Stop With the Discrimination

Apparently Amazon does not approve of Christian authors writing Christian books.

Declan Finn and Jon Del Arroz, both authors which I have reviewed and am a fan of, have had their latest pre-release ebooks have been cancelled. No explanation has been given. That's fine. I'll provide one:

It's religious discrimination. Both men are Catholic authors selling Catholic themed works. They were banned because Amazon doesn't like Catholics. You know who else doesn't like Catholics? The Ku Klux Klan. Seriously. Yes, they are best known for their hatred and acts of violence toward black people. Yes, those happened. I'm not going to catalogue every bad thing the Klan has done to black people because the list is too damn long. If someone has a list they can put in the comments because fuck the Ku Klux Klan.  Here's the thing though: They can, and do, hate more than one group.

But really, how badly does the KKK  hate Catholics? (They term them "papists") Badly enough to have burned a cross on the ground of the Shrine of the Little Flower church in Royal Oak, Michigan just a few miles from my house. It has long since been rebuilt and looks magnificent on the outside. I have not been into the Basilica proper so I can't comment directly, but I'm told that it looks great on the inside too.

I have a hard time believing that two Catholic authors having their pre-orders cancelled on the same day, less than a week before they release to be a bit more than just merely coincidental. Apparently Declan Finn agrees. When I asked him for an opinion he stated, "I'm usually not paranoid, but in this case, the timing is too suspicious." I agree.

Jon Del Arroz gave me the following statement:

"I will never equivocate not water down my message proclaiming the Glory of Jesus Christ -no matter what it costs me!"

Apparently that would be a decent amount of money since all of your pre-orders were cancelled. 

Of course, the Klan weren't the only group of White Supremacists to hate others. Hitler's Third Reich was also known for deplatforming authors of a religious group they didn't like. Yep, book burnings were common in Nazi Germany.  Of course, you can't burn digital books, so Amazon would have to just ban them instead. Anything that doesn't get downloaded can't be passed on. You can stop the signal before it starts.

These series both sell extremely well as compared to their respective authors. Declan Finn recently extended his Saint Tommy, NYPD series because it was his best selling series to date. Del Arroz stated on his live stream that his Nano Templar series was his best selling series to date. This is nothing other than an attempt to ruin two men because of their religion.

I am, quite frankly, incensed. Seriously, I am not - myself- Catholic. My ex-wife is though. Both of my daughters are growing up in the Catholic church. Both have been baptized as Catholics. Both have made their First Confession and First Communion as Catholics. My oldest is set to make her Confirmation as Catholic next spring sometime. (My ex hasn't given me the date yet. I'm assuming that's because she doesn't have it yet either.) This blatant attack on the religion of my children has me fuming. This is not okay.

I'm hoping that this is some rogue employee doing the wrong thing. I'm hoping that this is one person's attack on the worlds largest religion and not the beginnings of a the systematic pattern of deplatforming of a major religion by Amazon. I truly do. If that's what it is, Amazon is free to remove the problem. I won't call for a boycott until I hear how this is resolved.

What you can do to show your support for these two victims of hate is simple: Buy their books.It's not hard to do. I'll drop the links at the bottom. I have not read either, although I am in possession of an Advanced Review Copy of Deus Vult. I have enough confidence in both writers to recommend their works sight unseen though, because I've read enough of their stuff to know how good they are. I will, at some point in the future be reviewing both. I can say that with confidence, because I have put my money where my mouth is:

So go forth and support these two brave authors. Buy their books from a non-Amazon source, since you can't get it where you want to get it from. You can still read them on your Kindle.

Deus Vult is available for purchase here:

https://silverempire.org/product/deus-vult/

Glorified by Jon Del Arroz is available for purchase here:

https://silverempire.org/product/glorified/

For the record, I don't get paid for things bought from links to the Silver Empire website like I would if I use Amazon affiliate links like I usually do. That sucks. Buy them from Silver Empire anyway.

