The first episode of Nanotroopers debuts in about a month.  This episode, called “Atomgrabbers,” will be uploaded to www. smashwords.com on January 18, 2016.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Here’s a general plot outline of this episode:

Johnny Winger’s mother has died in a car crash.  His father is injured but survives.   Medbots save him and help him recover. Winger is intrigued by the capabilities of the medbots.   A hospital tech mentions that Quantum Corps uses the same technology. To get away from ranch life and seek adventure, he resolves to apply and join Quantum Corps.  But to be accepted, he has to pass a qualifying test.  However, the test turns into something much harder than anyone expects. 

From the outline, you can see that this is how Johnny Winger begins life as a trooper with Quantum Corps.  This is where it all begins. 

For technical and background details on my series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit my other blog at http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com.  For details on other books in this series, visit my website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt or you can learn about other books by me by visiting www.smashwords.com, www.bn.com, Apple iBooks or other fine ebook retailers.

Now that I’ve gotten that shameless promotion out of the way, I want to talk briefly about motivations: Johnny Winger’s and mine.

Why would a nice kid like Johnny get mixed up with some semi-secret UN agency called Quantum Corps?  Two reasons.  First: he’s tired of running a failing ranch in Pueblo, Colorado and nursing his depressed father along after the terrible car crash death of his mother.  Second: he’s learned that he has some special abilities that Quantum Corps values.  When his Dad was recovering in a hospital from that same crash, surgeons used nanoscale medical robots to help repair Jamison Winger and assist in his recovery.  Spending so much time at the hospital, Johnny talked with the technicians a lot about this new technology and it was from one of them that he learned of Quantum Corps and that the Corps was using the same technology, for different reasons.  Johnny was intrigued and one of the techs let him play with these medbots on an artificial human body used for training.  That’s how Johnny found out he had a real aptitude, a real knack, for manipulating and maneuvering these little bitty devices.  Learning of Quantum Corps and their interest in people with such aptitude, Johnny put two and two together and decided to apply.

That’s when the fun begins for Johnny Winger.

As to my own motivations, I have several.  One is that I’ve long been intrigued with the backstory and world that is depicted in Tales of the Quantum Corps.  Commanding a small but elite special forces unit to engage enemies and threats emanating from the world of atoms and molecules appealed to my sense of intrigue and curiosity and I wanted to write out my ideas of how this could come to pass.  I have a sense that such a development may be closer than we think.  Plus there’s a pretty nasty group of enemies that Johnny and the Quantum Corps will have to confront in the process, namely an Asian criminal cartel known as Red Hammer.  More on them later.

And to complicate matters even more, this Red Hammer cartel has been in contact with an extraterrestrial race for some time and has learned how to access some of their technical archives and develop tools and techniques to further their criminal designs.  Think about that: a criminal cartel with the technology of an alien race at their disposal.

Gives me the shivers.

A second motivation for me, as a writer, is to go beyond the already existing stories of Tales of the Quantum Corps and explore this imaginary world I’ve created from other perspectives.  Nanotroopers will draw on many of the same events, people, conflicts and technology as Tales but the stories will be different.  The writing platform of a serialized story allows me to put out stories at a faster rate and gives you, the reader, a chance through this blog, to react, critique, vent or otherwise let me know what you think.  In fact, I’m secretly hoping, through this and related venues to gain some insight from my readers in such a way that I can adapt the story arc of Nanotroopers to what readers are saying and wanting to see.  In other words, this is a way for you to affect and co-create with me the kind of stories you want to read. 

So, Nanotroopers is a sort of experiment with my readers and I hope you won’t be shy about letting me know what you like and dislike.  Posting your thoughts on this blog is one way to do that.

So, look for Nanotroopers, Episode 1, “Atomgrabbers” on January 18, 2016 at www.smashwords.com.

The Word Shed will take a two-week hiatus for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.  The next post will provide more background on either or both of my two main projects, The Farpool and Nanotroopers.  Plus, I’ll have some news about a new project in the coming year, a non-fiction inspirational story called Partly in Heaven.  More on all this, starting January 4, 2016.

Ya’ll have a great holiday and I’ll see you in the new year.

Phil B.

“How Many Pages Should I Write Today?”

Every writer faces the same question when he or she sits down at the computer in the morning: how many pages, how many words, should I write today?

This is basically a matter of scheduling.  For writers of novels and non-fiction books, it goes without saying that there’s no way you can do the entire work in a day or a week, probably not even in a month. You have to divide it up into chunks, mainly because you’ve got other things to do with your life along with writing. 

Case in point:  I’m currently working on a science fiction novel called The Farpool.  I anticipate that when the initial draft is done, it will come in at somewhere around 250 pages, when formatted for Smashwords.com.  Each page runs on average about 500 words, so we’re talking about 125,000 words in total.  Now, how to divide that up....

I’m doing 2 pages a day.  That doesn’t sound like much. But it leaves me with time for other tasks and projects.  Writing 2 pages a day takes me about 1-2 hours, depending.  But it’s 10 pages a week.  Divide 250 pages by 10 pages and you get 25 weeks, about half a year, or six months.  At the rate I have chosen, I can do a draft of The Farpool in six months.  Plus I can work on other things and have a life.

Could I write more?  Of course I could.  But you should choose a rate that is comfortable and sustainable over a long period, since it’s unlikely you can finish a novel-length project in a few weeks.  There are some writers who bat out a draft in a single marathon session of a month but I’m not one of them.  I take longer and take my time and try to do the thing right from the beginning. 

One the most important aspects of this writing process for me, when engaged in a lengthy work, is “staying in the story”, mentally.  I find that a daily regimen like I described above is a great way to do that.  Even away from my desk, I find my feverish brain cogitating on the next scene, the next sentence.  Sometimes ideas for snatches of dialogue or plot variations will come to me when I’m working out, mowing the lawn, eating dinner, watching TV.  I want that. 

Every writer approaches this differently. 

I’m also a detailed outliner and planner, when it comes to writing a novel, or writing anything.  I’ve covered some of this in earlier blog posts, but I work from the beginning to build a fairly detailed outline, with character sketches and setting and background details readily at hand for the actual writing.  Sometimes my outlines and sketches are detailed enough to be lifted and pasted into the novel text as is, or with little change.  That makes life easier, as long as it advances the story.  The story is everything.  I’m even planning on including an Appendix of some of this material at the end of The Farpool, for readers who just can’t get enough detail on my imaginary world and its people.

That’s a little peek behind the curtains at the logistics or the mechanics of daily writing life.  I plan to do more of this sort of thing again. 

My next post, on December 21, will cover more details about my upcoming series Nanotroopers, which debuts at Smashwords in January 2016.

See you next week.

Phil B

In my last post, I put out a little background detail on my recurring main character Johnny Winger.  Winger shows up in all my stories of Tales of the Quantum Corps and also will be the main player in Nanotroopers.  The last post ended with Johnny Winger learning that his mother had just died in a car crash.  The time was August 2, 2047….

The period 2047 to 2051 was a four-year period of hell and challenge for Johnny Winger.  Jamison Winger was also severely injured in the crash, but managed to survive and recover.  However, he was devastated at the death of his wife and responded to the overwhelming grief by spending all his time, after being released from the hospital, in his barn-cum-workshop on the North Bar Pass Ranch, working and tinkering on inventions that had no future, as a way of dealing with his grief.

For most of this period, until his father got clinical assistance for grief and depression (neuroplant and patch treatments), Johnny and his brother Brad and his sister Joanna had to run the ranch/farm business.  Johnny put off any thoughts of going to higher school and did one hell of a lot of growing up during this time.

The most difficult time came in 2048, when severe drought and low beef/produce prices caused the Winger kids to have to sell off part of their ranch land to a resort developer.

The developer proceeded to develop a faux “dude” ranch-western culture showplace called Highhorn, catering to rich city people from all over the western U.S.  Johnny hated himself for agreeing to this decision forever afterward.  Just seeing the stylized Highhorn signs and billboards and para-sailers wafting on mountain breezes over the ranch’s perimeter fence made him sick.

Not long after Jamison Winger got the ‘patch’ treatment for grief and depression, Johnny learned from hospital techs at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Colorado Springs that the nanoscale medbots they had used on his Dad to assist in his recovery, were also used by an international organization called Quantum Corps.  In fact, one of the techs even let Johnny have a go at operating the medbots inside an artificial body.  He found that he had a sort of knack for working with devices at the scale of atoms and molecules. 

The first nanoscale robots were just becoming known to the public, at this time in 2048 to 2050.  Studying up on this strange UN agency, Johnny learned that Quantum Corps wanted candidates to apply for a 5-year term of service, get schooled in nano theory and techniques, and assist the Corps in developing, building and perfecting such bots as weapons.  Threats from outside the U.S, other nations and even criminal groups such as the cartel Red Hammer were beginning to employ such nanoscale bots in the service of their own enterprises.  The threat to public safety was growing and Quantum Corps needed applicants to fight this new menace.

Johnny Winger was intrigued.

In November, 2048, he applied to Quantum Corps. 

His father was back at the ranch, better and able to work, with Johnny’s brother and sister.  Johnny got his Dad’s blessing to apply, but Brad and Joanna were skeptical.  Johnny was invited to Table Top Mountain, in Idaho (the main U.S. base for Quantum Corps) for initial interviews and screening.  This was June 2049 and Johnny was now through with school and Net Tutor.

 

At Table Top, Winger saw firsthand what Quantum Corps did.  He was given some tryouts in simulators and continued to show unusual aptitude for operating bots in nanospace environments. 

 

Winger met other applicants including Oscar M’Bela, Nathan Caden (a Red Hammer agent) and Deeno D’Nunzio at the Table Top recruit station.  They were also applying.  He learned why they were applying.  They became friends and learned a lot about each other.  They were also highly competitive with each other.

 

Unknown to the others, Nathan Caden used some liberty time to meet his Red Hammer handler at the Custer Inn, in Haleyville, Idaho. The handler gave him some malware to ‘infect’ the training ANAD system the applicants were using.  But Caden didn’t know he was under suspicion.  Base Security had placed a TinyEye  spybot on him before he left Table Top.

 

Before they could be accepted, Winger and the others learned they would have to pass the Atomgrabbers’ Qualifying Test.  Part physical, part mental, it tested their abilities to perform functions and combat roles in the nanoscale environment.  Caden did a surreptitious insertion of the Red Hammer malware into the ANAD containment tank, after studying all the security and containment arrangements.

 

The day of the AQT came and it was a bitch.  Winger continued to do well in tests of dexterity and skill at the nanospace orientation and nanobot maneuvering tests.  But something happened: one of the early training ANAD (Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disasssembler) bots suffered a malfunction (due to Caden’s malware), and the defensive systems didn’t seem to work.  (Caden had fiddled with the defensive systems to disable them and had released ANAD from Containment).

 

ANAD now escaped containment and started replicating out of control, consuming everything in sight. At Table Top, this was called a Big Bang.  Quantum Corps regular troopers tried HERF’ing (High Frequency Radio Frequency) the growing swarm but it seemed in danger of escaping Table Top.  Panic set in across the base.  Winger asked to try locating and ‘driving’ the master bot that controleds all ANAD replicants at the base. Base Security and the base C/O General Kincaid told him to try it.

 

Using a portable interface control unit from inside the Mission Prep bunker, Winger is able to locate, contact and take command of the ANAD master, driving it back to into containment.  Table Top is saved.  Moreover, Base Security has now moved in to take Nathan Caden into custody; he is MOB’ed (Mobility Obstruction Barrier) right after the Big Bang started.  Caden is immediately suspected of creating the threat to the base and is arrested.  Memory-tracing is ordered.

 

Major Jurgen Kraft, commanding officer of the newly formed 1^st Nanospace Battalion, tracks down Winger.  He presents a civilian Order of Merit award from the base commander Kincaid, even though Winger was just an applicant. Then he tells Winger he’s a natural at atomgrabbing and asks: does he still want to join the Corps?  Winger said he does.  Kraft said, “Good.  We need someone like you.  Sign here and welcome to Quantum Corps.  Get a good night’s sleep. Your first day of nog school is tomorrow.” 

 

Johnny Winger was now an atomgrabber.

 

This is just a little background on how Johnny Winger became a Quantum Corps trooper, or as they say in the Corps, an atomgrabber.  For more on this, see my upcoming series Nanotroopers, debuting on www.Smashwords.com in January 2016.  The first upload is scheduled for January 18.

The next post to The Word Shed will be on December 14.  In this post, I’ll attempt to answer a question that every writer has to deal with, a sort of logistics question: “How many pages should I try to complete every day?”

See you next week.

Phil B