Defiant (The Mythrar War Book 4)

by Douglas Wayne

  Using his mind, he processed a message on his terminal and with a thought, he sent it. Within days, if not hours, humanity's wars would brew anew. By the time Pleium mustered the fleet and crossed the distance, humanity would be ready to fall, and he would be there to bring the rest into the collective, just like he had the first time.

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  Author’s Notes

  Defiant

  October 30, 2017

  Wow. It is hard to believe it is already October. It seemed like a few short months ago that I released Reliant. That has good, and bad, reasons as you will soon see.

  First of all, Defiant was a real clusterfuck of a book. I had so many moving pieces on the table at any point; it became hard to keep up with. It is my fault, I realize. I could have easily focused on the primary battle and left everything else alone. Or perhaps I could have written each point of view in succession, to make my knowledge of the timeline a bit more solid. But alas, I did things the hard way in this book, writing one chapter at a time from start to finish.

  When I originally conceived the Mythrar War saga in my head, I envisioned a twelve book series. Each part of the series could be divided into three separate series of four books for easier reading. But as I got into the series, I realized that needed to change. The events of Defiant did nothing but reinforce that need.

  As of now, humanity is on the ropes. Sure, they have won two significant victories against the Mythrar, destroying three flagships and capturing another. There is still one flagship roaming human-controlled space, but for the most part, the threat is neutralized.

  The thing is, the NEC has thrown damned near everything at the Mythrar. There are still quite a few ships around, but nowhere near what they started the war with. This is becoming a war of attrition they know they cannot win. With that said, it is pretty obvious what they need to do sooner, rather than later. Every day they spend defending the outer colonies another batch of ships destroyed. If they hope to survive, it is vital for the NEC to finally play some offense.

  That one little thing is why the series is being split differently. Instead of three groups of four, it is becoming two groups of six. This works to help both the logical flow, as well as the practical flow of the series.

  One of the most significant factors in the series has become Jason Bremerton’s storyline. When I created him, I never knew he would end up stealing the show, but as time has gone on it has become clear just how vital he was. It should’ve been easy to spot after Endeavor, and definitely after Infamy, but four books in and it continues to delight me.

  Like I said when I wrote Endeavor, I had something else in mind for Jason when I started. For the most part, I expected him to be the voice of reason to counterbalance Wellard’s brashness. But as you have seen, neither of those things is true. Instead, both characters have seemed to take on a life of their own well beyond what I could’ve ever imagined. As a writer, it has been a delight, though they have caused their fair share of problems.

  Tegan has also started to come along. In a way, most of what I have planned in the Mythrar War universe revolves around her in some way. She isn’t the main character, but she makes her presence known during every book. What makes her difficult is her penchant for putting herself in harm's way. I thought putting her in command of the flight group would have broken her from that, but it hasn’t. Making matters worse, she only has one member of her original squad left alive. I can already see the amount of trouble she is going to cause me in the next book.

  Speaking of the loss of Fireball. It was one of those things that was a long time in coming. Out of my cast of characters, he was one of the hardest to write. As time went on, he had lost his will to live. I think if circumstances had been different, he would have gone out another way. That isn’t to say I didn’t like the way he died. In fact, given our heroes penchant for crashing into ships and surviving to talk about it, it was only fitting that one would perish in the attempt.

  The thing I didn’t realize is how hard Tegan would take it. I mean, I’ve written four books (five if you count one I’m sitting on for later) with her as a character, and every time she simply doesn’t get attached. Why she had grown close to Fireball, I could never know. She has been a fighter pilot for most of her adult life. In her line of business, losing other pilots was a fact of life. It was that way during her time with the corporations and continues to be the case now in the NEC. Getting close to another pilot is asking to become an emotional trainwreck, as Fireball has shown. In any case, her attachment is something I will explore in the next few books, so stay tuned.

  Outside of the book related issues, I had some difficult real life issues to deal with, all of which contributed to the delay of the book. Initially, I hoped to have the book finished by June, but a pair of accidents kept that from happening.

  The first was not severe, thankfully. It had the potential to be bad. I’m talking months in a burn unit bad.

  I work construction. Specifically, I do pavement maintenance. Yes, I’m that guy out in the midsummer heat, slopping that black shit on the pavement. It’s hot work, but not particularly hard work.

  On the day of the first accident, I was filling cracks in a new concrete street. The day went down without any problems until the end, when the crack fill machine surged, kicking the hose free, and spraying 450-degree hot rubber at me. My clothes and protective gear took the brunt of it, though I did have to shave my hair and beard. Small price to pay, considering I could have spent weeks in ICU.

  But the bad luck wasn’t quite over. Six days later, I’m crack sealing a commercial parking lot. I don’t want to mention the store, but it is a relatively large grocery chain here in the St. Louis area. It’s one of those jobs where we have to get in and done fast because the parking lot fills quickly later thanks to a few restaurants in the plaza.

  We’d been there for most of the morning. It was a little after ten, and we had less than a half hour of work to go. My driver was trying to turn our big truck around one of the islands and into the driving lane when he started to drive over the decorative mulch and fresh landscaping work. Instead of letting him monster truck the thing over the pretty work, I had the driver back up. Before that, I put my crew in position to direct traffic around us, and through the parking lot.

  It is important to mention we are in a parking lot once again. Meaning that drivers have plenty of options to get around us. Sure, it will take them a minute or so longer than usual, but this is an open work zone, so it is to be expected.

