Last Day of the Nazi-Hunting Palooza!

It's the last day of this special offer time! You can still get Wolf Hunt at a reduced price of only $2.99 over at Smashwords. Grab your copy now: tomorrow it'll be back at $3.99.

The same is true for the paperback edition on Amazon.com: right now it's $12.23 instead of $16.99, and I don't know for how long that'll be the case! Don't take any chances, buy your copy now.

Amazon Top 100!

...for Alternate History, but come on, how often can an indie author say he's beaten books by Eric Flint and Robert Conroy?

Screenshot of the Top 100: Wolf Hunt on #73, above Conroy's 1862 and Flint's 1824

Thank you all for making that moment possible!

The Locations of TBA - The Azores

I've thought about how to give you guys a more graphic impression of where the plot of Wolf Hunt takes place and came up with the idea of a short series which focusses on several of the locations that are featured in the story. I've redone this first installment and added scenes from the novel to actually give you something that's worth your time. I hope you enjoy it.

Note: If you haven't read Wolf Hunt yet, there will be spoilers in these posts. You've been warned. Either way, dive into the world of The Burning Ages!

The Locations of The Burning Ages

-
01: The Azores

The Azores play a major role in Wolf Hunt, as they are the place in whose vicinity the NATO flotilla is caught by the strange tempest and transported back in time. There are nine major Azorean islands and an islet cluster, in three main groups. These are Flores and Corvo, to the west; Graciosa, Terceira, São Jorge, Pico and Faial in the centre; and São Miguel, Santa Maria and the Formigas Reef to the east. They extend for more than 600 km. All the islands have volcanic origins, although some, such as Santa Maria, have had no recorded activity since the islands were settled. Mount Pico, on the island of Pico, is the highest point in Portugal, at 2,351 m. The Azores are actually some of the tallest mountains on the planet, measured from their base at the bottom of the ocean to their peaks, which thrust high above the surface of the Atlantic.

The naval version of the NH-90 multipurpose helicopter.

The first peak we get at the Azores is when Scout One, a NHG-90 helicopter of the German Navy, takes off from the amphibious assault ship FMG Emden following a complete collapse of communications with NATO HQ and all satellites.

“Currents and temperatures are completely off for this time of the year, but sonar data correlates with what we have on file about the area,” Schroeter mumbled while shuffling some chewing gum from one cheek to another in his mouth. “These are definitely the waters off the Azores. We are just there to double-check that they are there.”
“Why? You think someone stole them and now only will give them back for,” he paused dramatically and placed his small finger against the edge of his mouth, “one million dollars?!”
“Could be the flying spaghetti monster for all I care. It's not as if we mere mortals would be told what's really going on,” his co-pilot snorted. [Wolf Hunt]

Piloted by Hendrik Kramer and Kevin Schroeter, the stealthy helicopter quickly makes its way to the archipelago to its south, noticing that naval traffic is not only surprisingly low in quantity, but also lacking every sign of digital radio chatter. While that may be a side-effect of the strange events they have gone through - they did mess up the electronics - it does not explain the lack of superfreighters - or any other large commerical vessels - on what should be one of the most frequented sea lanes in use.

Interview - Alternate History Weekly

Matt Mitrovich at the Alternate History Weekly Update conducted a quite indepth interview with me on writing in general and Wolf Hunt in particular. 

Which writer(s) would you consider a mentor?
There are many writers whose work I've thoroughly enjoyed and whose influence may have helped me along the way – Robert Jordan for establishing a grand design, George R.R. Martin for infusing it with a sense of gritty realism – but I can't say there's anyone out there who I'd call a mentor.

Do you have a specific writing style?
No, not really. I try to adapt my writing style to the tone and structure of the story I'm writing. That is, a story featuring only one point-of-view character will end up being more personal, direct and dialogue-based than one where I use an omniscient POV. It's also dependent on the genre I write in: a cyberpunk thriller demands a different focus from me than, say, a WWII alternate history novel does. In the latter case I know people will spot details which are wrong. As such, I occasionally tend to go with David Weber-ite info dumps there.

What got you interested in alternate history?
That must have been the movies The Final Countdown about the USS Nimitz being transported back to December 6, 1941 and Fatherland with Rutger Hauer. Before that, I wasn't aware such a genre even existed. I guess that planted the seeds in my mind to one day do something similar on my own.

