First Paragraph of My New Novel 'Burning Sky'

After announcing the signing of a contract for a new mass market paperback to be published by Solaris called Burning Sky. I sat down and wrote the first 1111 words (here and unedited). I discovered that the main character, who is referred to by his team and others as Boy Scout, has an affinity for Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, and those books that pit man against nature.

I thought I might share the first paragraph with you.

What Booklist has to say about Burning Sky-

"This dark, twisted, and unnerving cosmic horror is framed by Middle Eastern mythology, with a sense of unease that increases with the relentless pace of the action." - Booklist on Burning Sky

"Without slowing down, Ochse also offers a thoughtful commentary on the human cost of war. This is an excellent example of the emerging genre of military horror, combining details of army life and technical jargon with a well-constructed supernatural thriller." - Booklist on Burning Sky

"Ochse's writing finds the beauty in the language of brutality, which will appeal to fans of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)." - Booklist on Burning Sky

Burning Sky will be available September 25th. Please pre-order so we can sell out the print run before publication. That will help guarantee more books in the series. You can click on one of the book links on the left, or go to the following links for your favorite stores.

Indie Bookstore Link

Barnes and Nobles

Amazon Link

Kobo

Kindle

iTunes

Grunt Hero Smashes to Earth

I'm so pleased that I can finally say that Grunt Hero has been published and it looks amazing. Solaris Books did an incredible job with the production (like they always do). Writing the series was so cathartic. Coming to terms with my own issues, realizing what kind of PTSD I have while writing about others, hearing from fathers and daughters and fellow veterans that I was getting it right have fueled me beyond belief.

I was also extremely pleased that I was able to tell the story of invasion and the after effects over three books. So many characters and so many loose ends to tie up. Quite a few of my loyal readers came up to me at PHX Comiccon and thanked me for wowing them. They were equally surprised I was able to answer all of the outstanding questions. And that, my friends meant the world to me because there were so many loose ends that I had to address without pulling the readers out of the story.

Back and 2015 I wrote an article for Sci Fi Bulletin about writing the first book. The title was Necessary Evil: PTSD in Military Sci Fi.  I wanted to write it to explain why I was writing the book and about how tired I was about soldiers being able to kill in fiction without any emotional cost to them.  Here's how it begins:  

I wanted to write a series of books about soldiers with PTSD and I wanted to get it right. I didn’t want my characters to be some lone gunmen, but to rather show them in a PTSD-positive light. But where would I start? How far could I go? How far should I go? After all, writing about PTSD is a trigger all unto itself. What is the line that separates entertainment and harm?

I recently wrote a few more blogs celebrating the release of the third book. 

One was also at Sci Fi Bulletin titled This is What Happens When a Horror Author Writes Science Fiction. Although my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I wrote it, I did want to point out that there is a need for more darkness in some science fiction.  Here's how I began the blog:

My science fiction publisher told me that my last three military sci fi novels were the bleakest books they’ve ever published and that’s a good thing. Let me explain.

I also wrote a blog for Sci Fi Now. This one was about the craft of writing and was titled The Ancient Art of Writing Trilogies. I wrote it because I felt that I failed to write a trilogy for SEAL Team 666 and took my lessons learned when I approached the Grunt Books. I spend a lot of it disambiguating between trilogies and series. Here's how it begins:

I grew up reading The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift Jr, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys. These mysteries were packaged by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and specifically targeted kids. Like many of my contemporaries, I liked reading these books because they were about kids like me solving fantastic mysteries. I fell in love with the characters, following them from book to book. I was especially fond of Frank and Joe Hardy, adventuring with them in The Sinister Signpost, The Phantom Express, The Ghost of Skeleton Rock and so many more. Reading them was like reading about old friends and I never tired of it.

Finally, I have an interview up at The Quillery where they posed some hard questions and put me on the spot. 

Fan Letter Thanking Me -- PTSD and Self Harm

Sometimes you get a fan letter that is more than just "you write good stuff, thanks." I get versions of this all the time and am always appreciative when it happens. As you writers know (and this may be a secret or not for readers), as narcissistic as us writers are, we also have moments in writing where we doubt our abilities... moments when we're convinced that we suck and have no right writing anything except a shopping list. 

