The Good Shepherds at Shepherd.com

Here’s a new book promotion site I’m trying. Check ’em out! At the very least you’ll see five of my favorite air war books!

https://shepherd.com/best-books/air-war-stories-that-put-you-in-the-cockpit

No Merciful War Climbs Again!

When I checked my email a few minutes ago I found a notice from Chanticleer that my series, No Merciful War, made the cut from the long list and is now short-listed to continue on in the competition! Needless to say this is welcome and exhilarating news. Truth to tell I felt like dancing a jig…in private, of course!

Hope this news finds everyone doing well.

No Merciful War is Long Listed at Chanticleer!

Chanticleer Book Reviews placed my series, No Merciful War, on its long list for Best Genre Fiction Series.

Needless to say, this is a major honor, but it’s still only a first step! Going forward, there’s stiff competition. I’m one of forty-six authors on the list, and some of those writers look like they might be almost as good as I am. Well, that sounds maybe a little arrogant, but come on, I write about fighter pilots, you think writers are that different when it comes to belief in what they do?

Anyway, you can see for yourself at the Chanticleer website. Here’s the link:

Series Award 2023 Long List for Genre Fiction

For those of you who haven’t read my books, the No Merciful War series is historical fiction set during World War II. The series characters are pilots and aircrew in the US Army Air Forces — which no one at the time ever referred to as anything but the “Air Corps.” The first book in the series, Everything We Had: a Novel of the Pacific Air War November – December 1941, is set in the Philippines during the lead-up to America’s entry into World War Two. Subsequent books pit my characters against the forces of Imperial Japan through the long retreat from the Philippines until the US stands together with Australia on the island of New Guinea.

The characters who survive will face further action in Europe. That’s where things stand now, after publication of the eighth book in the series: Dancing with Angels: a Novel of the SW Pacific Air War March-May 1943.

The ninth book is in preparation. The full title will be Nos Credimus: a Novel of the Air War May – July 1943. “Nos credimus” is Latin for “we believe,” and the nuances of the title go beyond that being adopted as the motto of the fictional 427th Fighter Group. I’m working on a first draft, so there are a lot of problems still to solve. My intention is to solve them as quickly as possible, but there’s no way of saying, at this point, how quickly that might be.

Briefly, though, the story line follows Jack Davis and the members of the 427th Fighter Group as they prepare to deploy for combat, and Charlie Davis, commanding the 945th Bomb Group in the 8th Air Force. Both outfits have their problems, and those problems will test the ability of all the characters to believe in themselves, their abilities, and their mission.

Future books are in contemplation, taking surviving characters through the end of the war. Following Nos Crediums, look for the tenth book, Schweinfurt: a Novel of the European Air War August – October 1943.

So you see I have plenty of work ahead of me. I’d better get back to it.

Hope everyone reading this has a healthy and happy holiday!

Dancing with Angels, Five Days In

Five days of sales data isn’t a lot to go on, but it’s enough to do the following:

1. Achieve the rank of Number ONE in the category “Action & Adventure Literary Fiction.”
2. Number ONE New Release and Number Five overall in Literary Sagas.
3. Number 49 in Historical Literary Fiction and an overall ASR of 5,878.

None of my books have ranked that high since early 2022.

The first review of Dancing with Angels said the only problem they had with the book was that it took two years for me to get it out. I’ll try to do better with the next book, Nos Credimus.

Some of you may recall Jack Davis telling the fledgling Jimmy Ardana that a good pursuit pilot had to have the faith of a Georgia cracker reaching into a gunnysack full of timber rattlers that he’ll pull his hand out unscathed. Nos Credimus is the Latin version of that: We Believe.

It’s the motto of the 427th Fighter Group, but for more you’ll have to wait, and I’ll try hard not to make anyone wait two years!

Dancing with Angels LIVE on Kindle!

I checked Amazon Kindle about 1415 today, 9 October 2023, and Dancing with Angels is available as an ebook and on Kindle Unlimited for your reading pleasure. The print version should also be available soon.

This one took me awhile to bring out, so thanks to everyone for your patience in the process. I hope it’s worth the wait!

Do please feel free to let me know what you think when you’ve read it.

Best regards,

Tom Burkhalter

A Promo and a Progress Report

My eighth book, Dancing with Angels, is finally coming along and I’m hoping to publish it later this fall. It’s in third draft stage now and I usually do four drafts.

For Dancing With Angels, look for Jimmy Ardana and Danny Evans, along with other characters, in the jungles of New Guinea between March and May of 1943.