Jon Del Arroz's Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar Book One

I recently had an interesting experience that made my face turn purple and made my head want to pop off: Someone (and I don't remember who) had posted something about fantasy authors in particular being unChristian. What really set me off was when I found out that one of the excoriated authors was C.S. Lewis. Why? Because EVERYTHING THE MAN WROTE WAS CHRISTIAN ALLEGORY!!! It kind of gets my goat, especially as a Christian who loves those books. That reminds me. I need to get copies for my eight year old.

Sorry.

I bring this up to underline this fact: Science Fiction and Fantasy have a long history of religious themes and that it works IF IT'S DONE WELL. Fortunately for Mr. Jon Del Arroz and those of us who consider themselves his fans, he's done a damn good job with Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar Book One. Seriously, I love this book.

Justified is the story of Drin, a Templar warrior serving the Elorian people. It has a lot of combat to be sure. That's good. It's Space Opera with a touch of Space Fantasy. If you like Star Wars and not Justified I don't know what to tell you. It's got that kind of epic scope and maybe even some similar weaponry.

Del Arroz himself has referred to Justified as Deus Vult in space (And no, Deus Vult is not a Nazi saying.) and it fits. This is definitely a Crusader style book set in a different segment of space where there are no humans. All of the characters are aliens, and he had to adapt the Gospel story to another setting but it works.

What works better, to my mind at least, is that Drin himself has a major crisis of faith. Sort of. Maybe it's less a crisis of his faith than it is a doubt that he's spreading it in the correct manner. When one spreads their faith through war and combat and the head of the religion (called Yezuah in the book) is a man of peace, it makes sense to take pause at the forcible seizure of real estate in the effort to convert the populace. I get it.

I also get the other characters in Justified and that's what makes the book work so well. A man of faith is a believable construct since they do exist in real life (on my better days I like to think I'm a good one) but not everyone is of God. That's not just a fact, it's a reality that must be dealt with on a regular basis. And not everyone in the book is a man of God. Most don't try to be. A few happen to be members of a competing religion. It's fairly obvious which one, too.

That's good though. Every epic saga needs a definable enemy and Del Arroz has picked an ancient foe of his religion.  The battle for souls is not a new one and it translates well over interstellar distances. Del Arroz has packed just enough history into his fanciful setting to make it work while still realizing that he's not writing history and he doesn't have to get all the details of the Siege of Wherever correct, because that's not what he's writing about.

The point I was trying to make before I so effectively derailed myself though is this: Drin loves to proselytize his religion. It's his calling. Not everyone he witnesses to believes at first. That's normal. It doesn't work that way in real life. In the end though, many do. That's also realistic. Christianity is the world's largest religion. It didn't get that way because people refused to convert.

The battles in Justified sometimes feel a little more Fantasy than they do Science Fiction. I think it has to do with Drin's use of a light sword and the enemy's use of battlemages. I really enjoyed that aspect of the story. Battlemages are potent opponents and present a massive threat. It's fun to watch Drin sweat when he knows there's one around. Suspense is a good thing.

Most of the combat takes place on the ground. I'm good with that. In any real world military campaign the most important actions always take place between armies. Fleets are good and aircraft can certainly turn the tide of a land battle, but at the end of the day if one wants to take a city, they'd better put some boots on the ground. Justified is no exception. On the other hand, Drin spends a bit of time on a massive starship and I wouldn't mind seeing a deep space slugfest at some point.  I mean, this IS Space Opera.

Del Arroz does a fine job of mixing the cultures in his book. Not only do we get a good look at the culture of the culture of the hated Sekarans, but also the Skree and a bit about a race known as the Deklyn. I love the fact that space isn't covered with a monoculture. There are actually serious differences between the groups and it's fairly easy to tell which species someone is a member of based on how they're acting. That makes sense. Culture is a thing.