What is the German alternate history scene like?
It exists, but can't really offer much in the way of a qualitative or quantitative output. You get books with some interesting ideas once in a while - Kaiserkrieger by Dirk von den Boom is about a light cruiser of the Imperial Germany Navy transported back to 378 C.E. - but largely it is ASB schlock. I'd really like to say something nicer than that about the German AH scene, but it's a) small and b) really not that good. I've blogged about one of the worst excesses of German alternate history writing – Kaiserfront – here.

Please check out the full-length interview over at the Alternate History Weekly Update!

A Hymn of Praise...

... for my local customs authority! The town I live in has a commercial harbor and is thus also graced with a customs authority of its own. Unlike with the proof I was sent by CreateSpace, which was an airmail package and thus was stuck at Cologne International Airport, this one was placed in the care of the harbor customs authority.

And - unlike CreateSpace - I cannot praise those folks too much. For one, they were easy to find. Secondly, they were extremely fast and utterly professional. There was no delay when I went there to get my books, there were no problems. They were quick on the uptake and very friendly. You could say, they were exactly what one would expect of a customer-oriented company, instead of the old clichée of a federal public agency. I had a very pleasant chat with the lady working on my case. Turns out, she is an avid reader and was very interested in what I was shipping. And last but not least, the customs fees I had to pay were rather miniscule.

Of course, I did ask her who was responsible for marking the package: the shipping company, or the sender. It's the sender, ie. CreateSpace. So, a honest "Thank you" to my local customs authority. I won't say what I do wish to CreateSpace for being incompetent and lying to me. You can probably think of something appropriate.

Thanks, CreateSpace... again!

Dear folks at CreateSpace! 

Which part of

Customs has to know how much a package costs to be able to fucking process it

don't you understand?

You are working with an international customer base. There are tariffs between the EU zone and the United States. Customs agencies won't process your goods unless they know how much the content is worth! I could be foaming at the mouth right now! Slap the dispatch note onto the fucking package, fer Christ's sake! This is the second time I've got to deal with this crap because you're unable to adhere to international standards in an international business! Is it so damn hard to print out an invoice or dispatch note and add it to the bloody package? Amazon does it. You're an Amazon daughter company.

Get professional. Or, if you're too lazy to do that, add a bloody "Print" button to your customer's message center so that I at least can do it myself!

Update: I got an email from CreateSpace's customer support saying it's not their fault but that of the agency who ships the merchandise. I call bullshit. For one, the shipping agency would by default only have an invoice for the costs they are accounting for... meaning, well, shipping! And secondly... you really want to tell me that DHL, an outgrowth of the Deutsche Post (German Mail) wouldn't know how to ship merchandise to Germany - when they were the ones telling me they couldn't process the damn thing because of the lacking invoice?!

I just love that episode!

Last Week of the Nazi-Hunting Palooza!

The Great Nazi-Hunting Palooza of July is coming to an end, but we're not quite there yet. You can still strike a bargain over at Smashwords where Wolf Hunt is available for only $2.99 (that's a 26% discount, folks!) for the coming seven days! Get your copy now!

And right now, Amazon is selling the paperback edition of Wolf Hunt at a discount of 28%, meaning you can get it at $12.23 instead of the regular price of $16.99. Since I've got no idea for how long Amazon will keep the price that low: now's your chance!

Also, Wolf Hunt got its second 5-Star Review on Amazon! Thanks guys. I mean it.

Wargaming, Inc.

Now this here looks like a nice and useful toy:

ProFantasy Software, the people who brought us the excellent Campaign Cartographer series (I just recently bought Campaign Cartographer 3), have come forward with an interactive atlas of maps of World War II. But I'll let them speak for themselves:

Covering every month of every theatre of World War II, this huge atlas is for wargamers and anyone interested in World War II. It provides a highly interactive and thought-provoking view of the war, and is a great starting point for “what-if” scenarios. Each map contains date, movement, unit strengths and other military details.

From the world overview you can cycle through each month of the conflict, watching the changing events unfold. Click on important areas to bring up more detailed maps of the conflict. For example, punch down through the European maps to see Omaha Beach, the Battle for Stalingrad and the Raid on St Nazaire.

The Atlas works stand-alone, using its own powerful viewer. You can quickly search for events, zoom to any map area and control exactly what map features and troop details are displayed. The maps are all in vector format, so you'll see no loss of detail as you zoom in. You can print any map view at any scale, even tiling across sheets to suit any size of table-top game.

I guess I'll be buying this at some point in the future. For what I'm doing, the WW II Interactive Atlas seems like the right product at the right time (and at $39.95 for maps from presumably every month and every theatre of WW II there's really little room for complaints).

