Hello, Britain . . .

First Team, starring the irrepresible Bob "Ferg" Ferguson, is now available in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere in the world) as an ebook. Here's the Amazon UK link.

Speaking of paperbacks . . .

The mass market edition is now available at a bookstand and store near you . . .

The treachery of translators

My brilliant translating career hit another high when a French publisher invited me to translate Brigitte Bardot’s memoirs, “Initiales BB.” I had written a memoir about my childhood obsession with Bardot, so I said O.K. and suggested some modest revisions. It would have to be completely re-written from top to bottom and I would definitely take out all those exclamation marks. And I would put back in that affair with the English guy after she married Gunter Sachs – she should never have left that out! They took that as a “non.” Tant pis. All translators rewrite and rectify. Some even feel that they can do a better job of writing Bardot’s life than Bardot.

Full article.

Speaking of Iran . . .

. . . They're still monkeying around:

Things go boom . . .

. . .at Fordo, one of Iran's nuke complexes.

From the BBC:

"The false news of an explosion at Fordo is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome," Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi, deputy of the AEOI, was quoted as saying by the state news agency, Irna.

Right. And next you'll claim there is no project to build a nuclear bomb. Oh, wait . . .

Now in paperback

Starring the irrepressible, coffee-swilling FBI special agent, Andy Fisher.

What women can do - fight


The decision to formally allow women to serve in combat is a well and hard-earned recognition of their abilities, patriotism, and courage.

I admit to being a late convert. But stories like Captain Linda Bray's (during the Panama war) proved the point:

Bray and 45 soldiers under her command in the 988th Military Police Company, nearly all of them men, encountered a unit of Panamanian special operations soldiers holed up inside a military barracks and dog kennel.
Her troops killed three of the enemy and took one prisoner before the rest were forced to flee, leaving behind a cache of grenades, assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, according to Associated Press news reports published at the time. The Americans suffered no casualties.

(From a story about her in today's Washington Post.) More information here. And even more (a master's thesis) here.

There have been many others since. In actual fact women have been serving in combat situations now for considerable time; they just haven't gotten credit for it.

Best movie script . . .




My vote for the Oscar goes to FLIGHT - and not just because this fantastic Academy-Award nominated script was written by my cousin.

Go John!!!!!

Radio & the flu


First of all, thanks to everyone who's listened to me over the past two weeks as I've pontificated about the new book. And thanks especially to the indulgent hosts who shared their listeners.

And yes, I am now more or less finally over the flu. I'm not sure which was more painful - the virus or having to talk about myself.

Probably the latter.

The Zumwalt . . .

One of the most striking warships ever built is coming together in the little coastal town of Bath, Maine. The major components of the 610-foot-long ZUMWALT (DDG 1000) — a “destroyer” in name only — have been assembled this winter at the General Dynamics shipyard of Bath Iron Works, and the ship’s stark, tumblehome hull and superstructure is now together. These views were taken on Jan. 15, 2013

More photos, story.

Thanks

Now arguing with St. Peter . . .



. . . and winning.

RIP.

All in a cover


It's impossible to underestimate how important a book's cover is to its sales impact. Not only is it the best advertising for the book, it's the only advertising most books get.

Red Dragon Rising has now reached its climax with its fourth installment. The cover of the first book set a high standard as well as a distinct look, and no doubt played an important role in the series' success. Subsequent books have continued to have a very cool and instantly recognizable look.

But that didn't make things easy when it came time to create the cover for book 4, Red Dragon Rising: Blood of War. Here's an abbreviated look at the evolution, beginning with the first book we saw.*

This was the first cover that we saw, though I'm sure it had gone through a series of changes and artistic debates. It is a FANTASTIC cover. There's only one problem - well, two actually.

First of all, the action shown doesn't have much relation to what's in the book, and the weapons are wrong - two things long-time series readers were sure to pick up on. Secondly, the image is somewhat reminiscent of the cover of the first book, and we were afraid it just wouldn't stand up next to it.

So it was back to the drawing board. A lot of the critical action in the book takes place at sea, so I did up a rather horrible sketch to illustrate our ideas. In the interests of full disclosure and a belly of laughs I'm sure, here it is.

Hey, I never said I was an artist. The idea was simply to show the artist what we were talking about.

After the artist stopped laughing (I'm sure), we got this back. Again, a FANTASTIC cover:

Dramatic, dynamic, sets a great tone. But again, problems. First, there is no American aircraft carrier in the book, and second, while it is theoretically possible to have attack helicopters landing on a carrier, they're not in the book either.

