In the Shadows...

While I'm still trying to get my body and sleep rhythm to like working night shifts here's a little something for the German speakers among you: a series of excellent Shadowrun shorts written by my good friend Lars.

Lifesigns...

Well, it's been some time since I gave you an actual update on the state of affairs and I do feel kinda bad about being silent for so long. So here are a few explanations.

Some of you who follow my writing more closely will have noticed that updates there have died down to a trickle. The reasons for this are simple, if not exactly pleasant. I'm moving away from my little cozy home of eight years and back to my old place, which is both irritating and more time-consuming than I expected it to be. And the reason for that is that I'm spending most of my time now looking for a job that's actually paying my bills. Now, before you get all riled up, this is no farewell from writing! I'll be done with moving my stuff within the next seven days, and I've already found new employment, even though it's temporarily limited (keeping my fingers crossed). That means I'll be back to updating the story within the next week, too. 

Suffice to say this year has been less than optimal. I had to permanently bury some long-lasting aspirations, lost a very important loved one and am now trying to find serious employment just about when the Eurozone is dipping back into a recession. Lucky me, I guess.

Another point of frustration that makes me feel exceedingly guilty is the lack of updates and results to report to my IndieGoGo backers. I know you've gotten your signed paperbacks and ebooks as well as the keychains of your choice. I also know I updated ten days ago that the maps were in print. And because nothing ever seems to work the way its advertised I haven't heard back from the printing company since then. I've repeatedly tried to contact them by email, to no avail. This is doubly frustrating. For one, it makes me feel like a cheat to people whose support I so greatly value. Secondly, I'm holding the print proof in my hands! It looks really good, is 80x60 centimeters and printed on thick, solid paper. Knowing the same ought to be on its way to some of you and for some reason it isn't makes me grind my teeth (at least my teeth are okay; had four teeth surgically removed without even the hint of a problem).

But I don't want to end this update on a bad note. The guys who are doing the excellent Timeshift audio play series have begun the preliminary steps for turning Wolf Hunt into an episodic audio play. I've already seen and signed off the first episode's script. It'd be great if they could get this going because there's great talent at work there and the production quality has improved by leaps and bounds since their first episode.

Well, that's it from me for now.

Author Update: William Peter Grasso

W.P. Grasso

Fellow author and friend William Peter Grasso has some news for us:

It's almost here...my latest novel LONG WALK TO THE SUN will be released very soon. Editing is done, cover art concept decided on--so there's not much left to do. Here's the full-length blurb:

In this alternate history adventure set in WW2’s early days, a crippled US military struggles to defend vulnerable Australia against the unstoppable Japanese forces. When a Japanese regiment lands on Australia’s desolate and undefended Cape York Peninsula, Jock Miles, a US Army captain disgraced despite heroic actions at Pearl Harbor, is ordered to locate the enemy’s elusive command post. Conceived in politics rather than sound tactics, the futile mission is a “show of faith” by the American war leaders meant to do little more than bolster their flagging Australian ally.

For Jock Miles and the men of his patrol, it’s a death sentence: their enemy is superior in men, material, firepower, and combat experience. Even if the Japanese don’t kill them, the vast distances they must cover on foot in the treacherous natural realm of Cape York just might. When Jock joins forces with Jillian Forbes, an indomitable woman with her own checkered past who refused to evacuate in the face of the Japanese threat, the dim prospects of the Allied war effort begin to brighten in surprising ways.

I loved William's past two novels - East Wind Returns and Unpunished - and can't wait to read Long Walk To The Sun!

The Indie Spotlight

Wolf Hunt is featured on The Indie Spotlight today. Check it out, there are lots of other cool novels there, too!

CLASH of EAGLES Sample Chapter

While the manuscript is still a few weeks from completion here's something to keep you in the mood. The chapter's main character is an older Czech who has been conscripted into Heydrich's forces.

CHAPTER 14


...Time to Cry

Near Abersfeld, 15 Kilometers North-East of Schweinfurt

25 November 1940

Mired in silence the column with Johan Maiczek and the Faller boys marched on through Franconia. The sense of elation and camaraderie they all had felt after the first days of battle had evaporated after they had committed their gruesome work as executioners. During daytime in it's stead now lingered a feeling of numbness. At night they all went through fitful bouts of sleep filled with nightmares of the past and of what the future might bring. The levied Czech soldier saw it when he awoke from his own nightmares – or when he had to take a leak during the night. After all he was in his mid-forties. It was strange how the mundane or even the profane sometimes had its uses. For when he was awake he could see who slept safe and sound. It was these men he swore to keep an eye on. You didn't just run around executing people and then go for a toddler's slumber. He had seen that type of men in the trenches of the Great War: the killers, the sadists, the men in whose chests war had awoken the beast and who would put a bayonet through your belly with a smile on their faces. Every army, every society had them. Johan Maiczek just wasn't very keen to be near them.

At the head of their company rode their commander, black in polished black, his cape flapping in the wind, his big white stallion dancing forward rather than trotting. The tall animal was brimming with energy, white mist erupting from its nostrils whenever it snorted contemptuously at the slow pace its rider forced it into. It didn't even deign to look at the old mare that trotted after it, half a horse's length to its right.

In Johan's eyes the rider was a shallow, twisted copy of their commanding officer, a bit of a Sancho Panza to their Don Quichote. Hans Reimann was a new addition to their unit, in equal parts watchdog over them and lapdog to their commander. Gaunt, with a hawkish nose and fiery eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses he was the new Reichsführer's answer to his forces' supposed timid conduct against the enemy. As SS-Führungsoffizier his task was to assure they followed their orders to the letter and with the right amount of ideological fervor, and he had begun his duties of bringing 'his flock' back to the path of righteousness rounding on a man he thought making disparaging remarks about him with a riding crop. Reimann had only stopped when the unlucky son of a bitch's hands and face were a complete ruin. The man had lost an eye, too. He'd be crippled for the rest of his life.

But that wasn't even what had disgusted and frightened Johan, no. It had been their 'commissar's' face. Reimann's eyes had been blazing with laughter and excitement, and he had smiled throughout the whole ordeal.