All posts by Machine Trooper

Historical, Military, Reviews

Memorial Day – the Unmemorable Movie

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Memorial Day opens with Kyle Vogel stateside, going to visit his grandfather, a holstered Walther P-38 in hand. From there we flash back to Iraq in 2005, with SSgt Kyle Vogel’s squad encountering an IED. Then we flash back even further to 1993, when a young Kyle discovers his grandfather’s footlocker full of souvenirs from WWII.
Kyle strikes a bargain with the WWII veteran: He will select three items from the footlocker, and his grandfather will tell him the story behind them.
Not a bad way to spend Memorial Day. Not a bad gimmick to juxtapose soldier’s stories from World War Two and Gulf War Two, either. Loaded with potential, in fact.

memorialdayposter
For a low-budget film, the producers managed to round up some nice costumes and props, as well as a name actor and his son (to play the grandfather “Opaw” as a young soldier). A good flick could have been made with what they had to work with. Maybe even a great one. It’s been done before and could have been done this time. Overcoming the budget constraints would have been possible, but the film makers seem, to me, to be stuck in the “B” movie mindset. Or maybe that’s all they’re capable of.
First off, they desperately needed a competent technical advisor. This was obvious from the first scene in Iraq and only became more painful as the flashbacks mounted. But that’s not the only aspect of the film that grew increasingly tiresome.  Add the acting, writing and direction to that abominable snowball.
The director really wanted to make this a sentimental tearjerker, but fell on his cinematic face. The movie has a lot of positive Amazon reviews, and I have no explanation for that. I found all the hamfisted dramatic contrivances so inept that it took what remaining discipline my crotchety old civilian self still has to watch it all the way through.
This might be a Hallmark Movie Channel late night special some day, but even if it isn’t, I advise against paying money to watch it.

Non-Fiction/Documentary

Testosterone-Dripping Cover Art

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“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” We all know the cliche is true. And yet when we’re browsing for a good book, we forget or ignore that wise adage (I’m including myself here). I’ve made perhaps every mistake an indie author can make in this business, and one of them was publishing a novel with a weak cover design.

Subsequently I learned a few things about Photoshop, and took more time, making the cover better…but it still wasn’t great. Same goes for a few of my e-books.

Recently Virtual Pulp has enjoyed working with Logotecture, who designed the cover for the newest Retreads novel False Flag, and replaced the cover design for the first novel, Hell and Gone.

It's almost a crime to obscure any part of this image with text.
It’s almost a crime to obscure any part of this image with text.

We’ve found them to be accommodating, fast, reasonably-priced…and, best of all, Logotecture does darn good work.

Two decent images were merged and tweaked here to form something flat-out amazing.
Two decent images were merged and tweaked here to form something flat-out amazing.

The paperback version of False Flag will be published soon, and this is what it looks like. You can see they added the barcode already. From the tinting to the font, the designer did it all right the first time with no suggestions from us. He just knew what it should look like.

We are very fortunate to have found Logotecture and can’t recommend them highly enough. Whether you need a cover for a new book, a redesign for an old cover, formatting of a manuscript, banners or advertising art, they’ve got you covered.

Military, Reviews

Mission Veritas by John Murphy

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In the future, the USA and other countries have surrendered their sovereignty to the Global Alliance—which is the puppet organization for E.T. imperialists (the Carthenogens).

Vaughn Killian’s life and parents are part of the collateral damage in the Carthenogens’ brutal occupation of Thailand. A naive teenage gamer when the story begins, he becomes part of the guerrilla resistance in Bangkok, learning to fight and survive on the streets.

Killian is eventually rescued out of there by a Tier-One American unit known as Black Saber. Once stateside he enlists in the regular military and is quickly disgusted by the PC attitude, couch-potato standards, and social engineering purposes of the whole fiasco (pretty much how the Armed Forces are right now, extrapolated a few years forward). Lucky for him, he is offered a chance to qualify for Black Saber.

Black Saber transports him and some other candidates to a planet called Veritas, where they will be evaluated based on their performance during one training mission.

veritas

Where this novel really shines is in the characterization. I guess we’ve all seen basic training/academy type movies (most recent in my memory, Ender’s Game had such a segment), and read such stories in books (Starship Troopers had this element) so it’s nothing new. There’s a reason it’s done so often—probably the same reason “reality shows” are so popular: all those different personalities crammed together can generate a whole lot of drama. In this book Murphy exploits that quite well.

There were a few technical details that gave me pause, and I really believe readers would have been happier had Kerrington and a couple other candidates received the dressing-down they deserved after all was said and done.

