M.D. Thalmann's Blog

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In other news, I have just entered the Space Opera Writers’ International Flash Fiction Competition with a story based on this image. I am not even allowed to announce the title as of yet, but I am quite proud of it.



Last year, I placed third in the competition with my story, November Log, which you can read for free here: NOVEMBER LOG on my website. I even did an audio version and put it up for free streaming on Soundcloud, pardon my accent.

If you or anyone you know would like to send in a piece of flash fiction (1,000 words max) based on this image, I will pick my favorite two and post them alongside my submission on my website with your bio and link to your own site or social media page. You will keep all rights to your work, but my newsletter subscribers will get see your flash fiction chops and maybe get you a few followers as well.

Thank you all for subscribing, clicking, and reading… Each of you are helping me realize my lifelong dream. Without readers, I cant do what I do.










































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Chapter 1: Drop Zone

 

“The drop zone is too hot, we’re going to unload your tubes in one Mike. Ready your men, Commander Rustin!” the captain’s voice roared overhead into Rick “Rusty” Rustin’s ear.

“Lock in, ladies, these ugly motherfuckers are tryin’ to end our trip early!” Rusty shouted through the drop ship, his voice unwavering. Only his third tour, first as squad leader, and Rusty’s face showed no evidence of excitement.

With one hand, he yanked the release on his bucket, freeing the clamps which secured his armor, and therefore him, to the bulkhead. Pushing off toward the deck, letting his mag-boots pull him to standing with a double thunk, a smile crept across the corners of his mouth. “Well I say ‘oohrah’, and ‘give the Devil his due’ to these beetle-faced sons-uh-bitches!” This was a far cry from the timid nausea Rusty’d felt before his first drop, just six months before. Earth months, anyway. Those meant nothing out in the void.

A starburst off the starboard engine boomed and rattled their transport, the lights in their drop-pod flickering in time with the vibrations. Rusty sank lower in his stance, pulling himself towards his mag-boots and into a tight ball; preventing himself from being flung about by the impact. Confident the hull hadn’t been breached, he stood once more, widening his stance like an old seafarer. A whimpering voice barely eked over the vibrating rattle of the drop pod. It was an involuntary squeak of fear, which men were told made them weak. The noise maker would be ashamed, telling himself that no one heard, that it was only loud in his own head, and that the ship had masked the cry, but Rusty had caught it. So had everyone else. They all kept quiet because to call him a coward or weak would be to say the same of themselves. It was the very sound Rusty had made on his first run when a piece of shrapnel from another pod had slammed into his boat just before they broke atmo. The same squeak of terror that others had made the first time a slug had hit their faceplate and rattled their brainpan so hard that they’d been unsure if the lights they saw were Heaven or a concussion. Everyone on that boat had the right to that moment, they had earned it when they signed up for service in the GA, but Rusty couldn’t afford to let the greenhorn live there—he did the same thing Burke had done after Rusy’d squeaked: stomped over to him, exaggerating each footfall, mag-boots clanging with aggravation. “Just what in the fuck are you crying about, Simpson?”

“Nothing sir, it’s just that—”

“You’re goddamn right it’s nothing,” He said and grabbed Simpson’s brain-pail from the mag-latch of his bucket, “You wait till you get home in one piece to shit your pants. Don’t you fuck up one of my missions, are we clear?”

“Roger, don’t fuck up your mission, sir!”

“Good. Now firm it up and keep this on your goddamn skull!” Rusty said and shoved the kid’s helmet into his gut.

“Did everybody hear what I told Simpson? That goes for all you shit-birds. Get those brain-pails on your grapes before you waste all the goddamn money GA spent on you! And charge your rebreathers. No one gives a rat’s ass if you die, If they did, mommy wouldn’t have let you sissies sign up for Galactic Armada, but you can die on your own time, not in one of my suits! Ohhrah?” Rusty shouted through the tube and clapped on his own helmet amidst the cacophony of resounding “Oohrahs” thrown back at him.

Into the helmet comms he softened a bit, if only to preserve his own eardrums, “That a boy, lads. That a boy. Now, who’s ready to dance?”