As soon as I finish Dancing with Angels I’ll start putting together notes and research for the ninth book, titled Nos Credimus. In that book we’re going to England, so be ready for the bloody summer of 1943 with the 8th Air Force. Hopefully I can get this one out the door a little faster!

AND NOW THE PROMO: for a limited time the audio version of my second book, A Snowball’s Chance, is available for 60% off at the following link:


https://www.audiobooks.com/promotions/promotedBook/530287/snowballs-chance-a-novel-of-the-pacific-air-war-january-february-1942?refId=98986

I’m told this should take you straight on through to the point of purchase. Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

Best regards to all,

Tom Burkhalter

Interviewed by Laurence O’Brian

Last Monday I was interviewed by Laurence O’Brian of Books Go Social. Laurence is a really great guy and if any of you reading this are also writers, you should go and check out the Books Go Social website.

Anyway, this interview was a lot of fun to do, and watch this space for future interviews I’m conducting in concert with Laurence of other writers of historical fiction.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/OYtUr8q4EKQ

Enjoy!

Tom Burkhalter

Check out The Author Show

I was interviewed for The Author Show in late September for my novel, Everything We Had. The interview is now live and you can find it by following this link:

https://wnbnetworkwest.com/featured-author/Tom%20Burkhalter

Danielle Hampson is the founder and executive producer of The Author Show. Danielle created The Author show in 2005 as a professional interview podcast giving an expanding pool of listeners around the world access to news about authors and books. I would recommend to all my friends who are writers and readers to go by The Author Show and check it out!

Big shout out to the interviewer, Don McCauley, and of course to the wonderful Danielle Hampson, who created The Author Show! What a great bunch to work with!

Alistair1918

There’s an interesting low-budget scifi flick on Amazon Prime titled “Alistair1918”. It begins with Poppy, a young sociology student assigned to film a documentary on homeless people in LA. Poppy and her film crew come across a strange man in an old-fashioned English Army uniform, living in Griffith Park and feeding on squirrels. The man claims to have been transported to modern-day LA from 1918. He gives his name as Alistair.

Spoiler alert! If you like time-travel stories you might like this one, and like any time travel story, this one depends on surprises.

Despite some defects, most, I’m sure, due to the necessities of a low-budget production, I found the story quite charming and worth watching. I will also state that “defect” is my own word, and perhaps a bit strong. The story could have been handled differently, and because it’s my own opinion about it, of course it would be a better story if handled my way!

I found the initial setup of the story to be quite effective. A documentary film crew stumbling on something unusual? Sure. A man looking like an old-fashioned English soldier, living homeless in a park in LA? Could be any number of reasons for that. Maybe the uniform was thrown out of some bankrupt studio’s Costume Department and ended up at the Goodwill. I mean, shades of “The Blair Witch Project,” right?

Although…right down to the puttees? I thought those were a good touch. Puttees haven’t been worn by soldiers since World War II. That little touch of authenticity went a long way with me. However, in a later scene we see Alistair’s boots. Some attempt was made to make them look like the stiff hobnailed boots the British infantry wore; not entirely successful, but A for effort.

There were one or two other things that might have been done to increase the authenticity of Alistair’s character. I’ll point out that external appearance is key here. Alistair states he lost his “gun” (I would’ve preferred “rifle”; I doubt a proper Brit infantryman would refer to his Enfield as a “gun”) and his “papers” in an explosion. Yet other papers survived in an inner pocket, and I’m fairly (not totally) sure ID tags were used in the Royal Army by 1918. What about his equipment belt and harness? Also lost in the explosion, despite the fact that his uniform is in good shape, without obvious tears or stains one might expect after living through an explosion that tossed you into the air. Dropping your rifle and having your helmet blown off as you fly through the air is plausible, but if Alistair had pulled out his equipment belt and canteen that would’ve added to his appearance. Maybe, on second thought, a bit too much. There’s the issue of ambiguity required to keep a necessary conclusion at bay until the proper moment, after all.

So, enough authenticity of appearance without too much? Judgment call over which any two reasonable writers could easily differ. But imagine a scene where Alistair pulls out his equipment belt, to which would’ve been attached a bayonet at least a foot and a half long.

BRANDON: Uh…hey, man, a knife that big is illegal in California.

ALISTAIR: (offhand) It’s not a knife, mate, it’s a bayonet.

BRANDON: (puzzled) Bayonet?

ALISTAIR: You’ve not been in the Army, then?

BRANDON: No.

ALISTAIR: (patiently) It goes on the end of your rifle. Very handy for keeping unfriendly blokes at a distance.

BRANDON: Well, it’s still illegal in California.

Or something like that.

