Alexander R. Tambascia - From US Army Lieutenant Colonel to Science Fiction Author
After 28 years in the US Army, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander R. Tambascia suddenly found himself having to adjust to life outside the military. Combat injuries had brought his career to an end, and serious health problems meant he was facing an uncertain future.
But an unexpected conversation with another science fiction author encouraged him to have a go at writing himself.
Alexander joins me on *Author Conversations* to talk about his years in the Army, what it was like leaving military life behind and how he came to write *ODAT: Orbital Drop Armor Team*.
It's a military science fiction series featuring futuristic tanks, battles in space and plenty of detail drawn from Alexander's own experience.
We talk about how much of his military background finds its way into the books, what he's learnt about writing and the readers who've encouraged him along the way.
It's an interesting conversation with someone who's spent much of his life in the Army and has now found something quite different to put his energy into.
Key Takeaways
- Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander R. Tambascia transitioned from 28 years of military service to writing science fiction after facing medical retirement and a terminal health diagnosis.
- His ODAT (Orbital Drop Armor Team) book series combines authentic military experiences from conflicts like Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq with imaginative intergalactic science fiction.
- Tambascia draws heavy inspiration from classic military sci-fi such as David Drake's 'Hammer's Slammers' and applies gritty, realistic depictions of combat rather than Hollywood tropes.
- The central protagonist and the overarching universe reflect Tambascia's own life and career, incorporating real comrades, units, and British military figures like Captain Smite.
- The ODAT universe has expanded into multiple story arcs requested by fans, including Imperial Navy combat and law enforcement narratives adapted into anime series.
After 28 years in the US Army, retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander R. Tambascia faced a very different future. Medically retired following combat injuries, he had to adjust to civilian life after spending virtually his entire adult life in uniform.
Alexander tells me about that transition, the serious health news he received and the encouragement that led him to write military science fiction. His ODAT: Orbital Drop Armor Team books draw on his military experience to imagine armoured units deployed from orbit into an intergalactic conflict.
We discuss the realities behind his fictional military world, the inspiration for his characters, how he builds believable technology and why his readers matter so much to him.
Find Alexander at https://milscifiauthor.com and on YouTube via Imperial Information Network.
Author Conversations with Chris Dabbs: https://author-conversations.c...
And see Alexander's ODAT page here: https://www.author-conversatio...
Watch Alexander's interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/author-conversations-with-chris-dabbs--6905413/support.
Every book has a story beyond its pages.
In Author Conversations, broadcast journalist, presenter and newsreader Chris Dabbs sits down with the writers behind some of today’s most fascinating books to uncover the research, experiences and ideas that never made it onto the printed page.
Featuring bestselling and emerging authors from around the world, each episode goes beyond the blurb to explore the real stories behind the writing.
From untold historical discoveries and groundbreaking scientific research to personal journeys, business insights, faith, true crime and the human experience, every conversation is designed to inform, challenge and inspire.
Drawing on more than two decades of professional interviewing across radio, television and digital journalism,
Chris creates thoughtful, in-depth conversations that give authors the time and space to tell the stories that matter most.
Whether you’re searching for your next great read, fascinated by the creative process or simply enjoy intelligent, long-form conversations, Author Conversations offers a unique opportunity to discover the people, ideas and experiences behind remarkable books.
Real authors. Real stories. Real conversations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Alexander R. Tambascia?
Alexander R. Tambascia is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel with 28 years of service who transitioned into writing military science fiction after facing combat injuries and a terminal health diagnosis.
What is the ODAT book series about?
The ODAT (Orbital Drop Armor Team) series follows elite terrestrial armored units, particularly tank crews, deployed from orbit into intergalactic conflicts within an alien empire.
How does Alexander R. Tambascia's military career influence his writing?
He incorporates realistic combat tactics, leadership challenges, and the psychological realities of warfare drawn directly from his decades of service and deployments in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Where can readers find Alexander R. Tambascia's work?
Readers can find his books and related content at milscifiauthor.com and follow his updates on YouTube via the Imperial Information Network.
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[Music]
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Hi and welcome to author conversations with me, Chris Dabbs, as usual.
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Well, today we've got a bit of departure from our normal books.
