Alliance of Shadows is out today! It is the final book in the trilogy that began with Dead Six, and was continued in Swords of Exodus.

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I posted the following back in July when I finished the final edits on this book, but figured I would copy it over again for those who didn’t see it, because how these books came to exist is really kind of a cool story. 

These books came about in a really odd and interesting way.

Back when I was working on the first MHI, I was a moderator on a popular gun forum called The High Road.

There was another member there named Mike Kupari. I had never met him in person, and only knew him from his THR posts.

In 2006 he started writing an online fiction serial called Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler. He would write a scene, and then post it on the forum that day. The next day, another scene.

Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler was a thriller about mercenaries in the Persian Gulf. Mike had just gotten back from working there as a contractor, so he knew the area and really nailed the vibe, but his job had been uneventful guarding stuff kind of work.  Mr. Nightcrawler was the stylized action hero version he started working on when he was bored.

It was pretty popular. The forumites were really enjoying it. I started reading the serial posts, and it was really good. This Kupari guy could really write. Then I got to this scene where his mercenary character Valentine takes out a terrorist financer, it was awesome, but it got my writer brain turning. And I came up with an idea about one of the bystanders.

So I started thinking about the scene from the perspective of somebody who was there to rob the bad guys. What the heck, I wrote it up. That was how Lorenzo was born.

http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-207390.html

Keep in mind, I’d not published anything yet at this point, so Mike didn’t know me from Adam. So I sent him a message, said hey, I’m a wannabe writer too.  I just wrote a novel about monster hunters. You inspired this scene set in your world. Do you mind if I post it to your thread?

Fortunately, Mike took it as a compliment, and said go ahead. I posted it to the serial thread.

The readers went nuts. My scene integrated so well that they all assumed we had been planning it that way from the beginning.

So Mike and I got to talking. Neither of us were professionals at that point. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. But by golly, people were reading it and enjoying it. So what the heck? He’d keep writing his serial, and I’d keep writing my side story. Let’s see where it went.

So then Mike would post another scene the next day. Then I would write up a couple thousand words from my character’s perspective and post the next day. Then Mike would read what I wrote, and post up another scene from his character’s PoV. We were going so fast there was no proof reading and hardly any planning at all.

The fans loved it.

At some point Mike and I realized that if this story was going to have a coherent plot, we really should figure out where it was going. Both of us had just been pantsing it based on what the other guy had written the day before. So we started brainstorming where this thing was going to end up.

What people don’t realize is that during that initial brainstorming for Mr. Nightcrawler, we would also come up with the basic plot for what would eventually turn into Swords of Exodus and Alliance of Shadows.

Over the course of that summer Mike and I wrote a hundred thousand words of on the fly fiction. By some miracle Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler actually worked out great, everything came together, and it had a satisfactory conclusion. By the end we had thousands of people hooked on the serial.

The best thing about that for me was I now had a couple thousand people in one place who knew I could write, and hey, look at this… I just so happen to have this novel I’m conveniently self-publishing soon you guys can throw money at. That led to MHI having some fantastic sales for a self-published novel (this was before the eBook revolution, so we’re talking about $20 Print on Demand paperbacks), one of the serial readers introduced me to Uncle Hugos, which is how a PoD paperback wound up on a national bestseller list, Uncle Hugos is how I met Toni at Baen, and the rest is history.

During this Mike and I started working on the next serial idea which would turn into Swords of Exodus and Alliance of Shadows. We decided this one was going to be epic. (Uh yeah, since neither one of us knew what we were doing, the plot of this “little serial” actually ended up around 350,000 words over two novels). I wrote a bunch of Lorenzo’s half of what would turn into SoE, but we never ended up posting it on the gun forums, because stuff got kind of crazy.

During all of this I owned a gun store in Utah, and anybody who owns their own small business knows that consumes your life. Mike (who I still hadn’t met in person) came out to Utah for a change of scenery, and ended up moving here. The first time I met the guy who I’d basically written a book with was when he stopped by my shop.

