Action Adventure About to Kick Into High Gear

There have been some detours and bumps in the road getting here, but the rough draft of Tier Zero, my sequel to Hell and Gone, is in the can.

After learning a lot the hard way by trial and error, this time I'm avoiding some of the mistakes I made with my debut novel.

The most important correction may have been my decision to hire a professional artist for the cover art this time. Despite the wise old adage to not judge a book by its cover, people do exactly that. We've all heard about the importance of making a good first impression. If the book cover doesn't pique a reader's curiosity, they'll probably never sample what's inside. So, in effect, it doesn't matter how good a book is if you can't lure readers to open it.

I was fortunate to find veteran cover artist Derrick Early. He was quick, reasonable and spoke my language--just an overall pleasure to work with, and worth every penny. Since I wanted TierZero to have an old-school men's adventure feel to it (despite its 2013 setting), I wanted a retro-men's adventure look for the cover, too. As you can see in the e-book version cover above, he delivered big-time.

I also made an effort to pack even more action into the story this go-round. And I cut the number of characters down from my cast-of-dozens in Hell and Gone. I still tried to keep the language PG-13.

What I didn't change was my effort to write a paramilitary shoot-'em-up throwback to the '80s paperbacks, but without obliterating suspension of disbelief or underestimating the intelligence of the reader. I was fairly happy with it once the rough draft was finally done.

There have been times when I thought I wrote something good, but when somebody else looks at it, they point out flaws I had been blind to before. So even though I think I've matured quite a bit as a writer, there's still some doubt, if not trepidation, when I go through the critique process (now called a "beta read"). My new novel recently finished the beta read and received much constructive criticism with few red flags. The revisions have been fairly painless.

So far, so good.

I also asked a favor of Jim Morris, since he is a well-established and respected author whose influence with readers spans decades: Would he be willing to give it a quick read and write a reaction I could quote for promotional purposes? He agreed, even though he was helping others with their projects. I got a blurb from him, and was very grateful to have it. Then I got these comments:


"I've edited more than 200 adventure books, fiction and non-fiction. Not five of them were as good or better than Tier Zero. ...It really is a highly superior adventure novel. Big fun."

That was welcome news, let me tell ya. He kept reading, then said:


"I'm two-thirds of the way through, and it just keeps getting better. You are one hell of an adventure writer. If I weren't already reading two other books I'd be through."

And finally, upon finishing:

"Loved it. Do I smell sequel?"

Heavy sigh of relief. And swelling of the head. When you're a relatively unknown independent author, you just have to share comments like that from a guy like Jim Morris.

Something else I'm doing different this time is a blog tour. It should be a lot of fun, and there's a giveaway with it. (Free stuff! Yay!) The tour is scheduled to start right here on Monday, January 14. Check back for the schedule and details on how to win (and what you can win).

The Second Wave: Resurgence of Men's Fiction

First of all: Happy New Year, everyone.

With Jack Murphy's novel hitting the virtual stands today, and my next one still on track for release later this month, I got to thinking about the "new wave" (or 2nd wave) of men's adventure/military fiction/paramilitary novels. 2012 was a very encouraging year for those of us who miss the genre(s) and would like to read it again. I actually think the resurgence began in 2010, but its growth has been accelerating, making last year the biggest so far.

So following is just a from-the-hip summary of what the state of the genre is right now.

Jack Silkstone's PRIMAL series burst on the scene in 2011 and has been taking no prisoners ever since. His heroes are part soldier-of-fortune and part vigilante. Imagine the A-Team, but more plausible. Imagine a James Bond villain, only righting wrongs instead of doing wrong. PRIMAL is a private military company, but they don't hire out to the highest bidder. They are privately (and well) funded, which means they don't have to compromise their principles to make a living by the sword. His latest installment is PRIMAL Vengeance, and I'm sure he's got another one in the works. He's also got some nice videos up, and a cool website.



I met Jack Murphy after he reviewed my novel, Hell & Gone. The review was a pleasant surprise, mostly because he was not only a fan of the genre, but another veteran, so he could appreciate it on at least two levels. Frankly, before that, I'd been seriously worried that there were no fans of the genre left...that there was no interest or market in this type of fiction. The closest thing to it was the techno-thriller a la Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, etc.

Anyway, Jack and I became cyber-friends and gradually, I discovered that there were a lot more of us out there. He was working on his debut novel, Reflexive Fire, at the time, and posting chapters on his blog. Jack had recently come home from the Sandbox and his knowledge was vast and up-to-date. (He also had some hilarious anecdotes from personal experience in SF and the Rangers that I hope he will find a way to insert in his future fiction.) I wrote Reflexive Fire's first Amazon review and was happy to do so.



Jack's been busy going to school, starting a family, writing books and co-founding SOFREP, a fantastic resource for anyone interested in Special Operations Forces. His novel Target Deck, sequel to Reflexive Fire, just went live on Amazon.

