Two New Books Coming Soon!

 And I'm Opening a New Substack Blog.

Hail to all my blog subscribers and those of you who signed up for emails!

The latest  news is that there are now two books in the pipeline, and Kirov & company get pages in each one. These are presently scheduled for March and April, and my Substack will be sending out the details on these projects later. There are still spots in the Advance Review Teams for each book, so if you want to be a team member, and get the book two weeks before anyone else, email me.

                        Coming April 15                                            Coming March 15

The Writing Shop is opening space on Substack!

I’ve decided to move blog and weekly email traffic to Substack where I can opine on other things and write about topics of interest. I know it’s a busy world out there for you, both online or off, and I’m just one more pulse in the wire. On Substack I’ll be hitting some different vibrations, on the craft of writing, the history behind my books, the characters walking my pages, and then even things like current events.

But my Substack won’t just be a book tour thing. I just threw up a post about ChatGPT again, the hot topic of the day, where I asked it to write fiction, do some research, and proofread as a writer’s tool. How did it do? (Hint, it’s a great proofreader). The transcript of that conversation is posted there if this AI thing is of any interest to you. I respect your time, and privacy, so I did not load my email list into Substack. If you want to get my Substack posts, news, special offers, announcements, team openings, polls & surveys, articles and such, you can find me here:

Https://Writingshop.substack.com 

 

I hope you’ll tune in!

John Schettler

Clash of Empires

 A Devil Ship meets Imperial China

In my latest book I introduced one William Jardine, the Scottish trader who established the J&M (Jardine Matheson & Company) that came to be the center of the opium trade. Jardine got rich and powerful with his fleet of China Clippers running opium  from India to China, and bringing back teas and silks to England. He came to be known as the Tai-Pan, or supreme leader of the China Trade, and he also helped the mighty British East India Company take a nice profit from that trade. Then he sees  the Devil Ship, which he mistakenly calls the “HMS” Nemesis. Even though it was a purpose-built ship, not for the Royal Navy, but for the British East India Company who would profit from the war it would enable.

I first met this man (Jardine) in the landmark novel Tai-Pan by James Clavell, one of my most admired writers. I read Shogun nearly 40 years ago in 1975 when it was in everyone’s lap on trains, planes, and subways, the book that was Clavell’s breakthrough novel. Then I discovered Tai-Pan had been written eleven years earlier in 1966, and I devoured it. Returning to that book this year after finishing The Devil Ship, I was delighted to see it covered some of the same history as my latest novel.  I even found a scene where Clavell’s Tai-Pan, who he called “Dirk Struan” instead of the man’s real name, catches his first glimpse of the paddle steamer Nemesis in the book Tai-Pan. He swears at it roundly, seeing it for what it was, the coming of a new age in shipping, and the harbinger of the death of his prized China Clippers, the most beautiful sailing ships that ever graced the seas. 

These were the sort of things I explored in The Devil Ship, a time of conflict between two empires, two ages in naval technology, two starkly different cultures. It was a time where new ships, iron-hulled steamers, were just coming into regular service, and the sparks of inevitable conflict ignited by the grinding of two cultures, the British and Chinese, started the fires of war. They were both Imperial powers with long histories that were locked in a struggle in the mid to late 19th Century, and among the prizes Great Britain secured in those wars was the island that became the glittering jewel of a city we know today as Hong Kong. They held it for over 100 years.

I hope you’ll take the time to pick up a copy of The Devil Ship and enjoy it! In my story, there had to be mention of the Tai-Pan as well, for I had learned that William Jardine all but spoon-fed the plan the British used to defeat Qing China in the Opium Wars to Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary at that time.  So here was a perfect setting, the Age of Sail meets the coming of Steam and Iron, ships that ‘endured the disgust of the seas and the contempt of the wind’ as Clavell’s Tai-Pan laments. Throw in the last days of the red coated British infantry, the Martini & Henry Rifle, the new quick firing Nordenfeld field guns, Maxim Machine Guns, a Devil Ship sailing up river to Canton with the Royal Navy, and it was a whirl of a story.