And when it turned out he was super good at selling guns, we ended up working together. Sure, he didn’t get paid much, but then again, neither did I most of the time. We ended up teaching pistol classes together. Long story short, Mike has been one of my best friends ever since.

I sold the rights to MHI to Baen and discontinued the self-published version. A year and a half went by before the Baen version came out. My really limited writing time was spent on MHV, so the plan for the SoE online serial kind of fell by the wayside. Mike, who had been in the Army before, joined the Air Force and went to EOD school. Burned out of the gun store, I sold my shares to my partner in 2008, and for four months I was unemployed wannabe writer guy (which was when I wrote Hard Magic) until I found a military contracting job.

In 2009 the Baen version of MHI came out and did shockingly well. I was selling well enough that Baen wanted more books from me. So I got to thinking… What about Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler? It was way too rough to just publish it as it was, it would take a lot of work to really clean it up, but it was one hell of a story.

Keep in mind, Mike was kind of busy right about then (I’ll get to that in a second), but he was game. So we cleaned the heck out of Mr. Nightcrawler (and both of us were more experienced writers by this point) and it turned into Dead Six. (It was now nearly twice as long too). Toni thought it was great and picked it up.

It came out in 2011. Remember when I said Mike was kind of busy? He’s the only author I know who had his first book signing at a FOB in Afghanistan.

We still had the story we had come up with for the second serial, and I’d already written a bunch of my half. So Mike dove into that and we finished off Swords of Exodus. It came out in 2013.

It took us a while to wrap up the last book considering we had the basic plot figured out nearly TEN YEARS AGO! One reason is that between SoE and AoS, by popular demand, Mike launched his solo career with the excellent space opera Her Brother’s Keeper. (Seriously, buy it. Great book)

Last week we heard back from Baen, the final edits were in and done for Alliance of Shadows. The eARC will be out soon. The book will be on shelves everywhere in October.

That is the end of one heck of a creative journey.

I’m proud of this book. I’m proud of my coauthor. I think you guys are really going to enjoy it.

I can now reveal that Special Project N is actually the Illustrated Christmas (Noun) Book!

That’s right. We have compiled the first six years of Christmas (Noun) stories into one volume, added a bunch of extras, and illustrated the whole dang thing!

Yes. I draw cartoons (poorly)! Lots and lots of cartoons. (between that, the guns, and mini painting, I’m like a modern day renaissance man, which is okay I guess, because I always wanted to be a street samurai when I grew up, but that didn’t work out because of all the required cardio)

This book has cartoon manatees, dinosaurs, kung-fu fighting reindeer, ice tanks, and more! And if you ACT NOW you can also get Christmas (Noun) Christmas cards and posters.  And (*Jack’s disclaimer: Probably) get your Illustrated Christmas (Noun) Book in time for Christmas!

Bonus points for whichever of you nerds recognizes that cover design. 🙂

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Hey all- Jack Wylder here with the big reveal of Special Project N.
In July of last year, Larry showed the very beginnings of the project. https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/07/29/behind-the-scenes-look-at-special-project-n/
Now at last, we can reveal the project in all it’s glory. As speculated in the comments at the time, Special Project N is… (drum roll, please)

The Illustrated Christmas (Noun)!

A year or so ago Larry started taking a sketchpad with him to the various cons he was signing at and in between his signings, doodled some cartoons. After he had enough, he sent them to me to scan. (Example: )

Then I put it through the CorreiaColor process (IE Photoshop) and we get:

We could have called it “The Expanded and Illustrated Christmas (Noun) because there is some new material not found elsewhere, but that would’ve been hard to fit on the cover.
We were so pleased with the way the artwork came out that we’re offering some of our favorites as mini-posters and/or greeting cards.