Then there are those rare times when you get a fan letter that transcends everything else you've ever

received. I was sent one yesterday through my website. I read it twice before I wholly understood the gravitas of the man's words. I admit I cried. It was almost too much. You see, I don't write to change the world or change a person. I write to entertain, first and foremost. If I achieve that then I did what I intended. Often, I want a reader to think and perhaps understand. Those are secondary goals and if I achieve that, then I know I've done something real good. But to be told that my writing changed a life... maybe saved a life, that's something altogether different. It's frankly, humbling, because no writer, regardless of their narcissism, ever writes a fiction novel intent on saving lives.

Grunt Life, Grunt Traitor, and the soon to be published Grunt Hero (collectively called the Grunt Series) is an alien invasion story about a small group of grunts who all have PTSD to varying degrees. Because I wrote the first book when I was stationed in Afghanistan, I think I was able to tap into the PTSD theme better than had I not been in Afghanistan. In a war zone, everyone has PTSD. EVERYONE. Me included. So the suffering and symptoms I wrote was real. It was raw. It rang so true that my superb editor at Solaris Books, Jonathan Oliver, and rightly so, expressed his concern that the book(s) might be a trigger. It worried me as well. Neither of us wanted to do harm. We wanted only to entertain and maybe achieve those other things. We discussed the nature of Grunt Life and it's themes. Although we never voiced it, I think each of us knew that if either one of us had said to the other, 'maybe we shouldn't publish this," that we wouldn't have. And that's a bold statement I've never made in public before, but I believe it to be ultimately true. Jon cares about what he publishes. I care about what I write. We live by the mantra- Do No Harm.

We ultimately decided to let it roll off the presses. The first print run sold out before it hit the streets. We held our breaths as the reviews began to pour in. And they were great. They got what we'd intended. Never did a single reviewer condemn us for capitalizing in on suffering, instead they all mentioned how real and raw the narrative conveyed PTSD and its symptoms and how it made them realize things they'd never known. 

Collective exhalations of relief. 

Back to the email. I didn't know whether or not I should mention it in passing or provide it (names redacted of course) in whole. I didn't want to use it as an advertisement. I could never monetize someone's misery. That's not what this blog post is about at all. What I was thinking was this: maybe if I was able to help one person, perhaps others could be helped, not by buying any of my books, but by reading the email I received. 

Sort of like passing it on. Paying it forward.

Here's the email:

Dear Mr. Ochse, I recently discovered your excellent book Grunt Life and whilst I was reading it I came across something that has transformed my relationship with my daughter (redacted). You see she was a self harmer and I never really understood what caused her to keep hurting herself. When I read the passage about Aquinas and the need for her to self harm I finally understood what my daughter was going through and why. I took the book upstairs and just said to her please read that passage and then tell me what you think. After reading it she said that it described how she had felt when she was down and it was right about blaming herself for problems in her life and feeling guilty about them. I will never know how you managed to get such a complete and accurate description of the illness but regardless I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the chance to understand it. Yours sincerely, XXXXX

I am honored and humbled to have been able to help. I don't know what else to say.

Don't go out and buy any of my books. If you feel the need to spend money, why not go out and spend the money you'd spend on one of my books by giving it to a local veteran's groups or a PTSD charity. Here's a link to the National Center for PTSD where you can find more information. Here's also a link to a website providing access to Self-Injury Outreach and Support. Please go there if you need to or if you know someone with a problem.

I hope this blog post helps. 

Pass it on if you think you need to.

Be well.

New Book Contract - Burning Sky (Solaris)

Just signed a contract with Solaris Books for a novel called BURNING SKY. It's about an O.S.T. or Operational Support Team. OST is the movement security detail for VIPs within Afghanistan. Comprised of active duty military, civilians, and contractors, all veterans of military police, security services, special operations units, and other combat agencies, these men and women spend seasons in hell to, not only try and fix what’s broken in each of them, but also to make enough bank to change their futures. They are  stress junkies and the world is better for it. But seven months after their last mission, safely back on American soil, Land of the Big PX, they feel like they've left something undone... like maybe even they've left something or someone behind. And the feeling is driving them crazy. One by one they come together, and discover that they've all been having the same dream... a dream of a woman, a goat, and a sky that won't stop burning.

I orginally wrote this pitch in the fall of 2013. Several other houses looked at it and it wasn't until Solaris looked at it that it found a home. Thank you Solaris. I think I've made an impression there. The fine men and women who work at Solaris know I do a quality job and get the work in on time. From Grunt Life to Grunt Traitor to Grunt Hero, and then back to Blood Ocean and Empire of Salt. Although the latter two were with Abaddon Books, I'm working with the same editors, so this will make six books with them. Natch!