The Devil Ship starkly illustrates the importance of a powerful navy. 42 Ships of the Royal Navy and less than 20,000 British regulars were able to bring down a dynasty that had ruled China since 1636, with an army of over 1 million soldiers. How could that have happened? Read The Devil Ship and see. Yet Britain could never do today what it easily accomplished in 1842.  Since then, England’s Navy has dramatically reduced in size, to a point where it now has only five destroyers, while modern day China has over six times as many and will build five new ships in that class every year. It pays to look at history and remember the vital importance of sea power. That is as true today as it was in the 19th Century. 

First Reviews of The Devil Ship are in!

 

Dear Readers, 

 The Devil Ship was released on 12 JAN 2023. I want to share with you some of the reviews it has received:

“The depth and scale of the research is peerless and results in a thoroughly believable account of an alternate history of the First Opium War."

The explanation of the origins of the Opium Wars is by far the best and most concise one I’ve ever read and sets the scene superbly for the adventures of HMS Nemesis.”

“It has all the intrigue and background that we have come to expect from the author. Treasure ships, naval guns and Marines intermix with the all important KEY that makes all this time travel possible. It ends with a statement:

"The West might do better in their dealings with modern China if it were to remember what China suffered in the 19th Century." This book tells some of that story in in a book that you will enjoy.”

“I certainly found ‘The Devil Ship’ very interesting - almost steam-punky! I love this idea of a ship like that, ahead of its time, only in the deep past. (It’s even got rockets. What’s not to love? Except perhaps the fact that it really existed - like Kirov)”

“5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping alternative history of The First Opium War”

“If you want to read a book that will keep you reading well into the night, knowing you should really put it down as you have work the next day but can’t, then this is a book for you.”

If you have read the book or are still reading it, I  encourage you to sound off and post an online review. Reviews are key to getting the book noticed,  helping it gain momentum, and rise from millions of other published books. It matters a great deal to me to hear from you. I look forward to reading them.

Note that you do not need to finish the book to post a review. You can share, for example, what made you select the book, what goes on in your mind about the chapter you are reading. And you can come back and edit or expand your review at any time. A survey related to the book will be released soon. I’d like to hear from you!

If you have not already done so, go and get a copy of the book.

A Word on Genres...

 

What is Military Historical Fiction with Time Travel?

The Devil Ship, my latest novel, was just released. A Military Historical Fiction, this book adds a twist common in my work, Time Travel, which opens the door to interventions that spin out an Alternative History. Those who have been following my writing, particularly the Kirov Series, one of the longest stories ever told, are familiar with this genre. For those who are new, what is military historical fiction with time travel?

Historical military fiction with time travel is a story set in a documented historical period that involves military conflict. It can be a war or battle in the past, or a hypothetical conflict in the future, where the author presents real historical figures as characters, sometimes interacting with his own fictional characters. The arrival of characters capable of time travel causes interventions and variations in that history, which changes the documented flow of past events and produces an alternative historical outcome. Interventions in Military history can be particularly decisive and dramatically alter future history arising from that period. For example, what if the South had won the American Civil War? What if Napoleon had defeated Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo? These are the kind of questions explored by mixing historical, military and time travel genres.

In Kirov, I displaced a powerful fighting ship some 80 years into the past in the middle of an ongoing historical naval battle in the Norwegian Sea. The fictional characters aboard the ship then struggle to understand what has happened to them, before realizing that the power their ship wields gives them a means of changing the outcomes and consequences of the war. In many cases, the intervention of the time traveler changes the history to create an alternative history of the events covered in the story.

All of these elements are also present in the Devil Ship. What are the historically documented wars and battles? What characters are real and what are fictional? What are the time travel elements? You can find answers to these questions from the book.

          

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Just Released!

 The Devil Ship... Available now.

Announcing the release of John Schettler’s latest novel, The Devil Ship.

 GET IT HERE

The Devil Ship was well named, both by its creators and by those who would have to face it.