In unison his platoon, even scared shitless Simpson shouted the same thing they had been programmed to say since day one on Titan, training in those harsh frozen and irradiated conditions, learning how not to fling themselves off-world as they got acclimated to their new suits: “Give the Devil his due!”

His smile, now hidden behind the solar visor of his brain-pail, dominated his face as he said, “Now, we’re heading to meet our new Suzy in 30 seconds. And I, for one, am tired of the foreplay! If you got prayers to say, I suggest now’s the time to say ‘em, because God’s gotta stay behind, I’m only bringing Devils!”

His squad again shouted the mantra of the GA Hellraisers, and Rusty sat back into his bucket once more, feeling the automatic clicks and clacks as his power-armor was pulled and clamped into the seat.

“Fifteen seconds,” came from the comms overhead, now barely audible through their helmets. Only Rusty had his helmet tuned to the general freq and could respond. “Roger that. Send it!”

“Commander Rustin, it’s been an honor, sir. I can’t wait to tell the boy’s I got to fly with Rusty Thrusters! Good luck!”

 

Chapter 2: A Dead Man

 

Rusty Fuckin’ Thrusters. He hadn’t heard that name for a while now. Rusty was dead. If his career hadn’t been over before he signed up for service, it definitely was once he’d gotten the Hellraisers’ wetware burned into his cortex. Drivers on the Terran Circuit weren’t allowed to use stims or cybernetics to gain an advantage. It was all about the driver getting a “feel” for their rig.

Commander Rick Rustin was dead now, too, in his drop-pod, along with all his men. Until the pod made landfall, it was a giant tomb filled with talking corpses. That was the most comforting thing Burke had ever told him. Rusty’d gotten a feel for the drop by now and could deal with it by closing off his comms, turning the dial on his visor up enough to block out the flickering lights of the rattling pod, and the dazzling helmet torches of his squad casting wild arcs throughout the pod as their heads bobbed and jerked. He’d arranged this sensory blockade as a default setting in his wetware so he could dial for it without much of a conscious effort. It was awful kind of the GA to allow him a few Gigs of storage space in his own brain for personalization of his gear.

Rusty began to get lost in his silent death until an increase in his weight upset his senses. The tube was rolling. The ablative shielding tearing off in uneven swaths, causing their slow roll to gain momentum. The crash buckets that had done so well in absorbing vibration, keeping his bones and organs from being liquefied, could do nothing to alleviate the G-forces of the centrifugal spin. Through clenched teeth, Rusty shouted into his mic, “Pop your stims!” knowing that if he was feeling the crunch, his men were, too. He’d be lucky if Simpson wasn’t passed out with a full urine reclaimer already. You better drink up, Johnny, he thought.

A tightening on his neck let Rusty know the suit was preparing to dose him. It swelled like a blood-pressure cuff to help the sensors find a vein, and then WHAMMO! The icy fix filled his carotid artery and raced into his skull. The intense cold of the stims didn’t dissipate as the fluid spread through his body but instead gained intensity. His skull felt to have swelled to maximally fill the brain-pail, its prongs and sensors digging into his scalp more with each throb of his pulse, and then he was socked behind the eyeballs by the mother of all ice-cream headaches. Rage followed and Rusty clamped his hands around the roll-cage of his bucket, disengaging his comms just before releasing a tremendous roar, fogging up his visor and only making his headache worse. Hairs on his spine, neck, and arms stood on end and his flesh tingled. The unbearable cold suddenly snapped into intense heat and his body became a furnace with which his suit’s thermal-exchanger needed to deal. In an instant, he was ripped to pieces molecule-by-molecule and slammed back together by the drug. At least that’s how Burke had described the sensation, and after a handful of stim pops of his own, Rusty couldn’t find a better way to put it. Rusty added, to benefit his cadets, that they’de be royally pissed off by the ordeal and should try and not clobber anyone on the same team.

Regaining focus, Rusty dialed back his visor and saw fire at the far end of the tube that was the drop-pod, so now not only was he still dead, but apparently he was gonna have to participate in arranging the funeral. He was sure that the pod’s fire suppression would come online any second now… why wasn’t it coming on, the ship was designed to detect… no that wasn’t fire, but the vaporization of the hull. Rusty was looking through a hole. The goddamn ship was breached and the friction was making quick work of his transport.