What's interesting about the pitch, is I never name any of the characters. Instead, I labeled them by their archetype (e.g. Boy Scout, Preacher's Daughter, Narco, etc). Now I get the fun of naming them.

The book is scheduled for release sometime between Fall 2017 and Summer 2018. It will be published in the UK in trade paperback and in the US in mass market paperback.

Grunt Traitor Makes Nebula Reading List

Click to Buy

The Nebula Awards are awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. First step is to get on the reading list and guess whose military sci fi PTSD novel made the cut? Yep. Grunt Traitor. Can you be both humbled and thrilled cause I'm both of those!!!

The reading list used to be a top secret (if I tell you I have to kill you) list. But 2015 marked the first year that the Nebula Reading List became open to the public.

Nebula Commissioner Terra LeMay says “Even before I became the Nebula Awards Commissioner, I’ve always thought the Suggested Reading List was one of the best resources I’ve ever encountered for finding the most exciting new science fiction and fantasy works each year. It is a great privilege to have helped bring this list out to the public where any reader may benefit from it.”

Here's the full article about the reading list going public. 

Nominating for the list ends on Monday, so if any of you SFWA members have read books that you think should be on it, I suggest you hasten to the list. I added several myself that I felt were deserving of recognition.

Here's a quick link to the full list.

Sci Fi Gazette Looking Forward to Grunt Hero

Nice to be on someone's wish list. Internet icon Sci Fi Gazette posted their 2016 preview. Among such look forwards as the return of the X-Files, Stephen King's 11.22.63 being broadcast on Hulu, The Expanse TV series on Syfy Channel, lies Grunt Hero, my third book in the PTSD alien invasion series started with bestseller Grunt Life.

You should go to the complete list and check out the books, movies, tv shows and comics that Sci Fi Gazette is most anticipating in 2016. You can find that here.

What's the Grunt Life Series About? I talk about it here on my webpage and how I pitched it to Solaris Books.

But don't trust me. See what two of my literary idols have to say about it.

"Grunt Life was a major achievement in military SF! A real page- turner! This new David Gerrold, Hugo and Nebula Award Winner of The Martain Child
chapter in the series is even better!" -

“Add Grunt Life to your list of must-have books.  This is action adventure at its best.” - William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling author of Legion of the Damned

Grunt Traitor Makes Another Best of List While Grunt Hero Makes Another Most Anticipated List

Love love love the fact that so many people are loving Grunt Traitor -- the second book of my PTSD alien invasion series which began with Grunt Life. Add to the fan base, Elitest Book Reviews who listed it as one of their Best of 2015.

Here's part of their original review:

EXCERPT: Weston Ochse’s GRUNT LIFE was one of my favorite novels released in 2014. It was also one of the finest Military SF novels I’d read, and I’ve been anticipating the sequel ever since. After the follow-up novel, GRUNT TRAITOR, arrived I took it with me on a plane trip…and ended up reading the whole novel that day. To put it mildly, GRUNT TRAITOR was a page-turner. GRUNT TRAITOR delivered on it all, making it the best Military SF I’ve read in years, and a huge step up (somehow) from the first book in the series. -Elitest Book Reviews

Elitest Book Reviews also has a most anticipated list where they list Grunt Hero (the third forthcoming book in the series) along with many other books, including ones by Joe Abercrombie, James S.A. Corey (an Expanse novel), Lois McMaster Bujold, Patricia Briggs, Daniel Abraham and Kevin Hearn. I'm in very good company. If I had a single wish this year it would be to sit down around a dinner table and just chat, drink wine, and eat a magnificent dinner with these fine people, many whom I know (Kevin, Daniel, Corey) and one whom I've publicly and rather pathetically crooned a love poem too (Briggs) while I was toastmaster at TusCon and she was Guest of Honor. Yeah. I do shit like that, but what the hell. You only live once, right?

You can see their whole list here.

Elitest Book Review Selects Grunt Life One of 2014s Best

Grunt Life was reviewed by Elitist Book Reviews (Steve Diamond) back in August. Here's a link to that review. Bottom line is that they liked it--liked it so much that in a recent interview they chose it as one of the best books of 2014 according to an interview with Stuart Charles Flynn at scflynn.com!

