Category: Epsilon Universe

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“Brave hearts do not back down.” — Sophocles

Welcome to the next stop on the Blog Tour de Troops, put together by the Indie Book Collective.  If you got here from Stephen England‘s website, hello!  The next stop on the blog tour is Paul Rice‘s site.  Take a look at what they’ve got to show you and leave a note for them so you get some free ebooks and so does a serviceman or woman.

Friday, November 11 was Veteran’s Day (Remembrance Day in the UK, Canada, and other Commonwealth nations) this year, a time when we as Americans (or Englishmen and women, Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians, to name a few) celebrate the service (and unfortunate sacrifices) of many men and women in uniform who have put their own lives on hold for the good of others.  It’s a day of respectful remembrance, celebration, and appreciation we share with other nations across the globe, thanks to the shared experience of World War I.

The Great War ended on 11 November 1918.  It was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

It didn’t.

My great-grandfather served in the US Navy during World War I.  He lied about his age in order to enlist, wanting to fight for the country of his birth.  He was of Irish extraction but born in the United States.  He had only daughters, but his son-in-law served in the Army Corps of Engineers, rebuilding parts of Germany after the end of World War II.

My other grandfather, the son of a Chicago police officer, served in World War II, training fighter pilots on the home front.  He never spoke about his service, but several years before he died he wrote down everything he could remember of that time and gave it to me in a sealed envelope.

Now, three years after his death, I still haven’t been ready to read it, even though I asked him to write it all down for me.  He was buried with military honors, complete with an honor guard.  The flag that draped his coffin is now in the custody of my uncle, his oldest son.

There’s something important to our collective consciousness about soldiers.  Though I have never served myself, I realize know that there have always been servicemen (and women) in my life.  A family friend I called “uncle” who served in Operation: Desert Storm (I wanted to send him snow, because it just wasn’t right that he didn’t have snow in Kuwait), a cousin stationed in Omaha on September 11, friends and classmates who joined the service either because of September 11 or in spite of it, friends who are veterans who have come home after their time as different (and many times, better) people.  Though I have not always agreed with the government’s decisions to deploy troops, I have never wavered in my support or gratitude to these men and women in uniform.

Likewise, I am absolutely fascinated by the military, which is reflected in my fiction–in my imaginings of how things might work in some far future military apparatus.  The military of the Epsilon universe is much different from the reality of today’s modern militaries, though I like to think that I capture some of the camaraderie, some of the loyalty, the brother/sisterhood of arms that seem to be an inherent part of the heartwarming stories we see on the news and in the press on the home front.

Even in the days and weeks where I hated what people were being asked to do for the good of “national security,” my fascination with and appreciation of the military–the servicemen and women thereof–never wavered.

It takes a lot to serve your country, to sacrifice of yourself and your family for the greater good–because it’s not just about one soldier, it’s about their family, their community.  One person’s service changes everyone around them–that’s how I feel, in any case.  It makes us examine our lives, our feelings, the way we think and what we do.  Regardless of where they’re sent or what they’re doing, men and women in the armed services are doing their jobs for the greater good of all.

I have to believe that.  I hope you do, too.

This blog post was made as part of the Blog Tour de Troops, celebrating the service and sacrifice of veterans in the United States and the world over.  We appreciate your time and your service, even if we don’t always show it.

If you’re a serviceman or woman yourself, or a family member of a soldier, I’d love to hear your story.  Just leave a comment below.  If you just want to say thank you to men and women in uniform, drop a note as well.

Leave me your email address in your comment so I can get you set up for a FREE ebook copy of my debut novel, Epsilon: Broken Stars.  Every comment gets you a free copy–and a free book for a serviceman or woman.

Midday Edit: If you have a specific serviceman or woman that you’d like the book donated to, please leave their e-mail address in your comment as well as theirs so I can shoot them a link+code, too.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke

And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke 

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‘Good, because I think I need it.’ – Excerpt from NaNoWriMo ’11, Epsilon: Redeemer

A little bit of a teaser from the rough draft of Epsilon: Redeemer, second book of the Epsilon series.  I’m writing the first draft of the book for NaNoWriMo 2011, and now I’ve got a bit that I’m okay with sharing.

            ‘Quintilian was captured by the Imperium.  He must have been, since we swept the area where he was and found signs of a fight, but no body.  Still trying to figure it out; word would be appreciated.’

I rubbed my temple.  It wasn’t good news.  Quintilian was another regional lead, two sectors over in the Borderworlds, but closer to the edge of Imperium territory than my area of influence.  He’d been a friend of Korea’s from school and one of my closest allies in the upper echelons of the Resistance, especially when it came to trying to find her.

I closed my eyes, leaning back.  I was with Renegade again, taking my turn on the watch.  I’d been switching off with Sam and Conrad, but Kallyn had come to take a watch or two, a signal to me that she was getting ready to get more deeply involved in Resistance affairs.

I wasn’t sure whether that’d be a good thing or a bad thing.

A groan from the bed dragged me out of the quagmire of reports.  Renegade had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past few days, eyes dull with fever and barely responsive when we spoke to her.  It hadn’t surprised me.  I wasn’t quite sure what point the process had been interrupted at, but I knew that this was as close to normal as these things got.  Her system was in a state of shock.  Nothing was going to happen until that fever broke, and I knew it.