Dan Tharp is a regular contributor to SOFREP, and has recently been commissioned by them to write about the Rhodesian War. His study of African history and politics informed his debut novel, Task Force Intrepid: The Gold of Katanga. The heroes, again, are ethical mercenaries sorting out the chaos in the Congo. He followed up with a shorter adventure about TFI: Highway to Hell. In addition to being a scholar of the Rhodesian conflict (and his blog, Sharp End of the Spear, is a very informative site), Dan was involved in Mixed Martial Arts for a while. I can't wait to read the book he writes about that.



If you haven't discovered Jack Badelaire's Post Modern Pulps blog, do yourself a favor and check it out. He's one of my trusted sources for book and movie recommendations, and we've had some stimulating back-and-forth since we've known each other. And he's become a published author himself in the last year or so. When the craziness of my own authorial efforts die down for a bit, I plan on finishing Operation Arrowhead, his novel of British commandos raising hell in Fortress Europe between Dunkirk and Normandy. In addition to that, there is his debut novel Killer Instincts; a tongue-in-cheek fantasy short: NANOK and the Tower of Sorrows; and the E-Zine Hatchet Force, which I am pleased to have contributed to.



New on the scene is Peter Nealen, and a welcome member of our growing community. His novel Task Force Desperate is a well-written yarn set in the near future, about a PMC suffering mission creep after a US outpost in hostile territory is overrun and hundreds of hostages taken. You might be exhausted after reading it because the tension never lets up. From talking with him, I know that he has many more books in mind, in several genres (kinda' like me). He's also a brand new blogger, and his American Praetorians blog is well worth a visit.



This isn't everybody writing in this genre, but they're the guys I know (in an online sort of way). Of course there are guys out there like comic book writer Chuck Dixon, with his SEAL Team Six novels. All of it is welcome. I miss the 1980s because you had quite a selection to choose from, and you could find a book in the genre at most drug stores and even gas stations. Now you can't even find it in a brick-and-mortar book store. But I must say that the quality of stories now, at least using the authors mentioned above as examples, has improved since then. And you can shop for your E-reader anywhere, including at drug stores and gas stations.



And don't forget Walter Knight's military sci-fi/comedy series, America's Galactic Foreign Legion. Walter is a Two-Fisted Bloggee, and has too many books to represent here, about American expansion into outer space. He's got accolades from folks like Piers Anthony under his belt, and the series sounds like a lot of fun.



BTW, all the blogs mentioned are on my blog rolls to the left.

Death of a Beagle

Lately I haven't been as diligent about promoting the work of other authors as I have in the past. I feel kinda' bad about it, actually. I fully intend to get back to plugging for others here on the Two-Fisted Blog. Some have asked for reviews, others have not, but I feel obligated to read and review just the same. I feel solidarity with my fellow authors, and I know indies and unknowns, especially, desperately need Amazon reviews and word-of-cybermouth to get noticed by their potential readership. The Two-Fisted Blog is over two years old now, and will continue to promote good reads for as long as it lives.

But lately I've had to cut way back on some activities in order to nurture my own fledgling career as an author. Obviously I haven't had much reading time. And my poor online book store, Virtual Pulp Press, hasn't been getting the TLC it needs (part of that is due to a convoluted situation with the computers in my house). Let's not even discuss other non-breadwinning activities...

So I've been putting what spare minutes and hours I can scrape up into Tier Zero, my sequel to Hell and Gone. Right now it's going through the beta read. Some helpful feedback so far, and no red flags or cause for massive rewrites (knock on wood). But there is one minor tragedy.

Let me rewind. I had a character in H&G, Gordy Puttcamp, who was a pilot. I had another character which was his dog Sentry. My favorite breed is the pit bull, and so I wrote Sentry as a large American terrier who is well-trained and plays with bowling balls like other dogs play with tennis balls (he's based on a real dog, BTW).

Puttcamp isn't in the sequel, so neither is Sentry. But I did give Rocco's Retreads another four-legged friend this time out, and her name is Shotgun (because that is the seat she claims as her own when riding in a motor vehicle).

Shotgun was a beagle. Why? Well, I learned a little about the breed some years ago. Despite their diminutive stature and stuffed-toy cuteness, beagles are hunting dogs. I've heard some folks say their noses are even more sensitive than a bloodhound's. With such an impressive scent-catching ability, I figured a beagle would be an interesting choice for a bomb-sniffing hound, which could be trained for other useful wartime tasks, as well.

As I wrote the first draft, I came to love the little furball--her floppy ears, stubby legs, her pitch-coded howling...

Then a beta reader pointed out that he's never seen beagles used for bomb-sniffing. Come to think of it, neither have I. Not that I've been around bomb squads in the military or civilian world, but I've seen pictures and videos. I haven't seen beagles or bloodhounds used for drug-sniffing, either.

With time as valuable a commodity as it is for me, I showed remarkable self-discipline in not spending half a day or more researching exactly why that is. This time I simply told myself, "There must be a reason why police and bomb disposal forces use mostly shepherds for working dogs."

(I've actually seen some MPs use rotweillers. And my beta reader mentioned Belgian malinois, which look enough like small German shepherds that I've probably mistaken one breed for the other in the past.)

And, while thinking further on the issue, I reminded myself that there were other chores I would have the canine performing which required a high degree of stealth. Beagles are not easily trained to be silent in any circumstance, especially when on a scent.