So even though it was a great cover, the artist had to go back to the drawing board. We next saw a series of covers that included this image:

This time, the artist puts us aboard a Navy destroyer, and manages to get a very dynamic situation. I guess in retrospect we could have nitpicked about the helos, but we were so blown away by the great image we thought readers would be too.

Here's the final, final version, on sale this week:

Throw a few kind words in there about Larry (and me, actually), and we're good to go.

* - I've culled a few steps in the interest of brevity.

Ebooks & piracy . . .

You gotta fight the latter if you want the former to survive.

Item:

In a presentation at the Digital Book World Conference in New York today, [Professor Michael D.} Smith argued against three myths that he said permeate the discussion on illegal downloading. The first is that piracy doesn’t harm sales, which he said is not true. “Piracy harms sales,” he said, claiming that while 3 studies have been published suggesting that piracy doesn’t hurt sales, 25 others have shown that piracy is bad for sales. ”There are options to use legitimate distribution channels to convince people who have stolen your content to buy it,” he added. 

The final myth that Smith aimed to bust is that, “Anti-piracy regulation won’t work.” According to Smith, law enforcement around illegal downloading is not a game of whac-a-mole. “You can use laws to make pirated content less attractive,” he said. Citing the global Megaupload shutdown, Smith claimed that the shutdown helped lead to an increase in legal digital content consumption. “The shutdown of Megaupload caused a statistically significant increase in digital sales,” he said, comparing numbers between countries with high Megaupload usage to countries with low Megaupload usage.

Story.

Red Dragon 4, Klub missiles,

& the tyranny of math

A funny thing happened to on the way to the latest installment of our series Red Dragon Rising – we almost lost one of our main characters.

Worse: we almost lost a destroyer. And the war.

#

A quick briefing for anyone who hasn’t read the books:

In the series, climate change and economic problems have caused China to seek solutions outside of its borders. It begins by invading Vietnam. The U.S President recognizes that this is just the beginning of what may become a series of conquests, and wants to nip things before they blossom into World War III. But with the U.S. itself ailing and most of the public dead set against war, he has to move somewhat cautiously – not to mention covertly and, at different points, with questionable legality. America helps Vietnam, gradually becoming involved in a proxy war, and then finally explicitly exchanging fire.

Hopefully that’s informative enough without giving too much away.

One of the main threads in the final book involved a U.S. Arleigh Burke destroyer, fictional, of course, though closely based on real life. As things ratchet up in book four, the destroyer faces a succession of threats and finally does battle with a variety of enemies.

Smack in the middle of the plot progression was a small encounter with a pair of Chinese bombers, dispatched to sink the ship. (There's a story about how the name of the ship changed from one book to another, but I’ll spare that horror story for a different time.)

Larry and I sketched out the battle roughly, then I went on to write a first draft. Both when we were first talking about that battle and then when I was writing it, I saw the encounter as more of a pace setter – something necessary to amp things up, but not as critical as the other battles in the plot line.

In the fictional universe we created, the Chinese had purchased a number of Backfire bombers, and equipped them with a number of so-called Sizzler anti-ship weapons. The Sizzler – more formally the 3M-54E “Klub” missile – is a doozy of a weapon. Probably its most endearing feature, at least to the person firing it, is its final stage, where it takes a supersonic leap at the target, accelerating madly in a rabid sprint to its target. Just the thing to add a little spice to a plot.

As I originally wrote the draft, I posited that the planes would be flying from well inland China, and because of that would only be equipped with two of the missiles. They would make their attack from relatively close range. The destroyer would fend the missiles off, and then shoot down the planes.

I have to confess that part of this was due more to what needed to happen in the rest of the book than out of fealty to actual Chinese tactics. And there was a bit of leeway there – as you probably know, in real life China hasn’t (yet) bought any Backfires, and there were reasonable questions, at least to me, about how they would operate and where they would be based.

Reviewing the draft, Larry pointed out that the Chinese would almost certainly be using the aircraft to much better advantage, given what had already happened in the book and the series. For one thing, the planes would be based much closer than I had posited, and would almost certainly be carrying a full complement of the missiles.

“Hey, those things are light” is how I think he put it. “They’d load those suckers up.”