You can order as much or as little as you like, but we have put discounts on the bundles.
For obvious reasons, we don’t want to reveal too much of the artwork here but I’m pretty confident you’ll be amused.
2 things:
1) Right now we’re taking orders for First Editions, but we’ll likely offer other editions down the line (unlike the Challenge Coins we’ve done in the past).
2) In 2 weeks time, we’ll place the order based on the sales numbers at the time. With our new shipping division and the lead times I’ve calculated these definitely should be in your hands in plenty of time for Christmas. (For obvious reasons, I can’t promise this but I’m expecting to have these all shipped by end of November at the latest.) There’s been a lot of work put into this and we can’t wait to see what you think!
To see more, or to place an order go to: https://mhiswag.myshopify.com/

 

 

I went with a US Optics 5-25X with the Horus. Low power 5x is like using an ACOG. On the high end, you ever find yourself thinking, man, I wish I had a little more magnification? Not gonna be an issue. 🙂 

 

I am still waiting for the tax stamp for the SilencerCo Omega. I’m also going to stick some side sights on it for close range (love those).

Sorry for the lack of blogging, but I’ve been swamped. I’m working on Monster Hunter Siege, and the plan is to have it out the door by Christmas.

Here is the back cover blurb:

GO BIG OR GO HOME.

When Owen Zastava Pitt was given a tip about some hunters who had gone missing in action, he didn’t realize their rescue mission would snowball into the single biggest operation in Monster Hunter International’s history. Their men are being held prisoner in a horrific nightmare dimension, and the only way to reach them is through the radioactive ruins of a monster infested war zone.
Except it’s also the home base of the powerful creature behind the attacks on the Last Dragon and Copper Lake. It turns out ancient gods of chaos really hate trespassers, but he picked a fight with the wrong crew, and now MHI wants payback. Calling on their allies, a massive expedition is formed, and with the odds stacked against them, a legion of hunters goes to war.

It’s D-Day at the City of Monsters.

 

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Monster Hunter Siege comes out in August.

The lack of blogging has been because I’m in that part of the book where everything is really clicking fast, and I’ll start writing in the morning, and the next thing I know it is 5:00 and I’ve not eaten lunch. Being in the zone is awesome.

Sarah Hoyt is currently working on the rough draft of Monster Hunter Guardian. The way that collaboration works is that she writes the first pass, I write the 2nd, she does the 3rd, cleaning it up as we go.

I’ve still got one more Ringo collaboration, Monster Hunter Saints, to edit, but because Siege is on the calendar, I’ve got to get that done first. These are different than the regular series, but they are popular. (if you are curious how the spin offs are doing, was not confirmed, but Toni is pretty sure we earned back our advance off of the sales of eARCs alone)

The Monster Hunter Files anthology is done. It is edited by me and Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and has a ton of good authors in it. I’ve already listed the table of contents. I do not know when that is going on the calendar yet. I’m just waiting to get a check from Baen to pay the authors, and I’m assuming when that comes they’ll give me a tentative publishing date too.

Alliance of Shadows is my next release. That’s the 3rd and final D6 novel with Mike Kupari, and I’m really pumped. That is on shelves October 4th.

I will be going to New York City ComicCon in October too. That is my last convention of the year. Thank goodness! I swore I was going to cut back after the insane amounts of travel I did over the last few years, and I did. A little… Though there was that 3 weeks in Europe bit, so actually, never mind.

The next charity red shirting drive is coming up. The last Monster Hunter Nation charity red shirting drive was such a success that it took me years and years to get all of you guys into books as characters (in fact, the final one is in Siege) and we paid for a kid’s kidney dialysis while he was waiting for a transplant. This time we are going to help someone with spina bifida pay for their surgery.

In other charity news, as many of you know I’m helping out with the Vets on Sets project from Mission Valor. There is going to be something special and unique coming out to help there.

There is a big project coming up that Jack and I have been calling Special Project N. There will be more news about that very soon. I think it is awesome.

I did not win the Gemmell Legend award this week, but that’s cool because Mark Lawrence took it. I’ve read some of his work. The dude has skills. I’d encourage you guys to check out his work.

In other business news–don’t get your hopes up because Hollywood is weird and flaky as hell and I don’t trust anything until the checks cash–but someone is shopping Tom Stranger as an animated series. Yes, I know that would be amazing. But again, don’t get your hopes up. MHI has been optioned for 4 years and it is still in “development”. Though Tom really would translate well as a cartoon. It would be the only way we could afford the special effects budget.