The Problems of Writing Consistent Alternate History

Alternate Histories: Not all are quite as obvious.

This is a long post. You've been warned.

I've tried to set The Burning Ages up as close to RL characters and with as much insight into the historical political situation as I could. In fact, I'm not ashamed to claim that I've probably come up with one of the most close-to-the-truth depictions of the situation featured in AH literature ever. What I wasn't aware of was the rat's tail of challenges this would present me with. Now, I do love a good challenge; this here is more to explain where this desire to stay true is leading me.

Ironically, killing Hitler or something to that end is usually the least of the problems writing AH brings with itself. You'll always find a dedicated group with admittedly varying influence willing to give you a helping hand in killing off the man with the funny moustache.

The less easy part is coming to the realization that you're not acting in a vacuum. That's were the tricky part starts. Because this is where your actions become less important, and the situation and historical actors move to the forefront. Say, you've killed Hitler in 1940. Fine, but what now? You've killed the most revered political leader of Germany on the height of his triumphs! Oh, sure, you do whatever you can to discredit his party and his close circle of leaders, but still: it's 1940, not 1945! So even if you end up fighting a civil war for Germany's soul and win it, you'll find yourself in a situation where you'll have to take a tougher stance for the simple reason you're not exactly sitting tightly in the saddle of leadership. Meaning you're ending up in a position in which your peace offers will amount to LESS than what Hitler repeatedly offered to Churchill (maybe not much less, but less nonetheless...less), i.e. virtually a return to the status quo ante. Why? Because you're risking to get hanged from street lanterns by people who aren't exactly keen to have to support you in the first place. “You wanna be better than the Nazis who did so well for us? Prove you can strike a better deal for Germany then. For the time being, you're on probation.” Meaning the new government can't go for a quo ante deal out of pure self-preservation (though the deal they will offer isn't a bad one).

Pay the Writer!

Fellow author Helen Hanson has taken it on herself to provide a summary of the discussions about free books and pricing that seem to concern the indie and self-publishing community at the moment. The basics of the situation seem to go somewhat like this:

There’s a movement, if you will, of authors who offer their work for free at Smashwords, in order to get Amazon to price-match. The intent is to get the book listed as free at Amazon, which leads to an increase in downloads and, theoretically, higher rankings. Sometimes, the download numbers are remarkable and the ghost ranking stays with them even after the book is up-priced.

In essence, you've got authors trying to cheat a ranking system by giving away hundreds, if not thousands of copies of their novels for free on the off-chance of getting paid customers by appearing in a high-ranking position. That's legit, and if you as an author think that's great, that's your cup of tea. But you've got to realize you're not acting in a vacuum here.

While I understand (somewhat) the reasoning behind giving away books for free, it’s something I’d never do outside, say, a signed edition paperback giveaway on Goodreads, for example. Maybe that POV will change once I’ve published more than just my debut novel, but I somehow doubt it. Due to the constraints and expectations of the market I’m already selling what I’ve written way below the price I’d like to charge for it.

Yes, you've read that quite right: $3.99 USD isn't quite what I'd charge for a book of 175,000 words. The better part of eight months were spent on writing and researching Wolf Hunt, going from the technology involved to the politics and the historical personalities featured in it. Now, ask yourselves this: Would you work for $3.99 an hour? ... I hear the crickets chirping. I suppose most wouldn't even work for $7.99 an hour, and with good reason. Neither would I want to, but it's hard to compete with people who think it's okay to work for no compensation at all. 

I know I'm just a nobody with an opinion. But authors who sell full-length novels at $0.99 do their fellow authors a disservice. Authors who give away lit. hundreds, if not thousands of their novels away for free as downloads? They quite frankly kill the market. I'll leave you with the words of someone a bit more experienced in the writing business.

Quote of the Day

Found beneath an Electric Six music video on Youtube, labelled Hi Res:

If I had a dollar for every pixel this video has, I'd have about 5 dollars.

A Review and an Interview

Wolf Hunt did just receive it's first 5 Star Review on Amazon! I'm grinning like an idiot right now! Thank you! Thank you alot!

Clocking in over 60 million dead, WWII was the deadliest war in history. So if you somehow found yourself thrown backward in time to 1940, before the most brutal campaigns of the war, before the Holocaust was in full swing, before Barbarossa, before Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki, and for that matter before the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe, the division of Germany and the fall of China to Mao, you might be tempted to try to change history.

Especially if you happened to have the power of a NATO naval fleet at your command.