Tyla_Gore_AD

As a whole, Mission Veritas is far superior to anything the Hugo-nominated authors of the last two decades have foisted on us. It’s nice that the democratization of publishing has allowed entertaining fiction like this to slip past the gatekeepers and into the hands of readers.

Final judgement: A strong start to a military sci-fi series that promises much drama, surprises, and adventure to come

Action, Politics/Current Events, TEOTWAWKI

Vaginas Rule the Wasteland (But Enough About Hollywood)!

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My gloomy predictions about the Mad Max reboot have been proven true. We’d all be better off if something like this fan video below was incorporated into a feature length movie:

Here’s the character we love and miss, in the milleu which has never been showcased as well, but in a story we haven’t already seen, which potentially fills the gap between the first and second movie, and doesn’t ruin the character, preach at us, or perpetuate the cultural programming we get from everywhere else.

So in other words, Hollywood would never allow such a film to be made. Same with Australia’s film industry these days, probably.

"Gee Goose: If only we had a strong womyn warrior to tell us what we should do..."
“Gee Goose: If only we had a strong womyn warrior to tell us what we should do…”

It’s not just the artistic tyranny of the SJWs permeating every nook and cranny of organized entertainment (except videogames so far, and a small outpost of science fiction authors). The authors, screenwriters, directors, etc. THEMSELVES, have been fully assimilated into the hive. All their pretensions of individuality are a pathetic joke: the same narrative is being pushed by ALL their hackneyed reboots, remakes, adaptations, rip-offs, knock-offs and “original” cultural-conditioning-disguised-as-entertainment.

But I’ve got a side-note that hit’s closer to home.

Even among self-described “red pill” males there is no solidarity. It’s nauseating how the feministas, SJWs, homophiles, cultural Marxists and other vermin routinely band together to push their agenda; but men on the opposite side are more concerned with hamstringing each other than cooperating on even something as small as a film criticism.

My article on the new Mad Max was posted on April 9. Yesterday, somebody on one of the big manosphere sites made the same warning. Initially glad to see somebody else getting the word out, I posted comments. Within a half hour my comments were gone and in their place was a comment by some other guy using the “Mad Maxi-Pad” joke I had made.

"You can run, but you can't hide! Sodomite marriage is coming to a wasteland near you!"
“You can run, but you can’t hide! Sodomite marriage is coming to a wasteland near you!”

This wasn’t the first time that ideas I’ve shared online have been “borrowed.” But why did my comments have to be censored?

Because I shared the link to my own, earlier Mad Max post.

Nobody at Virtual Pulp writes the “Five Ways to___________” or the “Why Serial Killers Shouldn’t Murder Pretty Girls” or “False Rape Accusation at __________ Campus” articles that is the primary focus at that site, but they obviously see us as competition.

And they can’t have that.

Ironic, because the article in question, reporting the same thing I did (over a month after I did), appealed to solidarity among red pill men, to vote with their dollars and boycott this flick.

Yeah, okay, you big team players, you. Since we’re all in this together and everything.

Politics/Current Events, Socio-Sexual Studies

Most Feministas Don’t Consider Themselves Feminists

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A whole lot of recent news is comment-worthy, but it’s hard finding time to comment.

One story I really found illustrative is the one about Joss Whedon coming under fire for Avengers 2 not being feminist enough. Nevermind that Scarlett Johenson’s amazon superninja character is portrayed in Marvel movies as somebody who could take on Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson (in his prime) and Chuck Lidell (in his prime) all at once and subdue them in half a second without wrinkling her tights. Not strong enough, say the feminazis.

blackwidow

You’re a sexist unless Black Widow is shown to be superior to Captain America, Iron Man and Thor (not just Hawkeye).

But here’s a quote from this article that made me groan/laugh:

“For years Whedon has been lauded as one of the few Hollywood screenwriters who creates strong female characters.”

Face-palm. One of the FEW????????

Has this writer been hiding under a rock?

For anyone with eyes and a brain, it’s obvious that females dominating males is obligatory in the Hollywood Bible. Physically in action movies. Intellectually in sitcoms. Morally in dramas.

Okay, there are some weak female characters in romantic comedies; but the males in that genre are even weaker (except when the male is homosexual).

But white knights and manginas accept that as the status quo. It’s only when the cultural svengalis get really outrageous that anyone in the mainstream (including “conservatives”) so much as raises an eyebrow. Until that outrageousness becomes the status quo.

 

SHTF

Can Well-Armed Alpha Dogs Rescue Western Civilization?

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Loss of freedom. Militarization of the police. Politicians who routinely break the law and violate their oaths. A powder keg of race-based animosity. A mortally wounded economy. And an ignorant population hostile to those who draw attention to the real, underlying problems.

