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Myke Cole, wizard story

Myke Cole Interview
Author Of Shadow Ops: Control Point
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JMW: Oscar starts Control Point, the first book of the series. As an army officer who is totally vibes in to the company line. But that soon changes. How much of that is total fiction and how much of it reflects your own experience in the military.

Myke Cole: That’s a heck of a question to lead of with. I would say that the military is a large bureaucracy. And I think one of the things I wanted to explore through Control Point, was a phenomenon of large bureaucracies having to deal with society threatening existential changes through the lens of a single person. The fact is, if you’re going to move hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment, hundreds of thousands of people all in the same direction, you really can’t adjust for personal idiosyncrasies and individual quirks. So sometimes, people get steamrolled. And, sometimes, those are good people. And sometimes, those people have to make hard choices between the mission and what they feel is right. I have certainly seen that in the real world, and it was something I wanted to explore through fantasy.

JMW: One of the things I like about the book was, having worked in DOD, it doesn’t matter what you are dealing with, there’s a regulation for that.

Myke Cole: Absolutely. And that is the thing, those regulations deal poorly with, you know, the gray areas in life, which there are always are. And those gray areas, especially dealing with something incredibly dangerous against which individual rights have to be balanced, that creates a really cool mix of a story. That is something I wanted to explore.

Rest Of The Interview On Video..

Calling Home
By Jeffrey Wilson

Science Fiction War Story

It wasn’t the heat this time; it was the friggin’ sand. Those first couple of weeks the heat bothered him the most- no question. This place felt less than a mile from the sun.

Dry heat my ass!

On that first day only eleven weeks ago, John had stepped through the door of the C-17 transport plane and sucked in his first breath of desert air.

Sweet mother of god! My throat is going to burst into flames.

But he had adapted since then: now he barely even noticed the constant film of sweat that painted his body, trickling from his head to between his toes inside damp boots. Now it was the sand- everywhere, all the time. Nothing escaped the fine layer of grit, not even the lining of his lungs. Brushing his teeth had a disgustingly grainy feel and no amount of swishing with sandy water made it better. At meals, an audible crunch! crunch! accompanied every bite. At night a fine layer of sand invaded his rack and sheets, sticking to his skin. Yeah, definitely what sucked was the sand.

John worked at the far end of the tent city compound in the Fleet surgical hospital. The work came in spurts- long dull days when his surgical team received no wounded Marines, punctuated by the hysteria of hours and hours of mass casualties. It was nothing like medical school or surgery residency. They hadn’t prepared him for this place. But he felt proud of his team. Here, he made a difference.