“Eject! Eject! Eject, goddamnit you worms, Eject!” he shouted into the comms and one-by-one his team’s buckets vacced into the bulkhead and their canopies came down. One after another, they shot out of the tube in little egg-shaped escape bubbles… all but Simpson.

Rusty reached for his sidearm, and even with the power-armor, it was some undertaking to fight the Gs of the spin. He took aim at Simpson’s chest. “Wake the fuck up, soldier,” he shouted.

Rusty squeezed the trigger and the drop-pod ripped apart fully, throwing he and Simpson askance.

***

Rusty yanked the eject handle for a second time and still nothing, the hunk of the drop-pod his bucket was latched to had no power. He was a falling duck. Reaching for his sidearm, he planned to shoot the couplers that held his seat to the hull fragment and somehow get enough clearance to pop his chutes. He found only disappointment. Rusty’s holster was empty. It took him less than a second of confusion before he remembered that the sidearm was gone, ripped from his hand by the violent death throes of the escape pod. His plan was now shit. Confusion became rage again.

Scanning his HUD, Rusty discovered that he had less than two minutes to impact, that he’d already reached terminal velocity for this planet, Xaron 3, and that there were roughly twelve chunks of the drop-pod at or above his approximate altitude.

He hoped like hell one of those sections went by the name Simpson.

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Europa Affair is HERE!

This STATIC prequel/companion story is the perfect gift for the Sci-Fi fan in your life (even if that’s you!)

Corporate espionage, explosions, gunfights, and even some sexy-time!

Somebody’s halls are getting decked!

What happens when two senior officers in your ice-mining operation can’t keep their hands off each other, and a sentient baboon hell-bent on destroying mankind uses them for corporate espionage?

Marwick is a deep space test-pilot and soldier in the Solar Confederacy’s cyborg army, feared by many, avoided by most. Melina is the most daring ice-runner in the fleet, a respected officer, and wife to the Solar Confed’s Chief Military Advisor.

They really shouldn’t get along, especially after he throws a monkey wrench into her mission, almost killing her.

Is the baboon biting off more than he can chew? Will his blackmail lead to power or war?

All this, plus androids with identity crises being shot into space.

PREORDER NOW!















Related Books

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Do you love Androids, Cyborgs, and War? Does a Homicidal baboon hell-bent on destroying mankind spark your interests?

Get the scoop on the cast of Europa Affair, read STATIC!

Buy Static!










What’s on sale

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When getting the girl costs you the world… literally.

A classic story of boy meets girl, causes nuclear holocaust, travels to multiple dimensions, brings home a dog… That old chestnut.

FREE! For Kindle Unlimited

Shop the sale »

Get your hands on Europa Affair and static for $0.99 total!

STATIC is $0.99 for the next 3 days!!!!

Do you like stories about androids, cyborgs, and war? Does the idea of a homicidal sentient baboon with genetic modifications spark your curiosity?

Get the scoop on the characters in the upcoming Europa Affair, read what started it all, STATIC. Originally written in four novellas but packaged up for you in one handy novel. $0.99 today through Monday, but free for Kindle Unlimited. I want your money, just not all of it. I’d rather have your reviews.

An epic solar space opera saga spread across a century: cyborg armies, nanotechnology, constant-thrust space-travel, and a solar government that discards the Earth and her people as the regime expands, leaving a shattered planet working for a hundred years to reclaim the stars. Elliot Glassman began the war. Halloran will end it.

Electromagnetic storms stopped the machines but left mankind in the dark ages—savages rule the wilderness and pockets of the civilized huddle together in camps to fend them off. Halloran, different and dangerous, leaves the safety of his home to journey across the badlands, pulled towards someone he can feel and almost remember—and together they might just be able to save what remains of humanity.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0755PDGWR/

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Marwick is a deep space test-pilot and soldier for the Solar Confederacy’s cyborg army; feared by most and avoided by more still. Melina’s the most daring ice-runner in the Sol, a respected officer, and wife to the Solar Confed’s Chief Military Advisor. Marwick and Melina aren’t supposed to get along.

