Shattered Shields – Available Now, with a story from my new fantasy series in it

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The Shattered Shields anthology of military fantasy from Baen is available now. I’ve got a story in there and I’m really excited about it. This one is called Keeper of Names, and it is the first story set in my new epic fantasy series (the first book will be coming out October 2015).
I’m excited for this series to start. But at least this gives you a first look into the general feel. It is a pretty dark and gritty world, with a regimented caste system, and a brutal system of laws. This story is from the perspective of one of the casteless and his no so successful attempt at causing an uprising.

Updates on various projects and things

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It has been really busy around here. Here are some quick updates.

First off, the epic fantasy novel is back from the Reader Force Alpha. They were extremely helpful as usual. I’ve been doing edits on that and will be sending it off to Baen by the end of this week. It is pretty awesome.

But today I’ve got to go be interviewed for a documentary about Bigfoot… Yes, I lead an interesting life. No. Despite the 56 inch chest and size 15 feet, I’m not related to Bigfoot. Because I write monster books I’m the guy to talk about the influences of cryptids on pop culture, which if you think about it, is sort of what I do for a living.

I’ve got to hit the post office on the way to send some thank you packages. One of them is for this.

Don Williams is a fan who reads this blog and has seen my many pictures of painted Warmachine minis. He had an army gathering dust, so he sent it to me. Yes, on the side I run Correia’s Home For Orphaned Miniatures and Teddy Bear Hospital.

khador

So thank you, Don. They will get a nice paint job and a loving home.

But first, I’ve got to go vote. My one disappointment this election is that I don’t live in Mia Love’s district, so I can’t help make it so that Utah has zero democrats in our congressional delegation.

Other than that, slow week. Only one death threat on Facebook yesterday, but for some reason I doubt I’m going to get invited to go on Colbert to field some softball questions.

V-Wars: Blood and Fire, I've got stories in here! Green Beret Vampire!

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Super Author Jonathan Maberry created the V Wars shared world anthology and comic book. The general premise is that a virus causes the reawakening of “junk” DNA in some people which causes them to turn into vampires. It turns out the myths from various cultures are based in fact, and now those things are out there again. Jonathan established the rules of the game, then got a whole bunch of authors to jump in with stories.

Volume 1 came out last year, I wasn’t in that one. I’m in #2 and #3. There’s also a comic book from IDW and a TV show in development. When Jonathan asked if I wanted to join, I read the first volume, then my first question was if he wanted more recurring villains.

Since the general idea had vampires living among us in secret, and they were drastically outnumbered, and this book is about the war between them, I asked myself, how would the smart ones fight?  How do you fight now when you’re behind enemy lines, surrounded, and outnumbered? And I decided that the absolute worst person to turn into a vampire would be a Green Beret, because their mission is to create armies from indig populations to cause trouble. So then I called my friend and Dead Six technical advisor, who is a LtCol in the Army Special Forces, (I never know if I should name him because he still does crazy stuff for a living) and asked, “Hey, if you suddenly turned into an evil vampire, how would you screw with humanity?” Good stuff.
 So I wrote a story a story called Force Multiplier. I’ve written another story which will be in V Wars 3 called Absence of Light. And I can always tell when short stories are good, because my internal thought process is, I could totally write a whole novel out of this… 
This one has stories by Jonathan Maberry, Kevin J. Anderson, Scott Sigler, Joe McKinney, James Moore, Yvonne Navarro, and Weston Ochse.