Hey all. I know I’ve been a little quiet here lately, and for good reason. I originally posted this on my paywall account, but decided to set it free here, as well.

When you open a text post in Patreon, it will prompt you. Today, the prompt said, “Tell a story.”

Well. I have a story for you; it involves the imminent release of “The Javan War,” a co-authored novella that has been simmering for a long time.

The story goes back to 2017. I had just finished my original trilogy, the Valley series. I wrote the first book before I was in contact with JB. That thing was a hangover from my final tour, and the idea to write it wasn’t mine. It was my counselor in the Combat Stress Recovery ward. She said I should write a book because I had a long list of craziness to work through.

Write a book? The thought hadn’t ever occurred to me, and WTF did I have to offer? How was I supposed to write a novel? What would it be about? I didn’t have a clue, but I thought about what she said.

In 2013, I had nothing but time. I was on active duty, and my assignment was a “healing mission.” It said so on my OERs, or my Officer Evaluation Reports. Yes, even when undergoing the Army Medical Board, you are still required to file those. The Army, the Board, and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles said I shouldn’t be driving due to loss of conscious episodes, so I couldn’t drive. It was the purest hell. I felt like I was fifteen again; on the cusp of adult mobility, but not quite there.

I spent a lot of time in the hospital. There were endless appointments and evaluations I was required to attend. When the Army said, “You are permanently disabled, your career is over,” it was like a lightning bolt to the nuts. What was I going to do?

I had no idea.

So, I decided to follow the good Doctor’s advice, and I dreamed up a novel.

I didn’t want to write a biography or some dumb shit. Self-promotion sucks, and who wants to read about a long career that was mostly boring? Nobody. However, I have read a lot of sci-fi and other fiction.

While deployed, books were a source of comfort and entertainment. Some books I had read many times, and on every re-read, I found new things to enjoy. Authors I read? Wow. The list is long.

Heinlein. Asimov. Haldeman. Stirling. Scalzi. Birmingham. Turtledove. Conrad.

Of course, there are many more, but these were prominent names in my collection.

What to do?

I wanted action like JB. I wanted a narrative sweep like Asimov. I wanted bitterness like Haldeman.

Given a sci-fi setting, I wanted to write about things I knew, but I didn’t want to write about me. I crafted a character, Private Paul Thompson, who left home young and returned home broke and old. He is a star-traveling soldier who saw a chunk of the universe and wished he hadn’t.

I began to type without a clear plan. The words became blurry, and before I knew it, I had a manuscript.

Meanwhile, the cottage industry of indie publishing was born, and Amazon catered to that crowd.

This made it possible to bust out my book, totally ignorant of the publishing world and its pitfalls, to a “wide” audience.

I paid a lot of money to a self-publishing venue, CreateSpace, which held my hand through the process—for a nominal fee, of course—but the deed was done.

In June 2014, the year and month I grudgingly retired, In the Valley launched into the void.

And readers, it was a void. I sold seventy books in the first two years after Valley launched. Later, I learned that this is typical of most self-published books. Friends and family, and maybe an odd rando or two.

I got my license back and put my stupid book on ignore.

I’m not sure what I did during that period. 2014-2016 is a dead space in my life. I’m pretty sure I worked at a retail job stocking shelves, which was a humbling experience. I had an episode at work, which was noticed by coworkers. Deeply embarrassed, I quit the next day.

A normal life, I could see, was not in store for me.

What to do? No idea. I drank a lot back then and tried to pick up the pieces as a father and husband, with mixed success.

Then, one day, randomly, I received an email from some guy in Wisconsin. He asked me when I would write the next book. Also, I was in tentative touch with JB, who was so kind to respond when I shot him an email- “Hey, I like your books.”

Trust me, most authors don’t bother. This touched me.

I decided to write a follow-on novel to Valley, The Captain’s Cauldron and committed to completing a trilogy.

For fun, I pinged JB and let him know work was underway on Book Two.

To my vast surprise, he answered with, “Wait, what? You wrote a book?”

Yes, I said, and I gave him the deets.