In gun news, got a US Optics 5-25x with a Horus for the Cazador. Just waiting on the tax stamp from the ATF for the SilencerCo Omega… Because what is the fun of being a fiction writer if you can’t build your character’s guns for research purposes? My daily carry gun is Lorenzo’s pistol.

In politics… I got nothing. Yeah, I know I’m usually full of political posts this time of year, but meh. I didn’t even watch the debates. This election is a train carrying toxic waste derailing into a sewage treatment plant.

So that is the update.

EDIT: Wait, I forgot another charity thing. You can enter to win a really nice MHI holster, autographed by me, for Kilted to Kick Cancer. There are also holsters from Superman, the guy from Monster Garage, and the Nuge, and I would love if mine was more popular than theirs. 😀

From the comments:

No mention of your support of DragonLeatherTN’s Kilted to Kick Cancer?

From their Facebook page:

Simply go to http://www.kiltedtokickcancer.org/…/kilted-to-kick-cancer-…/ to make a donation.

During checkout, select Team Dragon from the drop-down menu. For every $10 you donate, I’ll enter your name in a drawing for a holster of your choice, signed by Dean Cain, Jesse G. James, or Larry Correia.

Or in $5 increments, you can be entered for a hand-crafted knife (either a skinner, or fighting knife) made by Florida knifemaker Reg Moree.

When you get your PayPal reciept in email, simply forward that reciept to kilted@dlwtn.com and in the email, tell me how you want the donation value to be applied to the drawing.

One of the holsters bears the MHI logo and our host’s signature (scrawl).

So “Cultural Appropriation” for writers has been in the news again lately.

First there was this dim bulb having a freak out because the keynote speaker at a writing conference dared talk about how silly the concept of Cultural Appropriation is. This is an incredibly boring and long winded freak out. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/as-lionel-shriver-made-light-of-identity-i-had-no-choice-but-to-walk-out-on-her

(the best part is how she got up and walked away from this dangerous offensive badthink talk AND ALL EYES WERE UPON HER JUDGING HER BY THEIR CULTURAL NORMS! When in reality most folks probably just thought she needed to use the toilet or something)

And here is the actual keynote speech which caused all that outrage: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

You should read this. She makes some excellent points. This is coming from the Literati side of the writing world, but it is just as bad over in the exploding space ships and magic elves section of the book store.

I’ve talked about Cultural Appropriation before, and why it is one of the most appallingly stupid ideas every foisted on the gullible in general, and even worse when used as a bludgeon against fiction authors.

First off, what is “Cultural Appropriation”?  From the linked talk:

The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

The part that got left out of that definition is that engaging in Cultural Appropriation is a grievous mortal sin that self-righteous busy bodies can then use to shame anyone they don’t like.

Look at that definition. Basically anything you use that comes from another culture is stealing. That is so patently absurd right out the gate that it is laughable. Anybody who has two working brain cells to rub together, who hasn’t been fully indoctrinated in the cult of social justice immediately realizes that sounds like utter bullshit.

If you know anything about the history of the world, you would know that it has been one long session of borrowing and stealing ideas from other people, going back to the dawn of civilization. Man, that cuneiform thing is pretty sweet. I’m going to steal writing. NOT OKAY! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!

Everything was invented by somebody, and if it was awesome, it got used by somebody else. At some point in time thousands of years ago some sharp dude got sick of girding up his loins and invented pants. We’re all stealing from that guy. Damn you racists and your slacks.

This is especially silly when white guilt liberals try to enforce it on Americans, the ultimate crossroads of the world, melting pot country where hundreds of cultures have been smooshed together for a couple hundred years, using each other’s cool stuff and making it better.

This weekend I painted miniatures for a war game from Spain, played a video game from Belarus, listened to rap music from a white guy from Detroit, watched a cop show from Britain, had Thai food for lunch, and snacked on tikki masala potato chips, while one daughter streamed K dramas, another read manga, and my sons played with Legos invented in Denmark.

A life without Cultural Appropriation would be so incredibly boring.

