Battlecruiser Alamo: Aces High
Page 25
Further, I wanted to expand the range of activities of the crew of Alamo, to give them a wider canvas to draw on. Spitfire Station was an experiment in that regard, but although I was very happy with how ‘Triple-Cross’ turned out, new stories in that particular line didn’t seem to happen. I came up with a few plots, but they all seemed to fit better as Alamo stories, even when I needed to use some of the Spitfire characters to make them work. The first of these was ‘Ghost Ship’, incidentally, and the second, ‘Not In My Name’, is to be the next book in the Alamo series, to be released in September.
So, Yeager Station was born, intended as a base of operations for Alamo’s adventures into the frontier, as well as potentially a source of some adventures itself. By combining the two concepts into one storyline, I’m rather hoping to have the best of both worlds, and my intention is to continue to develop the station over the course of coming novels. Indeed, a good portion of the next novel is set there, though naturally I won’t give any spoilers at this stage!
Midshipman/Sub-Lieutenant Salazar came about for two reasons. The first was that I wanted this book to be friendly for newcomers to the series. One problem I have had myself with longer series is that it can be a little daunting when you see that there are ten, fifteen, twenty books to work through before you become current. The goal this time was that this could serve as an introduction to the series, allowing you to work forward to future books. The tricky part was balancing it so that it continued previous storylines without requiring too much past knowledge of the part of the reader. I’ll leave it to you to judge how well I did. Salazar, a newcomer to the series, was intended as a gateway for new readers.
In addition, I wanted another junior-ranked point-of-view character. At one point, Orlova filled that role very well, but she’s heading off in other directions now, and it’s harder to put her down on the lower decks. Ensign Cooper (who will be making a full return in the next book) can fill that role, but as one of the space marines, Alamo’s Espatier commander, he has a rather specialized function. With Salazar, I now have multiple POV characters to play with: Captain Marshall, Captain Winter, Senior Lieutenant Orlova, Sub-Lieutenant Salazar, and Ensign Cooper; there’s a Harper story coming up as well in book fifteen, ‘Cage of Gold’, but aside from saying that I’m really looking forward to writing that one, I’ll say no more.
The current loose trilogy of books – thirteen through fifteen – are to introduce the themes of the books to come next year, and beyond, bringing in new enemies and missions for Alamo, her crew, and the accompanying task force. Naturally, old foes such as the Cabal will continue to appear, and that storyline still has plenty more elements to explore. Again, it’s really a matter of giving me more tools to work with. Speaking of which, I suppose I’d better get back to work. ‘Not In My Name’ won’t write itself!
Thank you for reading 'Aces High'. For information on future releases, please join the Battlecruiser Alamo Mailing List at http://eepurl.com/A9MdX for updates. If you enjoyed this book, please review it on the site where you purchased it.
The writer's blog is available at http://tinyurl.com/pjl96dj
Look out for Battlecruiser Alamo: Not In My Name, coming in September 2015...
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C