Meanwhile, I busted into one of my writing fugues and completed the MS for Cauldron in a month. I shot it to CreateSpace and published the bastard.

John got back to me about Valley—he read it and liked it! Whoa! Then, he hawked it on Burger! This was a holy shit moment for me, seriously. I think in ’16 was the first time we had a video chat. This was mind-blowing for me. I spoke to an incredible author whose work I carried in combat—I remember reading “Final Impact” during Operation Andarab, a seriously shitty trip.

Our relationship evolved, and by 2017, while I wrote Immolation, the final book in my original trilogy, we were in regular contact. He became a mentor and a friend, and he recommended some professional reading. One of the books I latched onto was his entertaining tome, How To Be A Writer, which was great! For my budding authors here in the in-group, I highly recommend this.

By fall of 2017, I’d done a few bits of nip-and-tuck for him. Little shorts, some advisory work. This led to his proposal in the fall of 2017- would I like to do a co-authored thing with him called The Javan War, an origin story for Lucinda Hardy, the chief protagonist in the Cruel Stars series?  

Uh, yeah, I said.

With a premise, I pitched in and wrote a bit.

Then, things happened beyond our mutual control. Diseases. Issues. Delays.

Eventually, I kind of forgot about JW. But the files were there, nestled into the cloud. Meanwhile, John had other projects, and so did I. CreateSpace went out of business, and I wasn’t sure how to publish anymore.

It turned out to be a left-handed gift, and through a series of conversations with John, I learned how to publish on my own at about 1/10th the cost of using an outfit like CreateSpace, with better results, frankly. The funny thing is that CreateSpace was the lowest-cost all-in-one publishing package out there! If you want to be ill, research this yourself. I could name names, but I won’t. You can easily drop 10k on your very own novel; I guarantee you that 99.9 percent of the books created like that will never see a neutral ROI, let alone a profit, no matter how slim.

I did consider the Houses for my new novel, The King’s Ohio Rifles, but they expressed zero interest. To be fair, I didn’t try particularly hard. I had heard too many stories of authors’ nuts being put into a sling by that crowd, so I was satisfied with my 70 percent royalty cut from Amazon.

Oddly enough, The Ohio Rifles series was finished before I published my next book, The Storyteller’s Heaven, in 2022, when I broke a six-year publishing gap.

The crack in the wall led to a flood. I established my Patreon paywall site, and began to publish books fairly rapidly. Due to a backlog of material, this was easy.

By the time I made my belated trip to Australia, I had eight long-form novels out there. When I left for the trip, Light’s End was on the cusp of publication, but I didn’t want to launch it from Oz in case there were complications I couldn’t deal with while overseas. During the working trip, I put the last details on LE and obtained a cover.

While there, John surprised me by expressing an interest in capping off the Javan War; of course, I was game! I spent a week typing away on it when he told me his vision for the ending. I shot him the files, and the vacation neared its end.

Before I passed through the door, however, a cabal of creatives met. We hatched the plan for ISOLATED, I had a concept when it was time to take the bird.

I got back to the States and launched LE. Then, I started cranking on ISOLATED, which has gone slower than I’d like, but it is what it is.

Meanwhile, John did his thing with Javan and decided to take the non-linear route for structural reasons, which also slowed him down.

But now, the moment is almost upon us, and I thought to share the story of The Javan War, a long-awaited mutual venture.

Two things will happen on Patreon.

First, all of my paywall peeps get a free copy via BookFunnel.

Second, after the launch of the final version, I’ll start dropping chapters from the original copy. Much of the book ended up on the cutting floor; for structural reasons this was inevitable.

However, if you are familiar with The Cruel Stars, you’ll note that some of the cutting floor stuff ended up in canon. Also, you’ll see all of it, anyway, and you may agree with John that some material distracted from the throughline of our novella.

More soon on Patreon, and notice of publication here on Interstellar. Behind my paywall, there will be a free copy of The Javan War, ISOLATED1, and serial drops of the first draft of JAVAN WAR.

Cheers,

J