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.

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  

MERIDIAN V: Golem 7

JUST RELEASED! (12/12/11)

Book V in the award winning Meridian Series Time Travel novels has just been released. The book brings this quintet of novels blending sci-fi and historical fiction to a satisfying conclusion, with the promise of more to come. Buy Golem 7 on Amazon.

Book V: Golem 7

"Nordhausen is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind the Palma Event. Now the project team struggles to discover how and where the Assassins have intervened to restore the chaos of Palma, and their search leads them on one of the greatest naval sagas of modern history--the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck.

REVIEW:

The title Golem 7 refers to an industrious grouping of Kelly Ramer’s search Golem programs, which specialize in uncovering alarming variations in history by comparing live data on the Internet to a massive RAM bank of known recorded events. As soon as a variation of contradiction is detected an alarm is triggered to warn team members involved in an elaborate time travel project at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. This time the alarm produces a strange event. By some means the German battleship Bismarck was not sunk on its maiden voyage, and now the team must sleuth the course of events in the Bismarck campaign to find out how and why, and try to put the ship back in its watery grave before its fifteen inch guns wreak havoc on British convoys, and the time continuum as well!

 

This volume presents a new approach in the telling of the story. The same crisp and informative dialogue is used here to set the parameters of the history and mission, but the main weapon used by the project team this time is information. After identifying the key Pushpoints involved, the author then launches into a convincing and exciting alternate history retelling of the campaign, where all the little details in the history are keenly elucidated and one comes to feel that the history itself rested on the most precarious stack of small, inconsequential events.

These live history scenes alternate in groups with the more familiar chapters set in the Berkeley Lawrence Lab facility, as the author shows us results on a live stage peopled by the real historical figures instead of having his team members just talk about it in the lab. In those scenes, the team tries to understand how their interventions have affected the history we have just witnessed on stage, and try again with another intervention until they get the change they are hoping for.

As it turns out, the Bismarck is one slippery fish to reel in! In fact, after reading this you will come to feel that it was sheer luck that the British managed to sink the German ship at all, and wonder if someone actually was operating in time to control these odd events--a possibility darkly hinted at by the conclusion of the novel. The details here, some ferreted out of individual ship logs and eyewitness reports, are astounding. If you like naval sagas, as the author clearly does, you will love Golem 7. The treatment of the live history scenes, while unique, reads much like a C.S. Forester novel, and that is a compliment, to be sure."

Meridian V: Golem 7 is now available on Amazon.com here

This was the novel that inspired the author to continue his interest in naval fiction and write the popular Kirov Series featured prominently in this blog.

Meridian IV: Anvil of Fate Just Released!

The Writing Shop Press announced the release of Book IV in the award winning Meridian Series Time Travel novels by John Schettler. Meridian IV: Anvil of Fate is now available exclusively in the Amazon Kindle store.

In volume IV, the Time War continues with a major intervention by the Assassin Cult aimed at defeating Charles Martel at the famous Battle of Tours. At a critical moment in the conflict between the Moorish Empire and Europe, Charles Martel suddenly seems AWOL in the history. Instead the Frankish army is led by Griswald and is decisively defeated at the battle of Tours. The repercussions of this are staggering, as the Moors overrun all of Europe, abolishing Christendom, and the New World is not colonized by England, Spain and France, but by an invading army of Moors! The "United States" are never formed, and all history changes.

Now the project team struggles to preserve their own lives and the fate of all Western civilization by solving the mystery and unraveling the plot to defeat Charles "The Hammer" Martel at the famous Battle of Tours. Mystery, intrigue and action in this exciting alternate history time travel novel.

More on the Meridian Series novels here, including reviews and video trailers. Book V in the popular series, entitled Golem 7, is also available now on Amazon!

Two New Meridian Novels Scheduled For Fall Release

The Writing Shop has announced that the popular "Meridian" series time travel novels by John Schettler will continue, with a fourth book entitled The Anvil of Fate due out this fall in eBook format, followed soon after by a fifth volume tentatively titled Golem 7.

In the fourth volume, Anvil of Fate, the cryptic ending of Touchstone is clearly explained, and the project team now faces the most significant attack yet from unseen adversaries in the future, an "intervention" at a key moment in the 8th Century that threatens to completely alter the entire  course of Western history in an outcome that is absolutely catastrophic, to say the least. The project team sleuths through the history to identify three key "Pushpoints" or levers on the historical events, and to think of what may have happened here gives one a real shudder.  VIDEO TEASER HERE

The fifth volume Golem 7 begins just days after the conclusion of volume IV and sees the project team finally attempting to reverse the effects of the Palma Event, which was restored to the timeline earlier in the series. But far from just being about 'unfinished business,' it stands on its own as a unique alternate history novel set in the early years of WWII. When Chief Historian Nordhausen puts his hand squarely on the neck of the man he believes is now responsible for the plot, the threads of his research lead the team into the midst of one of the greatest naval sagas of all time. The author has also ended this one with a deep hook that opens the possibility of further series  novels "in the future."  VIDEO TRAILER HERE

The Meridian series explores the successful efforts of a project team at the Berkeley Lawrence Labs to travel in time, and the opening book, Meridian, focuses on the struggle to reverse a modern day terrorist event that makes 9/11 pale by comparison. Building on the award winning success of the series opener, two sequels have already been published, Nexus Point and Touchstone.

In the first sequel, Nexus Point, the team discovers that their technology has been discovered and used by adversaries in the future, and that a "Time War" is now underway where each opposing side is attempting to influence key moments in the meridians of history to alter events and secure a decisive cultural and political advantage in their world of the future. The third volume, Touchstone, sees the Berkeley team drawn further into the complex struggle in a harrowing mission to Egypt at the time of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone during Napoleon's invasion. Here they meet and learn more about the adversaries in this Time War and are slowly entangled in operations aimed at preserving the meridian of history as they know it.

This trilogy of novels will soon be joined by these two new volumes to form a "quintet" of stories, all related to one another in one massive Time travel adventure series. But don't look for chase scenes and gunfire here, and there are no mandatory teenage characters or cute little kids about as in typical run of the mill Hollywood treatments of this genre. These novels are heady, intriguing looks at key crisis points in history where the effects of even minor interventions can cause major consequences.

Ever since H.G. Wells first penned his landmark novel, The Time Machine, the genre has been extremely popular in its ability to blend both science and historical fiction together in one story. All the key elements of the genre are here, a plausible theory of how time travel is possible, incredible plot that has a new twist around every corner, the confounding effects of paradox and, of course, time shifts into key moments of the past where the team seeks to influence the "Pushpoints" of history, the actual triggers that set off and influence the outcomes of major events. Yet the theory here is that the really great events are set in motion by small inconsequential moments in time, little accidents, mishaps, stumbles, loose threads in the weave of time that become the real movers and shakers of history. Sleuthing the history to find these key moments makes up a large part of the fun and enjoyment in these stories.The four key characters are sharply drawn, the dialogue crisp and intelligent, the plot well structured and full of surprises.

Both new novels are now in final review and should be available in the Amazon Kindle store, on Smashwords.com and many other popular eBook outlets this fall.

MERIDIAN SERIES VIDEO TRAILER FEATURING ALL FIVE NOVELS