Not really a problem – we did a little bit of math along with the research, plugged some values into Larry’s excellent Harpoon simulator, and concluded that each aircraft would be reasonably expected to be carrying eight missiles. Then we also decided that they would employ classic Tu-22 tactics – very low altitude approach, pop up attack, etc.

Theoretically, that still wasn’t a problem, until Larry pointed out that given everything that had happened to this point, the Backfires would also be very wary of the destroyer, and would undoubtedly opt to stay out of range of its SM2 missiles. Which basically meant that they would make their attack no further than eighty nautical miles.

(I can see the hands shooting up to ask about SM3s. Because of plot complications – I don’t want to give away the rest of the book – only the SM2s could be used in this engagement. And the Chinese at this point, I decided, couldn’t know about SM3s. Well they could, but I still couldn’t afford to fire any.)

So OK. We gave the Backfires eight missiles apiece, and had them launch their popup attack from eighty nautical miles, the effective range for the SM2s. (Eighty-one if you want to be exact. Larry was working the calculator – I just had pencil and paper and tend to round down in real life anyway. Avoids trouble when I balance the checkbook.)

The destroyer had sixteen missiles coming at her from eighty-one miles away. They would start out “slow” but as they closed would hop up to roughly three times the speed of sound. Oh, and at wave-top level.

What does Harpoon say about that?

Hmmmm….

As soon as I realized the planes would launch from that distance, I knew there was no way that the destroyer could shoot down the Backfires, which really bummed me out. There’s nothing I like writing better than a good explosion, especially when it takes place in the air.

But as Larry started doing the math on the SM2 volleys and working the Harpoon numbers, I had a much worse feeling – I realized the American ship wouldn’t survive the attack.

We went back and forth, trying to change some of the variables – maybe there were less missiles on the Backfires because, uh, because, uh  . . . but in the end, escaping any reasonably sized volley wasn’t in the cards, let alone the simulator. We’d already expended our ERAMs, we weren’t touching the SM3s (admittedly for plot purposes, but they wouldn’t have helped the way we set this up anyway), and even the close-in Phalanx canon – one of my favorite weapons in the world – would be overwhelmed by the leakers.

In short, our ship would be sunk before the climax of the book. Which not so incidentally meant the U.S. would lose the war with a good hundred pages to go.

In real life, the U.S. Navy does have a few ways of dealing with this exact threat. For starters, they probably would have another ship with the destroyer (couldn’t change that because of the plot), air cover (ditto), or be operating much further from the Chinese mainland (double ditto). The ship might also be able to rely on its counter-measures a little more effectively than we did, although in my opinion we were pretty realistic there as well. (We did use the Nulka, which is a nifty radar cloak, but given the parameters of the engagement, I’m not entirely sure that even that superb weapon could solve the problem, at least not well enough to set the Americans up for the next battle. Which of course was our actual consideration.)

What all of this means, in fact and in fiction, is that the combination of Backfires and Klub missiles is a pretty awesome problem. We’re sure the Navy is well aware of it, but the math is very daunting.

In the end, we took a solution not available to American sailors: we changed the attackers, and their weapons.

I hate spoilers, so I won’t say what happens. But I will say this – I love math, except for when I hate it. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it’s the spreadsheet and calculator that rule in the end.

Witch hunts in perspective

Talking about video games. Item:

To understand video games’ complex status as our current bête noire of media entertainment, it is helpful to examine, briefly, some of the pariahs of the past. Comic books, particularly those rich in murders and fornication, so irked lawmakers in the 1940s and 1950s that McCarthy-like hearings were held and words like “terror,” “horror,” and “crime” were banned from appearing in books’ titles. Not long after, television was called upon to face Congress, with representatives of the American Temperance Society, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Movement, and the National Grand Lodge of the International Order of Good Templars decrying the new medium’s alleged encouragement of violence and drunkenness. The same drama unfurled in the early ’90s with gangsta rap.

Story.

On the radio

Larry and I are doing some local radio interviews in support of the new Red Dragon book. Among the stations this week:

Monday:
WFLA-AM
WVOX-AM

Tuesday:

WCXZ-AM
WOCA-AM
KPQ-AM

Wednesday:

WXBM-FM
WICH-AM
WANV-AM
WISR-AM
KJFF-AM
KCTA-AM

Thursday:

KWDQ-FM
WSAT-AM
KFJB-AM
KISU-FM


Check the Twitter feed for more details and times, etc.

On sale today

Actually, tomorrow, but they've already started putting it out. And you can get it online already.