Alternate histories of WWII and the idea of people from our near future traveling back in time to WWII, are not new, but this book offers a unique twist. For more than half of the NATO force that find themselves thrust back in time are German. And they have their own, very strong ideas about how history can be improved.

The premise is pure, distilled awesome. As I was reading the beginning, I was wondering, are these NATO forces *really* going to turn on each other? Is that believable? But the author made it not only seem believable, he keeps both sides very sympathetic and heroic.

At the heart of the story are two men, a German, Captain Florian Hallwinter of the German lead ship, the destroyer FMG Brandt, and an American, Captain Steven Flynn of the US Navy destroyer USS Halsey. Their deep friendship is what makes the story downright gut wrenching when everything goes south and they find themselves on opposite sides. There are a number of well-drawn supporting characters as well. No one in this book is a caricature, each comes across as a flesh-and-blood person with strengths and weakness--even the more vile ones.

There are also a lot of frankly fun scenes in here. Haven't you secretly always wanted to know how a battle would go between fellow NATO ships? (Be honest.) How modern destroyers would fair against the pride of WWII's navies? How geeks from Los Alamos would react if you showed them a modern computer? If a single twenty-first century soldier could take out a panzer?

Why I almost gave this book 4 stars instead of five: There are malapropisms, which interrupt the smooth reading, and a fair share of clunky sentences. (Not unlike the writing in The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.)

Why I gave it 5 stars anyway: I stayed up all night to finish this book. My biggest regret after toggling the last page was that the sequel is not out yet.

This book ended with a satisfying bang. It could be a stand alone, but there's also plenty room for more. I am curious to see where the author will take it from here.

Tara Maya
Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction
The Unfinished Song: Initiate (An Epic Faerie Tale)

And I did an interview on Kipp Poe's Blog. 

A Second Interview!

The great people over at the Indie Books Blog gave me the chance to present my book and answer a couple of questions.

Q: Why did you go indie?

I liked the freedom of choice it's given me. Sure, it's more work - doing the promotion, searching for illustrators, beta-readers, editors and reviewers myself, but at the end of the day I can sleep well knowing that the book I hold in my hands is exactly the way *I* want it to be.

Please support the Indie Books Blog by checking out the full feature at their site!

Exclusive Preview: Read two chapters of "Wolf Hunt" for free!

As a little Sunday treat here are two chapters, picked at random from Wolf Hunt for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy them. As always, I encourage you to leave your comments and questions in the comments box below. If you like what you've read and are interested in more, you can purchase Wolf Hunt as an ebook at Amazon US, Amazon UK and Smashwords, or the paperback edition at Amazon. And now, please enjoy Chapters 8 and 11 of The Burning Ages: Wolf Hunt.

Wolf Hunt: Now available as paperback!

Well, it should've happened a week earlier, but I'm pretty thrilled nonetheless. The paperback edition of Wolf Hunt is now available on Amazon and the CreateSpace EStore! Go check it out!

First Smashwords Sale

I just received an email that the first copy of Wolf Hunt was sold over at Smashwords!

Thanks, anonymous reader! Once you've read the book, please feel free to post a review and tell me and others how you liked it!

The Fog Thins... somewhat...

Well, slowly but surely information has begun to trickle in as to why there's this whole mess I'm finding myself in. Wolf Hunt has been available world-wide for the past two weeks. But apparently now Amazon registered some problems, as this email details:

In regards to the issue with the searchablity of your book in the DE Kindle Store, please note that your book “Wolf Hunt” has not been made available in the following countries (due to local laws and policies):

1) Austria
2) Germany
3) France

I checked with the concerned team, and it appears that your book contains images that are banned in the above countries; hence, your book is not searchable (or not available for sale) on the DE Kindle Store. Further, since you’ve updated a German address in your KDP account, you’re unable to view your book on the US/DE Kindle Store (as the book is not available to customers located to Germany). In order to view your book on the US Kindle Store, you’ll have to log out of your account, then search for your book on the US Kindle Store.

Please be assured that your book is available for sale to customers worldwide (other than the above mentioned countries).

Michael Wallace's "Red Rooster", available since
March 2011 for Kindle in Germany. Note the rather
prominent Swastika...

In plain old English, I can't see my own book in the US store because the cover contains a swastika, and my book's been blocked from sale on Amazon.de's platform for the very same reason. And there I was, thinking that Paragraph 86 of the German Code of Criminal Law was pretty straightforward. But apparently writing isn't art, and neither is writing about the events of contemporary history... writing about the events of contemporary history. I guess I'd have to had studied law to actually get the difference.

