Incident at Trakan Part 1

Incident at Trakan Part 1

I originally wrote this as a newsletter draw for the separate The Unity Wars newsletter.  Since I’m folding the series into my main author “brand,” I’m going to serialize it here. Trakan System Tyrus Cluster 4,400 hours since the fall of Oram Prime Seventy-five starships hung in the black, only the faint starlight reflecting off their hulls.  Ahead, the star designated Trakan on most starmaps was little more than a slightly brighter pinpoint of light amid dazzling myriads. The largest formation of ships was made up of angular, chisel-nosed battlecruisers, painted a bright blue, with the wreathed Sigma emblem of the Sparatan Space Force only dimly visible in the star glow. Nearby floated two dozen broad, dumbbell-shaped star cruisers, their hulls a deep red that almost looked black in the dimness of deep space.  The characters etched on their flanks were alien; tehud symbols spelled out each ship’s name and its place in the Vergsegeilith Task Fleet, out of Bilbissari. Two ships didn’t fit with either group.  The three-sided, coppery arrowhead bore no markings whatsoever, but was immediately identifiable as belonging to the Order of Shufa, one of the most secretive and rarely seen of the galaxy’s Military Brotherhoods.  The silvery

Getting Into Science Fiction

Getting Into Science Fiction

With the Maelstrom Rising anthology well in the works, Enemy of My Enemy also in the works, and several other projects in development (yes, including a possible new Jed Horn story), I’m preparing to re-launch The Unity Wars.  Some of you are familiar with my first science fiction work, but a lot aren’t (which is why the re-launch).  I published the following on theunitywars.com a couple years ago: What is The Unity Wars? Well, it’s an upcoming series of science fiction adventures.  The best description so far is, “The Clone Wars crossed with The Horus Heresy, with influence from the Lensman series, Hammer’s Slammers, and Farscape.” Confused yet?  Hopefully also curious and a little excited. I fiddled around with writing science fiction  for several years before I became an action-adventure writer.  It was mostly Star Wars and Wing Commander flavored at the time.  I’ve always enjoyed science fiction, specifically what can often be described as “space opera,” adventures in deep space and on distant worlds.  And I’ve also always wanted to go back to it. A few years ago (before Disney Star Wars, which we won’t go into), I got a wild hair and asked myself, “What if the Star Wars prequels were

The Unity Wars

A little while back, I mentioned that I had started work on a space opera epic.  Well, there’s more to it than just writing books (though that’s the main effort).  In true Galaxy’s Edge fashion, I’ve put together a website with some content to hopefully whet some people’s appetites leading up to when I start releasing books (hopefully in the summer). Welcome to The Unity Wars. I won’t be posting about it much on here; it’s its own thing.  The books will be published under the pen name P.L. Nealen (because Amazon’s algorithm tends to market things differently for “new” authors in different genres).  But if any of my current readers are also science fiction fans (particularly those disappointed in where Star Wars has gone), I’d welcome you over there. Now back to the word mines with me.  Got more Brannigan’s Blackhearts to work on, too.

Book Review: Gray Matter Splatter

Jack Murphy definitely has a way with titles.  Gray Matter Splatter is a title that few could pull off, particularly in a day and age of nonsensical buzzword thriller titles like True Faith and Allegiance. But Jack pulls it off, somehow.  Gray Matter Splatter is a breakneck bloodbath in the Arctic, a bit of a change of pace from the last couple Deckard installments.