The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales out now!

My latest short story collection, The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales, is out now on Amazon and Smashwords. It's going through the Smashwords system of Premium distribution and will soon be available in all major online retailers. The cover is, as usual, done by my talented brother-in-law Andrés. It looks a bit different form his regular stuff and I think it works well. The book retails for $2.99. A blurb is below.

A rat hunter on the Western Front suspects his prey are plotting against him…
A routine trip through the trenches leads to an unexpected insight…
A soldier discovers the most dangerous enemy can't be killed…
A bereaved woman performs a forbidden ritual to avenge her father’s murder…
A doomed militia is offered a path to victory that leads to damnation…

Here are five tales of war from the pen of military historian and novelist Sean McLachlan. From the bushwhackers of the American Civil War to the trenches of WWI, these stories walk the line from the strange and paranormal to the frighteningly real.

Forging ahead with my next Civil War novel

As I've mentioned before, I've been working on a sequel to my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. I took a hiatus from writing it for a while because I was a stuck. I had written the first 60% or so, knew the ending, but didn't have the bit in between.

That's strange for me. Usually I have the whole story arc in my head from the start and the writing process is just filling in the details. This time, the penultimate section really had be stuck and I took a break to do various other projects, including a spinoff short story that will be published later this month.

Now I'm back to writing the novel. I still don't know quite how I'm going to get to where I'm going, but each scene has been coming to me in chunks of about 1,000 words or so. It's also becoming apparant that this novel will be longer than I anticipated. Oh well. A story has to be as long as it takes to tell. It's good to be working on this again!

Now if I could only think of a title. . .

I got a short story accepted!

I recently signed a contract with Rocking Horse Publishing, a Missouri-based small press, for one of my short stories to appear in an anthology. The anthology is called Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories, and will be available next month in print and electronic formats.

My story, "After the Raid", is a spinoff of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. It tells the story of Helena, who sees her father gunned down by bushwhackers in front of their home and wreaks a terrible revenge. . .

I never got to fully tell Helena's story in the novel so this was a good chance!

Book Review: Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows by Jack Badelaire

Nanok and The Tower of Sorrows by Jack Badelaire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella is by Jack Badelaire, better known for his excellent Commando series of war novels. Here the author takes on a different subject--old school pulp fantasy in the vein of Robert E. Howard.

There are far, far too many Conan pastiches circulating these days, but fortunately Badelaire takes a lighthearted approach. There are lots of jokes and pratfalls mixed in with Badelaire's signature fight scenes.

I especially enjoyed all the references to fantasy fiction and movies. In his adventures Nanok even meets The Beastmaster (oh, sorry, The Master of Beasts!), one of the more embarrassing fantasy films of our youth. There could have been more, though. What? No reference to The Barbarians or Willow? I would have loved seeing mighty-thewed Nanok cleaving Willow's head in with his massive sword.

Anyway, this is a fun little read, nothing Earth shattering, nothing you'll be tempted to read again, but an amusing way to spend an hour or so. If you want something meatier, check out his Commando books. Those are more serious, and seriously good.


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Wild West Photo Friday: Swastikas In The Wild West

Here's a photo of a classic old pulp magazine cover. . .but what's that in the upper right corner? Yep, that's a swastika! It was the symbol of The Hersey Magazines, a publishing house started by famed editor Harold Hersey in 1928. He took as his symbol a blue swastika. The swastika, before the Nazis got a hold of it, was a symbol for illumination and good fortune.

As you might expect, the logo was eventually changed. One of their magazines was called War Stories. Of course, they were talking about World War ONE. By the time World War Two came around the swastika had been ruined as a symbol in the Western world. For more on the history of this symbol, check out my article on The Swastika: Symbol of Peace and Harmony.

Book Review: Lolito

Lolito by Ben Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel I don't read enough contemporary fiction so I picked up this book, published just a few months ago, by the young author Ben Brooks. What I found was a mixed bag.

As the title suggests, Lolito is about an underaged teen who gets into a relationship with an older woman. Etgar is 15, totally screwed up, suffers panic attacks, and already a binge drinker. When his girlfriend cheats on him he tips over the edge. In his loneliness he starts chatting to strangers on the Internet and ends up in a liaison with a 49 year-old mother and teacher.