The world building here is both good and somewhat limited. Drin is separated from his fellow Elorians in the first few chapters and we don't see much of them after that. We get a good look at Drin's personal dislike of the enemy and how he manages to gather some allies but what we don't see a lot of is him interacting in his native culture. This is the first book in the series, so it's not like we won't see more in the future and it's also not like there was a whole lot of opportunity for it but it still strikes me as a bit weird that the only culture we don't see a lot of is the one the main character is part of. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to buy the sequel.


Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Nannites

Justified
Jon Del Arroz
Superversive Press, 2019

Justified is available for purchase at the following link:

Jon Del Arroz's Knight Training

I don't usually read anything in a series out of order. I had a bad experience with that in the Nineties with L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. (Shut up. I was twelve.) I started at book six, not realizing it was book six and then had to start over and then re-read the sixth one. It made much more sense the second time. But, I figured I'd pick up Jon Del Arroz's latest novella anyway. I had hear it worked well as a standalone and it does. I still do plan on going back to pick upFor Steam and Country but Knight Training worked just fine without it. I had a good time.

Our hero is a young apprentice Knight named James. (I approve. I find all guys named James to be both awesome and humble. Yes, that is my name. What does that have to do with anything?) He has a problem: He's good at what he does and he has the favor of the royal family. Why is that a problem? Because the other apprentices hate him. They basically see him as a teacher's pet. His life is hell.

I found myself identifying with this kid. I was the guy in high school whose teacher gave him a pet name (I spent my freshman year answering to “Scribble” in my biology class. Yes, my handwriting is that bad.) and check tests. A lot of people hated me as well. The difference is that this James can't just go home at the end of the day to get away from the crap. He spends his nights in a dorm with the people who are tormenting him. I couldn't help but to feel bad for the kid.

The fact remains that this not some “Woe is me. My life sucks. I'm being bullied.” story. James's solution to being tormented is to work harder and make his fellow apprentices eat their words. And, put bluntly, he really is that good. His instructors love him because of his talent and work ethic. He puts in the time. A competition is announced. It's just when that happens that James stumbles onto something...

I don't want to give too much away here, so I won't say what it is or where it leads, but James ends up doing even more than I expected him to when I picked this Knight Training up. I really like this kid. He's the kind of person I wish I had been at his age. He has been through a lot but he keeps persevering. What didn't kill him really did make him stronger. James is a real dynamo.

James and friends do not have it as bad as the characters in a George R.R. Martin novel, but they don't have it easy either. In a way, James himself almost has a Harry Dresden feeling to him. Either that, or he's a Timex watch. Regardless of how you view it, he takes a beating and keeps on fighting. This kid can absorb more punishment than a quarterback for the Detroit Lions. If he were any tougher, he'd be your mama's pot roast. The lost thing I saw get beaten like that was my...

Uhh...

Nevermind.

The thing is, he's not that super competent, Honor Harrington type, ominpotently awesome dynamo that some other characters are. He's willing. He's able. He wants to do what he needs to do. The problem is that James is an apprentice. He knows that he doesn't know everything but that knowledge, in and of itself, is not enough to save him. He has to get some help from his friends sometimes and is not always smart enough to seek it. There is a bit of Harry Potter in this kid and it's not because he has a lightning shaped scar or gets treated like The Chosen One. No, James wants to do it all but can't always get 'er done. The thing is, he never stops trying.

I hear a lot of people complain about the boarding school cliché in Young Adult literature but it works here. Knight Training starts at the knight training academy. James states (the book is in first person) early on that he has the goal of becoming the youngest Journeyman knight in history. I find myself wondering if that's because of flat out ambition or if he's just trying to escape all of the assholes. It may actually be a little bit of both. Either way, the reason the boarding school has become so common in these types of stories is because they provide a big enough place to tell a story and a place small enough to keep things from getting out of control, especially in a novella where the author may not have room to introduce an entire planet full of people.