So no Wolf Hunt for the German Kindle market right now. Well, maybe it's for the better. Who knows what kind of legal shenanigans I could have stumbled into. Still, it leaves a bad taste, and not just under a "freedom of speech" vantage point. It reeks of censorship. It's also apparently arbitrary, as shown by the cover to the right.

Update July 4th: I got a one sentence mail from Amazon.de that the title is, indeed, blocked because of the swastika. Around the same time I received a mail from Kindle Direct Publishing to get in touch with Amazon's Title Submission team. Which is what I did, sending them the following:

The Odyssey Continues

Sigh. 

If it's not the one thing driving you mad, there's always another one there to do the job for. 

Last Tuesday I lowered the price of Wolf Hunt from $5.99 to $3.99. Usually that kind of change takes effect immediately for me so I knew something was wrong when instead of the price the notice "Pricing information not available." appeared. Worse - and weirder - Wolf Hunt vanished from Amazon's search engine!

And here's where it gets even stranger: I couldn't see the price, and I couldn't find my book. Then I logged out of my Amazon account, and guess what? Amazon's search engine showed the book. The product page showed the price. But it gets even better. As weird and nonsensical as that was, it at least gave me a shimmer of hope and I tried the same approach with Amazon.DE's site (the UK site worked comparably fine): regardless of whether I'm logged in or not, I can't find Wolf Hunt there anymore.

So, to sum things up so far. I, as the author, cannot find my own book on Amazon.com as long as I'm logged in, and I cannot find it on Amazon.de at all. This all was presumably caused by a simple price change just like the ones I had done prior without any negative effects! At the same time, Wolf Hunt has jumped from a sales rank in the 50,000-60,000 (equalling between one and two sales) to one of 25,000 - without any additional sales being registered at KDP.

And this all before I approved my CS print. From the CS forums I've got the information that the novels usually appear on Amazon right away. I checked CS almost hourly, and until noon today it was still pending. Now it's supposedly ready on Amazon - yet can't be found there, not by title, not by my name, not by either of the ISBNs. After all the hassle I had even getting the proof shipped to me, this week is turning out to be a nightmare. 

I've written mails to KDP and to Amazon and have yet to receive an answer, and the whole situation's keeping me from writing because I keep checking things, searching for answers. Maybe it's because of the coming 4th of July and Amazon and co. are just busy. Either way, I've got no idea what the heck's going on.

You should nonetheless be able to reach Wolf Hunt via the links provided on the My Book page!

I'll keep you guys posted.


Update:
Amazon reacted to my first email from yesterday when the whole issue wasn't really as transparent as it is now. This is what I replied with, but I doubt I'll get any useful answers before Tuesday.

So I'm kinda bummed now.
a) I can't see my own novels as long as I'm logged in with my Amazon customer account.
b) I can't find my own novel on Amazon.DE at all, regardless of whether I'm logged in or not.
c) Amazon.com doesn't show the novel in the search engine when I'm logged in and says it's not available when I access the site via my browser history.
d) CreateSpace lists the title as available on Amazon.com since 12 o'clock today (GMT) with this ISBN 978-1463570101. Yet, the paperback cannot be found on Amazon.com. It's not just that it's not linked with the ebook: it's just not there at the moment.
e) I'd like to know what changes were made that I suddenly have to jump over all these obstacles to do something as simple as access my own novel's product page?! Five days ago none of this was relevant; Id punch in my novel's name in any given search engine on Amazon while being logged in with my customer account and the novel and its price would pop up.

I know you guys got probably a lot on your hands right now with the 4th coming up, but I'd greatly value it if you could address the above mentioned points.

--Sebastian Breit

The Great July Nazi-Hunting Palooza of 2011 is Approaching!

I finally got the print proof of Wolf Hunt in the mail today after spending the better part of the last two days on the phone. I didn't achieve much except losing a bit more hair and getting it from the horse's mouth (German customs) that UPS is, how shall it put it? Not the sharpest tool in the shed? Well, anyway, I approved of the print, and going by the information gathered from this thread it'll be either tomorrow or Sunday until Wolf Hunt will finally be available on Amazon.com!

This means that the Great July Nazi-Hunting Palooza of 2011

will start this weekend!

With the launch of the paperback version, I'm offering the ebook at a discount price of $3.99 USD (instead of $5.99) for the duration of July!

You can already purchase the paperback of Wolf Hunt at the CreateSpace Estore!

Please consider taking this option; it's as easy as using Amazon but makes a real difference to me!