So, fickle mercenary jerk that I am, I had to put the poor girl down.I want it on the record that I tried, I really tried, to use a non-macho breed for a dog hero.

I had a girl-talk scene or two; there's a romantic sub-plot; a cute little sawed-off hound dog with a cold, wet nose and a wagging tail...I was really showing my sensitive side, there, until my roll was slowed by the mean old realism monster. But alas, no more vanilla-almond iced latte` for me--back to scalding hot black java in a beat-up canteen cup.

That's right, dear readers: Shotgun the beagle is dead. Long live Shotgun the shepherd mix. And things just aren't quite the same in the blood-splattered jungles of Indonesia...

Boxing Tales For Boxing Day

So far as I know, Boxing Day is a British Commonwealth holiday in which people trade occupations for a day. At least that's what I learned from a rerun of M.A.S.H. one night long ago when I was bored enough to watch it. And I don't think it has anything to do with the sport of boxing.

But what the heck. It seemed like a good excuse for a promotion of the Fight Card series. So from December 26 to January 1 ALL the Fight Card books will be available for 99 cents on Amazon. That's an opportunity to enjoy a lot of hard-boiled noiresque pulpy sports fiction for the cost of a proportionate binge on 40-ounce Arizona iced teas.

All the Fight Card authors, myself included, publish under the house name "Jack Tunney." But here's some extra incentive to buy mine: If you buy Tomato Can Comeback, then next time I play Fight Night Round Three, I'll name a character after you and beat the living crud out of him.

What's that, you say? You'd rather have your namesake beat the living crud out of me? Well, that can be arranged. Post an Amazon review and I guarantee your alter ego will emerge triumphant. I'll even adjust the outcome of the fight based on your ranking. One star and you'll barely eke out a decision win and fans will forever question your skills. Five stars and you'll destroy me in a devastating knockout that confirms your cyber machismo to the videogame world.

Is that an amazing deal, or what?

Men's Adventure Cameos

Crossovers are nothing new, but with the recent nostalgia for old-school action-adventure, spurred along by the Expendables movies (with a 25-year high school reunion flavor to them), it seems there was never a better time for team-ups between heavy-hitting icons.

The latest Mack Bolan novel, State of War, features a sort of team-up that is more along the lines of one of Alfred Hitchcock's cameos in his own films. Bolan is joined, not by another famous paperback action hero, but by author Jack Murphy (PROMIS; Reflexive Fire; Target Deck). I find this especially cool because I know a little about Jack...like how he's been a Mack Bolan fan since he was a kid. Don Pendleton's character made Jack an enthusiast of the genre, and ultimately led to him becoming an author himself. His Deckard character is not a pastiche or knockoff of Bolan, but he is a sort of literary offspring. Anyway, Jack Murphy has now been fictionalized, and assists Mack Bolan in his war against evil. I haven't read it yet, but just had to buy the book, knowing this. I'm sure I'll read and review at some point.

This got me thinking. (Dangerous; I know.) Wouldn't it also be cool if, among the circle of military fiction authors publishing right now, we had some fun with crossovers in some of our own books? Not cameos of authors, necessarily, but of our characters. I read somewhere that Bolan and the the Death Merchant knew of each other, therefore existed in the same "universe." I don't know if they ever had a crossover or even cameos in each other's adventures, outside of fan fiction. If they didn't...they should have!

This could be our own little "in joke," shared by those savvy enough to follow the Two-Fisted Blog, of course. It wouldn't have to be a ha-ha funny joke, or a detour into self-parody a la` The Expendables II. Just something kind of fun, that would bring smiles to our faces, while paying tribute/respect to the creations of our fellow, contemporary, action-adventure authors.

What do y'all think?

Hegel Rides Again: Enemies Foreign and Domestic by Matthew Bracken

In the wake of the latest media blitz, capitalizing on the school shooting in Connecticut, I figured it was as good a time as any to review the first book in a trilogy written by Matthew Bracken. Bracken, a former Navy SEAL, is someone who believes in the 2nd Amendment, and his trilogy fictionalizes the federal government's war against individual rights.

It probably won't be long before somebody labels this book prophetic. And in some ways it is. Not that the author is clairvoyant--he just has paid enough attention to history and current events to notice the patterns and extrapolate from there.

Bracken has put some well-drafted characters into the mix. What mix? Some of tomorrow's headlines, and the real stories behind them. Tomorrow, that is, if you refuse to believe that the sort of false-flag operations he depicts are already happening.

As a work of fiction, what's refreshing to see is that the characters make sloppy mistakes and bad decisions that real people do...and usually pay for it. But even when they are smart and extremely careful, Big Brother can still track them down and bring the pain. Yet there are other characters who make mistakes (like the sniper that got cut around the eye by his scope) and don't wind up paying for them. Plausible.

Ranya Bardiwell is easily the smartest "good guy" in the book. The Lebanese-American beauty has had no formal military training as have most of the other citizens forced into conflict with their government, yet she accomplishes some impressive feats and makes very few mistakes along the way.