You know, I keep telling myself I'm going to read more Steampunk and then not doing it. That's sad because this really is a great genre and I am looking forward to reading more Steampunk by Jon Del Arroz soon. I love this setting and others like it. I confess to being more of a fan of the “electronic stuff hasn't been invented yet” thing than the “all the electronics have failed” gimmick but the former is what Del Arroz uses here. It really does work. Because electronics haven't been invented yet, Knight Training is able to focus on the future instead of constantly pining for a lost past.

Del Arroz also avoids the trap that some Steampunk works fall into. Any good story focuses on the people in it. Don't get me wrong. Any Steampunk novel needs to have Steampunk tech in it, but the author needs to keep in mind that the tech is part of the setting and not the whole story. The 1999 version of Wild Wild West fell into this trap, but Knight Training didn't. You might read about horseless carriages in the background or a special gun but the tech is kept in its place. Kudos to him for getting the balance right.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Wooden Swords.

Knight Training
Jon Del Arroz
Superversive Press, 2018

Knight Training is available for purchase at the following link:

Jon Del Arroz's Gravity of the Game

I'm a fan of the epic Science Fiction or Fantasy story. I always have been. I want to see Jim Kirk and friends save the galaxy for the four million and sixth time. I want to see the Heroes of the Lance charge in and defeat the evil goddess Takhisis and foil her attempt to take over the world of Krynn...

Yup, there's nothing like a good romp with a definable villain and some heroes that just want to beat the everloving tar out of them because they deserve it. I mean, who doesn't love that kind of story? (Okay, people who read romance but they're weird.) Then again, sometimes it's good to read something a little lighter. Every once in awhile, a feel good story works and removes all your cares... and entertains you if it's good enough.

Enter Jon Del Arroz and Gravity of the Game. It's a story about a baseball commissioner, a sick child and baseball on the moon. Yes, you read that right. Baseball on the moon. It's not really possible at first because of the gravitational differences between Earth and the Moon but hey, what's a story without a little conflict?

When Hideki Ichiro, retired baseball player and commissioner of all of professional baseball, decides he needs to expand his league, things get a little weird. He thinks expansion is necessary. All of his owners seem to think that expansion is necessary. The problem is over-saturation. Where do you put a team when there is nowhere left to put a team? How do you grow your sport when it fills up pretty much anywhere that the sport is consumed? It's a conundrum to be sure.

Of course, that's not the only problem. Commissioner Ichiro is not universally loved by his owners. There are some inter-league politics that make his life especially rough. Partially, his plan to expand on the moon is motivated by them. Partially, he just plain sees an open market. He just needs to make the physics work. And that's where the truly Science Fictional part of the story comes in.

I don't want to give too much away, but the title of the story ought to make it obvious that Ichiro has to find a way to either make baseball work in one-sixth of Earth's gravity or increase the gravitational attraction of the moon. I don't want to give away too much, but I'm thinking that most SF fans won't be too surprised at the solution he comes up with. It's pretty standard in damn near every SF story that takes place in space.

And that's one of the really cool parts of this novella. We get to be in on the ground floor so to speak. A lot of works reference similar tropes and we all accept them because they're what we're used to, but very rarely do we get to start at the beginning and see where they came from. I really got a kick out of that. I have a feeling a physics professor may experience a catastrophic meltdown if exposed to the concept, but honestly I got out of the sciences because I didn't like physics professors and their tendency to force everyone to follow their formulas instead of thinking. So kudos to Del Arroz and all of the other SF writers out there who were able to think instead of following some formula out of a book.

I really like Mr. Ichiro too. He does his best to promote the interests of the game, and that includes making teams more profitable, or at least keeping their revenue from shrinking to the extent possible. It's not just about that with him though. Somehow this always seems to get lost in modern day sports coverage. We obsess over a player's stats and his paycheck. We'll spend all day debating a manager's play-calls and trying to get him fired. We'll all talk trash about our favorite team's general manager (and I'm from Detroit where criticizing Randy Smith used to be a more popular pastime than watching Tigers games) when he makes a move that we think might be slightly sub-optimal. What no-one seems to talk about is the people in the league and how much they love the game.
But Del Arroz seems to get what it's all about. Ichiro is not just some money-grubbing executive out to make as much as he can. He genuinely cares about the game and what happens to it. Listen, we've all seen our favorite pitcher walk a batter and asked if he could have struck him out for another million. It happens, but in Gravity of the Game we're reminded that the guys we watch on television love baseball as much as we do. They've dedicated their lives to it and there was a lot of work put in before they got their first check. It's something to think about.

