I was in Denver yesterday filming for Joe Mantegna’s Gun Stories on the Outdoor Channel. I was on last season, and apparently people liked me so they invited me back. Most experts they use on TV shows are Serious Experts, and I’m more of Not Very Serious Expert. 🙂

Before that though I got to sit down with Michael Bane and do this interview which was posted live to the Outdoor Channel’s page.

https://www.facebook.com/OutdoorChannel/videos/10155287857572884/?pnref=story

I had a lot of fun. The other writer they’ve got on the show is Stephen Hunter, who is a really super nice guy, and a living legend. Yes. His Earl Swagger books are the reason why Earl Harbinger is named Earl.

So if you’ve got the Outdoor Channel, check it out.

I can go ahead and announce the two new collaborative projects that I’ve been hinting about.

The first project is a fantasy novel co-written by me and Steve Diamond.

The second is a sci-fi novel co-written by me and John D. Brown.

Those names will be familiar to my regular readers. I’ve Book Bombed both of them, and have known these guys for years. They are both extremely talented authors, and I’m excited to be working with them.

I recently wrapped up a few big projects, so Toni Weisskopf approached me if I had any ideas for other collaborations. (I’d done a series with Mike Kupari, was wrapping up the edits on the last of the John Ringo MHI novels, and have one outstanding with Sarah Hoyt). I pitched her these two, Toni liked them, the other authors who I’d come up with the ideas with were all in, and as of this morning it sounds like all the contracts are signed and are on their way back to Baen. So here goes:

The Fantasy Project

Steve Diamond is the author of the YA thriller Residue, and a bunch of short fiction, including a story about Vatican Combat Exorcists in the upcoming Monster Hunter Files anthology. I first met Steve when I was a relatively new author and he interviewed me for his book review site, Elitist Book Reviews.  Then I found out he was a fellow accountant and we hit it off. We ended up in the same game group (Writer Nerd Game Night, so if you read those serials, you got to see Steve first learning how to write fiction). We also wrote the Son of Fire/Son of Thunder short stories together.

Then when my writing career started doing really well, I realized I would have to quit my day job as a finance manager for a defense contractor, so I hired Steve to be my assistant. We worked together for a year while I trained him to do my job, and he took over when I left.

This idea is about four years old, and we originally brainstormed it to be a story set in someone else’s IP. I had been approached to write that project, only it fell apart for business reasons unrelated to us, and got shelved. But in the process we worked up like a 20 page detail outline for what was a really, really cool story, with some neat characters.

That outline sat on the shelf for years.  I still wanted to write it, because the characters and plot were just that interesting, but the setting didn’t belong to us. So when Toni asked for collaboration ideas I sat down with Steve, and we started thinking through how we could lift the characters and plot out of one setting we didn’t own, and make up a new world to stick it into. And the fun part was that once we weren’t constrained by someone else’s already established rules, we came up with some really nifty ideas.

The brief pitch, it’s a grunt’s eye view of a war (think WW1 on the eastern front) in a world based on Slavic mythology and grimdark fairy tales. It’s about a young man who has been avoiding conscription, until something nefarious steps in and violently shoves him toward his destiny.  Then it’s off to the trenches, magic and mustard gas, wearing armor made out of dead golems and powered by the souls of the damned, where the troops are more frightened of the secret police behind them than the monsters in front of them.

Yeah. This one is bad ass. 😀

The Sci-Fi Project

John Brown is the author of the Servant of a Dark God series, and the Bad Penny thrillers. We both started out around the same time, and as two relative nobodies with no chance in hell of getting our publishers to pay for us to go on book tour, we teamed up to send ourselves on book tour. Usually by picking a major city, schmoozing our way into getting an official book signing at one store there, then getting a map to every book store in the region, and driving from store to store for several days straight to meet the staff, sign the stock, and hopefully get some new fans. So we spent a whole lot of time in cars together. And in fact, the scariest drive of my life was with John Brown, from Denver to Evanston in a blizzard, with me driving a Ford Focus. Not fun.

John and I had teamed up to teach a How To Plot A Novel in an Hour class a couple of times at LTUE. That’s where some authors are given some random ideas from the audience and show that they can tie them together by plotting out a whole novel on the fly. The problem with those kinds of panels is that when you ask the audience for plot elements, it is like a competition to see who can throw out the stupidest crap. And inevitably the professional authors make even the weirdest ideas work (that’s how Jim Butcher wrote Lost Legion with Pokemon in Codex Alera), but it’s usually silly and a lot of time is wasted.

Two years ago John volunteered us to do it again (I’m kind of the Vanna White to his Pat Sajack during these), and this time rather than get hung up on dumb random suggestions, we’d start with all the elements already written down. And to keep it a challenge, instead of an audience member, we drafted my (at the time) 10 year old son, and basically asked him “Okay. Tell us everything you think would be awesome in a sci-fi story.”