I will say, and here comes a real spoiler, that the scene where the filmmaker, Poppy, reveals her sexual orientation to Alistair struck a false note with me. A provincial middle-class Englishman like Alistair might not have any idea what a lesbian is, and for Alistair to simply take it in stride was the moment where I thought, here’s where the writers reveal Alistair is a fraud, or for Poppy to think, wait, why didn’t he react differently? Or perhaps I’m the provincial; after all, there are indications that male homosexuality was not unknown in England at that time, even if it was persecuted and frowned upon. The question should also be asked, how much did this scene further the story? As far as I can see, all it did was create a bond between Alistair and Poppy, of two lonely people who have both experienced the loss of those they loved. Maybe that was all it needed to do, but it seems there was far more potential in the scene than ended up on screen.

The “handwavium” required to explain Alistair’s presence and SPOILER ALERT! to return him to his own time I found charmingly naïve, and yet, again, given the probable budget constraints, oddly effective. The gorgeous female scientist was a nice contrast to the usual scifi trope of a wild-haired middle-aged man no one listens to. Her being from Denmark was interesting; people forget that Copenhagen was once home to Neils Bohr, a pioneering nuclear physicist. But her accent? Sounded more French than Danish to me. The distortion effect in the air was the most convincing item in the film’s meager special effects arsenal. I also found the “magic laptop” the scientist used to track the wandering wormholes an interesting idea. Hey, it’s a laptop, surely there’s an app to track wormholes, I mean, why not? And the three little balls? Effective simply because they were so cheesy. You can’t hire Industrial Light & Magic on a shoestring budget, now can you? And who knows what a time machine would look like, anyway?

The only other major point I would raise regards the scene where Alistair figures out the wormhole is traveling “east” instead of “west.” The scene was in the sense of the hero gathering his forces for one last throw of the dice, the “final confrontation” with the forces arrayed against him, if you will. We learn Alistair was a journalist before the war, so the idea that he can ask the right questions and put together a coherent story isn’t too surprising. But how did a person from 1918 figure something out that the modern-day physicist overlooks? That needed a little more from Alistair’s character than I think the story to that point established he could give, and probably no more than a few lines of dialog would have been enough to plug the hole. The scene with Alistair playing football with the little kid could maybe have been used for this. Something on the order of the following:

POPPY: Wow, you really know where the ball’s going to be.

ALISTAIR: Oh, I can always see the direction things are going.

The ending: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. I thought the ending was absolutely fabulous, ending on a fascinating question rather than any sort of certainty. Poppy gives Alistair a GoPro to record his experience. Alistair promises to come to America and bury the GoPro under his squirrel trap. When Poppy strikes something in the spot where Alistair left his squirrel trap, she looks up with the most incredulous look of surprise. Then, FADE TO BLACK. We don’t know for sure what’s there, but something is there, and what story do we choose to tell ourselves about it? Wonderfully ambiguous!

To me, though, the ending raised another question.

Put yourself in Alistair’s position. What if you really did travel forward in time and then backwards? You’ve been in the future for 6 weeks or so. You have an email account and a cell phone. If you kept your eyes and ears open you could have learned a lot about history, and you have a major incentive to be curious, after all. When you get back to your own time, though, first you’re on a live battlefield, unarmed and unequipped, since you’ve returned to where you started from. You have to survive that, and the following six months of the war. Only then do you arrive at the rest of your life.

So my question is: what do you do with your life after the war? When you know a lot about what the future brings?

To put it mundanely: What do you say when your wife asks you, with great asperity, who this Poppy person you keep dreaming about might be?

It almost begs for a sequel, in my mind, with a logline something like “How do you live in the past when you’ve been to the future and returned?” Imagine explaining that in 1918! “Ah, you daft bugger, go on with your silly tales. Who do you think you are? H.G. Wells?”

Who was still alive in 1918…

Recapturing the dream – memories of Apollo and a wonderful future

I remember Apollo. So should you. Matthew Wright captures the reason why in this post.

You have to have a dream. You have to work towards it. If you lost the dream, are you still alive?

Matthew Wright

It’s 51 years this coming week since Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. Just over half a century since the most stunning achievement in the history of the world. Think about it this way. Life has existed on Earth for around three billion years. For most of that time it was little more than single-celled protozoa and such creatures.

Launch of Apollo 11, atop a Saturn V booster. One of the readers of this blog’s Dad was the pad safety officer for Apollo 11. How cool is THAT? Public domain, NASA.

Around six hundred million years ago, multi-cellular life emerged, at first in the seas – then on land. And yet, for almost the whole time complex life existed, it was restricted to this planet. Suddenly – very, suddenly, when set against this span of time – a great ape turned up that had a facility with tools, and in…

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