I'll be honest in stating that Gravity of the Game is quite a bit shorter than the books I typically review on my blog. I picked it up one day over lunch (I eat the vast majority of my meals alone) so that I would have something to read while I was eating. I was intrigued by the fact that I loved The Stars Entwined and also by the ninety-nine cent price point. I didn't want to spend a whole lot on a story that was only one meal long. I'm pretty glad I did though. It actually took me two meals to read and was a good time.

At the end of the day though Gravity of the Game is what it is. If you're the kind of person that only reads works overrun by explosions and severed body parts, you won't find them here. This is a good story with a real conflict but it's not solved with swords or bomb-pumped lasers. There is no fireball tossing wizard and you won't find a single phaser pistol in existence. On the other hand, if you're looking for something a little more laid back and relaxed with a solid plot and likeable characters, give Gravity of the Game a try. You'll be glad you did.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Outside Strikes

Gravity of the Game
Jon Del Arroz
Superversive Press, 2017

Gravity of the Game is available for purchase at the following link:

Jon Del Arroz's The Stars Entwined

(Authors note: I'm not sure why, but I can't seem to write this review without spoilers. So advance and read at your own caution. You have been warned.)

When one receives a request for a review from The Leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction, one reviews the book. If it kicks ass, that's just a bonus. So, when I received an email from Jon Del Arroz requesting me to do a review of The Stars Entwined I did. And the fact that it kicked ass was just a bonus. See what I did there?

I had a bit of trouble slotting this one into subgenres. I mean, The Stars Entwined is kind of Science Fiction, but it's kind of Science Fantasy (I'll get into that in a bit.) It starts out looking like it's going to be a police procedural, then it turns into a spy novel. You can never get comfortable with this thing because it changes in an instant. There are lots of twists and turns, but they all make sense in the story.

Seriously, if I should ever have the good fortune to meet Mr. Del Arroz at a con I will, after having bought him a drink and congratulated him on writing such an awesome book, stick my tongue ALL the way out at him for making me chase my tail like this. I like to slot books into sub-genres and this one doesn't freaking fit. I guess I'll get over it. I mean, it was a good book.

Despite my problems fitting works into little boxes The Stars Entwined is, at its core, a story about learning and functioning in a foreign society. Our protagonist, Lieutenant Sean Barrows, first encounters a species of beings called the Aryshans in his space station. Barrows is a security officer and runs into a stunningly beautiful Aryshan named Tamar.

Before long, Barrows finds himself undergoing radical surgery to make him look like an Aryshan and sent off on a spying mission. There he makes friends and discovers things about both Aryshan capabilities (his true mission) and culture (not really his mission but potentially more useful). There is a lot to be said for both. His friends are important people in their own right as well. His lover is the well... not really captain... but... first among equals in command of the ship. There is a lot of depth to the other culture because there has to be. The majority of the story takes place within it.

The reason I labeled The Stars Entwined Science Fantasy is because, although it has strong elements of SF like starships and space travel, the aliens in it are different. The Aryshans have a strong empathic sense among members of their own clan, similar in some ways to the Betazoid empathic sense from the Star Trek universe, only more limited. The sense is more pronounced among “entwined” couples. When Sean entwines with Tamar, unless I'm hallucinating, he actually gets a more advanced connection that even most purely Aryshan couples get. It surprises Tamar too. It definitely sounds like they're able to communicate better than their entwined friends. It's more of a telepathic link than an empathic one. It leads me to believe that Aryshans and humanity might just have a shared ancestry somehow.