 Yet when it sailed from Liverpool on its maiden voyage, a false destination was given to the press to hide its real purpose and mission. Not even its Captain and crew could know its true destination.  The ship was called the  Nemesis. Yet her Captain, Master William Hall, Royal Navy, found he would soon have the company of a most mysterious man, a company man, who supposedly knew the answers to all of his many questions. Along the way, the ship is being steered through the unfathomable waters of fate as well as the wild seas of the world.

Where were they going? What was the Nemesis designed to do? What were his orders? Soon the Devil Ship would shake all under heaven in the clash of two of the world’s great Empires, where the fate of each would hang in the balance.  

He was bound for mystery and destiny in one throw, half way around the world, where a clash of two cultures, two great empires, would write one of the darkest chapters of modern history ever seen. Something was telling him this would be grand, daring, bold beyond his imaginings, and yet terribly wrong.

A Military Historical Fiction, this book adds a twist common in John’s work, Time Travel, which opens the door to interventions that spin out an Alternative History. If you enjoyed Field of Glory or Zulu Hour, this volume is in that same vein, and will be sure to please.

New Book Scheduled for General Release

 Devil Ship Getting Ready to Sail!

The Writing Shop Press announces author John Schettler’s new historical military fiction, The Devil Ship, is now scheduled for release on January 12th for Kindle and in Trade Paperback. The research was even more extensive for this one, relying on official accounts by the ship’s Captain, numerous other eye-witness accounts, a couple of movies available, including a 60-episode drama of certain events translated into English for John, episode by episode, minute by minute.  The book will feature an atrocious war involving both naval and land fighting between two great empires.

Mark the release date on your calendar and be among the first to get the book!

Happy New Year!

 Exciting new books ahead!

Happy Holidays!

My next book, The Devil Ship, is almost ready and coming soon. I have put a dedicated page on my website. Check it out at http://www.writingshop.ws/html/devil_ship.html 

Hope you had a great Christmas Holiday! I asked Santa to slip something into your stocking, a free book from me. If you didn’t get yours, it will still be available for a  free download through 3 JAN 2023. Start here:  https://writingshop.ws/html/gift.html.  It would be nice to see you post online reviews. 

Hoping your new year will be full of promise, opportunity, peace and happiness. I know that’s a lot to ask, but why not?  

Happy New Year!

Here's a peek at the cover for my next release - Coming Soon!

Christmas Is Coming!

I am happy to tell you that my next book, a historical military fiction, is reaching its final draft and will be released soon. The release date will be announced in early January.

As you may have noticed, there have been a lot of activities going on at the Writing Shop.  We have received a lot of emails. At present, the Beta Reader and ARC team positions are all filled. If you have an interest in these,  I will make sure you are included in the next project.

Right now, I expect most of you will be trying to fill those stockings and check off the last few items on your gift lists! I’m going to be sticking something in your Christmas stocking this Christmas Eve too. Be sure to see next week’s announcement in this space. And join the mailing list to be among the first to find it out.

Advance Review Copies going out soon!

 12 DEC 2022

ARC Team Members

Do you know that in the first screening of the film Pretty Woman, Vivian (Julia Roberts) and Edward (Richard Gere) did not end up together? The audience hated the ending. The producers changed it and gave us a movie loved by so many.

I would love to know your perspective as a reader before the publication of my new book. I know you are passionate about the genre of my new project – a naval, military fiction that involves the clash of two cultures and two great empires. As I am too familiar with my work, I need fresh pairs of eyes and minds to provide impartial feedback.

There are still a few spots open for Advance Review Copy (ARC) team members.  I invite you to sign up for the team. Just drop me an email with your mailing address. This is a commitment to read the full First Draft of my upcoming book before it goes to general release, and then consider posting an honest review on Amazon on or near launch day. (Est. 15 JAN 2023)

Please sign up as soon as you can to secure your spot as a reader. I will send you details on what I am looking for with the book. You can request either the Trade Paperback or kindle file version (Free), and I’ll get it to you as soon as the First Draft is in readable form. Due to time constraints, overseas readers will get the Kindle file.

Thanks for your support as a reader in the past. I’m hoping to make the next book launch a great success with your help.

