Dronescourge Pre-Order

Yes, it’s absolutely a relief to see a supplement finally out on pre-order. I mentioned The Taking of TOR 563 recently, but that was just a fiction lead-up to my latest book, a supplement for the ‘Beyond the Gates of Antares’ game by Warlord Games – The Dronescourge Returns.

To say ‘my’ is a bit of misnomer. Whilst the design, writing, testing was by or organised by me, the production of a full-colour book like this needs loads of graphic artists, painters, and quite technical proof readers. It is agroup effort, and the design studio did a great job on the interiors as well as coming up for the look of the dangerous drone race at the core of the narrative: the Virai Dronescourge. Some of the work they did can be seen in the snapshot below.

If you’re interested in the models, then the first starter force (a swarm) is already up on the Warlord’s site: the Starter Swarm. There is a huge amount of background information about them already on the Antares Nexus knowledge base, with more to come (I know, I wrote it).

Another book release. It’s a huge releif to be back on the writing road, again.

The Taking of TOR 563 Serial

I’ve been quiet on here, but it’s simply because I’ve been busy. There’s a number of serialised novellettes coming out to support the release of the supplement I wrote, The Dronescourge Returns.

The first of these episodic tales is ‘The Taking of TOR563’ and is published on the Warlord Games Antares Nexus, right here: https://www.gatesofantares.com/taking-tor-563-part-i/.

There’s a lot more to do – hope you enjoy!

Freeborn and Family

Another novelette has been released in the saga of Batu and Baray in the Beyond the Gates of Antares universe. This time, we discover how Batu got his terrifying drone and how the cloud of bionanocytes he carries – and fears – was awakened, as well as why he is considered such a threat to the Isorian Senatex.

The novellete is called Freeborn and Family and is in PDF format accessible from this overview page. If it’s difficult to see, it can be downloaded directly from the Warlord Games website.

I’ve also built a Kindle .mobi format file that can be downloaded to a kindle directly or emailed to your amazon kindle account from your your own, approved emailed address.

Batu and Baray’s adventures started in The Claiming of Shamasai, continued in the Open Signal anthology and on the Beyond the Gates of Antares website (coming soon: to be assigned). Other stories include the series in Plaguespore, set in the timei between Shamasai and Family.

An odd experience proofing…

An odd thing happened the other day that I thought was worth sharing, for it isn’t something I’d either been told about, or read about or seen.

As mentioned before, I’m a fan of the big red/pink pen and always give my proofreaders and first readers one so it’s easy to see what they find or where they struggle. Though that requires a hardcopy, still nothing beats it – read through material on the screen and it’s easy to skip over errors.

But what if someone radically changes the format?

News that can’t be told…

Aargh!

It is fantastic when you’ve signed a contract for a book of whatever kind. I’m delighted, and looking forward to sharing the news and contents, but I can’t yet announce it due to necessary publishing constraints that I very much agree with.

It is associated with what’s one of my favourite genres, SF, but more news when the day comes… 🙂

Different books, different approaches

I’ve started another book this year, this time YA, but still SF. One of the things that stuck in my mind from last years helping out with the Summer Reading Challenge is just how much some of the younger readers loved the books they read – and what it was they liked about them.

It would be great, I hoped, if I could inspire that joy through a book.