  My job, being a CDL driver, was to help direct the other driver, so he didn’t back into the cars parked in front of the building. Not long after he started backing, a motorcycle rider approached the zone. Seeing him, I pointed towards the lane in front of us and yelled for him to go around. His response was a goodie.

  “You don’t own the road,” he said, revving the engine. He twisted his hands on the throttle and bolted towards me. Thankfully, he slowed a bit before he hit me, settling for stopping the bike on my foot. I muscled it off of my leg and pushed the bike back away, only for him to gas it and return the tire to its position on my steel toe boot. The game of tug-of-war (push-of-war?) went on for six rounds. The last of which, he played his trump card and drove the bike up my leg, pinning me to the ground.

  Long story short, with me on the ground, and with a few witnesses holding their phones at the scene, he finally decided he could go around and bolted from the scene. They still haven’t caught him, and probably never will.

  Normally, when people hear that story, they expect to listen to a tale of doctors and surgery. An epic tale of a man vs. the evil worker's compensation doctors. But I got lucky again. Sure, I spent the next six weeks on crutches, but I got out of it without so much as a torn ligament. I then had another s
ix weeks of reduced mobility as I regained my strength. Most of that time I was wrapped from thigh to ankle and forced to elevate it to keep the swelling down. The pain made it difficult to concentrate for more than a few moments at a time.

  I came back to full duty around June, right in time for our busy work season. I went from 40 hours a week, to 60 the day after the doctors released me. Making things worse, I got sent out of town twice for work. (I’m writing this addendum on November 13th. Just last week I got sent out of town for another series of jobs, which is part of the reason this book wasn’t out a week ago -DW) Things have slowed down for the offseason, so I’ve been buckling down and getting back to work on my books.

  As some of you may know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.) Every November, thousands of writers get together to write a novel, with the goal of having a completed first draft of 50,000 words by the end of the month. Last year I wrote most of Infamy during the challenge. The year before I was all over the map, with none of the words published to this day (ran into research issues that bogged me down and eventually killed the story.) This year I’m working on book one of a new series titled Drachar.

  Drachar is my attempt to tell a story that I’ve had rattling in my head for years. In truth, the story was always meant to be a fantasy, with magic and swords and princes and kings, oh and a few dragons. The modest success of the Mythrar War Saga is the reason I haven’t worked on that series other than some basic planning. It’s hard to walk away from what I’ve already accomplished in the science fiction scene to take a stab at the unknown.

  So in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I challenged myself to modify some aspects of the story to make it work as a space opera. The day I sent Defiant off to my wonderful editor, Sue Currin, I started working on the story beats and planning. In one short week, I had more than a skeleton of a story to work with. More than enough for me to hit the ground running on November 1st. As of today, I’m around 18,000 words into the story, and it has been a treat. Unlike Endeavor or the other books in the series, Drachar took a little while to get going. This has a lot to do with the fantasy basis of the story, even though those elements no longer exist. There is just a lot that had to be set up for later events to make sense. Even now, I’m wrestling with how much I need to tell the reader versus how much I want to. The universe has already grown much larger than I could’ve ever imagined from the start.

  Drachar is the first book in a trilogy, a firm number I will hit for the series regardless of what happens. That doesn’t mean that I won’t revisit the universe later, just that the initial story will span three books. It is worth noting that these will be three larger books (It’s too early to tell, but I expect Drachar to come in around 100,000 words or 150% of the size of this book, which is my longest to date.) I don’t have a firm release date for the project, and in fact, only intend to release the books when the trilogy is complete. I promise to tell you all about it as I go on.

  Anyways, as much as I like filling you in my life and my writing, I need to get back to work. Drachar and Contempt won’t write themselves.

  As always, thank you for reading this book (and especially reading this far.) I appreciate everything you do.

  Until next time,

  Douglas Wayne

  Douglas Wayne is a thirty-something construction worker in the grand ole state of Misery. When not on the job (who is he kidding? All day long) he dreams up characters and stories. During his night life he works hard to bring these stories to life.

  He grew up reading most of the now ex-Star Wars canon as well as many other fantasy and science fiction books. Today his favorite books include: The Legacy Fleet Trilogy, the Odyssey One series, The Wheel of Time, and of course Game of Thrones.

  When he isn’t writing or reading he is fond of playing games. His favorites are any of the Final Fantasy games, though he is disappointed at the ending of 15 though not because it coaxed a tear out or anything. He wouldn’t hate an ending for that, right? He is also weird in that he absolutely loved all three of the games in the 13 series, though because of the story not the games themselves. There is occasionally room for other greats like Fallout as well, and shooters though he sucks at them.

  Douglas Wayne’s books:

  Intrepid - Mythrar War Prequel Novella

  Endeavor - Book One in the Mythrar War series.

  Infamy - Book Two in the Mythrar War Series.

  Reliant - Book Three in the Mythrar War Series.

  Defiant - Book Four in the Mythrar War Series.

  Contempt - Book Five in the Mythrar War Series. Coming 2018

  Destiny - Book Six in the Mythrar War Series. Coming 2018

  Demontouched - Book one in the Demontouched Saga. A dark fantasy mash up where Supernatural meets Left Behind. You can read book one free.

  Fallen/Reaper/Vessel/Sacrifice/Risen - The rest of the Demontouched Saga novellas. Individual links not provided, instead pick up the completed saga here. (It’s Cheaper!)

  Sparked - My first steps into urban fantasy. Influenced by the Dresden Files. As one reviewer said, it’s like Dresden, but on a national scale.)

  Vampire for Hire - Book Two in the Nephalem Files series.

  Dead of Night - Book Three in the Nephalem Files series.