Season 5 Premier

Kirov Series: PRIME MERIDIAN

Available Now

Season Five Begins with Prime Meridian

    The War in the West takes a dangerous step forward when Churchill orders a dramatic retaliatory strike on Germany. Even as plans are laid for the invasion of Italy, Marshall and Eisenhower now steer the course of the campaign in a bold new direction. But first, the last of the German fleet in the Med must be challenged at sea. In the battle that follows, the German battlecruiser Kaiser Wilhelm soon finds itself grappling with a mystery, and strange new foes on the high seas.
       Meanwhile, Gennadi Orlov makes a most fateful decision and sets out to find Ivan Volkov in 1908. He is joined by a most unexpected visitor, but they soon find that they are not the only ones in the hunt, and events in the crucial year of 1908 now threaten to spiral out of control.
      The Fairchild group continues its quest for the lost key, even as the Meridian Project team detects the onset of a dangerous wave of utter annihilation in the distant future that threatens the integrity of Time itself.

  The Grand Finality they have long feared begins to cast its ever deepening shadow, and the fate of the Prime Meridian is now in grave jeopardy.

BUY NOW: For Kindle ~ $4.99

MORE ABOUT PRIME MERIDIAN

    After being upstaged by Sir Roger Ames in the marvelous retelling of the Waterloo Campaign,Field of Glory, Season 5 now begins with Prime Meridian. Like the Season 4 Premier, Doppelganger, the book’s striking cover hints strongly that this volume will take us deeper into the mysteries, and consequences, of time travel, which has always been at the heart of the series itself. Readers know that ‘nothing is written,’ nothing ever certain, and ‘everything is permitted, ‘as the old Ismali saying goes. In Prime Meridian, several missions into the past now present us with some startling twists, and grave consequences.

    Even as the war continues, with the Allies now poised to make their invasion of Italy, the Germans must decide how and where to defend. Kesselring argues strongly that the key ports and airfield complexes in the south should be defended, while Rommel holds that everything should simply be pulled back to the Apennine Range and only the Po Valley should be held. At the same time, the Allies are dickering over any number of options now open to them after the fall of Corsica. Churchill proposes a daring move into the Balkans, Montgomery prefers his historical “Heel and Toe” operations, and with Sardinia in hand, now Allied air power can easily cover a thrust aimed directly at Rome. The plan that is finally chosen is, however, most unexpected, a conspiracy born of collusion between Eisenhower and General Marshall.

    Yet everything these men grapple with pales before the dilemma now facing Fedorov and company. A triumvirate of our local heroes, Volsky, Fedorov, and Karpov (the Siberian), finally agree on an attempt to eliminate Ivan Volkov to prevent the rise of the Orenburg Federation. Yet their plans are complicated by the great loose cannon in the story, one Gennadi Orlov. Separated from Fedorov’s team on their last mission to Ilanskiy, Orlov has remained behind in 1908. Now he makes a fateful choice when he detects another modern day naval service jacket signal, and realizes who it must be.

    Orlov has always been a wild card in the deck of the main series characters on the battlecruiser Kirov. His bumbling about, impulsive decisions, strange finds on the tundra of Siberia, have always introduced some of the major plot twists of the series, and that will certainly be the case again here. First, Orlov finds he is not alone as he sets off to hunt down Ivan Volkov. The plan hatched by Fedorov and company is now about to undergo a convulsive twist, and the implications are more threatening to the integrity of the history than anything that has yet happened in the series.

    Meanwhile, the Meridian Project cannot fail to notice what is happening from the vantage point of the Berkeley Lab facility in 2021. With war imminent, their Golem monitors now present a startling series of variations originating from 1908 and migrating all along the continuum, to their present. As all the series character sets slowly come to the same realizations about what is happening, the author uses the Meridian Team to explain all the time theory behind this development and make it more graspable. The striking cover illustrates this as well, though you won’t find out what the Hindu statue means until very near the end of this one. It’s an amazing synthesis of the author’s entire universe of writing, all blooming now in the middle of this marathon retelling of the history of WWII.

