Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve worked as a military intelligence operator, an engineer and a construction manager. For the last three years, I’ve been writing full time and have seven titles. Four of them are full length (80,000 to 100,000 words) and three are shorter novellas.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The latest in the ‘Black Ships’ series is ‘The Orphan Alliance’. It grew out of a discovery made by Dr. Colbert during her return voyage to Earth in ‘The Dark Defiance’. It occurred to me that her research might hold the ultimate prize for our species, but there’s always a catch.
If things went wrong – and I mean horribly wrong – what would happen to our forces in enemy territory? Marcus Cicero once claimed the sinews of war are infinite money. What happens if those sinews are severed?
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
When I get stuck on a scene, I start up Blender – an open source 3D modeling program – and build the environment. With science fiction, you can’t just travel to your settings to inspire the imagination so I create the environment and animate the camera to take me through it.
I just finished a model for a sub-oceanic city as part of the outlining process for ‘Counterweight’ and I’ve already come up with some interesting SDR (surveillance detection route) possibilities.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I really need to keep this list as a doc file on my admin directory. It’s not a short one, so I’ll just do a bit of cherry picking:
Heinlein, Asimov, Cornwell, Forester, Flemming, Ford,
And the Godfather himself – Arthur C. Clarke (c’mon, the guy practically invented the sattelite).
What are you working on now?
I’m working on ‘Counterweight’ which is book four of the ‘Black Ships’ series. It takes us forward in the conflict by a century and a half and we pick up the tale of an alliance ‘agent provocateur’ who’s trying to stir up trouble on the remote oceanic planet of Chaco Benthic. His tale becomes linked to the descendants of two opposing renegade groups from the previous book and the connection will unleash something new and unexpected.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
It’s funny you should ask – I’m currently collecting data to answer that very question. I’ll be tracking results from several sites over the next few months, allowing my sales to reach a stable baseline between each experiment.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
If you sit by the riverside long enough, the body of you enemy will float by…
So don’t drink the water while you’re waiting…
What are you reading now?
I’m reading my way through Evan Currie’s ‘Warrior’s Wings’ series. It’s an incredibly well written series with carefully crafted science and a strong female protagonist.
What’s next for you as a writer?
After the ‘Black Ships’ is wrapped up, I’ll get back into ‘Prometheus Bound’. It’s a story about the cyclical nature of civilization.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Probably ‘The Lord of The Rings’ and George R. R. Martin’s ‘Game of Thrones’ series (kind of a cheat to pick a series, but we’re making this up as we go anyway, right?) The first is my all time favorite story and the second has so many threads in it, I forget half of them by the time the next story comes out.
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