What happens when two senior officers in your ice-mining operation can’t keep their hands off each other, and a sentient, homicidal baboon hell-bent on destroying mankind uses them for corporate espionage? All this, plus the comic relief of Androids with identity crises.Tune in to find out, and let’s blow some shit up!

Coming December 2017

Sign up by email to my newsletter and get a link for a free download next month

Www.Mdthalmann.com

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#militaryscifi #cyberpunk #spaceopera #colonization #spacemarine #sciencefiction

Today I am proud to host bestselling sci-fi author, Craig Martelle, in my newsletter.

He’s been both an inspiration and a friend, and for the past year, he has given me some pointers along the way.

Today, 9/26, through Thursday, 9/28, we are running a multi-book promo together. Three books, for less than two dollars. It’s a steal.

Pick up Static for $0.99 (free for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime customers). Click thumbnail to view on Amazon. [image error]

Elliot Glassman began the war. Halloran will end it.

In the aftermath of electromagnetic storms, civilization has fractured—savages rule the wilderness and pockets of survivors huddle together in camps trying to fend them off. Halloran, different and dangerous, leaves the peace and safety of his home to journey across the badlands, pulled towards someone he can feel and almost remember—and together they might just be able to save what remains of humanity.

And while you’re at it, Go ahead and scoot over to Free Trader by Craig Martelle

A cat and his human minions fight to bring peace to humanity! If you like Sci-Fi adventure, Andre Norton, or a little old-school RPG, then the Free Trader series is for you! From Sep 26-29, Free Trader 1 is Free and Free [image error]Trader 2 is only 99 cents. Start your journey today with the Free Trader (six books strong and growing).

Free Trader 1 – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CDFYFE6

Free Trader 2 – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CX7UPVQ

 

 

Hello Thalmannators (or whatever you want to call yourselves), September 15th is less than two weeks away. That means that in less than two weeks you will have a fantastic new book to add to your library, Static. This book has been near and dear to me

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for over a decade, and I assure it has been worth the wait.

Many of my fans will have gotten an advance reading copy from me during the crowdfunding campaign, and some of you will have even read it… even so, please go ahead and pre-order a copy HERE for your Kindle device, or Kindle app, so that you can leave an official review of the book. If you are holding out for the paperback or even the coveted hardcover, then stay tuned as I will be releasing the print copies soon as well. In the mean time, if you have read it, please prepare a review, and if you haven’t, please pick it up today. A few bucks spent could make a load of difference in this author’s world.

As always,

Thank you for your support, and keep reading!  —M.D. Thalmann

 

Do you have an Amazon account? Like to read? Want to help discover the next big thing?

If you were nodding your head while reading those questions, you gotta keep reading.

Kindle Scout ( #kindlescout ) is a program similar to the Amazon Pilots program, where you get to pick the next hit show. Right now, you can read the first 20 pages or so of my new novel and decide if you think Amazon should feature it. Each account (user) gets three nomination spots. You can add a book and remove it later if you find a different top 3. At the end of 30 days, if I have enough nominations still active, I’ll get an advance and contract directly with Amazon… it’s really that easy.

Even if you read my first 20 pages and think, Not my cup o’ tea,  you will be exposed to dozens more options that might resonate with you.

Try the program, CLICK HERE to see my campaign and navigate the portal from there.

Thanks in advance, and KEEP READING!!!

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my subscribers.

Whatever your plans, I hope they work out just as you’d imagined.

In the event you have any downtime, here is a free piece I wrote for an international flash fiction contest back in November 2016. It came in third overall (the judge was a Brit), and as far as I am concerned, is the best flash I have yet completed. And what’s more, I did it in totally free streaming audio for your earholes!

Click below for streaming audio, or you can read it like a savage just below the image. FYI, the image was the only prompt for the submission, so it shaped the voice of the story, which was fun and challenging.

At any rate, Enjoy!

AUDIO LINK

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 NOVEMBER LOG

I haven’t written anything in forever, and I don’t goddamn want to. It took ages to get my vidcap booted. This whole hab’s ripe for the junk heap, not just this old-ass sensory cap. Not like NASA can’t afford a new one.

