A question for the people who follow this page: I am about 2/3 through the third book in the Birthright series and I hope to have it completed and available for sale by the Fall.
So, I’ve started thinking about what’s next, of course. I have several alternatives in mind—a prequel to Birthright about Caleb Mitchell’s experiences as a Glory Boy commando in the war with the Tahni; an as-yet unplotted book set after the Duty, Honor, Planet trilogy; a SF plot I’ve had laying around for a while that’s unrelated to anything I’ve published so far; or an epic fantasy that I’ve had kicking around my brain and WIP files for a while.
Any of y’all have any preference? I could use an outside push to make this decision.

I’m running a weekend giveaway of Duty, Honor, Planet this weekend, starting tomorrow June 4 and running through Sunday.

I’m running a five day free promotional giveaway of Duty, Honor, Planet from Wednesday March 9 to Sunday March 13.  Please let your friends who haven’t read the book know.

Never, ever, ever buy an LG product.  Their customer support is horrible and their products are substandard, particularly their cell phones.

I’m running a 5 day giveaway of the e-book version of my science fiction novel Birthright http://www.amazon.com/Birthright-Rick-Partlow-ebook/dp/B005FMBIKY/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 starting Saturday and running through Wednesday the 20th.
It’s a space opera combined with a dash of cyberpunk, a bit of military science fiction and told in the style of a noir detective story.
The main character, Caleb Mitchell, is the Constable of what used to be an agricultural colony populated by an offshoot of the Quakers, until the war with the aggressive and humanoid Tahni tore that world apart. Cal volunteered to be a cybernetically augmented commando during the war and returned to a world torn by war and exploited for its mineral resources by the monopolistic Corporate Council that was allowed to grow into an unstoppable force during the war. Now he just tries to keep a lid on the pressure cooker and protect his people. That becomes much harder when a Corporate mineral scout comes to him for help. She’s discovered a secret that the Corporate Council is willing to kill for…and now Cal and his family are in their crosshairs.

If you’ve already read it, let your friends know about the giveaway.

Thanks

I am going to be running a special on my books Duty, Honor, Planet and Birthright starting tomorrow and running for a week.  Both are going to be priced at 99 cents each to download for Kindle.  Let your friends know!

Just a pause to wish all those who read this blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  I am about 35,000 words into Enemy of My Enemy and still wondering if I can wrap up all the plot points from Northwest Passage in one book or if I’ll have to write another in the series.

Someone asked me this on a message board where I post, and I thought it would be informative for anyone who actually reads this blog as well so I am reposting it here.

I couldn’t tell you how to get picked up by a publisher, because I never had that happen to me despite having a real literary agent and trying hard for several years.
I can tell you how to write a book…or at least how I do it.
First of all, you have to have a story you want to tell. That sounds basic, but I can’t count the number of books I’ve read that don’t seem to have any compelling story the author wants to tell. Things happen, it’s all vaguely connected, but there’s no “sit down by the fire and let me tell you a story” feel to it. You need to have a good tale that’s just bursting to work its way out of your head and onto your keyboard.
Second, you have to come up with characters that people will care about. Again, sounds basic, but it’s even rarer than the first one. A lot of characters in fiction are cardboard cutouts with no depth to them, and only serve as sounding boards or hand puppets for the author. The best characters will write your story for you. It’s happened to me many times…I’d have an idea where I wanted the plot to go, but when some momentous event happened in the story, I’d start thinking not what I’d decided to do next but “what would Jason McKay and Shannon Stark do now?” If you can ask that question of your characters and the answer winds up being different than the plot you outlined, you’ve got some good characters.
Third, you have to be able to slog through the “middle parts.” Writing a beginning is easy. If you’ve done it right, the end writes itself and the big action-filled sequences are fun to write and don’t seem to last long enough. But you still have to get through those parts inbetween where it seems like you’re just killing time between one plot point and the next but what you’re really doing is filling in the parts of the story that connect things and make people care who lives and dies or succeeds and fails by the end of the book. You can’t just cruise through them half-assed, you have to work at them. That’s the real work of writing for me, getting through those “middle parts.”
Last, give your readers closure. Don’t leave plot threads hanging, don’t leave anything unresolved that you’ve made important to the reader. That’s cheating, whether or not you intend there to be another book.

I personally write and sell my own books via self-publishing on Amazon for Kindle and I’ve been fairly successful at it. Stephen King once said that if you can pay a utility bill with what you’ve made writing, you’re a successful author. I could have bought a very nice car with what I’ve made in four years. (Not that I did buy one. My car is an econobox.) The most important part about self publishing is to know your genre and know your market. Things you do to market your books aren’t nearly as important as writing a book for which there is already an established market.

Anyway, good luck. Keep writing and if you can’t find a traditional publisher to buy it, publish it yourself. If nothing else, someone besides you and your friends and family will wind up reading it and you might get some good criticism at least.

I am currently 20,000 words into Enemy of My Enemy, the third book in the Birthright series.  I have a very clear idea of where I want to go with the main plot of the novel, though I haven’t decided on a couple of peripheral plot points.

Here’s the Prologue for the third in the Birthright series, Enemy of My Enemy:

Prologue:

Jock Navarre wiped a hand across his eyes and glanced again at the holographic display.  “Freighter CCV-13889 Juneau, you are cleared to dock,” he droned, seeing the green halo surrounding the fat, ugly, ungainly ship’s profile as it hung in space a hundred kilometers from the station.  Behind it, the blue, brown and green arc of Tahn-Skyyiah hung suspended in the firmament, so much more welcoming than the antiseptic white of the Commonwealth Garrison station.