Etgar's emotional rollercoaster is vividly drawn but it's hard to sympathize with him because he doesn't seem real. The author's MFA style of overwriting makes Etgar sounds like a literary construction, with phrases like "shops the colour of old fax machines" and "eyes like glasses of red wine." Does a 15 year-old talk like that? Does ANYONE talk like that? Certainly not a teenager who spends most of his time drunk in front of the television.

Also, the narrative gets a bit unbelievable. Etgar's fake ID works without question everywhere, even in posh hotels, and there's an unrealistic scene where he's being questioned by the police and they let him run away without even trying to stop him.

What really frustrated me about this novel is that I feel the author could do much better. Some passages are excellent, the minor characters are well drawn, and the concept has loads of potential, especially with "cougars" being so trendy now. Brooks is an author to watch, but I think he might need a few years for his style to mature.

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Halfway to my goal of writing 200,000 words of fiction in 2013

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my writing goals for 2013 is to write 200,000 words of fiction. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable.

Despite it being doable I only just passed the halfway mark last week. Yesterday I counted and found I'd done 101,330 words. Of course we're more than halfway through the year but my pace is picking up. Part of this is, sadly, because I have less work at Gadling. A change in editorial direction means they will be publishing much less travel writing.

So what have I been working on? A book set in the same world as A Fine Likeness, some short stories, some other work I don't want to talk about yet, and of course my Tangier novel. That last one made up for a whopping 26,000 words of my total, written in an intense ten-day retreat.

Back to work, only 98,670 words to go!

Offering my fantasy novella for free

I have decided to offer my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence as a free ebook. It's now available on Smashwords in all formats. Since I'm not in the Kindle Select program, I can't make it free on Amazon unless someone reports a lower price to them (hint, hint).

I've never done a free promotion before so I want to ask my fellow indie publishers--what's worked for you? I've already done the usual FB and Twitter announcements. What else can I do besides plea for a bit of your blog and Twitter time? Of course, I'm assembling the next Reader News post, so if you have anything you'd like to share, I'd be happy to reciprocate.

This dark alternative history novella was originally published in Black Gate magazine. I'm hoping this free promotion will boost sales on my other fiction. By the way, if you were one of the kind folks who bought a copy before it went free, drop me a line at the email address you see on the sidebar and I'll send you another, as-yet-unpublished story as a thank you.

A blurb is below:

Can a drug-addicted sorcerer sober up long enough to save a kidnapped girl and his own Duchy?

In an alternate 18th century Germany where magic is real and paganism never died, Lothar is in the bonds of nepenthe, a powerful drug that gives him ecstatic visions. It has also taken his job, his friends, and his self-respect. Now his old employer has rehired Lothar to find the man's daughter, who is in the grip of her own addiction to nepenthe.

As Lothar digs deeper into the girl's disappearance, he uncovers a plot that threatens the entire Duchy of Anhalt, and finds the only way to stop it is to face his own weakness.

Back from my writing retreat in Tangier

I'm baaaack!

After ten amazing days in Tangier, I'm back in Spain. I went there on a writing retreat to work on my next book, a novel set in contemporary Tangier.

I cut myself off from the internet, music, video, and all those other distractions that are only important when we have them around. I wrote 21,000 words in longhand and outlined the whole novel. It's amazing the progress you can make when you have nothing else to do.

It was nice to fully reconnect with my fiction, something I haven't been able to do for far too long thanks to all the other writing responsibilities that demand my time. Writing longhand was wonderful too. It made me write more slowly and focus on each word and phrase.

Of course I didn't spend all my time hunched over a notebook, although I did carry it everywhere. I explored the city more than I had time for on my previous visit and met lots of interesting folks who I'm looking forward to seeing again.

Yep, I'm already planning my next trip. This time I'm going to rent a cheap room in the medina and stay for a whole month, probably in November. The kind folks at the American Legation have given me access to their excellent library, complete with a desk and wifi. If I'm going for a month, I'll have to take my computer. I don't think my editors would take kindly to me disappearing for that long!

Hitting that word count!

As I mentioned in the beginning of the year in a post about my writing goals, I plan on writing 200,000 words of fiction in 2013. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable. I even put a counter at the very bottom of this blog to keep myself motivated.

Now that we're a third of the way through the year, how am I doing? Well, as you can see I'm only a little over a quarter of the way to my goal. A nonfiction project took up a great deal of my time, and then I took a week off while I was traveling in Estonia. So yes, I'm behind, but with almost 52,000 words written I still feel pretty good.

