The End of World War One

A hundred years ago today at 11:11 am, one of the most destructive wars in the history of the world finally ended. World War One led to the fall of several governments, destroyed large swathes of Europe, and killed millions of people. Not just confined to Europe, battles were fought in the Middle East, the Far East, and Africa.

The signing of the Armistice led to wild celebrations in the victorious countries, and a huge sigh of relief in the defeated ones. German civilians were close to starvation thanks to the Allied blockade, and had long since become sick of the war. Little did they know that less than 30 years later they would be in for worse.

This photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, shows The Black Watch celebrating in their camp. As you can see, they are mired in mud, and the photo itself is battered and faded. I think it makes a fitting image for this post.

As regular readers of my blog know, I've been writing a series of action novels set in the Great War called Trench Raiders. I'll be coming out with book four, Under the Front, in the coming year. It will deal with the tunnelers' war, those brave men on both sides who endured unthinkable conditions to tunnel underneath enemy lines. The heroes of Company E are sent in to help, and poor Crawford, the bravest of the brave, discovers a phobia he didn't know he had.

So take a moment today to think about what our forefathers had to endure in those tough times.

May they never come again.

July Sale: Two Ebooks for 99 Cents Each!

You folks deserve some cheap summer reading, so until the end of July, I'm slashing the price of two of my novels to only 99 cents each. Radio Hope and Trench Raiders have both been around since 2014 and they've sold steadily, but in the past year they've been eclipsed by some of my more recent efforts. So this is a chance to rediscover some of my earlier writing. While both are the start of series, they can be read as standalones.

Radio Hope is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the autumn. A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!

Trench Raiders is the first in the Trench Raiders series of World War one action novels, which includes three novels and a novella. Here's the blurb:

September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.
After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing toward Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.
Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?
Trench Raiders is the first in a new series of World War One action novels that will follow the brave men of the British Expeditionary Force through the major battles of the First World War a hundred years after they happened. The Battle of the Aisne was the start of trench warfare on the Western Front, and it was there that the British and Germans first honed their skills at a new, vicious brand of fighting.

Trench Raiders is available at Amazon, Smashwords, and within a few days will be available at all other online outlets. 

Book Review: Dark Matters: Memories by Andrew Leon Hudson

Dark Matters: Memories by Andrew Leon Hudson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Andrew Leon Hudson is in my writers group and I have been a beta reader on several of his stories, including one that was in this volume. Still, I'll try to be objective.
Speculative fiction author Andrew Leon Hudson continues his collection of short story two-packs with this one on the theme of the Great War. The first story, "The Palimpsest", is my favorite of all his stories and follows a WWI veteran and artist as he sketches ruins in England's remote north. Strange things start to occur reminiscent of M.R. James ghost story. Hudson captures the feel of a James story quite well and the ending is powerful. Very well done.
I was less intrigued with "The Foundation", another tale of memory as it relates to the Great War. I thought the dream sequences were handled well and the overall writing was good but it lacked the punch of the other story. Perhaps I've read too much, "we must not forget" literature for this sort of thing to gut punch me anymore, especially when nothing is added to the premise. Others might find it more moving. Even if they don't, "The Palimpsest" is well worth the low price of admission.
Hudson is a writer to watch, and I hope he'll start writing longer works in the future.

View all my reviews