For some, these are signs of progress. For others, these are harbingers of impending oblivion.

That’s the scenario faced by the characters of False Flag. And then it gets worse.

FF1

This speculative tale follows how these and other trends may lead to their logical conclusions in the very near future; and how a few good men respond.

Those good men happen to be The Retreads, who brought smoke on terrorists and modernday pirates in previous novels.

Simply because it portrays a growing resistance movement in action, I’m including a clip in the Red Dawn remake below.

The Kindle version is now available for $2.99. Paperback coming soon.

Aviation, Historical, Military, Reviews

Jet Jocks Over Vietnam

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There’s an expression for people who consistently order more food than they wind up eating: “His eyes are bigger than his stomach.” That’s how I was with books in my younger days. It dawned on me yet again the other day while building more bookshelves for my personal library that, even if I never buy another book, I’ll still probably never finish reading everything I own before I die.

One of the paperbacks that’s been gathering dust for many, many years was this novel of the air war in Vietnam.

All those years, and then the first time I opened it and read the opening paragraph, it grabbed me by the throat.

Berent tells a rip-snorting story of men both in the air and on the ground serving with honor in a conflict in which victory was forbidden.

The characters are great—Hollywood prodigal Court Bannister; soul sick rich boy Toby Parker; and devout killer Wolf Lochert. Much like W.E.B. Griffin, Berent seems to like privileged, wealthy characters who don’t have to serve, but do anyway and prove to be natural, superb warriors. Not easy for me to relate to that caste, but the author did a fine job winning my sympathy.

And you will probably learn more relevant information about Vietnam in this one novel than you can from any and every history book that covers US involvement in the conflict. I’ve read plenty of fiction and non-fiction about Vietnam, and this has become my favorite so far–just from one reading. I can’t believe I only just now got to it. But I fully intend to read the next one, STEEL TIGER (Wings of War). If that one is as good as this one, I may read the entire series.

Politics/Current Events, TEOTWAWKI

The War Against Americans

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Every week this country is consumed in a new distended orgy of polarized, mutual hatred, set against the backdrop of outrage mobs, race riots, shuttered businesses, scandals, Twitter-induced career ruination, gleeful smear parties, and partisan hackery.

More and more people see writing on the wall all the time. But I had come to believe “conservatives” (whatever that means) would be the very last ones to realize or admit it, due to their myopic optimism.

That so many of them are sounding alarm bells now is kind of chilling.

My soon-to-be-released third novel incorporates into the plot many of the cultural, political and economic trends competing to topple America. Every day I worry that if I don’t finish it fast enough, the toppling will take place before publication is final.

Speaking of that, I better quit piddling around here and get back to work. But here’s a video for ya:

This idiotic conclusion by Brooke Baldwin is just one part of a narrative we’re gonna hear over and over until “everybody just knows” that veterans are dangerous. Almost as bad as (gasp!) Constitutionalists or (hiss!) gun owners.

This meme hasn’t even caught on with most of the flock yet, but I’m already sick of it. Here’s a few points that NEED to be made at every opportunity, to anyone capable of rational thought:

  • The Constitution is the law of our land.
  • Politicians (and all public officials) swear to uphold the Constitution.
  • 99.999% of them spend their careers violating, ignoring, circumventing and perverting the Constitution.
  • They consider their enemies to be anyone who would uphold the Constitution.
  • Their now-weaponized institutions like the FBI, CIA, IRS and Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, according to policy, consider patriotic Americans, gun owners, and veterans, to be a greater terrorist threat than actual, proven terrorists.
  • “Actual, proven terrorists” includes Bill Ayers, the mentor to and ghost writer for the individual presently occupying the highest office in the land.
  • Almost nobody cares. And they won’t care until it’s too late to do anything about all this.
  • And it’s probably too late already.
Action, Adventure, Military

Book Giveaway: Tier Zero

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I’m gonna try this here giveaway thang one more time.

CLICK FOR PAPERBACK

Yes, “Tier Zero” is a play on words. The recently-popular terminology “tier one, tier two,” and so forth, refers to military units according to their respective budgets.  My fictional black ops units, then, would receive even more cashola than Delta or DEVGRU.