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I'm really looking forward to this one.
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So what happens, right?
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When someone who knows military life from the inside decides to take it into space,
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yeah, you got it.
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My guest today is retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Tambascia.
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His ODAT books follow an elite armored team sent into extraordinary missions
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in a science fiction universe.
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But behind the futuristic action, our experience is drawn from a real military career
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giving everything much more authenticity, I think.
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Now, Alexander, after that introduction, welcome to author conversations.
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How are you?
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Great.
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Thank you for inviting me, Chris.
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I really appreciate it.
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So thank you very much.
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Hey, listen, no problem with what I'm really looking for.
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It's a finding more about the story and turning our listeners and viewers more about the,
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well, yeah, the story, your career as well, because, yeah, that's quite amazing.
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Not everyone gets to be a Lieutenant Colonel, right?
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So, your military career began long before he became an author.
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And now you've taken some of that experience, which is really interesting, and you put it
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into science fiction.
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I mean, what first made you think that those two worlds could come together in O-Dat?
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I mean, how much of the original idea, I guess, came from something you'd witnessed or
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experienced or lived through?
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Well, you know, I've always been a huge sci-fi anime fan ever since I was little.
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I'm a Gen X, or I grew up in the golden years of anime, you know, 80s and 90s.
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So I've always had a love for it.
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And, you know, so I grew up with reading science fiction, you know, at most famously, the
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most famous tank sci-fi tank series was Hammer Slammers written by David Drake.
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So when I entered the military service at 17, I enlisted.
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I served, you know, several years enlisted, went to OCS, you know, Mustang, meaning I called
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from enlisted to come in an officer in armor.
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And through a lot of that series, I served, you know, total 28 years, and I got medically
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retired due to combat injuries.
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And that was kind of a real shock to me because after 28 years, that's more than almost
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virtue of my whole adult life I served in uniform.
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And, you know, it was a culture shift from getting up every morning, you know, and exactly
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what my job is to getting up and trying to realize like, what do I do now?
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I'm a civilian.
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You know, I actually have to actually have to pick what I'm going to wear, you know, but
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it's one thing I like about it, you know, that's one thing left, but the military, you
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will the same thing every day.
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Not much slot.
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So, you know, and then on top of that, you know, the VA, our veterans administration for
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your UK fans, they manage us retirees from military service.
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You know, they told me that because of my exposure on terminal, and I was lucky and fortunate
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to meet a very famous international sci-fi author, Jonathan Yanis, and I asked him, I said,
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hey, you know, Jonathan, you know, I'm terminal, I'm a, you know, I just don't want to die,
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not people knowing me.
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So, if you make the character in your books, and he agreed, and he, him and I started talking
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over the year of my experiences, my personnel, how I do things, and he, he was the one who
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got convinced me to tell my story.
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He said, you know, and I told him, you know, I'm not a writer, I mean, I'm not some, you
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know, and he, you know, I said, you know, what I know is military and nobody really really
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wants to read hard for military stuff except military historians.
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And he explained to me, he goes, you know, you know, who aldus oxalutes?
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And I said, of course, I know what aldus oxalutes, he wrote, "Break into words."
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I mean, he said, "Did you know that was his autobiography of his drug abuse when he was
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growing up?"
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He, he, he, "Precife."
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I said, "I didn't know that."
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And he goes, "He says to me, "Well, he could do it.
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Why can't you?"
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Which kind of got me to, though, that back to you right in the corner where I had to
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agree, you know, I'll try.
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And when I sat there trying to develop my universe, I instantly came back to David Drake's
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hammer slammers and where, you know, one in three years, there has never been another science
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fiction series, whether it written, anime, movie, big screen of tanks dropping from Melbourne.
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I'm planning it.
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Okay, you know, I think I can, you know, really do him justice at, you know, being, you know,
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one of his, you know, one of his future, you know, mentories, you can say it.
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And so I came up with the whole concept of orbital drop armor team of tanks that get deployed
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from a drop cruiser in orbit onto a planet on drop sleds.
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You know, the sleds, you know, take up all the heat and atmospheric and they do the landing
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and then when they land, you know, explosive bolts, unleash the tracks and they roll out and
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they do their job.