Don't get me wrong. The Stars Entwined isn't a book that focuses on anthropology. It actually includes my favorite scientific process, which I like to refer to as “blowuptuation.” There is a ton of action. This thing is actually action packed. Ok, so maybe one really scary moment was way too telegraphed, but it still made me say, “Oh shit.” so I'm gonna call it good. Generally speaking any oh shit moment is a good moment. Especially when it doesn't go the way I expected it to.

I've always wondered about spy novels where the protagonist doesn't identify at least a bit with the people they were spying on. It never sat right with me that a spy could just run along with no compunctions. I mean, sure they might not have any when they got there. They're spying on the enemy. But once they get to know they people they're spying on...

Yeah, it should get weird. I'm happy to say that in The Stars Entwined it does. Sean starts to feel weird about selling people out. The reaction of his new wife when he confesses to her is epic. The crazy part is that he doesn't realize that she can't allow him to come to harm. He just feels like he has to do it. It's not rational, but not everything a human being does is rational. He does it because he loves her.

*SNIFF*

It's just so beautiful!!!

Ok, so maybe I'm being a bit of a smartass but it's true. It makes sense. I like it when the actions of characters make sense in context, based on human emotion. Sean did the only thing he could here. He did what the vast majority of people would have done. It's almost like it's a universal human emotion and Mr. Del Arroz was acknowledging that his character might have something in common with all people. Even the ones who didn't look like him. Hmm...

Oddly enough, one of the things I also like about The Stars Entwined is that it really does have an actual villain. One of the Aryshans really is straight up crazy and out to cause problems regardless of the cost. He believes in his own cause, such as it is, but so does every bad guy. A story has to have someone to cheer for, but it really helps to have someone to root against as well. And I hate that guy. I'm just not going to try to spell his name from memory.

Other than my sub-genre confusion, there is nothing I can find to complain about here. The plot cooks. The characters feel real. I feel like I could have a drink with Sean. I feel like I could talk nerd stuff with his friend Tol. I want to walk through Tol's workshop. I want to tinker with his crap and offer impossible improvements because I have no knowledge of engineering and only a senioritis-infected knowledge of high school physics. Ok, so it has an almost, kinda, sorta cliffhangerish type ending but it's not as bad as it could be and honestly, I'm suffering from complaining-about-cliffhanger fatigue.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Entwined Couples

The Stars Entwined
Jon Del Arroz
Superversive Press, 2018

The Stars Entwined is available at the following link:

Writing From a Different Perspective - Guest Post by Jon Del Arroz

A question I get asked a lot from reviewers of For Steam And Country is: Is it weird to write from a first person perspective of a sixteen year old girl?

The answer is yes. It took me several passes to actually dial in what Zaira Von Monocle’s perspective would be, and I had to work extremely hard to get her to the point where she’s the fun character in For Steam And Country that my advance readers tell me they love.

I’m going to give a little peek behind the curtain as to my learning as a writer, and my process as I came up with all of this, in hopes that it is both interesting to readers, and potentially helpful to newer writers.

When I first conceived the novel, I knew that I wanted to write a Steampunk fantasy, to create a fantasy world of kingdoms and airships, alchemy and swashbuckling, high adventure that most books in the steampunk genre had shied away from. Most books in the genre either went going something darker and grittier, or dipping further into romance. I also wanted to make it somewhat YA (I consider the finished product a tweener between YA and regular fantasy, though it’s perfectly suitable for all ages), which I thought would allow me to take a lighter tone.

YA fantasy novels take the first person perspective more often than not, allowing for a real sense of feeling like you’re inside the head of the protagonist, or at the very least sitting across from them while you take high tea. A recent trend has them in first person present, which makes people really feel in the action, but I didn’t want to go that far, as it’s very few and far between I read a book in the present tense that doesn’t annoy me.