This is a sequel to Hell & Gone, for which I just finished another giveaway and shipped out paperback copies to 10 lucky winners. This giveaway will only last two weeks. You can read what it’s about on our Books page, and I’ll post some review excerpts from Amazon below:

It would be difficult to exaggerate how good this book is as an adventure tale, or how much fun it is to read it. – Jim Morris

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series, HELL AND GONE. As good as it was, TIER ZERO is better in every way. The characterizations are deeper, the plot has more twists, and hard as it may be to believe, it has even more of the gritty, well-written action scenes at which Brown excels. I thought I knew where the story was going, but it takes a nice hard turn about halfway through that powers it on to the end of the book. – James Reasoner

Overall, it’s an excellent entry in the genre, and an improvement on his past work. I can’t recommend it highly enough. – Peter Nealen

Although I have no doubt legions of Men’s Adventure fans have tried to imitate the writings of their favorite authors over the years, in Henry’s case, the student has definitely become the master. – Jack Badelaire (Post Modern Pulps)

…Author Brown harkens back to the “men’s adventure” novels that were so popular in the 80s and early 90s. He does an exemplary job of carrying on that tradition and even adds some depth and background to his characterizations that increases their humanity, makes them seem more real — all without ever getting in the way of the balls-out, full throttle action. – Wayne Dundee

…Full of action, intrigue and Shock and Awe. Tier Zero is the best of both ages of Dude-Lit. – D.R. Tharp

Now, I know Brown likes to call his work an homage to the bygone mens’ pulp-fiction genre, but it surpasses that. Sure, he hits on the essentials–the attractive women, the brave, rugged fighting men, and the unmistakably evil bad guys–but he’s a master storyteller, too. – Nate Granzow

The author puts this story together so well I read it four times and got the same hair raising on my arms… – J.G. Scott

CLICK FOR AUDIBLE BOOK


Again, there are no strings attached in the giveaway, though part of the reason I’m doing it is to get more Amazon reviews (and therefore more visibility).

Also, by the time this giveaway is finished, the third novel in this continuity should be published.

 

Non-Fiction/Documentary

Book Marketing Blues

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The Goodreads giveaway of my debut novel Hell & Gone is finished. I just returned from the post office, where I sent out 10 paperbacks to the winners.

I didn’t realize until just before the giveaway ended that I could see the profiles of those who entered. I was rather disappointed that none of the folks I regularly interact with on Goodreads signed up, unless I missed them while skimming through the list. Oh well–my fiction certainly isn’t for everybody.

I would have been happy if only 10 people signed up, and all 10 won a paperback, if they were people  truly interested in reading this kind of book (and then would write an Amazon review afterwards). But 504 people signed up, before all was said and done, and the ones I browsed didn’t appear to particularly like military thrillers. That leads me to worry that they signed up merely to get free stuff, not really caring what the free stuff is.

Maybe they’ll get the book and it will just sit around collecting dust for years until they host a garage sale. Maybe they’ll give it to somebody for Christmas or a birthday. Or maybe they’ll turn around immediately and sell it on E-Bay. Or maybe I’ll actually get a review something along the lines of, “I normally don’t read this genre, but I got the book for free. So I tried to read it but there just weren’t enough strong female characters…”

Or maybe I’ll just get a drive-by one star review the SJWs are so fond of giving: “This sucks. Couldn’t even finish the first page.” Yes, those reviews happen, all over Amazon.

I now have a list of giveaway winners. Nine out of ten are female. That would be great if the genre was romance or chick-lit or lesbian vampire paranormal urban coming-of-age fiction. But Jack Silkstone called Hell & Gone “A man’s book through and through,” which is precisely what I wrote it to be.

Here’s some depressing details about the winners: three of them haven’t bothered to post a single review on anything at all. One of them has posted one review, and one has posted three.  Only four winners have reviews posted in the double digits and two of them are tied at 12.

Some of these folks haven’t added a single book to their shelf. It’s a little surprising they expended the energy to sign up for the giveaway.

This is building on my bad experience at Goodreads. Previously, in my ongoing quest for reviews, I offered free download codes for my audiobooks to anyone willing to post a review after listening. All those who volunteered took the free stuff and ran. Some even deleted their responses in the thread where they volunteered.

Ostensibly Goodreads is the perfect venue for finding reviewers, because everybody there allegedly likes to read. There are a couple strikes against me right away because…

  1. It’s mostly women (I write for men).
  2. It’s 90% left-leaning feminists.

I tried to counteract this by only advertising the giveaway in groups where my intended audience was likely to be. But alas, it would appear that none of those folks entered, while 500+ from the general Goodreads population did.

It’s beginning to look like this experiment is doomed to the same fate as every other marketing ploy I’ve tried.

Well, we’ll see. Maybe I’m not giving the winners enough credit, because I’ve been stung so much in the past. So far I still plan on a Goodreads giveaway for the sequel, Tier Zero. When it’s all over and the reviews come in (or don’t), we’ll have some data to determine whether Goodreads giveaways have any marketing value for an author.

An author who does not write lesbian vampire paranormal urban coming-of-age fiction, that is.