And of course, being a ten year old boy, the answers were “giant robots, space pirates, murderers, giant monsters, bandits, etc.” And he even DREW THE GIANT ROBOTS.  (and let me tell you, nobody can envision a crazy fight sequence like a ten year old).

So armed with these extremely awesome plot elements, we went to LTUE, and in front of the audience, over two hours, came up with a basic world build, plot structure, theme, characters, and sketched out most of the scenes. All to show the aspiring writers that this stuff ain’t that complicated. Only when we got done, I looked at what we had and thought… Damn… This could use some more thought and tweaking, but we could actually write this book.

A few years later, and we are.

The brief pitch: In a universe where advanced military tech is limited to ‘civilized’ worlds, there is a team of thieves who specialize in stealing war mechs, and selling them to groups which are normally banned from possessing anything that dangerous. The pirates don’t usually ask questions about what the stuff they procure is used for. Giant killer robots are just tools, and who is some bureaucrat to decide who can and can’t be armed?  Only this time, they see what the client is using their merchandise for and it’s just too much to stand. But Warlords really don’t like it when you back out of a deal, and there’s hell to pay.

This one is going to be really cool. And I’m excited, because though I’ve done some sci-fi (D6 is like 15 minutes in the future, and Grimnoir is actually sci-fi) and quite a few pieces of sci-fi short fiction, this will be my first straight up space opera.

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The fantasy project is due first, though at this point I couldn’t even begin to estimate the release date. In the meantime I’d invited you to check out John and Steve’s books. They are excellent writers.

Here is the cover for the upcoming Monster Hunter Files anthology. I think this is just a place holder on Amazon though, because the final version should have author names along the bottom.

That cover is by Alan Pollack. A fun thing about anthologies is that you don’t know which story is going to end up inspiring the artist with a cool visual. This pic comes from Kim May’s story.
Here is the list of stories and authors inside.

“Thistle” by Larry Correia (Owen and his team take on a new kind of monster in Arizona)

“Small Problems” by Jim Butcher (MHI’s new janitor has to deal with some small problems)

“Darkness Under The Mountain” by Mike Kupari (Cooper takes a freelance job in Afghanistan)

“A Knight Of The Enchanted Forest” by Jessica Day George (Trailer park elves versus gnomes TURF WAR!)

“The Manticore Sanction” by John C. Wright (Cold War era British espionage with monsters)

“The Dead Yard” by Maurice Broaddus (Trip goes to Jamaica on some family business)

“The Bride” by Brad R. Torgersen (Franks wasn’t the only thing Benjamin Franklin cut deals with)

“She Bitch, Killer of Kits” (a Skinwalker Crossover Tale) by Faith Hunter (Jane Yellowrock teams up with MHI)

“Mr. Natural” by Jody Lynn Nye (an STFU mission in the 70s has to deal with plant monsters and hippies!)

“Sons Of The Father” by Quincy J. Allen (Two young brothers discover monsters are real, and kill a mess of them)

“The Troll Factory” by Alex Shvartsman (Heather gets some help from MHI for an STFU mission into Russia)

“Keep Kaiju Weird” by Kim May (a Kitsune may have already earned her PUFF exemption, but she’s not going to let some monster squish Portland)

“The Gift” by Steve Diamond (Two of the Vatican’s Hunters from the Blessed Order of Saint Hubert the Protector on a mission in Mexico)

“The Case of the Ghastly Specter” by John Ringo (while studying at Oxford, Chad takes a case)

“Huffman Strikes Back” by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Julie Frost (Owen’s vacation gets interrupted for some monster revenge)

“Hunter Born” by Sarah A. Hoyt (remember how I mentioned Julie didn’t get to go to her prom because of monster problems? Here you go)

“Hitler’s Dog” by Jonathan Maberry (It is WW2 and Agent Franks really hates Nazis)

 

Details at: http://bluesteelranch.us/

I’ll be taking a long range precision rifle class from JP Enterprises this October. We’re going to have a great instructor at a great range. If you’ve got questions, check the link. I’ll be just another student in the class.

I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve gone through a lot of training, but the area of shooting I know the least about is long range precision stuff.

Available now.

There are a bunch of great authors in here. It was fun to play in the Aliens universe. I’ve also got a story coming out for Predator. I get to write for all of the cool things from my childhood.

My story in this one is a little different though. Lots of other writers were already writing Colonial Marines fighting various things, and several were writing about some of the cool Colonial Marine characters we’ve seen before, but really, what is the coolest thing in that whole movie? If you are a gun nut you automatically said the M41 Pulse Rifle.

There are a lot of authors in the world, but I like to think that I’m the best choice to write a future Gun Stories/Tales of the Gun style script for an iconic sci-fi weapon.  😀

(speaking of which, I’m a regular guest on Joe Mantegna’s Gun Stories now. We’re filming Season 7 this month)