Search Forum Home   Starfist Headquarters  Book Recommendations  Military Sci-fi...  Re: Military Sci-fi   DavidS 988 posts www.novelier.com Joined 1/23/2006 Re: Military Sci-fi Posted: 05 Jan 08 1:33 PM Response to several posts. John Hemry is a pretty good guy, and an excellent writer of milSF. I recommend all of his books; not only the Stark's War trilogy, but the "JAG in Space" books as well. Under the name Jack Campbell, he's writing the Lost Fleet, which is superior space opera. (Skink, I just looked on my shelfs and there they were, so I do know them, just didn't remember the series title when you asked about it. Buy them, read them.) Like Dan said, war is a young man's job. Another writer once challenged me on the point by saying that some women did an excellent job of operating the electronic suites in two-seater fighter/bombers in the Gulf War. That may be so, but the fighters are trigger-pullers, not radar readers. In battle, men are warriors, women are booty. Come on, everybody's heard of war brides, but who's ever heard of a war husband? Biologically, a man's job is to knock up a woman, and then protect and provide for her and her child until they no longer need his assistance to survive. At which time he can go off and get killed in war or hunting, while she gets knocked up by another man. I've drempt a few times about being back in the Marines. Some of them were nightmares, the others were about getting in trouble for not accepting the mickemouse. I have a great deal more respect for today's army than I had for the army during the time I was in. The Army has really improved over the last couple of generations. In my day, I honestly believed that I was equal to three soldiers, that any Marine was. I wouldn't say that today. We don't really know what the Skink world is like because we haven't been there yet. While Dan and I do more detailed outlines for these books than either of us does when working solo, there remains a great deal that we don't know until we reach that point in the story. We had a change in editors last spring, and often we don't know what's going on to the same extent that we used to. So all we really know about when the next books are being published is that we haven't been given publication dates yet. That and that the contract gives them 18 months from acceptance until the book has to be published. They've had Recoil since last April. That means they've got until this coming October, so sometime between now and then. After the book goes to galleys--gets typeset--it gets returned to the editor and the authors for further corrections, mostly looking for typoes and things that got changed or dropped. Then it goes to whoever it is who writes the cover copy, and to the art department for the cover painting. At long last, it goes to the printer, gets warehoused, and then shipped to distributers who get it into the bookstores. And bear in mind, any given editor probably has 12-15 books s/he's shepherding through the process at any one time.  Page 25 of 25 Previous123...2425    Starfist Headquarters  Book Recommendations  Military Sci-fi... Flat View Tree View Oldest To Newest Newest To Oldest