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Archives for April, 2018
Days of Fire by Samuel Katz [Book Review]
I picked up Days of Fire as part of my background reading for the Divided Land megagame last Saturday. Samuel Katz was a member of Irgun in the mid 40s, and Days of Fire is his story of how Irgun pushed Israel into being. Days of Fire Days of Fire is aptly titled, Palestine from 1944 until the end of the British Mandate was a turbulent place. Thousands of people were killed or wounded in the violence and more were dispossessed. Even before the British withdrew there was a civil war. Irgun were an extremist breakaway group of the Revisionist Zionists. A bit like PIRA three decades later. Mostly they tried to cause chaos and avoid killing people, although sometimes their warnings went unheeded, like the bombing of the King David Hotel. Katz started as a secretary to the South…
First Mission ANDR12 [Short Story]
First Mission ANDR12 is a near future speculative fiction short story about the first mission of the Autonomous Networked Dynamic-learning Robots, or ANDRs for short. First Mission is set an unspecified time a decade or two into the future and in a generic counterinsurgency in an unspecified African country, somewhere in the greener belt between Sierra Leone and Kenya. I've written a bit more about the background to the ANDR featured in First Mission over on my military focused blog Hot Blood & Cold Steel. NB this is a first draft, there may be typos, inconsistencies and bits that don't really help the narrative. If you are feeling generous please call them out in a comment and I'll use that when I edit the story. Otherwise, please enjoy. First Mission ANDR12 A Royal Air Force Merlin HC3A helicopter during a…
A Hundred Years Before [Poetry]
War Memorial in Boubers-sur-Canche, France (photo: James Kemp) I wrote the first draft of A Hundred Years Before after visiting a cemetery in France in Boubers sur Canche near Arras. It wasn't one of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, it was an ordinary French commune cemetery, but it had over a hundred graves of French soldiers killed in action during August 1914. On reflection I realised that British soldiers, and before that the constituent nations fielded soldiers in the same place as the legions of WW1 we're currently remembering publicly. Let's not forget their forebears. A Hundred Years Before Here I stand now, near the border of France and Belgium. The cockpit of Europe. A hundred years before, others stood here. British soldiers who fought, and died, with the French against the Germans on this soil. Le sale Boche.…
Themself Giveaway Evaluation
Chocolate teapot. What is better, this or a kindle giveaway? I promised to do some evaluation of my Goodreads Giveaway. Before the Themself Giveaway on Goodreads there were six reviews averaging four stars (1 x 2, 3 x 4 & 2 x 5 stars). Another 28 people had it on their 'to read' shelf. Overall I doubt there were 100 copies already out there. I know for sure that I'd sent out 10 paperbacks for review, as well as emailing some ebook versions. Evaluation of the Goodreads Giveaway The Goodreads Giveaway offered up to 100 ebooks to people with a Kindle registered to I also offered anyone that commented on the announcement post an ebook. As at midnight on 21 March 192 people had requested a copy. 174 of those added it to their shelves. The Costs There's two ways…