Category: The Committee

“This property has stopped processing data.” my analytics says. Fair enough.

This site has stopped using Google analytics.

I’ve added a “Tech” section to the Blogroll, and included the inestimable Emacs Org Mode. The Tech sites are a little more permanent than the Sites of the Day.

There’s a new recommended book and I’ve instituted a policy of no longer linking to Amazon for book recommendations. Authors: Build your own web sites. Put your book on your own site where you can protect it.

In case you are wondering, I maintain a blogroll. It’s where I link to other interesting sites on the web. Not social media posts. Not big tech’s gigantic piles of debris. The web. Where we all have our own sites and we link to each other because that’s how you make “the web” and not an endless river of diseased #(%&*@%.

It was a lot of work, but it was both worth it and necessary. I’ve consolidated all our most vital operations to our own land, as it were, so we can have a little more control over the quality of the product we’re putting out there.

The Internet has changed quite a bit since I got started. Keeping in touch with readers is challenging, but at the same time it is easier than it was all those years ago. The good news is we are no longer dependent on outside services for our vital communications. I like to think of it as one less point of potential failure. In order for us to grow our audience and invite more subscribers, we have to be consistent. This is one of the steps we had to take to make that happen.

I have five primary commercial web sites now: One for the Starships series, one for the Ironjammers, one for the bookstore, one for the studio and the fifth one for Bitbook. There are other ancillary pages, but those are the main points of entry. The Committee is equally associated with each, which is why I’ve added all of the sites to their own section on my links page.

I have several other publishing projects I’ve completed over the years which are no longer being actively updated. These include the First Kiss Romances, the Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon, my Kings and Conquests LitRPG series, the Million Dollar Artist™ series and so on. The books will still be available in the store, but they aren’t going to have their own “sites” per se because we’re not actively pursuing any ongoing new titles currently. This may change, of course, but for now the two major initiatives are the Starships Universe military science fiction series and the Ironjammers fantasy adventure series.

It wasn’t all that long ago I had separate pen names for all these books. The logistics involved in keeping them all organized were overwhelming. Don’t ever do that to yourself if you’re an author.

The thing I’m most excited about is Bitbook, because it is where I can fulfill all the plans I had for the Library-Tron and still make entire novel-length titles available for purchase. I will publish my first experimental title there soon. I think it will be a lot of fun.

I will also be launching an Ironjammers newsletter soon, so I can keep readers up to date on what’s happening with my fantasy series. Believe it or not, my fantasy characters have been around a lot longer than my sci-fi crews. Those books will come together quick, so don’t miss out.

Head over to my links section (it’s in the menu above) and take a look at what’s new. I’ll be updating much more frequently now that I’ve got everything semi-organized in one place. Black out.

There are enough books in the Jason Hunter universe now that I thought it would be useful for readers if I explained how to arrange the stories in order.

Prior to the events of the Starships at War series, Jason Hunter was promoted to the rank of captain, which was unusual for several reasons, not the least of which is his age. Before being posted to a command billet, Hunter was the flight leader of a Yellowjacket squadron called “The Bandit Jacks.” His squadron mates are now his senior officers. Starships at War is a series of six novels that begins soon after he is assigned to his first mission as captain of the Argent.

The second series is Starship Expeditionary Fleet which is a series of four novellas (plus a bonus book)  that chronicles the events leading up to the Second Praetorian War.

The third series is Destroy All Starships which is currently in progress and recounts the story of the interstellar war between the Alliance, the Proximan Kingdom, the Sarn Star Empire, the Yersian Unity and the Kraken Decarchy. Destroy All Starships is being published concurrently with The Praetorian Chronicles. The respective series each take place in parallel timelines. The Praetorian Chronicles is a free series I’m publishing in the Library-Tron.

Here are all the current Jason Hunter military science fiction adventures in the order of their fictional chronology.

Strike Battleship Argent is now free for subscribers.

Strike Battleship Engineers is available at getabook.today

Strike Battleship Marines is available at getabook.today

Fleet Commander Recon is available at Amazon.com

Jacks Full of Aces is coming soon!

Silver Eagles is coming soon!

Battle Force is available at Amazon.com

For the Honor of the Captain is available at Amazon.com

The Guns of the Argent is available at Amazon.com

Operation Wolfsbane is available at Amazon.com

Alert Force is free for subscribers.

The Praetorian Imperative is available at getabook.today

Inversion Factor Zero takes place in a parallel timeline to the events of The Praetorian Imperative and the other books in the Destroy All Starships series. Inversion Factor Zero is free and available in the Library-Tron

The proper balance between illustrations and words has been a controversial topic for writers for some time. As authors, we rely on words to communicate, and to the extent we need illustrations, we limit them to book covers.

There is a reason for this. Imagery, animation, illustration work, and getting the look of something right is almost as time-consuming as getting the story right. As authors we end up with a trade-off. Either we spend hours making what will never be better than an amateur illustration combined with an amateur attempt at compositing typography and effects, or we spend that extra time working on the words.

