The Republic of Texas

by on July 3, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The news that units from Cannon Air Force Base had been deployed to arrest the former President of the United States hit the base like a bomb. Literally. The majority of the airmen deployed there did not approve of their fellows being used on American soil. The base commander quickly moved to make certain future actions on American soil would be contained before they launched. The President ordered the remaining Special Forces teams at Cannon to arrest the commander and secure the base for future operations. But members of the teams who opposed the arrest publicly announced the orders to the entire base. Decades of terrorist attacks on military bases had long since codified the practice of servicemen working on post with weapons on their person, so the reaction to that announcement was swift and lethal. Shots were fired and Cannon Air Force Base exploded into it’s own small civil war.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 2, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Specials Forces team sent to arrest the old President, also the incoming Governor of Texas, was never officially identified for the public. Much as it was never formally announced that they came from Cannon Air Force Base. Not all dirty laundry must be hung out for all to see. The news of the failed mission ignited a firestorm at Cannon, though. Most of the base’s airmen were shocked to find out that their fellows had been sent to arrest the former President. They understood performing missions of dubious legality in less developed nations to keep the chaos at arm’s length, but a mission like that on American soil was a bridge too far. The new President’s activation of the Insurrection Act against Texas did not change their minds. The active duty military did not deploy on American soil. It was a matter of faith, and their reaction to seeing that faith violated was… explosive.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 1, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Cannon Air Force Base housed many of the Special Forces teams near America’s Old Border with Mexico, including some of the most secretive ones. What people still call the Black Helicopter teams, even if modern “helicopters” have little in common with the original vehicle that coined the term. The Black Helicopter teams were infamous in various conspiracy theories of the Pre-Second Great Depression era, performing missions as unbelievable as ransacking organic milk producers to doing away with inconvenient individuals like the real life Epstein whose death resulted in the saying we all know so well. The most sensational stories always made these missions so black that the soldiers went in without any identification to avoid being recognized as part of the military if they were caught. As in most stories of this kind, there is some basis of truth to the genesis of these stories. There are highly secretive Special Forces teams that perform dark missions, and it was to those teams that the new President of the United States went to after the FBI failed to arrest the old President on charges of treason.

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The Republic of Texas

by on June 30, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Cannon Air Force Base housed many of the Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance, and other special operations units in the decades leading up to the Second Great Depression. They built the reputation of doing the hard missions when the orders came in, and their drones, Ospreys, and various C-130 variants flew all over the southern United States every day. They watched over the Old Border between Mexico and the United States, intercepted drug shipments, or simply guarded the southern skies from approaching threats. And many of the Special Forces commands that ravaged the various drug cartels often launched from Cannon AFB. So when the President of the United States needed a difficult job done, he called on Cannon to get the job done.

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Nine Years of Jack

by on June 29, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Today makes nine years since I first started publishing Jack of Harts. I was writing before that, of course. I’ve been writing various fan fictions from Transformers to BattleTech for most of my life, in fact.

But always in the back of my mind I’ve had this idea of the Peloran Confederation. It was a confederation of good guys, human but not from Earth, led by an Admiral Aneerin, who fought to protect everybody he could. Despite the humanity of the main man, it was always a bit of an alien concept, and one that was enjoyable to create in the mind of the child I was when he first came about, but he was hard to truly write about. Who would have thought that telling compelling stories about a basically immortal man with abilities beyond the ken of mortal men, and the greatest fleet and technologies in this galaxy and beyond, all at his disposal in his mission to protect everything and everybody would be difficult? Not the ten year old me who first thought him up, that is for certain.

But, oh around ten years ago, I finally decided it was time to take those stories of the Peloran Confederation I always wanted to tell, and make something of them. I decided I was ready to write stories and sell them, and so I took everything I had learned from a decade or two of writing stories and started Forge of War. It was from the perspective of one human from Minnesota, caught up in a War he did not fully understand between galactic factions he did not even realize existed. The Peloran Confederation and their allies became a far distant realm, with Aneerin having only a small force to aid the Earthborn humans who were the primary protagonists. THAT is a story that is easy to write.

The name of my main character was Jack. His first name was easy. I like to find names that fit the personality of the character I’m writing, and Jack is so very… well… Jack. 😉 The final name came about after exhaustive searches for copyrights and available Internet domains. Existing characters in literature wiped out one possibility after another. It seems a lot of people like to write characters named Jack. Hehehe. There were a lot of possible names or descriptors Jack could have had, but in the end I settled on one that nobody appeared to have ever used before if my searches were to be believed. Certainly never published by any publishing house I could find.

Jack of Harts. At jackofharts.com of course. Because it was available and I could buy it.

And nine years ago, I posted my first little snippet in Jack of Hart’s voice. Every day since, for the last nine years, there has been a post on jackofharts.com. Sometimes previews of stuff I am working on, sometimes my own reflections on the world around us. Usually something in the voice of one of the characters I write, describing their world far in our future. Their diary entries as I like to think of them.

These posts helped to introduce people to the world of Jack before I published Forge of War, and I’ve published at least one story a year on Amazon and other services ever since. Including a total rewrite of Forge of War itself. I’ve got several stories waiting for publishing right now, in fact. The conclusion to the Wolfenheim story is nearly done, while I’ve completed several short stories, which are ready or nearly ready for publishing. One is awaiting a cover. Others are awaiting final editing passes. The joys of self-publishing.

It’s been a good nine years, and I’ve learned more about writing stories than I ever expected when I started. I thought I knew it all back then. I thought I was ready. Hah. And again, I say… hah! It has been a wild ride, and I’m a better writer now than I was then. And I greatly hope I can say, nine years from now, that I am a better writer than I was nine years ago.

To nine years of Jack. I have enjoyed them all. To nine more years of Jack. I look forward to seeing what they bring. And should I manage to succeed in my life-long ambition of living forever, maybe I can add a few more nines of years to that little forward-looking toast.

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