I'm also speeding up. When you commit to writing fiction every day, your daily word count increases, and the words flow better. In July I'm spending two weeks on a writing retreat in Tangier to work on a novel set there. I'll only be writing: no email, no music, and I won't answer phone calls except from family. If I'm not caught up by then, that break in Morocco will certainly get me caught up!

Book Review: Time is the Oven

Time Is the Oven by Richard G. Sharp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a tale of a young Missourian coming into his own in the years following the Civil War. The book spans a couple of decades from his first wanderings as a callow youth, through various romantic relationships, his friendship with Frank James, and his ultimate success while working on the Panama Canal. Vast in scope, this is an ambitious novel told with wit and historical detail.

"Told," unfortunately, is the key word. Most of the book is narration, with little actual scene. While the narration is insightful and often funny--I even laughed out loud a couple of times, a rare thing for me to do with a book--it lends a certain distance between the reader and the plot.

This was frustrating because I could see the great book trying to break out of the constraints of the good one. The author overly explains everything, when in fact he has the skills to show us far more effectively. I hope in future volumes the author gains confidence to put us right in the scene instead of simply narrating everything.

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Reader News for March 12, 2013

More of my writer friends are getting published! As you probably already know by now, M. Pax has come out with Book 3 of her Backworlds science fiction series. Boomtown Craze is available now in ebook and paperback.

Friend and fellow expat in Spain Andrew Leon Hudson has gotten two of his short stories published this past week. "Tear Drops" is out now in the Mythaxis science fiction webzine. "Easy as ABC", a short story about bullying, is out in the latest issue of Young Adult webzine. For the second one you have to register at the site.

Do you have any news to share? It doesn't have to be related to writing as long as it would be of interest to my readership. Drop me a line at the email on the lefthand column.

Reader news for February 19

My readers have been pretty busy lately. First up is Shelly Akron, who has just come out with the print version of her ghostly novel Secondhand Shoes. To celebrate, she's made the ebook version free! She's also hosting the Run Away Bride Give Away and Blog Party on Feb. 19th, 20th, and 21st. You could win a 15 dollar Amazon card or an autographed copy of Secondhand Shoes.

Tyrean Martinson recently came out with Champion in the Darkness, book one of her YA Christian fantasy series The Champion Trilogy.

At the beginning of the month, Jack Badelaire announced that he was finishing up the draft for Commando: Operation Bedlam. This will be the followup to his awesome Commando: Operation Arrowhead, which I reviewed here. It will come out this spring and it's on the top of my to-read list.

David Meyer, author of Chaos, has finally restarted his Guerrilla Explorer website, one of my favorites. It features "mysteries of history, lost treasure, strange science, cryptids, conspiracies, forgotten lands, and explorers." Welcome back to the blogosphere, Dave!

Are you a reader of this blog and have some news to share? It doesn't have to be writing related. Drop me a line at the email address to the left and I'll add it to the next Reader News!

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

It's a new year, the traditional time to take stock of what you've done and what you're planning on doing. Yes, it's completely arbitrary, but it's good to do these things every now and then.

The year 2012 was so-so for me. I only had one nonfiction book come out: The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang, Jesse James & The Northfield Raid 1876. I also came out with the print version of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Both have gotten good reviews, although I wouldn't mind better sales on the novel. I did get some nice attention when the city of Madrid paid me to give a reading at their annual Noche del Libro festival. Considering the state of the Spanish economy, I doubt I'll get to do that again!

Another milestone was seeing my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence come out in Black Gate Magazine. It's free online, so click that link!

For my travel writing, check out this Gadling post about my year in adventure travel and what to expect from me in 2013. I'm much more satisfied with that part of my career, with popular series on Iraq and the Orkney Islands. Lebanon won the "where to send Sean next" poll, so it looks like I'm going there, editor willing!

So what's up for 2013? I'm making fiction a priority. My dream has always been to divide my time evenly between fiction and nonfiction. My history and travel writing careers are humming along nicely, while fiction still lags behind. I wanted to finish the sequal to A Fine Likeness in 2012 but didn't. I'm also way behind on a story I promised A.J. Walker for an anthology we're doing. Several other fiction projects got nowhere fast.