Brad Fallon is a likeable guy who just wants to live free and mind his own business. He has worked hard and saved to fix up a boat he plans to sail away from the police state our country is becoming. But fate and the evil ambitions of fascist control freaks (who happen to be just incrementally smarter than Eric Holder) will soon drive Brad, Ranya and some other law-abiding citizens together, hunted down as enemies of the State.

My only "problems" with this novel come down to matters of opinion:

First, the Mini-14 is called a "crummy rifle." I wholeheartedly disagree. True, it is not as accurate as the M16A2 and later AR variants. But it is far more dependable over time (and in any environment) than the AR15 family, speaking from personal experience.

More importantly, Bracken portrays our national descent into socialist police-statehood as orchestrated by over-zealous ATF nazis, while the individuals at the highest levels of government are hapless dupes, innocent of the false flag black ops making their own agenda a reality. That strikes me as a naive worldview, made necessary by the presumption that conspiracy is impossible. (After all, conspiracy theory is a hate-filled, farfetched, cockamamie fabrication of the vast right-wing conspiracy, ain't it?)

Compare press coverage of Fast & Furious with press coverage of this school shooting that just took place. The former has been swept under the rug, while the latter will continue to be hyped at least until the next atrocity. Fast & Furious, at last count, was responsible for roughly ten times the murders of those comitted at the school shooting. One reason for the glaring double standard is that Holder's "Justice Department" was caught red-handed committing a false flag operation. The crisis was revealed as a fabrication, and so it went to waste. This conveniently timed atrocity against children in Connecticut has not been revealed as a fabrication. This crisis will not go to waste. Though small potatoes compared to the murders perpetrated by Attorney General Eric Holder, this story will continue to be rammed into the consciousness of the culture relentlessly.

 
If you don't recognize the pattern, or the agenda, there's no use in trying to explain it to you, anyway.

This is a well-written book, but there's too much truth in it for an intelligent reader to be comfortable cuddling up with it. Escapism, it is not.

Oh yeah--what kept me from reading Bracken's books for so long was the exorbitant price. Electronic versions were priced around $10; paperbacks double that, or more. I obtained this E-book as a result of a free giveaway, or I might never have read it. But I'm happy to report that the prices have been reduced to a much more competitive level. This one was $4.99 and Castigo Cay was $6.99 last I checked. Still a bit steep for E-books, but not ridiculous, either.

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, WITNESS OF FATE...

Yesterday was the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I haven't read or watched any fresh material on the subject in quite some time, which is why I didn't blog about it. But that event was a turning point in history I doubt many people today appreciate.

The war with Japan was a catalyst which led to a change in warfare, and the world as a whole. Even after the Cold War ended, the paradigm shift has not yet been overturned. The major players on the global scene are still pushing their own agendas via proxy wars, when necessary. So I'm featuring a book written by someone who was there in the midst of some of those proxy wars: The Devil's Secret Name, now available as an e-book.

I've reviewed some of Morris's other books here on the Two-Fisted Blog before and, long story short, they are all good reads that just might educate you a bit if you're not careful.

A highly decorated Green Beret commander and acclaimed military writer, Jim Morris spent his post-Vietnam years as a journalist on assignment in the world’s most dangerous battle zones. Armed only with a reporter’s eye and a soldier’s heart, he covered the Third World conflicts that served to forge a post-Cold War world, shaping both lasting peace and sowing the seeds of global terrorism. An embedded journalist, years before the term was coined, he bore witness to the fierce realities and uncertain outcomes of guerrilla warfare.

From the jungles of Southeast Asia to the shattered peace of the Middle East and the violent twilight world of El Salvador, here are the frontline dispatches of a veteran reporter and seasoned solider. Inevitably the only reporter on the scene, Morris chronicles more than combat shrouded in the fog of war. Living among the soldiers, his remarkable battlefield reports capture the extraordinary courage, unwavering faith, and the dark humor common to all combat troops.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Morris served three tours with Special Forces (The Green Berets) in Vietnam. The second and third were cut short by serious wounds. He retired of wounds as a major. He has maintained his interest in the mountain peoples of Vietnam with whom he fought, and has been, for many years, a refugee and civil rights activist on their behalf.

His Vietnam memoir War Story won the first Bernal Diaz Award for military non-fiction. Morris is author of the story from which the film Operation Dumbo Drop was made, and has produced numerous documentary television episodes about the Vietnam War. He is author of three books of non-fiction and four novels. He has appeared on MSNBC as a commentator on Special Operations.

Gunfight: Union Yellow-Legs vs. KKK Night Riders!

Amazon has reduced the cost of my post-Civil War e-novella, Radical Times, to 99 cents. What better time to promote it, sez I. I've made sure it's available for the same price at Barnes & Noble for the Nook, at Kobo, Smashwords, Sony, Apple, Diesel and everywhere else.

It's tempting to categorize Radical Times as a western, and it does feature horses, six-guns and shootouts, but it takes place east of the Mississippi. Pick Garver is a soldier who survives the horrors of the War Between the States, but might not survive the smoldering hatred during Reconstruction. A native Arkansan, Pick was raised on his slave-owning uncle's plantation, but ran away North to fight with the Union Army. His "treason" is not appreciated by the white population of his hometown, but a desire to see two women overcame his better judgment. One was his dying mother; the other is the woman he loves but probably can never be with.