    Ever since the arrival of physicist Paul Dorland, reprising his role as Lieutenant Commander Wellings from the final book in the author’s Meridian time travel series, he and his project team of four intrepid researchers have made occasional cameo appearances in the story. We last saw them take notice of a new historical variation cause by Sir Roger Ames in Field of Glory. In fact, they even attempted to prevent his intervention there, but he was able to slip away on the eve of Waterloo, which led to that excellent retelling of the entire campaign. The time travel, while often brought keenly into focus, is always just a vehicle for the author to take us into some corner of the history where he has undoubtedly spent a long time grazing. Field of Glory is now as one of the most outstanding alternate history books ever penned, and as volume 1 in the Keyholder’s Saga, we get the promise of more to come in that series. In Prime Meridian, Dorland and his team appear again, getting about three full chapters near the end of this volume, largely used by the author to explain the consequences of things the other characters are doing, and to advance the mystery around the formation of that Grand Finality Elena Fairchild was warning about.

    Yet in spite of the cover emphasizing the time travel aspects of the story, this book is mostly focused on the history. The first 15 chapters all continue the evolving war in the West. Then we get a clever an interesting diversion in Part VI, where the author takes us on a little journey with the Russian Baltic fleet enroute to its fated appointment in the Tsushima Straits. That little incident makes a clever back-stitch to those events, which were echoed when Karpov arrived in 1908 with Kirov, deciding to reset the history in Russia’s favor. We all saw how that turned out. That segment sets up another intriguing loop involving the strange talisman Orlov discovered in Siberia, the Devil’s Teardrop. Then we get that seeming diversion stitched right back into the main story line where the German raider Kaiser Wilhelm has again broken off from Raeder’s task force. As before, mischief and mayhem lie dead ahead.

    All in all, Prime Meridian launches Season 5 quite well. We get new beginnings, echoes of past segments in the series, lines drawn to connect some of the many subplots, and at the end of this one, a terrifying twist that few will likely expect. Ahead lies the remaining months of 1943, and then the decisive year of 1944 in this long retelling of the war…. Assuming the time line holds together long enough for the author to write it all. Something tells me it will, as Mr. Schettler has, on more than one occasion, vowed that he would take the series all the way to the end of the war.

    And we get to take that wonderful ride!
    Look for Prime Meridian coming October 1, and welcome to Season 5.

BUY NOW: For Kindle ~ $4.99

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

Coming September 1

Keyholders Saga, Volume I

FIELD of GLORY

A Special Letter to Kirov Series readers concerning this book:

Dear Readers,
   As I labored to complete the final volume of Season Four, (Prime Meridian) the story suddenly took me on a journey that was far longer than the one I had planned. I was working on a segment involving the Duke of Elvington, and the mystery of the Keyholders. It was meant to simply give that plot line a little more ink, and carry his journey forward. In truth, he has been in the back of my mind for some time since first introduced way back in season one, and many readers have written to me asking what ever happened to him, and whether we would ever get to see what he was up to with his Footman Ian Thomas.
   As I wrote this segment, it began to draw me into his secret little mission again, and I also included the Meridian Project Team, who have now discovered the Duke’s name appearing suspiciously in and around variations in the history that they have been monitoring. I meant to stop there, and then continue on with my rampage through WWII, but the Waterloo battle was so compelling that I just kept going. The sound of drum and fife, the hard tramp of marching soldiers, and the distant rumble of cannon drew me inexorably to the Duke’s journey, and his strange rivalry with Fortier.

   I have always held to an important principle in my writing—when the story is there, alive in your mind and emerging from your imagination, by god, write it! So I did.  But Prime Meridian will be along very soon, and I will have it for you on Oct 1st. I just could not finish both volumes in 60 days, and Field of Glory was selected to prempt Prime Meridian and come out first. You should think of it as an essential part of the Kirov Series as a whole, and it will contain material vital to what happens in the series as it continues, so don't miss out.