'Ochse has an excellent narrative voice. Line to line, paragraph to paragraph, page to page. It’s all extremely smooth. I never had to go back and reread a section for clarity—though I did reread sections because of how much I enjoyed a turn of phrase, or a character moment. The action—and there is a TON of it—is super clear and effortless to follow.' -Elitist Book Review of Grunt Life

'Weston Ochse is an awesome author. I put his stuff next to Correia and Maberry without hesitation. While I was curious about Ochse’s work before, now I’m excited to read it. All of it. It's pretty easy to see that Ochse is one of the better authors for action SF out there, and GRUNT LIFE was an absolute blast to read.' - Elitist Book Review of Grunt Life

They also selected Grunt Traitor - sequel to Grunt Life - as one of their most anticipated books of 2015. This is the first mention of Grunt Traitor in the wild and most welcome. 

You can read all about Steve Diamond, Elitest Book Reviews, and their other picks at this link. Looks like I'm in terrific company with Joe Lansdale, Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Larry Correia, Sarah Pinborough, Robert McCammon and others.

Very humble. Thank you Elitist Book Reviews. Solaris Books is going to be extremely happy about this.

Introducing GRUNT TRAITOR

Grunt Traitor is the sequel to my ground-breaking first book from Solaris-- Grunt Life, a PTSD-positive military sci fi novel where PTSD sufferers are specifically recruited to join a special task force because there's something in their brain chemistry that makes it easier for them to fight the aliens who are about to invade planet Earth. Grunt Life has been hugely successful, selling out the first print run within days of release.

Here's what some are saying about Grunt Life.

From Pop Cults - 'Ochse goes beyond the normal chaos of combat and asks of the tough questions that we, as a greater society, are just starting to ask. In this novel, he addresses one of the biggest killers of our veterans these days: suicide.  While the taking of one’s life has been addressed before, Ochse embraces it and integrates it into his story without making it the focus of the book or glorifying it. The book starts out with a suicide attempt, but it isn’t for the reasons that you would expect. Ochse was willing to get past the Hollywood and mainstream media explanations of military suicide and try to address some of the real reasons why veterans would be willing to end their lives. This is a subject that needs to be addressed openly and honestly, and Ochse was brave enough to risk turning some readers off to do it. I think that many of the readers who do get turned off by his frank observations on this subject might feel that way because it hits way too close to home. I don’t want this to sound like a challenge, but for some folks out there, this might be the book that makes them stop and think.' 

From Elitest Book Reviews - 'Weston Ochse is an awesome author. I put his stuff next to Correia and Maberry without hesitation. While I was curious about Ochse’s work before, now I’m excited to read it. All of it. It’s pretty easy to see that Ochse is one of the better authors for action SF out there, and GRUNT LIFE was an absolute blast to read."'

Now to introduce Grunt Traitor

Their spies were among us for years. They mapped our electrical infrastructure, learned our weaknesses, then they flipped the switch, throwing us back into the Dark Ages. Only OMBRA and its battalions around the world seem capable of defending Earth from the next wave of attack—terraforming.

This is a time for heroes. For killers. For Grunts.

But at what price can we gain our freedom from these yet to be identified aliens?

Benjamin Carter Mason will be asked this question over and over as he dives deep into the nasty heart of an alien transformed Los Angeles. And in the end, he might just be the last person on Earth defending what it means to be human… our humanity.

Grunt Traitor will be available in July 2015. It can be preordered from your favorite store at Simon and Schuster. Go there now and help me get the first print run sold out before it's even released.

And if you have the time, read my blog post about the REAL and IMPORTANT issue of PTSD. More people have it than you know and it's not merely limited to the military.

Southern California Signing Tour for SEAL Team 666, Grunt Life, and many more

For the third year in a row I have the privilege of signing books in Southern California. In what has become an annual tradition, I'll be signing books next week at stores and libraries from Ventura to San Diego and points in between. Along the way I'll eat some great food, meet some fans, new and old friends, and booksellers, and be witness to the spectacular Pacific Ocean. This year I'll have my wife with me which will make it even more special. Gosh knows we've taken some personal hits recently and this time away from things will serve to rejuvinate us for the new year.

I'm posting my schedule below. Please come out and join me. You'll find that I'll be more than eager to talk about writing, books, and publishing. I'm linking

these to my Facebook Events Pages, in case you need more information.