It's time to get cracking. My goal this year is to write 200,000 words of fiction. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable. Some days I'll write more, and some days I'll write none because I'll be traveling. When I'm on the road I need to focus on what I'm seeing and how I'm going to communicate that to my readers.

To keep myself honest I've put a word count bar at the bottom of this blog. I'll be updating it once a week or so. Light a fire under my ass if I'm not writing enough.

I'll also be ramping up this blog, reaching out to other bloggers for guest posts and to guest post on their own blogs. You'll see me participating in more blogfests too. This blog started the year with only 100 hits a day and finished with almost 300 daily hits. I'm going to see how much I can raise that.

It's going to be a fun and challenging year!

How will the world end?

How will the world end?

Slowly.

Despite what the wide-eyed True Believers would like, the world is not going to end today or any other single day. No civilization has ended in a day. The real destruction of the world as we know it will come around a lot more slowly.

And that's going to make it a lot more painful.

This Choose Your Own Apocalypse blogfest came along at just the right time. While I'm busy with my next Civil War novel, I'm thinking of what I'll do next. One possibility is a series of loosely connected post-apocalyptic novellas. That got me to thinking how are world could fall apart.

First would come the Lean Years as the current worldwide economic meltdown worsens. This leads to various wars and civil unrest that stir the pot even more. Environmental degradation picks up pace and soon coastal areas are flooded by rising sea levels. This causes large-scale migration and that, compounded with a cash-strapped governments not being able to control the outbreak of diseases, leads to the Plague Years.

Now the world governments are really backed into a corner, and they do what they always do in such a situation--they start a war, actually The Wars, several major conflicts between groups of constantly shifting alliances. Thinks 17th century Europe with 21st century weapons. Not pretty. A few places will get nuked, biochemical weapons spread more disease, and the breakdown of civilization begins in earnest.

Then comes the World Revolution. This isn't one revolution but several. The people have had enough and a bewildering array of political and religious groups try to take over. The weakened governments fall after taking out large numbers of their own citizens. Countries fragment and the revolutionary groups end up with little patches of territory. Having widely different belief systems, they start fighting against one another, ushering in the Feudal Times.

But we're not done yet! In a world left with virtually no infrastructure or reliable long-distance trade, things like electricity and gasoline become rarities to be fought over. The new feudal states begin to collapse because of their own infighting, local revolutions, or simple starvation. A vastly depleted population is left living in fortified villages or scavenging the remains of the civilization they destroyed through their own ignorance.

And that leaves us at page one of my first book. . .

Now I just have to write it!

This photo of the Namibian ghost town Kolmanskop is courtesy Harald Süpfle via Wikimedia Commons. To learn more about this eerie ghost town and to see more photos, check out an article I did on Kolmanskop.

My historical fantasy novella has been published online by Black Gate!

Black Gate has just published my historical fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence, about a young wizard in the grip of addiction who discovers his drug of choice is at the center of a sorcerous conspiracy.

It was accepted and paid for five years ago, and now my long wait is over. Sad to say, Black Gate recently stopped doing a print edition. It would have been nice to see it on a dead tree, but I suppose given the website's popularity my story will get more readers this way.

Happy reading!

Birthday sales and the Battle of Lone Jack!

Today is my birthday. Yes, this grizzled old writer has turned 43. To celebrate, I'm dropping the prices of my ebooks for the rest of the month. My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness is going down from $5.99 to $2.99, and my short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other dark tales is reduced from $2.99 to $.99. That's right, just 99 cents!

While this is an historic moment, of greater historical importance is that this day marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Lone Jack. On August 16, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed at the little town of Lone Jack in Jackson County, western Missouri.

A group of rebel raiders had come up from Arkansas gather recruits. They found plenty thanks to a new decree by the state requiring all men to join their local Union militia or face punishment. Men who had been content to sit out the war had to choose sides, and many chose the South.

To head off the rebel raiders, three separate Union columns went after them. Only one made it in time. Outnumbered more than two-to-one, the Union troops put up a stiff fight all day amid Lone Jack's buildings before having to withdraw.

The Union troops had a few things on their side: they were defending a town and thus had better cover, they had two cannons while the rebels had none, and the Confederate force consisted of several units each under their own commander. By the end of the day, however, the weight of numbers gave the field to the rebels. For an excellent article on the battle with some good maps, click on the link I provided above.