  This battle was a place I have long wanted to go, and it dovetailed into several other aspects of the series as a whole: the physical time rifts created by the Tunguska Event, the mystery of the key found within the Selene Horse and then lost on HMS Rodney, and the expedition now launched by Fairchild and company to try and get to a place in the history where that key might be recovered before it was lost. In effect, the story I present to you here in this special edition is still an essential part of the Kirov Series.
   Sir Roger is also in pursuit of that key, using the one he already had to try and find it in an earlier time period--hence, his journey to the year 1815. But these novels are all about military history, and how could I set Ames and Thomas ashore at Ostend on the eve of Waterloo, and then tiptoe by the thunder of the campaign that would begin a day later? I could not. The urge to go there became irresistible, and so in order to show you what Sir Roger Ames and his rival Fortier were doing, I had to give you good look at the Waterloo Campaign they were tampering with, for that was where the deadly game between Sir Roger and his Rival Jean Michel Fortier was being played out.

   When Lord Nelson made an appearance in the story we learned that Fortier had been trying to bend the history towards a French victory at Trafalgar, one that would permit Bonaparte to carry out his plan to invade England. That plan was foiled, and you will learn more about Ames part in accomplishing that here. Yet that little victory did not end Fortier’s ambitions, as this tale will reveal. There are many key Nexus Points in the history where hidden Pushpoints lurk, just waiting to be found. Fortier thought he could find them at Waterloo, the campaign that seemed to be balanced on a razor’s edge, the “nearest run thing” that Wellington himself said he ever saw.
   I had to decide how to best develop and present this intriguing subplot. I could string it along, dropping chapters into books throughout Season Five, but suddenly that story line just took hold, and before I knew it, I had written this long alternate history depiction Waterloo campaign! The thought of slicing that all up and stuffing parts in to four or five books next season just seemed unappealing to me. The narrative had its own drama and gravity, and I just came to think that it simply had to be concentrated in one volume.

   So here it is, a special edition that has now slipped into the line of books in the series like someone sneaking into line at the movie theater. I will make it the Season Four Finale here, one of the most climatic battles in all modern history. Prime Meridian will then become the Season Five Premier, but you will not have to wait two more months for it. Since it is already more than half finished as of this writing, it will be released Oct 1. That volume has a major twist of the rope in terms of Allied strategy, is it pulls the war in a very different direction. And without my obsession with Waterloo taking up so many of its chapters, I can now focus better on that twist, and all the plot lines involving Orlov, Fedorov and Karpov.
   But it is Ames we follow most closely in this volume, and with him, we will inevitably be drawn into the dramatic events of mid-June, 1815, and the great battle of Waterloo. His tale is essential to the “Keyholder’s Saga,” and it is a road that must be taken in order to carry that mystery forward. That saga may end up seeing us visit other places in the history touched by the deep web of time rifts that have opened as a consequence of Tunguska, and also one that may reveal the other Keyholders who have thus far remained hidden.

   With the decision made to concentrate Sir Roger’s adventure into one volume here, I thought it best to reprise the few chapters scattered about in earlier volumes, as far back as Devil’s Garden and Armageddon. This would serve two goals: firstly, it would to concentrate the whole story here, like an army that has all of its corps present for battle. Secondly, it would make this novel capable of standing alone for any new reader interested in this history—in effect, “Keyholder’s saga, Volume I.” New readers would learn who the Duke of Elvington was, meet his Footman Thomas, and learn how they actually got to the scene of these events without having to find and read chapters here and there in three or four other Kirov Series novels. Otherwise, they would be lost.
   All in all, it just made sense to present the story this way, concentrating that subplot here instead of continuing to deliver it in small bites next season. So the opening six chapters will catch us all up, and then the rest of the book is all new material. Series readers may also find that I have seeded new “clues” in this opening material that they were not aware of when they first read it, so that helps as well.

   To simulate what happens in these events, I created a massive wargame map of Belgium, from Brussels to just south of Charleroi, and at 200 meters per hex. It was based on the excellent period map by Ferraris to be as accurate as possible, and I provide a link to that map so you can all use it to follow along and find the places mentioned in the narrative. As I do with all the alternate history battles in the series, this campaign was intensively researched and “gamed out” as I wrote the chapters presented here. It has long been a battle that has always been a personal obsession for me, I hope my enthusiasm for this campaign has inspired my prose.

Enjoy! - John Schettler