name for each job he performed. He had spent most of his life doing one job after another, losing his name with completion, and going elsewhere with a new identity. He’d only been Erik Torson a few months when I met him, but he’d already earned the loyalty of his ships and crews. He told me who he was in time. Once he learned he could trust me. The funny thing is that I’d already figured it out. I just didn’t believe it at first.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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