Wolf Hunt (WW II alternate history)

posbi

August 3 Update: You can purchase a signed edition directly from me.

July 24 Update: The Great Nazi-Hunting Palooza of July is coming to an end, but we're not quite there yet. You can still strike a bargain over at Smashwords where Wolf Hunt is available for only $2.99 (that's a 26% discount, folks!) for the coming seven days! Get your copy now!

And right now, Amazon is selling the paperback edition of Wolf Hunt at a discount of 28%, meaning you can get it at $12.23 instead of the regular price of $16.99. Since I've got no idea for how long Amazon will keep the price that low: now's your chance!
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Guys, for those simply interested, I've started a little feature series on my website, presenting some of the locations the plot is centered around. I've included scenes from the book - after all, I'm not the bloody Thomas Cook travel guide.:p

The Locations of TBA: 01 - The Azores 02 - Portsmouth, Uk 2024
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Well, I haven't shown my face around here for some time...

Well, pretty much around this time last year I began working on a story that grew way bigger than I had first anticipated. Some of you may remember that I had it posted in both ASB and in the Writers' Forum (both threads were deleted on ym request). It kinda flourished from that point on, and I've now published it as a book, professionally edited and all.

It consists of 175,000 words on 390 pages, so even if you don't like it you can use it as a doorstopper or as an impromptu weapon to bash somebody's head in. :p Since I quite frankly can't imagine a better target audience than you guys - you're even more suited than that of my "home forum" - let me use this opportunity to show it to you:

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The Burning Ages: Wolf Hunt
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2024. The world we know is crumbling. A devastating war in the Persian Gulf has left the global economy in ruins, and civilization itself is beginning to crack under the strain. When a war-weary task force of NATO ships races against time and a rival fleet to prevent Brazil's descent into a murderous civil war, their mission is unexpectedly upset by a mysterious tempest. Thrown back in time, Captains Steven Flynn and Florian Hallwinter with their crews emerge in the year 1940 as the world is gripped in the fires of World War Two.
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Presented with the opportunity to change both past and future for the better, they find themselves drawn into a maelstrom of conflicting interests. While overcoming the suspicion of their natural allies of the time proves harder than they imagined, they soon discover that even the best intentions carry the seeds of doom. For whereas Flynn is American, Hallwinter and his crew are from Germany...

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Wolf Hunt is a book in the same vein of S.M. Stirling's ISOT, Birmingham's Axis of Time or Flint's 1632 series. You can also read an interview the Kindle Author blog did with me about my writing and Wolf Hunt in particular here.

You can get it in print as a paperback edition, or if you prefer so, as an ebook.
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Ebook ($3.99 USD; July Discount due to the Valkyrie Anniversary):


  • Smashwords for all other formats (PDF, HTML, etc.)

Paperback ($16.99 USD):



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I hope I could interest some of you in my book, and I'd be glad if I could use this thread to gather your reactions to it, your reviews, and your questions. If you like it, tell your friends about it. If you don't... also tell your friends about it. :p Each way will help me to grow as a writer. Thanks for your time and your support.

-- Posbi (Sebastian Breit)
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posbi

And I've got my first 5 STAR Amazon review! I'm grinning like an idiot right now. :D :D :D
Clocking in over 60 million dead, WWII was the deadliest war in history. So if you somehow found yourself thrown backward in time to 1940, before the most brutal campaigns of the war, before the Holocaust was in full swing, before Barbarossa, before Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki, and for that matter before the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe, the division of Germany and the fall of China to Mao, you might be tempted to try to change history.

Especially if you happened to have the power of a NATO naval fleet at your command.

Alternate histories of WWII and the idea of people from our near future traveling back in time to WWII, are not new, but this book offers a unique twist. For more than half of the NATO force that find themselves thrust back in time are German. And they have their own, very strong ideas about how history can be improved.

The premise is pure, distilled awesome. As I was reading the beginning, I was wondering, are these NATO forces *really* going to turn on each other? Is that believable? But the author made it not only seem believable, he keeps both sides very sympathetic and heroic.

At the heart of the story are two men, a German, Captain Florian Hallwinter of the German lead ship, the destroyer FMG Brandt, and an American, Captain Steven Flynn of the US Navy destroyer USS Halsey. Their deep friendship is what makes the story downright gut wrenching when everything goes south and they find themselves on opposite sides. There are a number of well-drawn supporting characters as well. No one in this book is a caricature, each comes across as a flesh-and-blood person with strengths and weakness--even the more vile ones.

There are also a lot of frankly fun scenes in here. Haven't you secretly always wanted to know how a battle would go between fellow NATO ships? (Be honest.) How modern destroyers would fair against the pride of WWII's navies? How geeks from Los Alamos would react if you showed them a modern computer? If a single twenty-first century soldier could take out a panzer?

Why I almost gave this book 4 stars instead of five: There are malapropisms, which interrupt the smooth reading, and a fair share of clunky sentences. (Not unlike the writing in The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.)

Why I gave it 5 stars anyway: I stayed up all night to finish this book. My biggest regret after toggling the last page was that the sequel is not out yet.

This book ended with a satisfying bang. It could be a stand alone, but there's also plenty room for more. I am curious to see where the author will take it from here.

Tara Maya
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posbi

Life In Black said:
How hard was it to get published?
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Don't get me started. :rolleyes: For an unknown author in a niche-field? Nigh impossible. After much contemplation (and searching; oh, soooo much searching) I did it on my own, and that not because I wasn't convinced of the quality of what I had written.