Wanna take a peek?

The invaders wore hoods made from flour sacks, pillowcases and various other material. Most were cloaked with sheets or blankets, though one of them wore a Confederate Army jacket. Pistols still smoking in their white hands, they fanned out to cover the crowd.

“Make way!” shouted a muffled voice.

The crowd parted, leaving an open path up the aisle to the front.

“What’s goin’ on?” one man asked the masked intruders. A pistol fired and he went down.

“Any more stupid questions?” asked the masked figure who had shot him.

“The time for you niggers to gloat is over,” declared another muffled voice. “By order of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. You niggers up there in front, come here.”

Huddy, Josiah and Lutrell exchanged fearful looks, then stepped down and walked toward the masked men.

“That means you, too, Shealy!”

Randy Shealy blanched, but stepped down and overtook the others.

When the group of leaders had reached the back of the church, Shealy approached one of the masked men. “Just what is the meaning of this?” he asked, in a quavering voice. “Who are you and what right do you have—“

The masked man slammed his pistol into the side of Shealy’s face. The preacher went down. “You’re a disgrace to the white race,” the masked man said. He kicked the prone, unconscious body. Then, seemingly enjoying the sensation of his boot sinking into Shealy’s stomach, kicked him again and again.

Pick went from shocked, to scared, to furious as the scene unfolded. His single-action Colt had five cylinders loaded, the hammer resting on an empty chamber, but none of his compatriots seemed to be armed at all. Slaves were forbidden to bear arms, so few freed men even owned weapons yet, much less were in the habit of traveling with one.

“Rush them!” Pick cried, unholstering his gun. “There’s only a few of them; we’ve got them outnumbered.”

They could have overpowered the murderous visitors with minimal casualties, but the crowd was sluggish to act.

“Who said that?” demanded one of the intruders.

Another fired toward the sound of Pick’s voice, hitting someone in between them.

Pick, unable to get a clear shot through the crowd, ran to the aisle. With a hooded target now in unobstructed sight, Pick took aim and fired. The man was slammed to the floor.

Men scrambled to get farther out of the line of fire. The hooded intruders poured hasty shots in Pick’s direction. Pick dropped to his belly and fired again, winging one masked man in the arm. A hundred voices shouted all at once.

The masked men grabbed the leaders—two of them carried Randy Shealy—and backed toward the door. As the last one backed out with his captive, pistol still waving at the occupants of the church, Simon Lutrell tore free and dove to the ground. The masked man cursed and fired into the room, then the door was slammed shut.

Amidst all the yelling and cursing, there were noises outside now: thudding, scuffing, scraping, even hammering. Then there was a crash. A flaming bale of cotton came crashing through one of the only two windows, landing on one of the church pews and blossoming into a powerful blaze.

Panicked men charged for the door, trampling friends and neighbors in the process. But the door was solidly barricaded, and smoke seeped in around it. Pick tried to assess the situation without getting trampled himself.

Pick decided the windows were the best way to escape, but they were rather high…and now they were being boarded up from outside with preassembled planking. Smoke thickened rapidly in the building from all sides. The whole structure had been set afire from outside.

He tried to quiet the mob, but at the top of his lungs could not be heard above the din. He moved toward the window nearest him. Others nearer the windows had the same thought and got there first. Men jumped up and hung from the window ledges by one hand, but had little leverage to force the boards out with the other hand. If they would only cooperate with each other, one man could stand on the shoulders of two and push against the barricade. But nobody was being cooperative.

 The church grew hotter and smokier. Pick yelled and mimed directions to no avail. They were all going to suffocate and burn here because nobody would work together and focus on a practical plan.

This scene was lifted from the middle of the story.

This is from an Amazon review:

A group of Union soldiers returning home after Appomattox has one last battle to fight and the author does a wonderful job in this tightly written novella of drawing characters and moving plot forward.

This novella has everything - a nice exposition that doesn't get bogged down, wonderful character development, a bit of romance, a touch of sex followed by intense, well-thought out action before returning to a poignant touching ending that distilled the consequences of American history into the lives of two lovers.

That's right, Two-Fisted Bloggees: Yours truly tried his hand at a romantic subplot--just to give you a warm, squishy feeling before the final bloodbath.

Dang. From the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" list, it's obvious most of the sales have come from romance fans. Where are the lovers of blood and guts action? Does this mean I should shift my efforts from action-adventure to mushy bodice-rippers? Oh, the irony!

 Here's another Amazon review...I assume from one of those romance readers:

Informative, exciting, romance. All good. But I didn't like the ending so I'm hoping there will be a book 2?????

 Next time don't be so long-winded, lady! (Just kidding--I really appreciate reviews of any length.)

Well, pilgrim, it so happens the idea of a sequel has occurred to me, so I'll make a deal: if sales shoot through the roof and I get a respectable number of reviews and likes (let's say, um...40), I'll do it.

Whaddya mean, ya don't like the ending?!?!?

Actually, I think I know. But I won't divulge because it would be a spoiler. So nyah-nyah.