Why am I writing? It’s November, according to the readout on my HUD, which hangs just outside my normal field of view. They’ll be expecting a report, but who gives a damn? Houston sent me here to put out fires, not be a goddamned secretary.

I crawl into the bath to get some relief from my aching back, though technically it’s not my back. I am having a hard time adjusting to the new body. The tits are nice, but there’s only so much fun you can have rubbing your own body and looking in the hollo-reflector, tits or not. This frame wasn’t designed to dig in the hard packed blue-gray rock that make the moon’s glow so iconic. It’s like NASA isn’t even trying to disqualify candidates anymore. Too much PC bullshit happening back on brown soil.

The tiller is broken, otherwise it wouldn’t matter. I hate this fucking job. NASA keeps sending up lackeys, and they keep frying out in the first lunar cycle. No matter what kind of training they throw at the diggers, nothing prepares them for living on the little white ball when it’s so black you can feel the weight of light years’ of vacuum pressing down on you. So, they send me to clean it all up. They tell the poor fried motherfucker to calm the hell down and put on the vidcap and that they can call home, that it will all be butterflies and cotton-candy, or whatever the fuck. Then they hijack the poor bastards’ cortex and wipe it. Plant me inside.

I go out to keep the tiller working and make sure the place is tip-top (ha) for the next transfer. I only ever get a short break before I’m called in to jockey a new meat-puppet for the rest of the rotation.

I light a smoke, knowing the alarms will start firing before I’ve exhaled my first drag. It’s one of the few comforts NASA allows me, and one of the few reasons I do this shit job. I don’t have lungs of my own any longer, they were removed. Cancer. Shit sucked. I got a loaner pair from some frat boy douchebag that wrapped his Italian sports car around a Doric column outside a government building. The transplant didn’t take, so I smoke once in a blue moon… literally.

Somewhere back on Earth, my body’s hooked to respirators and other apparatuses that keep my brain supplied with enough oxygen and fatty acids to keep me driving the puppets who mine the ore, but I haven’t been on a walk in Earth Gravity in ages. Last time I tried, I bounce-hopped like a dumbshit and took a tumble.

I silence the atmo sensor alarm and suck down another harsh and wonderful pull from the smoke, not quite enjoying the dizzy feeling. She must not’ve been a smoker. The next one’ll be better, once the skinsuit builds a tolerance.

Anyway, the report.

Sector 16, log: November twelve 2079. What was your message, NASA? It ’ s been purged from the log. Today, before I boarded the rover, there was a message-waiting indicator at the main terminal. I was ready to go EVA, so I left it. Those fucking gloves … anyway … . When I got back, the message was gone. Please advise.

EVA: It took a week to get the drift dug out and retrieve the tiller. The chain ’ s missing several links. I can make it work, but we ’ ll need a new chain and auger bits at resupply. Hab ‘ s only functioning at 78 percent and Solar-One was sabotaged by candidate Alvarez before the wipe. Apparently, she was harvesting the fuel cells, but for what, I don’t know. Can ’ t find ‘ em. Probably need to send up a new rod while you’re at it. And let’s put someone on the boat that can at least carry 200 pounds. I don’t want to convert that to kilos, you nerds figure it out.

Kirk out.

I get out and dry my new tits off a little longer than I should. I flick the butt into the tub and leave it for the reclaimer, a big no-no for which I’ve been reprimanded twice already, but when it breaks, I’m the one who cleans the septic anyway, so fuck it.

I power down and uncouple the vidcap, and rub my face, her face, with the damp towel.

An alarm sounds at the main console. A response from NASA so soon? Impossible. No time to boot the ancient vidcap again, I race to the terminal, careful not to skid on the thin aluminum flooring as I round the corners.

It’s not from NASA. There are no headers. Instead, there’s a crude graphic of the hourglass from Windows ‘98 draining binary sand in the ultra-high-definition that can only be brought to you in 16 bits. I’m stupid and curious, so I click the hourglass before the sands can run out. It asks for my security clearance. I offer it, thinking maybe it’s NASA after all.

Go for operation? [Y/N], it says.