And most of you missed the really insidious part of that that academic, all-consuming definition. Without Permission… Think about that. So how does that work exactly? Who do you ask? Sure, these new Lays Tikki Masala chips are delicious, but are they problematic? Who is the head Indian I’m supposed to get permission from? Did you guys like appoint somebody, or is it an elected position, or what? Or should I just assume that Lays talked to that guy already for me? Or can any regular person from India be offended on behalf of a billon people?

This is all very confusing.

But hang on… India owes me. That’s right. Because vindaloo is a popular Indian dish, but wait! It was actually Culturally Appropriated from the Portuguese hundreds of years ago. I’m Portuguese! I didn’t give them permission to steal the food of my people!

So we will call it even on these chips.

And don’t get me started on Thai food, because the Portuguese introduced the chili pepper to Thailand. YOU ARE WELCOME, WORLD!

Some angry SJW recently assaulted a white kid with dreadlocks for Cultural Appropriation. Sure, he looks like a hippy doofus, but dozens of cultures, including a bunch from Europe have worn dreads. There are only so many ways you can grow hair. So half the time the when the Cultural Appropriation police freak out about something, they’re just being ignorant anyway.

SJWs got up in arms about white people wearing kimonos. That’s racist! But apparently they didn’t check to see if the Chief Japanese Guy had given permission first, because all of the Japanese kimono makers were like “Whoa, hold on there! These are just clothes. We like selling them to people. That’s how we live.” They tried the same thing with tacos, because eating tacos was racist. Which came as shock to all the Mexicans who sell tacos for a living (because tacos are proof God loves us and wants us to be happy) but shut up, actual people with skin in the game, SJWs are speaking for you now!

I think those misunderstandings illustrate the importance of a culture appointing one particular person for us to ask permission from, because otherwise you could have a culture with millions of people in it, and anything is bound to offend somebody… Tread carefully, or I’ll demand vindaloo back.

But how does this relate to writing fiction?

Basically there are a group self-appointed thought police who are just looking for a reason to bitch at authors, and scaring people into falling in line makes them feel important. They use Cultural Appropriation like a hammer to bash authors. In reality these people are basically useless, and can be ignored (or better, mocked) but many authors don’t realize that or they don’t like confrontation. So they self-censor and stifle their creativity to avoid giving offense.

Except you can’t avoid offending the perpetually offended.

Check out that first link if you want to get a good look into the culture warriors’ mindset. They’ve got this weird belief that if you tell a story about Person X, then you are robbing a real life Person X of their ability to tell that story. Like if a white guy tells a story about a teenage Nigerian girl, then a teenage Nigerian girl can no longer tell her story. Okay… Is there like a secret checklist at publishing houses I don’t know about? Sorry, Abegunde, this story is awesome, but we’ve already reached our quota on Nigerian YA for the year.

(Luckily for her, Abegunde can just go indy now!)

In the world of fiction, the SJW is constantly perched, like a falcon, ready to swoop in and shriek Cultural Appropriation at any author who dares transgress. So if you write about another culture you don’t belong to, and they don’t like you for some reason, they’re going to flip out. They’ll probably write mean reviews, form an angry twitter mob of rainbow haired Trigglypuffs, and call you names.

Ignore them. Or better, if you have the mindset and a career capable of withstanding their slander, mock them for their bullying stupidity. Bullies hate being laughed at.

If writers were limited to writing about people just like themselves, fiction would be incredibly boring. We are professional liars. Our job is to make up entertaining stuff. If we were that limited fiction would get really lame, really fast, because most authors are actually pretty dull. Sure, we write about heroic people in interesting situations, but most of us spend our days sitting in a chair in front of a keyboard, eating chips, and that’s boring as shit to read about.

Now, if you’re going to write about another culture, then you need to do your homework and try to make that as real and interesting as possible. But screwing that up doesn’t make you racist. It just makes you a bad writer. Get good, scrub. This doesn’t just apply to writing real cultures either. It is a question of basic world building. If you build an interesting culture that makes sense to the reader and feels real, score. You did your job.