Meanwhile, I'm off to buy a bodice so I can practice ripping it.

(P.S: Radical Times is also included in my adventure anthology Virtual Pulp, which is available in paperback as well as e-book formats. What a friggin' bargain!)

The Infantry, the Infantry, With the Dirt Behind the Ears...

You'll never stop the infantry in a hundred million years...

At any given time, I'm in the process of reading 5-20 different books.

Simultaneously.

Now granted, some of them may take years to finish; some of them months; some of them weeks (the ones I need to write reviews for are priority). Well, here's one of them. I bought House to House by David Bellavia for my Kindle a while back, for no particular reason other than I was curious about conventional combat in Gulf War II and this memoir about the battle for Fallujah seemed like it might enlighten me. (Obviously I bought it when I wasn't swamped, like now.)

It sat on my cyber-shelf for quite a while, collecting dust, but then I began working on the sequel to Hell and Gone. The sequel has some house-clearing action, and my own limited MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) experience is probably as outdated as the technology... and, well, heck, everything else my creaky old civilian self remembers. Now where can I find some reference material on this subject? Why, right here in my Kindle! Sha-zam!

Just in case I've fooled some of you into thinking I have half a brain, let me confess that I began my military service as an E-1 in the Airborne Infantry. I volunteered for it. In fact, once my ASVAB results came back, the recruiter told me I could choose any MOS the Army had--you know, all those nifty ones in the commercials that have plenty of overlap into civilian occupations.

Nope. Not me. I wanted a dead-end slot in the one MOS with absolutely no civilian application: Grunt.

Strip away all the extra alphanumeric characters from my MOS and what I am is an old 11B. Eleven-Bush. Eleven-Bulletstopper. I was trained to get there by parachute, but once I got there, I was a ground-pounder. Line doggie. Light infantry, baby. Hoo-wah! Woof, woof! Ui, ui, ui, aaaaah-uhhhrrrrr! We like it, we love it, we want more of it, blood makes the grass grow greener!

Ahem. Yeah, okay, I was stupid. If I had the youth and health (and inclination) to join the military today, I guarantee I'd do everything different.

But ya know what? I'm kinda' proud I did what I did, too. And so, while reading the prologue of Bellavia's book, he struck a chord with me. He was a leg, and mech, at that; but I couldn't help but feel some cross-generational solidarity with him when I read this:

Dust cakes our faces, invades our sinuses, and stings our eyes. The heat bakes the moisture from us with utter relentlessness. Our body temperatures hover at a hundred and three. Our ears ring. On the edge of heat exhaustion, we get dizzy as our stomachs heave. 

We have the spastic shits, with stabs of pain as our guts liquefy thanks to the menagerie of local bacteria. Inside our base's filthy outhouses, swarms of flies crawl over us. Without ventilation, those outhouses are furnaces, pungent with the acrid smell of well-cooked urine.

All this, and we get shot at, too.

Welcome to the infantry. This is our day, our job. It sucks, and we hate it, but we endure for two reasons. First, there is nobility and purpose in our lives. We are America's warrior class. We protect; we avenge. Second, every moment in the infantry is a test. If we measure up to the worst days, such as this one, it proves we stand a breed apart from all other men.

Where we work, there are no cubicles. There are no break rooms. Ties are foreign objects; we commute in armored fighting vehicles.

Our workplace is not some sterile office or humming factory. It is a stretch of desolate highway in a vast and empty land. A guard tower burns in the background. Shattered bodies litter the ground around us. Vacant corpse eyes, bulging and horror-struck, stare back at us.

The stench of burned flesh is thick in our nostrils. This was once an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) checkpoint, designed to regulate traffic in and out of Muqdadiyah, one of the key cities in the Diyala Province. Thanks to a surprise attack launched earlier in the morning, it is nothing more than a funeral pyre. We arrived too late to help, and our earnest but untrained allies died horribly as the insurgents swept over them. One Iraqi soldier took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). All that's left of him are his boots and soggy piles of bloody meat splattered around the guard tower.

This is our workplace. We began to acclimate to such horrors right after arriving in the country. 

While on our second patrol in Iraq, a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me. 

As for the rest of the book, I'll see how it shapes up. And for all you other grunts who might find this blog post, young and old, Army or Marines, Airborne or Air-Assault, straight leg or mechanized, Gulf War II, Gulf War I, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea...and everything in between, I salute you as a brother.

You can take a man out of the infantry, but it's hard to take the infantry out of the man.

Red Dawn...Revisited

It's pretty amazing a movie like this was made even once, and if there was ever a flick I was sure would never be remade, Red Dawn was it.

John Millius wasn't trying to make a political statement with the first one. He was basically reliving childhood games he used to play in the woods with other kids, based loosely on the WWII resistance depictions they'd seen on film, and a "what if" concept of a Russian invasion of the continental US in the future.
  Statement or no, the content was offensive to the film elite, and Hollywood never forgave Millius for making it, despite good box office and a subsequent bonanza in video rentals.

This time around it's not the Cubans, but the North Koreans, assisting the Russians in the invasion. That's right: Russians again, not the Red Chinese, as previously reported (though perhaps that would have made more sense). And this time the Wolverines are not in Colorado but Spokane, Washington.

