Walk the Sands of Honor!

 Available Now! A medley of John's entire universe. Book LINK

The price of honor has been high, for an Empire, a nation, a single man. And that price has been paid on battlefields all over the earth, in the hinterlands of Empire, beyond the frontiers of national power. For England, the world’s greatest empire in the late 1800s, the price of honor was paid with the blood of her soldiers, in Europe, Afghanistan, India, China, Egypt, Sudan, and Natal, and the often desolate places where that blood was shed, the battlefields where men fought, and strove and died, became the sands of honor. England sent her diplomats, politicians, her heroes and her soldiers in their khaki tunics to those battlefields, and so many young men looking to make a name for themselves.  In The Sands of Honor these ‘desert loving Englishmen’ will face and fight the whirlwind Army of the Dervish, the zealots who had rallied to the banners of the Mahdi, he who was promised to come. It's Dune in the late 1800s!

On the morning of the 2nd of September, 1898, with Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Army encamped in a large defensive position against the Nile called a zeriba, the British 21st Lancer Regiment rode out to find and fix the enemy’s intentions. They would reach and climb the grey gravel slopes of Jebel Surgham just off the right flank of the camp, whereupon they heard ‘a mighty rumbling as of tempestuous rollers and surf bearing down upon a rock bound shore.’ There they saw ‘a moving, undulating plain of men, flecked with banners and glistening  steel’ extending over a front three to four miles wide. It was a dense mass, a deep bodied flood of anger raging towards that hill, aiming to flow over and around it like a mighty sea of arms. Soon the shouts of that mass were plainly heard—Allah u Akbar! Rasool Allah el Mahdi! They brandished thick bladed swords and long cruel spears, masses of tightly packed warriors led by proud Emirs on horseback surrounded by bannermen and troops of Baggara horsemen.

The Dervish Army came on as a thick dark tide on the open plain. These were the men, like the Fremen of Dune, who had stirred the restless sands of Sudan in wild rebellion; the men who had thrown down Gordon of Khartum, one of England’s dearest heroes. The men who had slaughtered the 8000 men led by General Hicks. They were fierce, proud, relentless as they came, and endowed with a fanaticism that would drive them into the teeth of all the firepower Kitchener’s army could bring to bear on them, the quick firing artillery, Maxim Machine guns, the incessant volley fire by lines of steady infantry with their magazine fed Lee-Metfords. And they would be met by England's best: The Grenadier Guards, the Cameron and Seaforth Highlanders, and Fusiliers from Lancashire and Northumberland; men of Warwickshire and Lincolnshire.

The vast Dervish army, approaching 60,000 in number, could have come the previous night, like wolves in the dark, but instead they waited for the dawn, choosing to attack beneath the eyes of Allah. Why should they creep and snipe in the dark against these, who they would now surely destroy? Now, there was nothing between this vast host and Kitchener’s Army of 22,000 but the 320 men of the 21st Lancers, watching from that lonesome desert promontory. With them, was a young Lieutenant, out to make a name for himself, a medal seeking, glory hunting 23 year old named Winston Churchill….

On came the venomous Dervish fighters in their fearless fury.

Available Now!

Kindle and Trade paperback

36 Chapters, 350+ Pages

The Sands of Honor

By
John Schettler

Prologue – Rise of The Mahdi
 

Part I – China Gordon
Part II – The Work of the Faithful
Part III – On Desperate Ground
Part IV – The Road Less Traveled
Part V – Reconnaissance
Part VI – Atbara
Part VII – Omdurman
Part VIII– Consequences
Part IX – The Uninvited Guest
Part X –  The Last Battle
Part XI – While the Iron is Hot
Part XII – Men of Valour

Epilogue

Time Terminology Lexicon

Genres: Historical Fiction, Military Fiction, Alternate History, Time Travel

Characters: Sir Roger Ames, Ian Thomas, Generals Gordon and Kitchener, Captain Gordon MacRae, Hicks Pasha, Sheikh Ali, the Mahdi, the Khalifa, Cavalry Colonels Broadwood and Martin, Lt. Winston Churchill, the Meridian Project Team--Paul Dorland, Maeve Lindford, Kelly Ramer, Robert Nordhausen, and a special mission for Anton Fedorov, Vladimir Karpov, Admiral Leonid Volsky, Kandemir Troyak, Sgt. Zykov, Pavel Kamenski, and BCG Kirov.

The Desperate attempt to save Gordon of Khartum, then General Kitchener's bold advance up the Nile to fight the Dervish, first at Atbara, then on to the decisive battle of Omdurman, where the life of a single man could change all future history from that day forward. Make room on your Kindle for this one!

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.