Living Dangerously: How to Connect with Leisure Readers about My Novel Burning Sky

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.

Friday, October 19, 2018

How to Connect with Leisure Readers about My Novel Burning Sky

Becky Spratford who is the American Library Association's Superhero and their expert on horror fiction, provided a terrific booklist review of Burning Sky. On her blog RA for All: Training Librarians to Help Leisure Readers she has advice for librarians on how to get certain books into their hands. It occurred to me that this same advice might help folks who have read Burning Sky and loved the book and wanted to find ways to share it.

While I'm going to reference some parts of her post, I'm not going to use it all and I highly encourage you to follow this link and read the entire post. I also encourage you to make RA for All one of your daily readers. If you like books and if you like scary books, there are few better places to go.

I think my favorite part of it is this: Burning Sky is a love letter to servicemen and women who have toured in Afghanistan.

After a synopsis of the book, she provides a section for you to be able to compare other books to Burning Sky:

Further Appeal: I cannot stress enough how the occult elements here never overwhelm the real life horrors of war, rather they serve to underscore the terror and make it feel even more real. Even readers who usually like realistic military fiction, but want a more modern war setting will enjoy this. The cosmic horror elements are incorporated into the frame of Middle Eastern mythology, and the way Ochse introduces them, it feel real; like it could happen. The pairing of the realism and supernatural is seamless, so much so that it makes the book scarier.

Again with the theme of cosmic horror. It's funny, I didn't set off to write cosmic horror, but that's what I did. Now that I know, I'm actually ratcheting it up for the sequel.

Becky Spratford also has a section called Read Alikes that will allow you to compare other books to Burning Sky:

Readalikes: The best match is the Joe Ledger series mentioned above. I also mention Cormac McCarthy because the entire story is framed by the novel Blood Meridian but also, the writing itself is similar. If you like the way McCarthy writes, this novel is a great suggestion.

Fans of literary fiction about war, especially post-9/11 wars and its effects on veterans is also a great option like Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Fountain or The Yellow Birds by Powers.

Books set in Afghanistan and told from the local perspective might also be of interest here. Khaled Hosseini is a mainstream option, but check out this page of books tagged “Afghanistan”by readers on Goodreads.

You could also give this book to fans of military SF for which there is A LOT. Again via Goodreads. Really anyone who likes military fiction as it is crafted within any genre might enjoy this novel

I'm always very proud to have my books compared to my friend Jon Maberry's Joe Ledger books. Those are amazing books and share many of the face paced elements we both enjoy.

I was also very pleased to see her mention Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. I loved that movie before I went to Afghanistan because, more than most any movie, it really showed the repartee and comradeship among a close knit group of soldiers. It also shows how stunning PTSD can be, something I appreciate even more now that I am back.

If you don't have a copy yet, you can click on one of the book links on the left, or go to the following links for your favorite stores.

Or just hit me up with a question.