I don’t have time to think, but I do anyway. Alvarez may have been hysterical and destroyed Solar-One, but she was also a brilliant coder.

I touch nothing, hoping It’ll go away.

A spontaneous [Y] appears in the command prompt, and suddenly I know where that fucking fuel cell is. The whole place glows bright orange and then… [SIGNAL LOST]

 

✤✤✤

 

“Thanks for your service, Lieutenant.”

“Anytime,” my artificial larynx buzzes.

“I’m glad the relay worked, or we’d have no idea what happened up there. Get some rest. We’ll get you reassigned tomorrow.”

“Somewhere with atmo.”

“Roger that.”

“On your way out, tell the nurse I’d like to be moved by the window… just for a little while.”

 

Hello Thalmannators,

Happy Monday. I had a live interview /broadcast with Keystroke Medium today and wanted to share it with you all.

They are a group dedicated to discussing the craft, indie authors, and all things sci-fi. We had some fun and I managed not to look like a (total) fool.

Please take a gander and let me know what you think as we discuss the origins of The 13 Lives of a Television Repairman, and the upcoming novel, Static, which is my biggest achievement to date.

Click here for interview

Today marks a milestone in my life, career, and personal journey.[image error]

I finished Static today, just now. I thought I was done yesterday, but I had to go in and add one more little… and that is the LAST TIME!

I’ve sealed the record. I am so proud of this book because it is the one thing I always wanted to write. The spark that ignited a fire in me that has grown in size and strength each year.

When I met my wife I was discouraged from writing, and going through my early-life crisis: I was newly sober and had just turned 30 a few weeks prior. I hadn’t written in ages. This “book,” Static, was four years old and had turned into a giant turd that I couldn’t wrap my head around. I had it in a box. All I did was go to rock shows looking for chicks and on mountain biking adventures with my buddies. My roommate and I, the writers, never wrote anymore. We were broken writing machines. When my wife and I moved in together, I unpacked a few boxes and came across the original draft I had abandoned so long ago. I decided I was ready to finish it (I WAS NOT). This came as quite the shock to my brand new spouse, to whom I had never mentioned that I was a writer.

She has endured the pain of my absence and frustration as I have now completed my fourth book (3 novels and a novella).

Now I have a publisher, and some validation of the time I have otherwise squandered at a keyboard, or with a pencil and comp-book. It’s all starting to come together.

Anyway, I tried to finish this book right after we got married in 2011, and I still had no idea how to structure it. My cousin, inspiration to self-publish, and overused editing resource, Brandon Beam, politely informed me that “This is not a book. It’s a long-winded outline masquerading as a book. You should pick up some books on the craft if you want to make a go at this. Since you like King, I suggest ‘On Writing.'”

And that was it. I got the book by King, read it, took it seriously, followed the single writing prompt in the back of the book and turned it into a 60-page story. It was the first piece of fiction I had yet finished… And it was GOOD.

That motivated me. I studied more, I researched and interviewed with homicide detectives and then I wrote m first novel. 90K words of my thoughts laid out in a comprehensible fashion. And it was pretty good, too!

I couldn’t fucking believe it. I kept going, another novel, this one my tour de force, The 13 Lives of a Television Repair Man. This one wasn’t “pretty good” it was damned good if I do say so myself and it brought me to another level in my confidence and journey. I gained the skills I needed to call this thing more than a hobby.

Fast forward – I was 40 pages in on a new novel, a western I am writing for my dad, and I went to my drawer to get some pencils, and there it was… the last draft of static. I thumbed through it. I had no idea how to make it work but realized it was either going to happen, or I was going to need to burn it and erase all the files. I put that western away (sorry Dad) and went to work on my flagship novel.

Turns out I had to scrap the whole thing anyway… the original draft was written in first person limited perspective. It was clunky and weird and I had to start over, but I have invested again… I read the original, one chapter at a time, then re-wrote it from memory in third person perspective… eventually, I went off script and just started winging it. I followed my cousin’s advice, which was that my book wasn’t a book, but an outline. I only ended up keeping the last chapter in its entirety and a few random scenes that I was able to salvage from the original.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the re-envisioned work I have so long hoped to bring the world, Static-Redux.

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