Characters are the same. Liven your characters up. Give them likes and dislikes, give them traits, give them opinions, beliefs, hobbies, whatever. Make them people.  Make them interesting. That’s what really matters.

This whole bullshit about how an author has to “respect” a character if they’re a different culture… Bullshit. That character works for me. That character is going to fill whatever roll in the story I created that character to fill. Every culture has heroes, villains, victims, geniuses, morons, saints, and clowns.

If you’re not part of the cool kids crowd, and you write about a member of a “marginalized group” then they expect you to treat that character like an absolute saint, because otherwise the SJWs will swoop in to screech at you. This is why if you write a female character who is flawed somehow, somebody is going to accuse you of misogyny. Get used to it. The other option is perfect characters, and perfect characters are boring.

The key is writing good characters, period. Getting hung up on an artificial checklist is just bullshit. Make your characters interesting and give them an interesting story, entertain your readers, then laugh at the inevitable haters who are too hung up on minutia and agonizing over rules to create any art themselves.

Notice that this Cultural Appropriation thing only ever goes one way. Take for example a prog author who has never touched a gun, but apparently it is okay for them to write the gun culture. Usually as illiterate redneck Bubbas out murdering school children. Totally legit. Or take a goodthink peacenik author who has never served a day in the military, and they can write their blood thirsty, ticking time bombs of PTSD addled murder rage, and that’s perfectly cool. Christians? All up in your literature, as long as they are bad guys.

We don’t hate characters like that because they are appropriating our culture. We hate them because they are lame, boring stereotypes written out of obvious lazy ignorance. Quit sucking and you’ll sell more books.

Look, if you’re an aspiring author and this Cultural Appropriation nonsense has scared you away from writing what you want to write, you’ve bought into their con. Screw that. Write what you want to write. Because here is the ugly secret, no matter what you do, if they don’t like you or they get a bug up their ass about you, they’re going to attack you somehow anyway.

So you don’t write about any other cultures other than the one you come from because you are scared you’ll be committing Cultural Appropriation?  Okay. But then they can attack you for your lack of “diversity”. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

See? It’s a con game. The only way to win is to not play at all. Write what you want. Write what you think is awesome. Don’t let bullies scare you.

The sad truth is that what you actually put in the book is for the most part irrelevant to these people, because they’re just going to make up bullshit about it anyway. They don’t actually read much. See the talk above where the Fat Advocates were yelling at the skinny author and refusing to read her books, even though she was on their side. It came as a surprise to me and my readers when we were informed all my books were Manly White Men Having Manly White Adventure.

These critics don’t actually give a shit about anyone they claim to speak for. They’re not defending any underdogs. It is just a perpetual game of gotcha. They’re looking for reasons to be offended, because their culture equates being offended with being good. It’s all virtue signaling and posturing. And half the time they’re so damned ignorant they’re not even fluffing their feathers in the right direction.

For example, I wrote Son of the Black Sword. It is set in a fantasy world where the culture is based in large part on India and southeast Asia. I got one review from a culture warrior (on GoodReads obviously) where I was attacked because of my horrific stereotypes of Asians, and how I was so lazy that I didn’t even bother to do any research at all about different Asian cultures, because at the beginning I had some of the characters eating rice balls! And rice balls aren’t even Indian food!

Hmmm…. https://www.google.com/search?q=indian+rice+balls&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6pbChnY3PAhXBOj4KHUgJANcQ_AUIBigB

Disregarding that rather delicious looking Google image search, and the fact that in real life everybody who can grow rice figured out some way to squish it into a convenient clump, who is to say that the people of Lok didn’t culturally appropriate rice balls from somebody else before the rain of demons? It is after all, an imaginary place.

If I listened to these mopes, I never would have been able to write about Iron Guard Toru wearing samurai power armor bashing ninjas with a tetsubo, and that would make the world a much sadder place.

Cultural Appropriation is stupid when applied to the real world, and it becomes even dumber when they try to apply it to made-up worlds. If SJWs had their way we wouldn’t be able to write about somebody who looks slightly different than we do, how the hell do they expect us to write from the perspective of space aliens?

Cultural Appropriation is the stupidest argument ever.