The old cliche “a picture is worth a thousand words” isn’t quite accurate. A picture is worth more like half a day and at least one derailed train of thought, and for me, that can add up to more like six thousand words. That’s ten percent of a medium-length novel, and that can be expensive. Really expensive.

I’m fond of saying I have an unlimited special effects budget. But I only have that if I stick to my knitting. The very moment I open Photoshop or GIMP or whatever, the limits on my special effects budget become overwhelmingly apparent, and the limits on the time I have to fiddle and adjust and tinker become even more apparent. Every hour I spend on that illustration is 1500 words I didn’t get written today.

As authors go, I’m relatively experienced with graphics tools. I know GIMP and Photoshop well. I’m a fair to middling Blender user, and I’ve got journeyman skills with the tools in the Adobe Suite. I’ve had to develop those skills over the years as I’ve worked on video game projects, animated ads, audiocast projects and so forth.

But now, my business is books, and if I’m going to be good at something, it’s going to have to be writing and not gee-whiz graphics. I’m well aware of what happens when you overspend on graphics and underspend on script.

So on to the sourcebooks. You might ask what a sourcebook is? Well, it’s where I gather all the information that doesn’t necessarily make it into a story as is. It’s where, for example, I list things like a character’s favorite school subject, or a fighter pilot’s most prestigious accomplishment or award. It’s where I take what is two-dimensional and make it three-dimensional. It’s where I find out who a character really is before they get to that important scene readers care about most.

The sourcebook is where I describe all the creatures in a fantasy story, or all the enemy starships in a science-fiction story. I also build maps (without graphics, believe it or not) and name all the locations on various planets or realms where adventures take place. Readers appreciate it when stories get their own details right from chapter to chapter.

You would be surprised at just how much source material you can produce writing a 98,000-word fantasy novel. Every character has to be accounted for. Every treasure and creature has to be written before they can be included in the story. I have a list of nearly 100 starships in my Captain Jason Hunter series. It’s nice to be able to look up their names instead of trying to keep them all straight by re-reading previous chapters.

One of the most popular features of some of my past web sites have been the character profile pages for my LadyStar warriors. My Featured Creatures™ have also been popular, and I think some of the source material I’ve composed for Starships at War will be interesting for readers too. The thing is, those past sites had tons of graphics, which are among the things I can no longer produce in the quantities I need.

I want to start putting my sourcebook material up on my site, but I don’t have the time or the budget to illustrate it all. Naturally, I already have most of it written, but with thousands of pages of material, there is no way I can generate graphics in that kind of volume. There’s also the issue of mobile readers. Even if I could get the illustrations done, making them look right on desktops and mobile devices will consume incredible intervals of time I should be investing in new chapters and new stories.

So I have to make the trade-off and sacrifice graphics in favor of words. This is fine with me as an author because I’d much rather write my creations. I’m sure some readers will be disappointed I won’t have a pretty picture to go with each page. Perhaps someday I will find an artist to illustrate what I’ve imagined here and have the budget to do it well. In the meantime, I hope you’ll understand if I go easy on the multimedia extravaganza so I can get everything written that needs to be written.

Look for new material from my sourcebooks soon. Black out.

As many of you know, there’s a lot going on in most of my book series. I have an 800-page source book for LadyStar, and my written notes for the Starships at War universe just passed 100 pages. I expect if I took the time to compile it, Kings and Conquests would be close to 100 pages too.

Question: Would it be of any value to you as a reader of any of these three series to have an online resource listing the characters, prominent locations, equipment, ships, creatures, villains, etc. possibly along with art wherever possible? I’m pretty sure it will help me a bit, as keeping track of 1000 pages of source material isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I’m not planning to use the standard wiki software, as I find it far too finicky and over-engineered for what I have in mind.

Instead I’m planning to establish permanent addresses for my books and their corresponding series on my web server. These pages will function as both information resources for readers and as landing pages for any promotions I do. Alongside these pages, I think background details on characters and so forth would be useful and attractive, especially for new people.

So, what do you think? Would you like to see something like this? Leave your comments below and tell me what you’d like to see! Black out.

Long ago, when the Internet was very different from what it is today, there were more than a few destinations that had lists they called “The Site of the Day.” This was how we discovered things like the live coffee maker camera and Zombo.com before social media and search engines.

As you may have guessed, social media and search engines have done away with most of the fun on the web (along with pretty much everything else), so sites like mine are taking up the slack with our blogrolls. Enjoy my new Site of the Day list alongside links to my other web projects.

Those of us who know what the Internet used to be are not thrilled with what the Internet has become. The main reason I have a blogroll and a “Site of the Day” list is because we need to return to a time when sites just linked to each other.

If you have a site and would like to exchange links, drop me a line!

Now that I’m done with social media, I’m putting my blogroll back online.

I dumped Twitter yesterday after the third locked account warning in as many days. If I’m going to publish something, why would I put it on someone else’s site first? That’s the question you should be asking yourself if you actually believe social media performs any useful function other than wasting time.