Part of me was silently thankful that Wil wasn’t around.  I’d been able to taste his worry when he’d first brought me in on this, and it was disconcerting to say the least.  Better he wasn’t here to keep right on worrying and distracting everyone around him.

The fever had finally broken the night before, but she hadn’t been awake since then.

Setting aside the palmtop where I’d been reading the reports, I leaned toward her, watching as Renegade lifted a hand to rub her eyes and groaned again, starting to roll and curl on her side.  She noticed me a few seconds later, blinking blearily.

“Where am I?” she murmured, voice hoarse and heavy with confusion.

“Caldin,” I told her.  I touched her shoulder as she started to sit up.  “Careful, you’ve been mostly horizontal for a couple weeks except to get some food into you.  Don’t sit up too fast.  I don’t want you keeling over on me.”

She laughed weakly and let me help her sit up.  She hunched over a little, staring at her hands, thin and pale against the gray coverlet.  The engagement ring Wil had left on her finger sparkled in the room’s dim light and her gaze fastened on it for a moment.  Her breath caught.

“I don’t know where that is,” she whispered.  “I don’t know who I am.  Who’re you?”

“Call me Luc,” I said.  “I’m a doctor, and a friend.  I’m here to help you.”

Her gaze slid sidelong to me, hazel eyes pinning me in place.  She had one of those stares, one that could paralyze a man with a glance, a certain sort of intensity that could instill comfort or unease at her leisure.  “Promise?”

“I promise.”

One of her hands closed around mine and squeezed with a strength that surprised me.  “Good,” she said in a ragged whisper.  “Because I think I need it.”

Copyright 2011, Erin M. Klitzke

Like what you see?  See what comes before in Epsilon: Broken Stars, available where ebooks are sold.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke 

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Fragments of background (Epsilon universe)

What follows here is spoiler-riffic, so if you’re not into that kind of thing, don’t read below the break.  I’m in the midst of working on Epsilon: Redeemer for NaNoWriMo, and in doing so have ended up looking back at some scenes I scribbled out a long time back, when I was tooling around with a project called Resistance, which was a story mostly about Korea Cooper and Lucas Ross.  I have a .doc file full of scenes that were a mix of background scenes and sequences that might end up in later works in the Epsilon universe.

More ramblings (and one of those scenes) below the break.

Continue reading “Fragments of background (Epsilon universe)”

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Nanowrimo: The final countdown to November

It’s T-minus two days to Nanowrimo.  For the first time in several years, I won’t be able to stay up until midnight Halloween night to get my first thousand words in before 2am on November 1.  I blame my new position at the store for these things, but I suppose a night’s rest and eight hours at the store won’t kill my creative process before I have a chance to get started.

This year’s project is something entirely new in an old setting.  It’s the sequel to Epsilon: Broken Stars (which was released on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon yesterday), called Epsilon: Redeemer.  It’s a change of PoV from Aaron Taylor, a trip into the head of Lucas Ross.

All those things he could never say to Aaron?  Now readers are going to know what some of them were.

My plotting process this year is proving to be much, much different than it has been in past years.  All of my other Nanowrimo projects over the years (When All’s Said and Done, When Angels Cry, Fate and Second Chances, an untitled fantasy piece, Awakenings, The Last Colony, and Ashes to Ashes) have been in new universes or universes created the year before (When All’s Said and Done and When Angels Cry are both in the Lost Angels universe, Fate and Second Chances and the untitled fantasy piece are in the same universe, and The Last Colony and Ashes to Ashes are both in the same universe).  Never have I worked with a universe like my Epsilon universe, where I’ve lived with it and developed it over the course of more than a decade.  Furthermore, the story of Epsilon: Redeemer will fit neatly into a three year gap between Epsilon: Broken Stars and an untitled project based on notes and concepts that originally appeared in drafts 1-3 of Epsilon (back when the project was one big–or two big–books).  In essence, I’ve stepped into somewhat uncharted territory in a universe where I know what’s gone before and what will happen after, but not the specifics of what’s happened in between.

I’m also doing it with a new character, one that didn’t exist before the draft of what became Epsilon: Broken Stars.

That’s right, Lucas Ross didn’t exist before Aaron’s story came to Caldin.  I actually came up with the idea for him as part of a short-lived Epsilon universe science fiction game (born as a “what if characterX had a brother and he joined the Resistance?”) and his importance completely snowballed from there.

And now he’s going to have his own book.

I started plotting in earnest this morning, mostly because I didn’t want to be tempted to start actually writing him before November 1.  He’s one of those characters that curls up in the back of your brain and lurks, waiting to be let out.  He’s a bit lower key than either Aaron Taylor or Caren Flannery and much less bitter than the former.  He’s got secrets, and it’ll be tricky to figure out when to reveal them–and how.

There’s a lot of stuff that he knows that he couldn’t tell Aaron.

The truth is, Lucas Ross is part of my attempt to make Aaron’s father, Daniel, a more sympathetic character in the long term, rather than just the monster Aaron thinks he is.  We’ll see how well I succeed in that when the time comes.

Now, however, I have to get back to my notecard outlining.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke