The Unexpected Book

[jennifer_brozek]

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

A couple years back, Jason Schmetzer, the fiction editor for battlecorps.com, asked me if I wrote stories about “big stompy ’Mechs.” My answer was an unhesitating “No.” Jason, not to be denied, asked me if I could crash a big stompy ’Mech and then write him a story. I thought about it and said that I thought I could… if I could think of the right story.

It took two years and some back and forth between me and Jason to hammer out the idea for The Nellus Academy Incident – a YA Battletech webserial about 8 cadets and a General in a PR event gone horribly, horribly wrong. I figured it would be about 25 episodes of about 2000 words each and was designed to go up on a weekly basis. That’s not exactly what happened but, in the end, the webserial was 25 episodes and almost 60,000 words.

I was surprised and delighted beyond words when Jason told me that The Nellus Academy Incident was going to be packaged up as a novel for general sale. This wasn’t my intent when I wrote the serial but, wow, it looked like I had written a YA novel without planning on it.

Yesterday, I got the cover. The book will come out towards the end of January. Isn’t it pretty?

As a side note, I do know what I’d write for a sequel if Jason asked for another serial for battlecorps.com.

 

Comments

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

A YA novel involving giant robots shooting at each other and the characters we see on the front cover are mostly girls.

I know a young lady who is going to love this!

Hmm, and I need to get her something for Valentine's Day. Nothing says "Daddy Loves Me" like Big Stompy Mechs!

[jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com]

I have to warn you, there's a pretty high body count, including the cadets. Not all of them make it home. You may want to read it first, just to be sure.

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning.

She recently compiled a reading list for a mutual friend's little boy who is her age. She said, "All the Harry Potter books...but if you are sencitive [sic] about death, only the first three."

Would you rank it as worse than the Hunger Games? Because she enjoys that movie entirely too much.

And Pacific Rim.

I have a bloodthirsty kid. Who likes horror. Neither of her parents like horror that much, but she is on a YA horror kick. (THOSE, we are exercising great care in what she reads. The distance between YA Horror and Adult Horror is rather more than the distance between YA and Adult Sci-Fi.)

[jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com]

Not as bad as the Hunger Games, on premise, but a couple of the kids are killed on screen. But, over-all, it is kid friendly. Especially with parents who talk to their kids.

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

That always makes the difference, yes.

We'll discuss it with her, but "on-screen death" is not new to her, nor do other elements usually bother her. She has a deep fascination with Special Effects in movies, and she usually is able to make a fair guess at how a scene was done and is very good at distinguishing Fantasy from Reality.

The one time we psyched her out was with that video of "Space Oddity" done on the ISS. "No, that was not Green Screen. He really is floating around." "WHAT?!"

[strixluna.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, fantastic. I'll get it for me. And I may have the boys read it if it seems like they won't freak out (likely, they won't; they handle death in books pretty well because of that whole knowing what is real and what is fantasy thing). :D

[jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com]

I think your boys will like it a lot. But I'm glad you'll read it first, just to be sure. It is from a military brat's perspective and we grow up fast.

[eyezofwolf.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! That is very exciting news, and an amazing cover as well!

[jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com]

Thank you much!