I actually had this plan to write in the first person perspective from the onset, getting to worldbuilding and character creating. In keeping with YA, I wanted to keep the protagonist young, and also to the market, having a female perspective seemed the way to go. I looked at the idea and thought, “wow, do I really want to write a 16 year old girl in the first person?” It sounded pretty daunting, and like it required a lot of work to keep realistic. Once I looked at the job from that perspective, I viewed it as a writing challenge to myself.

Very little gets me motivated like a challenge, competition, even if it’s something as small as posing the question to myself if I could pull something off. In fact, a lot of my best work comes out of such challenges. It sounds silly, but in writing, self-motivation is about the most important skill you can learn. It’s hard to go through scenes, especially some of the heavier ones, and it’s much harder to edit. If you have other goals that trick yourself into feeling like a game, then you’ll more often than not breeze through something that seemed at first like a chore.

And this turned out hard to do, not in the sense of it took me a long time to write--I actually had so much fun with this world and with these characters that I breezed through my first draft-- but when I went through it the first time, the character didn’t come across as a good protagonist at all.

In my figuring this out, I observed teenagers, and tried to remember what it was like to be a teenager myself. Frankly, I found teenagers to be a bit rambunctious, acting without thinking, and extremely low in self-confidence (for the most part, there’s always exceptions). And I wrote my character as such. In my early submissions drafts that I sent out to agents and editors, the character whined a LOT. She was combative, teasing her love interest a bit too hard. Honestly, it felt very realistic to me from what I’ve seen of a lot of teenagers, but those behaviors grate on a reader if they’re too pronounced, and I found that many of the editors didn’t connect with the character because of that.

I later learned the value of connection over realism in writing, something I wish I would have learned a lot easier and sooner. Readers want to see some flaws, some mistakes, but they don’t want that to be overwhelming, don’t want to find a person annoying. And in a heroic adventure, some of those life quirks need to be toned down rather than be presented as too realistic.

I let the book sit for awhile, wrote Star Realms: Rescue Run, and released that to quite a bit of fanfare. When I looked at this novel again, I saw it was close, but I needed to push that perspective character to the next level. I thought of who this character was, and how it would have shaped her so she’s different than just a normal teenager. Zaira’s lived mostly abandoned, on her own except when the neighbors checked in on her. She’s had to work for herself, farm for herself, wash her own clothes, cook her own meals for a couple of years now. That’s a pretty hard life to have 14-16, and one that requires a lot of work. As such, she’d be tougher. The whining had to go. She’d also have a very strong sense that she could do anything herself, including going in and doing things like flying an airship (minor spoiler, but I think you probably figured out that airship flying occurs by this point!). That has negative effects like stubbornness, which provide for some good conflict that a reader can relate to more. With those major facets of her personality in mind, I rewrote the book. And this time, everything clicked.

Even though there were heavy rewrites, I flew through this last pass because I made a character that was compelling and fun for me. And that’s what it takes to make something compelling and fun for a reader.

Authors often strive too hard for realism, to the point where it makes a lot of works bland and boring. Something that we can’t connect with because we’re not wishing we were in that person’s movie. And that’s what the author has to create. We as readers want people to rise up and be heroes, to meet challenges, to exceed expectations. That’s why we escape into fantasy in the first place. Realizing that changed my world, making Zaira Von Monocle into the farm girl-turned-hero that she ended up being in For Steam And Country. She’s still got her inexperience, but her wide-eyed sense of wonder and being willing to take on big challenges makes her a fun protagonist. I hope you enjoy reading about her as much as I enjoyed writing her.

Jon Del Arroz is the author of the Alliance Award nominated and top-10 Amazon bestselling Space Opera, "Star Realms: Rescue Run." His second novel, "For Steam And Country," is just out. He hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, is a guest contributor to the Hugo Award-nominated Castalia House blog, and regularly posts to http://delarroz.com. Twitter: @jondelarroz Gab.ai: @otomo

Amazon: http://bit.ly/forsteamandcountry

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35378932-for-steam-and-country

ITunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1245930112 

B&N - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940154751312

KOBO - http://store.kobobooks.com/Search/Query?fcmedia=Book&query=9781925645026