As much as I like John Millius's work (director of Conan the Barbarian, Flight of the Intruder, The Wind and the Lion, The Rough Riders, plus screenwriter for Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now, Extreme Prejudice, Dillinger, Farewell to the King...), the original Red Dawn had plenty of room for improvement.

I'm pleased to report that probable one-time director Dan Bradley, and his writers, did improve on the original--particularly when it comes to acting and dialog. No groans or rolling of the eyes for me this time around due to those aspects. And there was an attempt to update the plot/increase the plausibility, which I believe was mostly successful. The first few minutes of exposition via news clips, however, I found to be fairly lame, and probably not even necessary.

Long story short, major US population centers are blacked out by non-nuclear EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) weapons, followed by a ground invasion, including an airborne component. Don't ask me why vertical envelopment would be necessary for Spokane, Washington. Maybe nearby Fairchild AFB... I suspect this plot element was retained simply as homage to the original, and perhaps also to The Longest Day, which obviously influenced Millius, as well.

I was going to insert a clip here from TLD, from the scene of the St. Mere Eglise jump--specifically a shot of a US paratrooper firing his Thompson while still under canopy on his way to the ground, duplicated in Red Dawn 2012 during the initial airborne assault. But alas, the only Youtube clip of that scene is modified to the point you can't even see that shot.

Of course, most of the familiar moments were from the Millius version: the ambush scene in which the wolverines pop out of spider holes; the deer blood drinking scene (but with a twist); and some others.

Dan Bradley didn't add a lot of character development, but what he did add was good. The writers took Robert's character on a different course, fleshed out a little more, but I'm not so sure I like it better. A nice touch was making Jed a veteran of Iraq this time, home on leave when the stuff hits the fan. With his experience, he's able to train these high school kids, including his little brother, into an effective guerrilla unit in short order. More than once he points out his role reversal--now he's on the insurgent side, interdicting on the occupiers.

Whereas the 1984 version took place in the Rockies, most of the combat here is urban. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about what was realistic and what wasn't, but I was pleased by the thinking that went into how a resistance movement could get going on a local or regional level. Lots of nice touches. As I've said before, I can pick apart pretty much any Hollywood movie or TV show on technical points, but I'll refrain here because they made an intelligent effort for the most part, while keeping the entertainment factor high throughout.

My biggest complaints about this movie can be confined to just two areas. First, it was hard to understand some of the dialog, particularly from the Josh Peck character. But honestly, some of this was due to noise in the theater, while most of it was probably due to my poor hearing. The other problem is one I won't let them off the hook so easy for: shaky-cam.

This is such an overused cinematic "technique" for action flicks these days, I guess other moviegoers must really like it or think it's cutting-edge.

It kinda pisses me off.

Saving Private Ryan used some handheld shots to nice effect (which, ironically, Steven Spielberg was inspired to use because of its effective use in John Millius's Rough Riders). But this wasn't just handheld work in RD 2012. They evidently had the cameraman overdose on caffeine, mounted him on a pogo stick and dumped a colony of ants down his underwear prior to shooting every action sequence.

I'm still glad I watched the movie. And I'm still amazed it was re-made. With the dominant ideology in Hollywood, I'd sooner expect it to be titled "Red State Dawn" and feature an invasion of diabolical Tea Party protestors, ruthlessly oppressing undocumented voters and welfare recipients. The actors and crew will probably emerge unscathed after this project. But pay attention to some of the propaganda snippets in the film--it's obvious that Dan Bradley has offended a lot of powerful interests by maintaining the spirit of the original.

As for the overall premise of Red Dawn, I'll let the words of President Lincoln hint at my opinion on the matter:

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the
ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia
and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own
excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander,
could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the
Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the
approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it
must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction
be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Task Force Desperate by Peter Nealen

Hello again, Two-Fisted Blogees! As you can see, I'm running late, or I would have had this review up on Veteran's Day. Oh well, most days are Veteran's Day here on the Two-Fisted Blog and at Virtual Pulp Press, anyway.

I have good news for you: I have more competition, which means we have more guns-blazing fiction to consume. I'm officially announcing the debut of two-fisted novelist Peter Nealen, who has just burst on the scene with the military thriller Task Force Desperate. Here's Nealen's pitch:

Written by a former Reconnaissance Marine and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Task Force Desperate is the gritty, fast-paced beginning of a new series of military thrillers.

Jeff Stone and his team of Praetorian Security contractors are marking time on counter-piracy duty aboard a freighter in the Gulf of Aden when the boredom ends abruptly. A major US base on the Horn of Africa is overrun in a well-coordinated terrorist attack, and those base personnel who survive are taken hostage. With the world economy tanked, and most of the Western militaries dangerously thinned, the Praetorian operators find themselves to be the hostages' only hope of rescue.
The mission wasn't going to be simple, or easy. But as events in East Africa accelerate, and outside players start to show their hand, the Praetorian shooters start to realize just what a desperate gamble they are embarked upon, and what this particular job is going to cost...