To elaborate on that point: getting an agent (and you need an agent for traditional publishing) in a niche field like "Alternate History" is like winning the lottery: there's only a handful of them, and most the time they don't accept queries. And even if you get an agent, that's far from being guaranteed to be published unless you're writing something in the hip fad like angels or - that's going to be the next one - mermaids.

Hence, I used several outlets to get published: one for file formatting & editing services, one for formatting the cover, one for creating the cover. It's about the same quality you'd get had I gone with a traditional publisher, but gives me full control over the product. It's a bit more work for me, but it's worth the effort.
 

posbi

Life In Black said:
Did you have to pay the costs for those services, and is it expensive?
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Yes, as an indie I have to pay for these costs myself. That's the downside to the really complete control you have that way. But since the people you're working with are also freelancers, the quality you get is often better than what you'd get at a traditional publishing house. An editor at Bantam will get paid no matter what. However, if a small editing service produces crappy output, it'll be out of business in no time.

You can't put a fixed price to these things. Basically, there's everything from "free" to "the sky's the limit" cost-wise.

Take, for example, the cover image. There are people who offer to do covers for as little as $25. And then there are some who won't even pick up their pen unless you pay them $750 in advance. I got mine from DeviantArt by querying about a dozen artists whose style I liked. Inside that group I got offers ranging from $60 to €400, just to give you an impression of the diversity you are dealing with.

The same counts for pretty much every other publishing-related service. I was lucky to have a whole bunch of beta-readers, which meant I ended up having to pay significantly less for editing services. If I had to give a number of the raw costs involved for the novel (which includes getting an ISBN, registering copyrights, setting your book up for wide distribution, cover illustration, editing & formating services) it'd be somewhere in the ballpark of $650-700 USD spent over the course of several months (get your cover done early, that's my tip).

You can get things done cheaper, but unless you've got an artist who'll do your cover for free and an aunt who just happens to be a retired English teacher with nothing else to do but read your manuscript: don't.

As for it being worth it? For me the simple fact that I can hold a copy of my own book in my hand was a big part of the gratification I wanted. As for the financial situation: Don't expect to break even within the first two weeks as an unknown indie author. But if you've got a good cover and a good blurb, you will earn money.
 
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posbi

As an addendum: Amazon offers a whole host of opportunities for indie publishers and authors (KDP as an easy tool to publish ebooks, CreateSpace as a nearly unbeatable print-on-demand service) - with the qualifier that their payment policies for non US-residents are outright retarded, ie. USD-cheque based.
 

ComradeFlyer

I just bought the Kindle edition. I'll give it a read when I am finished with the next two books on my nightstand.

Congrats on getting published!
 

posbi

Wrote a really long post about the problems of writing consistent alternate history on my website.
...Ironically, killing Hitler or something to that end is usually the least of the problems writing AH brings with itself. You'll always find a dedicated group with admittedly varying influence willing o give you a helping hand in killing off the man with the funny moustache.

The less easy part is coming to the realization that you're not acting in a vacuum. That's were the tricky part starts. Because this is where your actions become less important, and the situation and historical actors move to the forefront. Say, you've killed Hitler in 1940. Fine, but what now? You've killed the most revered political leader of Germany on the height of his triumphs! Oh, sure, you do whatever you can to discredit his party and his close circle of leaders, but still: it's 1940, not 1945! So even if you end up fighting a civil war for Germany's soul and win it, you'll find yourself in a situation where you'll have to take a tougher stance for the simple reason you're not exactly sitting tightly in the saddle of leadership. Meaning you're ending up in a position in which your peace offers will amount to LESS than what Hitler repeatedly offered to Churchill (maybe not much less, but less nonetheless...less), i.e. virtually a return to the status quo ante. Why? Because you're risking to get hanged from street lanterns by people who aren't exactly keen to have to support you in the first place. “You wanna be better than the Nazis who did so well for us? Prove you can strike a better deal for Germany then. For the time being, you're on probation.” Meaning the new government can't go for a quo ante deal out of pure self-preservation (though the deal they will offer isn't a bad one).

And then there's the problem of the Nazis. Yes, on the long run it's invaluable that you've fought them off yourselves. That way, Germany can walk out of this affair with its head held high. You beat them in battle, liberated the KZs, interned their leaders or shot them outright. But you won't have gotten all of them. Some will maintain an underground campaign against you, supported from some who've gone into exile. Also, some of the channels the Nazis used to try to initiate peace talks won't be available to you either (Dahlerus, for example). Furthermore, your de-nazification, if you try one at all, will be superficial, because, you know: you're still kinda in a war! ...
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Lectruck

Wolf Hunt, I finally can finish the story!!!

I was reading you story line last fall and lost it, now I know why. I'll be picking up a copy in a few days and waiting for the sequal.

Thanks,

Don

And I just submitted a review on Amazon, good luck with sales and I wish you the best!!
 

posbi

Strategos' Risk said:
Hey posbi, have you been following the current hot Hitler dies AH, The Ride of the Foxleys? It's not a straight-up Valkyrie timeline, and is very good.
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NO, I haven't, but now I am.:D
Lectruck said:
I was reading you story line last fall and lost it, now I know why. I'll be picking up a copy in a few days and waiting for the sequal.

Thanks,

Don

And I just submitted a review on Amazon, good luck with sales and I wish you the best!!
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Thank you very much. I appreciate it. :)
 
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