Novella Pre-Release Coverage

I’ve been doing some pre-release advertising for my new novella, Devon’s Blade. Mostly this consists of using images of my starfighter models and posting them to Twitter and Google+. I’m trying hard not to be annoying and using the imagery to ignite interest in the story. It must be working in some small way because I’m averaging a sale a day in pre-orders. All of those orders will register as sales on 31 October 2015 when it goes live.

I did a post on Google+ where I encouraged folks to Photoshop my models into interesting images, but so far nobody has taken me up on that. Perhaps I need to focus on PS forums. Go where the artists are.

In the mean time, I’ll keep doing my own “Gimping” of the models because it amuses me to no end. Below are some of my latest creations. A link for the pre-order page is in the column on your right.

https://flic.kr/p/yz2gty

https://flic.kr/p/yz8d1Q

https://flic.kr/p/zxjddx

https://flic.kr/p/yC8CwW

 

Historical Inspiration

When I first came up with the plot for my novella, Devon’s Blade I was looking for inspiration in developing the secondary character who would eventually become a good friend of the protagonist, Devon Ardel. Women were only recently allowed to be fighter pilots in the West, but I knew my aviation history and I recalled that there was a pretty vicious unit of women pilots in WWII. So I read up on the Night Witches of Russia. Some of these women were barely out of High School and they flew cloth covered bi-planes in bombing missions against Nazis. Later on they were given all metal fighters and proceeded to shoot down many German pilots.

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I took inspiration for both Devon’s leadership and the daring of her friend Katya from both Lydia Litvyak and Katya Budanova. I even took Budanova’s first name for my character. If you’ve never heard about the Night Witches, you should read up on them. They so tormented the Nazi pilots on the Eastern Front that the Reich awarded an Iron Cross to whoever shot down one of the feared women pilots. Both Katya ad Lydia were eventually killed in combat, but not before shooting down 11 or more Germans each. In my book, that makes them bad asses and worthy of using for inspiration in my space opera.

Meklin Natalya Fyodorovna
Meklin Natalya Fyodorovna
Lidya
Lydia Litvyak
Katya
Katya Budanova