Even though Lone Jack was a small battle compared to many in Missouri, it may have been the toughest one for the men in it. I'm tempted to include it in one of my novels one day!

New indie titles coming out thick and fast!

A couple of my blogger buddies have come out with books lately. First off, occasional guest blogger A.J. Walker over at the Genre Author blog has come out with At the Gates, Book Two of his timeless Empire series. He's offering it at an introductory price of $2.99 and has temporarily slashed the price of Book one, Hard Winter, to 99 cents! A.J. sent over a blurb for At the Gates.

In the thirtieth year of my life, I find I am a soldier in two armies about to go to war with each other, and already at war with a third.

We march across an endless plain, we soldiers of the Baron, loyal human subjects of the Dragonkin and their Timeless Empire. Loyal, I say, but only in name. For within that great army intent on crushing the rebellious cities of Haadsted and Ryksierde marches another army, a secret army, the army to which I owe my true allegiance.

Over at Post-Modern Pulps, Jack Badelaire has published Commando: Operation Arrowhead under his own PMP imprint. Jack loves all the classic men's adventure books from the Seventies and Eighties and judging from the blurb below, they certainly inspire him!

Corporal Thomas Lynch won fame at the Battle of Arras, and felt the shame of defeat at Dunkirk. A year later, as a member of Britain's elite No. 3 Commando, Lynch wants nothing more than to go back over the Channel and kick open Hitler's Fortress Europe, guns blazing.

Introduced by his commanding officer to the enigmatic Lord Pembroke, Lynch is offered a chance to be part of a special team of hand-picked Commandos. Their assignment: sneak into occupied France and ally with the French partisans to fight back against the Nazis.

Lynch readily accepts the challenge, but when the mission goes awry from the very beginning, and the motives of the partisan leader become suspect, the Commandos begin to wonder about their role in the mission: trusted allies with the partisans, or worms dangling as bait for a hungry fish?

COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead is a military action - adventure novel written in the spirit of classic war movies such as The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, and Where Eagles Dare, mixed with military adventure fiction such as Len Levinson’s The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards series.

Do you have a publication you'd like to appear on Civil War Horror? Drop me a line! All I ask is that it is at least vaguely associated with the subject of this blog. Military fantasy, local history, Westerns, horror novels. . .sure! Erotica, coloring books, investment guides. . .sorry, not my readership.

Book review: Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the first book of read by the famous Beryl Bainbridge. While I was impressed with this short historical novel, I did have some reservations and was somewhat surprised it was shortlisted for a Booker.

The story follows several people in the circle of the eponymous Master Georgie. Each gets to narrate for a short time and we learn the intricacies of this group of followers who adore the hero without really understanding him. Like many people who attract little coteries of admirers, Georgie is a charismatic, a bit mysterious, and takes his friends for granted. I found the interpersonal relationships between these people as they orbit Georgie desperate for his attention to be expertly drawn.

I would have liked the book to be longer, however. We don't get to know the characters as much as I'd like to, and we never get to know Georgie at all. While that's annoying with the other characters, in the case of Georgie that's not surprising. In real life, people like Georgie must keep a bit of distance to keep their sparkle.

I was also bothered by a series of anachronisms about early photography and period armaments. Unless you're a history buff you'll miss them, but those who do detect them will wonder why Bainbridge didn't do a bit more research.

Much of the plot takes place in England, but when Georgie volunteers as a doctor in the Crimean War, his gaggle of admirers come with him. As part of the army's retinue, we are treated to the real hardships of war--starvation, harsh elements, and homesickness. Bainbridge brilliantly writes off the war's most famous event with the lines,

"I am at least better off as far as transport is concerned; three days ago over two hundred cavalry horses of the Light Brigade stampeded into the camp, their riders having perished in a charge along the north valley. An auction was held, and I bought another mare so shocked by its recent subjection to bombardment as to have passed beyond nervousness into a state bordering on imbecility."

I found this book a compelling read but not good enough to merit five stars or a Booker shortlist.


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A writing podcast worth listening to

Longtime writing buddy and fellow traveler Cynthia Hope Clark is the guest on the latest episode of the What the Glass Contains podcast. She reads from her novel Lowcountry Bribe and gives some great advice on writing. One of my favorite points is that the more you write, the better you get. Don't sweat it, just practice. Seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of writers need to be reminded of that. Head on over and have a listen! Also check out the guest post she did on history as the foundation of any novel.