 

Sunday Dec 7

4 - 7 PM

Barnes and Nobles, 4820 Telephone Rd, Ventura, California 93003 

Link to Event

Mon Dec 8 

4 - 6 PM

Gatsby Books, 5535 E Spring St, Long Beach, California 90808

Link to Event

Tue Dec 9

7 - 9 PM

Dark Delicacies, 3512 W Magnolia Blvd, Burbank, California 91505
Link to Event

Wed Dec 10

4 - 5 PM

San Gabriel Library, 500 S Del Mar Ave, San Gabriel, California 91776

Link to Event

Sat Dec 13

Mysterious Galaxy at their NEW LOCATION 

5943 Balboa Ave, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92117

Link to Event

 I hope to see everyone. Come see me in person. I don't get out much and this might be your only chance.

GRUNT LIFE Update #1 - Free Excerpt

So Solaris Books has contracted me to write a military science fiction novel. I can't tell you how excited I am to write this. I've been trying to work with Solaris for years. They are top notch in the Science Fiction community and have published some of my favorite books and authors. To be a part
of their catalogue is humbling and thrilling. To make it even more fun, I get to write this while I'm in Afghanistan. Makes you wonder if my being here effects the content of the story. You be the judge.

PLOT: A private company grabs several thousand PTSD sufferers right at the point where they're about to commit suicide and makes them an offer they can't refuse. If you want to kill yourself, fine, but why not make it mean something by doing it in the protection of your own species. Thus was formed TF OMBRA, who is mankind's singular hope for the savior of planet Earth.

Here's an (unedited) excerpt from Chapter 1:

-GRUNT LIFE EXCERPT-

By Weston Ochse © 2013

-1-

//--END EXCERPT--//

It was my love of movies that made me choose the Vincent Thomas Bridge to kill myself. Although it was relatively convenient, joining Long Beach to my home of San Pedro, California, it had also gained a certain notoriety over the years. That it had been a shooting location for the films Gone in Sixty Seconds, Lethal Weapon 2, To Live and Die in LA, Heat and The Island was a bonus. The real reason I’d chosen to jump from it was because of my love of film director Tony Scott and the fact that he’d jumped from the same bridge back in 2012. The director of Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance and the incomparable Man on Fire had one day parked his car on the bridge, climbed over the rail, and leaped to a better life. Some people said that Tony hadn’t meant to kill himself that it was the result of a bad combination of drugs that had given him suicidal thoughts, but I knew better. The truth was that sometimes life was just shit and there was nothing to be done about it.

     I stared out across the lights of the harbor. A cruise ship was pulling in. Beyond this the giant cranes used to load and offload containers of consumer goods glowed with warning lights. The San Pedro hill to my right was dotted with a thousand lights, each one housing someone in a home, watching television, eating dinner, fucking, or simply staring off into space. To my left was the great plain of Long Beach where another million souls did the same, unaware that a man who’d been awarded two silver stars and three bronze stars was about to swan dive just so he could see if there was something else on the other side of oblivion.

     I’d come prepared. I wore black fatigues, boots and gloves. A black skull cap covered my head and I’d painted my face with black camouflage. I wasn’t there to draw attention. I wasn’t there to make a statement. I was there for one final selfish moment, to do something for myself. I’d stepped over the rail and had backed into the shadow of a beam ten minutes ago. Cars sped past behind me, many of them with their windows open to catch the sea air, leaving me with a random montage of music by which to die.

     Grasping the beam behind me, I leaned forward and stared down at the stygian black water. I let my mind wander back to Iraq, then to Afghanistan, then to Mali, then to Kosovo. Like a badly edited film it flipped back and forth with no context other than death. The death of children lying like discarded dolls in the middle of an Iraqi street, at the bottom of a Serbian burial pit, or atop a mountain near Tora Bora. The death of women, raped and left bent over, a position so much like prayer, but never so fierce. The death of men, body parts raining like confetti at an end of the world party where those with the better ammunition and weapons were bound to attend if only they could survive the deaths of so many of their own. Death. Death. Fucking more death.

     Somewhere along the lines I’d ceased to be a hero and had become a death merchant. The very term hero had become a laughable idea. “Who do you think you are, a hero?” my platoon sergeant had once asked. I’d wanted to respond that I did, that I was, but I knew that the platoon sergeant had already turned that corner. It was then that I’d realized that there would come a time when I’d be just like him. If I'd ever get to the point where I didn’t know the difference between a hero or a zero and lose my grasp on what’s right and wrong, I promised myself that I'd end it.

     So there I was.

     On the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

 

 

More Updates will be coming soon.

Leave comments.

Now back to work.

Weston Ochse
Currently in
Afghanistan