Until you actually go down there and see it, Navarre amended to himself.  I’d rather sit up here in orbit for a year than have to live down there with those tight-ass, grumpy bastards.

“Hey bud,” Navarre heard a voice through the shroud of holographic images that surrounded him and he shifted his control chair backwards out of the projection circle to see a tall, slender man with pinched, dark features striding casually through the hatch of the Docking Control Center.  His blue Commonwealth Spacefleet uniform was as neat as the ‘fresher in his quarters could make it, but was worn with an air of sloppiness that hung over the man like a cloud.  “Shift almost over?”

“You know it is, Sal,” Navarre sighed, leaning back in his chair.  “Our schedules haven’t changed in over a month, have they?”

“Since you pissed off Commander Kage, you mean?”  Salman Kapoor said with a malevolent chuckle.

“Hey, I was following protocols,” Navarre insisted plaintively.  “It’s not my fault some Tahni territorial governor got his shorts in a wad because his transport didn’t have proper clearance.”

“Preaching to the choir, bud,” Sal raised his hands in a placating gesture.  “I think half those assholes still won’t accept they lost the war.”

“It’s only been fifteen years,” Navarre grumbled, sliding his chair back into place at the center of the control display.  “You’d think it’d have sunk in by now.”

“Technician Kapoor,” a female voice carried over from across the control room, “do you have any actual work to do or are you here to distract Technician Navarre from his?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Price,” Kapoor said, coming to attention as the officer stepped over from the other side of the control room.  Her uniform was everything his wasn’t:  tailored perfectly, every fastener carefully aligned right down to the straps on her boots.  Her hair was cut shorter than his and her dark eyes looked as if they were capable of burning a hole through Salman Kapoor.  “I thought Jock was almost off duty and…”

“Technician Navarre has four minutes and thirty two seconds left before his shift ends,” Price informed him.  “You can either wait in the corridor or you can stand quietly and stop being a distraction.”  She cocked an eyebrow at him.  “The third alternative is that I call your shift supervisor and report you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sal said, stepping back and standing against the bulkhead.  “I’ll be quiet, ma’am.”

Price nodded sharply and started to turn back to the other side of the work area when she paused, eyes focused on something in Navarre’s display.

“What are they doing?”  she asked, and Navarre turned to see that she was staring at the avatar of a Tahni cargo hauler approaching in a docking orbit.

“That’s the scheduled laser-launch capsule from the planetside distribution center,” he told Lt. Price, fighting not to shrug.  She didn’t like enlisted men being casual with officers.  “Their lading is…” he snuck a look at the readout before continuing, “…bulk foodstuffs for the base processors.  It should be docking in a couple minutes.”

“I can see that, Technician Navarre,” Price snapped impatiently.  “What I want to know is, why is that capsule on a heading for the passenger lock instead of the cargo lock?”

Navarre blinked, then pulled up a schematic of the station next to the line that showed the trajectory of the cargo capsule.  The Commonwealth Orbital Garrison which had kept a watchful eye on the Tahni homeworld these last fifteen years was a huge, armored, spinning barrel with non-rotating docking facilities at each end.  The north polar docking ring was for non-military cargo—food, raw materials for the fabricators and such—while the south polar ring was for passengers and sensitive military cargo.

It was also where the stations weapons were emplaced…

“Oh, shit,” Navarre muttered, hands flying through the haptic holograms as he hunted down the manual override for the capsule’s automatic guidance controls.  “I’m taking manual control,” he told Price, surprised his voice was so calm given the roiling in his stomach.

Navarre brought up the maneuvering thrusters and ordered them to shunt the capsule to a slightly lower trajectory, towards the south polar docking facilities.  The order went through and was confirmed by the cargo capsule’s on-board control systems.  And then nothing happened.

“The capsule is not responding to manual controls, ma’am,” he reported, feeling a surge of panic.  “Orders?”

“Issue an alert to the North Polar docks and adjust its orbit with the Gauss cannon,” she rattled off as if she’d had the answer memorized and had practiced it before her shift.

“Aye, ma’am,” he confirmed, then opened a line to the secure docking ring even as he brought up the targeting systems for the Gauss cannon.  She could have ordered him to hit the capsule with the lasers, but if the beam weapon didn’t completely vaporize the craft then whatever fragments remained would still impact the docking ring.  The solid rounds from the coilguns were the size of small groundcars and would push the capsule into a different trajectory that would hopefully take it clear of the station.  “Attention docking security,” he droned as he brought the coilguns to bear, “we have a rogue cargo capsule headed your way.  Attempting to redirect with the Gauss cannons.  Please prepare for debris collision.”

Before they could respond, before he could give the order to fire, before Price could say another word, the capsule’s thrusters did finally fire…but not the maneuvering thrusters.  The main drive, the one that should have had its fuel supply exhausted by the trajectory transfer after the launch laser had taken it into orbit, ignited with an intense flare of hydrogen and oxygen.  The capsule covered the few kilometers to the North Polar docking ring in a second.

“Collision alert!”  Navarre yelled at the same time as Lt. Price, and he tensed up instinctively, even though he knew he wouldn’t feel the impact from where they sat deep in the armored core of the station.

Then his display whited out completely before disappearing in a spray of grey static, and he did feel something…a rumbling that was not like an impact at all, but more like the entire station wobbling on its axis as if the whole thing had been struck by a giant hammer.

“What the fuck?”  Sal had time to exclaim as he stepped away from the shuddering bulkhead.

It was the last thing Salman Kapoor ever said.  Before he had time to draw another breath, the Commonwealth Spacefleet Orbital Garrison at Tahn-Skyyiah erupted in a fusion explosion as hot as the heart of a sun and abruptly ceased to exist.

More to come!