ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

BREAKING NEWS -- Update on the Grunt Life Universe

Sorry Again about the April Fool's Prank
Thanks to everyone for their constant emails, IMs, Tweets, and smoke signals. I'm so glad you're enjoying Grunt Life and Grunt Traitor. I know you want more and I'm going to give it to you... in spades.

Firstly, sorry about that April Fools Joke. 

I've spent more time apologizing to people over this than anything else I've been doing the last week and I deserve it. I never pull these sorts of pranks, which is probably why people believed me. So let me say up front that no, Grunt Life is not being made into a movie by Paramount. And no Steve Buschemi is not going to reprise the role of Mr. Pink, and neither is Mark Wahlburg going to be Mason, Emily Blunt going to play Michelle, Eddie Redmayne going to play Thompson, nor is Freddie Prinz Jr going to play Olivares. And lastly, I am not quitting my job to be on set. (But that's not to say it might not happen in the future.)

Now back to reality. There's GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS however. And since bad news doesn't get better with age, and instead sits in the corner growing mold, rotting, attracting insects, we'll get to that first.

I thought for sure that Grunt Hero was going to be out this spring, but I was informed by the publisher that it won't be out until next spring. This means Spring of 2017. Why is it being bumped a year? Well, it's not being bumped. Here's what happened. When I signed the contract for book two, it included a contract for book three or another Solaris novel if Grunt Traitor didn't do well. See, they still wanted to work with me regardless of the success of Grunt Traitor but wanted to see sales numbers first. Once they saw the sales numbers-- thanks totally in part to you --they Green-lit the third book, Grunt Hero. What I didn't know was that by the time they made Grunt Hero a go, their catalogue for 2016 was already full. So it's coming out in 2017.

I know.

I can hear you.

Wally, Thor and Sean... don't jump!

Michael, put away the sniper rifles. I love the publishers. They're good people. We can't shoot them.

Now for the GOOD NEWS!

Because you all have been loyal fans and love the series, I'm providing you with some Grunt Life fiction in the meantime.

First comes SHATNER RULES which is a 20,000 word novella set right after the occurrences of Grunt Traitor. That will be the cornerstone in Cohesion Press's SNAFU: FUTURE WARFARE. This
one you'll have to pay for, but it will be totally worth it.

You all can thank Yvonne Navarro for the next idea. She said, why not write 2 - 3 stories and give them away to your fans?

I thought that was a terrific idea.

So here's the deal. As soon as I finish the Joe Ledger and Aliens stories I'm working on, I'm going to begin writing these stories. I'm going to make them totally free on Amazon for a period of 30 days, then they'll go to .99 cents. If you don't have Kindle and need them in another format, I can hook you up on a case by case basis.

BUT I NEED YOUR INPUT. 

You need to tell me what you want these stories to be. Do you want them about Mason pre-invasion? Do you want a story starring only Mr. Pink? If so, when do you want it set. Perhaps you want a totally new story set during the invasion but not with OMBRA? I can do all of that and more.This is your chance to tell me what story you want to read.

So if you want to give me input, do it in the comments section of this message and I'll start working on them, of course giving credit where it's deserved. I'll only respond if its in THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW!!!

Again, sorry for the long wait until GRUNT HERO, but as the editor has said, 'I thought this was a very worthy conclusion to the trilogy,' and you are going to think so as well.

In the meantime, let's get us some free fiction.

And don't forget, to keep sales alive, you need to proselytize. Let all of your friends know how good these books are. You can even tell strangers.