BLITZKRIEG: What’s It All About?
on FEBRUARY 14, 2012
The Warrior Trilogy. Wolves on the Border. The Clan Invasion. The FedCom Civil War. The Capellan Solution. MechWarrior: Dark Age. One of the things that makes BattleTech BattleTech is the long tradition of exciting novels that tell the story of the universe. Fiction at the cutting edge. Stories you can’t put down until you’ve blazed through them and then you can’t forget.
This is one of the things I love most about the BattleTech universe and I’m not alone. I don’t think there’s anyone at Catalyst Game Labs who doesn’t love the novels of yore and wouldn’t give their left, uh, non-specified body part to bring fans more of the same.
Late last year, Jason Schmetzer and I came up with an idea to do just that. We wanted to leverage the e-publishing revolution to bring more great BattleTech fiction to fans, an idea we pitched to our diabolical, but generally fair, overlords, Loren Coleman, Randall Bills and Herb Beas. Loren, Randall, and Herb were excited by the idea and improved on our pitch in a number of key ways.
The long and short of it is we are going to try an experiment.
Blitzkrieg.
LIGHTNING WAR
Here’s the idea: we’re going to e-publish short novels—about one-third the length of a full novel—roomy enough for plenty of twists and turns, but short enough that we can produce them monthly. These are real books with beautiful, original art for covers. Short novels that push fast and hard into new areas of the universe: Devlin Stone and the end of the Jihad. The Wars of Reaving. The brushfire conflicts that almost pulled down the Republic. The Dark Age.
And beyond.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BATTLECORPS
Catalyst already publishes BattleTech fiction through BattleCorps. Blitzkrieg isn’t meant to replace BattleCorps—it’s meant to augment it. There are wonderful things that BattleCorps does that this new program just can’t: present works that are much shorter—or longer—than short novels. Plunge fans into unexplored corners of BattleTech history. Take an intimate look at how war affects the lone soldier. We don’t want to lose any of these great stories.
Our plan is to keep the great fiction that BattleCorps is already publishing, and add the Blitzkrieg short novels. As a reward to BC customers, we will publish the Blitzkrieg works on that website in PDF—at no additional cost to subscribers.
COME CHECK US OUT
So I hope you’ll give this new program a try. Go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and peruse the sample text, see if we’ve hit the target. Drop by the forums and let us know what you think. And if you buy a short novel and like it, we would greatly appreciate a good review.
This is an experiment, one we really want to work.
So we can introduce a whole new generation of readers to the headlong action of BattleTech.
–Steven Mohan, Jr.
Ghost Bear’s Lament: Part One (a BattleTech Blitzkrieg Epub)
The Clans: a civilization that worships war. Soldiers altered in body and mind. Men and women bent to the blade. They slash through space, cutting through their enemies like a laser cuts through flesh.
No one can stand against them.
Star Commander Richard Bekker of Clan Ghost Bear is smart, tough, and ruthless—the perfect Clan warrior. Victory is all he has ever known.
That’s about to change.
Because he’s going to face an enemy unlike any he’s ever seen—unlike any ANYONE’S ever seen. And if he is going to triumph, if he’s going to SURVIVE, he will have to reach inside, past his Clan training, and find the part of himself that is human.
Steven Mohan, Jr. has professionally published more a half million words of military science fiction including the BattleTech novel A BONFIRE OF WORLDS. He has sold original fiction to markets as diverse as INTERZONE, POLYPHONY, and PARADOX, as well as several DAW original anthologies. His short stories have won honorable mention in THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION and THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR and he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Пруф
Operation: Ice Storm: Part One, The Frost Advances (a BattleTech Blitzkrieg Epub)
It is 3071, and holy Jihad rages in the Inner Sphere. Safe on worlds claimed two decades earlier, Clan Jade Falcon watches its enemies tear themselves apart. But a new threat is bearing down on the Falcons. Clan Ice Hellion, another of Kerensky’s Clans, has traveled the winding Exodus Road to attack its warrior brethren–for while the Clans hunger to conquer the Inner Sphere, they are warriors–and they have little qualm warring amongst themselves for advantage.
Khan Connor Rood of the Ice Hellions knows his Clan is taking a desperate risk. Victory over the Jade Falcons will give the Hellions a place in the Inner Sphere, new worlds to conquer and exploit. It will place them among those rarified Clans who are not trapped in the distant Clan homeworlds. It is a bold plan.
It could easily fail.
For the Jade Falcons have been warned of the Ice Hellions’ approach, and powerful and veteran Jade Falcon BattleMechs are turning to meet them. Can Rood and his Hellions defeat the forewarned Falcons? With Jihad raging in front of them and genocidal wars of reaving consuming the Clan homeworlds behind them, can the Hellions survive?
Read The Frost Advances, Part One of the two-part Operation: ICE STORM saga now, and find out.
Jason Schmetzer is the author of more than 40 published short stories and novellas, as well as four BattleTech sourcebooks and a novel. His work crosses genre and game boundaries, working with both print and electronic publication. He hold an MFA in fiction writing and works during the day as an advertising copywriter. He is also editor of the BattleCorps fiction website
Пруф
Цена по 3 бакса. Корпс пытается дергаться? каталисты выкинули пару рассказов с корпса в епабе, также по 3 бакса/
Эх, только забил на подписку, придется срочно возобновлять, никто не хочет внести свою лепту, нужно 300р?
Помощнику открою доступ к корпсу, если не открыт.
Особенно если оно будет со стороны Хеллионов , а не очередного Прайда.