One unique aspect of this novel is that it's narrated in first-person. Not much military fiction I can think of does that. Well, not any, to tell the truth. And since I've drawn attention to the writing itself already, I'll add that this is a very well-written book--way, way, way above average in this age of self-publishing. Jeff Stone (call sign: "Hillbilly"), the narrator/main character, has a voice well-suited for this sort of tale.

The good guys in this novel are mercs; the bad guys are pirates and terrorists (which can be said for my novel-in-progress, too, sort of. Here I was gloating that I'd get a modernday pirate story published before Jack Murphy does, then out of nowhere comes this Nealen dude and beats me to the punch. Ahem). Jeff is a contractor in a PMC working in the third world's hottest spot, along with some other seasoned professionals. The story takes place in the near future, after the collapse of the US dollar, and the chaos in North Africa and the Middle East is probably no worse than it is back in the US. You get the idea that the Praetorian Security shooters are orphans of a sort; men without a country. They choose to live by the sword because they like the warrior life, but also because there's nothing to go back to...nothing else left for them. It bonds them into a tightly-knit unit...almost a family. That's the impression I got.

You won't be disappointed in the action. There is tension on every page from cover to cover and it only gets higher as the plot drives on. Through no fault of the book, I had to read it piecemeal over a period of weeks, and yet I consider it a fast read. And the details were right.

When I wrote my debut novel, also a military thriller, I was shooting for the feel of the old paramilitary paperbacks, combined with believable characters, accurate details and plausible action (none of which was evident in most of those novels from the heyday of men's fiction), told at grunt's-eye-view. I had never found any such book up to that point, and believe me, I tried! Looking at the new wave of military fiction, however, this very form of hybrid I described seems to be a trend growing in popularity--possibly because so many of the new action/adventure authors are veterans. They want to make a buck just as much as the old cigar-smoking mid-list genre writers banging at their typewriters in a Manhattan efficiency apartment did, but there remains a level of pride in their former profession which compels them to sweat the details.

They want to get it right.

Pete Nealen strikes me as just such an author; and he did get it right. I recommend Task Force Desperate to everyone who likes military fiction.

Apocalypse Then: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Thanks to audiobooks, and a job which requires long road trips, I've been able to "read" a lot more than normal. And because of the selection, I've been "broadening my horizons" beyond the books I would normally choose. Case in point is Heart of Darkness--I've had a hardbound copy of it for over a decade, collecting dust in my "classics" section, but just never got around to reading it. When I found an audiobook version in the library, though, I figured there's no time like the present.

What intrigued me the most about this book was that I knew Apocalypse, Now was a film adaptation of it--transposed into South Vietnam circa 1969.

Believe me, I can find faults with Apocalypse, Now. Yet I still consider the original theatrical release of Coppola's film a masterpiece. I hold it up there with John Ford's The Searchers. Both are about epic journeys undertaken by disturbed antiheroes toward a showdown with not just a larger-than-life villain, but their own inner demons as well. BTW: I don't care for the Redux cut at all; as the added scenes just ruined the dark magic of the film as a whole.

So I had great expectations for Conrad's source material. It was interesting seeing how the "unsound methods" argument came about in the book, as well as Kurtz's obsession with "the horror." I also placed the Dennis Hopper character fairly easy.

In Conrad's book, the setting is not Vietnam, but the Congo during colonial days, and Kurtz was not a rogue SF commander, but an ivory supplier. Written in 1902, it very much follows the style so popular in those days. The entire plot is contained in a flashback. Conrad's vocabulary and grasp of English is deft. People, on average, were much more literate then than now (despite what you may have been taught), and it shows here.

But despite Conrad's intricate and flowery prose, the book was surprisingly short. And I hate to knock a classic, but I found the whole thing anticlimactic and lackluster. The version I checked out is supposedly unabridged, so after-the-fact editing can't really be blamed.

The problem, as I see it, has mostly to do with the Kurtz character. In the movie he is almost god-like, and the anticipation is pretty high by the time we meet him. In the book a couple characters talk him up a bit, even the narrator to an extent. But the build-up is half-assed. And Kurtz himself is dying of a disease by the time we meet him. He's supposed to be a great man; a charismatic leader who inspires fanatical devotion in his followers; and so brimming with other-worldly wisdom that mere mortals are mesmerized by his words. "You don't talk to him; you listen." And indeed, a couple characters are enamored by him this way. The natives will gladly kill or die for him, just for the privilege of remaining close to his greatness. Well, Kurtz only speaks a couple complete sentences in the whole novel, and none of his words struck me as profound or exceptional in any way. Maybe he lived up to the hype earlier in his life, but we don't meet him until he's almost dead.

I think director Francis Ford Coppola and Screenwriter John Millius were far more effective, not only at presenting Kurtz; but by selling Willard's journey to the audience as a worthwhile undertaking. They also made it easy on themselves setting the story during Vietnam, because of the drug culture. The film is like a mystical LSD trip, into which the eccentric characters from the book nicely fit. In fact, they ran with that theme, portraying some level of insanity in every scene.

As forgettable as I find the novel, I'm fascinated the film makers saw something in it in the first place. But whatever the seed of their inspiration, they nurtured it, watered it, and turned it into a towering redwood.