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And so once I got that part of my book figured out, I had to then think about, you know, the big
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things of, well, you know, it's, because I wrote this like, my book series is near future,
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alternate timeline, starting back from my graduated armor school because no one cares about my
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enlisted life.
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So I, you know, started from armor school.
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So because I was locking it back into like 1996, I said, well, I got to come up with something
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that's, you know, believable, near, near, near real term, near present day stuff, but
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while keeping it sci-fi and that's why I came up with the idea that, you know, that there
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is a giant intergalactic empires and, you know, we happen to be at promise of one called
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the Empire of Cool Worlds and they have a very unique principle of they choose certain
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cultures or civilizations to be, to provide certain types of, of services to the Empire.
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And when they come to Earth, they, they just want to bring inductances to their third war
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planet, their third planet to provide military forces to the imperial, military forces.
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And so my character, you know, gets ripped from serving what he, you know, at the time to
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being a, you know, US Army, terrestrial tanker to next he finds out he is now one of the first
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human Terrence to get thrown into the imperial forces.
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And because he's a tanker, he drops into, you know, the ODAC organization.
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And he doesn't realize until late, you know, about a quarter rate into the story that, you
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know, he made a joke.
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He goes, what, you know, what do you talk about?
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Tank's dropping from orbit or something and, you know, everyone looks in like that's exactly
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what we're talking about.
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And it's kind of our culture shock because, you know, I'm thinking, you know, I kind of
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think of it.
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I'm in, you know, for your UK fans, the main battle tank in America is the M1 Abrams and
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we have so variants of that.
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The last variant I worked on was an 80 ton beast.
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So trying to picture, you know, you're going to be dropped from orbit in an 80 ton steel
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coffin, you know, kind of, so a lot of apprehension into this.
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So I sat there and I said, okay, you know, I put a lot of physics in it.
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And there's a lot of physics behind a lot of my stuff in the book.
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And, you know, so when I said, how do we drop this, you know, went down through a lot of things.
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And, you know, that's kind of how I built the overall architecture of the story.
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But then, you know, sending that aside, it's really about, it's really for Lackar better
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way of saying it.
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It's an auto, it's my own personal autobiography set in a sci-fi background.
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So I take this huge universe that I've made, which we can, I'll explain later where I have
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subtle branches now of this universe due to my fan base.
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And bring it down to the person, which is the main character, which ironically is me, where
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you're seeing this all through his eyes and dealing with warfare from the eyes of someone
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who's never served in warfare.
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And one thing has made my book very unique is veterans from all countries, not only American
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veterans who served in my country, but I've had Australian, German, UK, comment about how
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brutally real my combat sequences are.
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And I did that on purpose because I've talked to civilians and they have no understanding
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of what warfare is like.
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What they know is what the move with Hollywood tells or what they see in anime, or you know,
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and I came in and I'm like, you know, no, it is much more darker than that.
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And I'm very, you know, I bring that grittiness, the reality.
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And I also bring in the pain and concept of being a leader where you have to, you know,
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make decisions and every decision has a concept and learning how to deal with those concepts.
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One of my best scenes in book one that a lot of people comment is when I did my first
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bayonet kill and I explained what it feels like killing someone with a bayonet.
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And I went very graphically with it.
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And a lot of vets have said to me, sent me letters and say, saying, that's the most realistic
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description I've ever read of someone using a bayonet to kill somebody.
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Which in some way, you know, says, you know, make me proud.
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So, hey, I did something right.
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But the same way I had to think of the reality of this was someone who did the same thing
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as me.
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So, he understands what I went through.
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So, it's kind of a mixed feeling type of compliment.
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So, the story is it's over three books.
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My old ad series currently has three books.
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There'll be a fourth book in about three years from now.
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But the three books really covered this whole cycle of him from me going from K4 and S4,
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which your fans should be very familiar with it happening in your content with the Bosnia
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and Kosovo to Afghanistan finally ending up in Iraq.
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And so I took a lot of the real, I took a lot of the real villains and the scenarios.
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And I just swapped the location.
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I mean, I've had people who read book one and they knew exactly what I was talking about
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in Kosovo and Serbia, body of description.
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And all I did was put it on a different planet.
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A lot of the characters of the book are based on real characters I've served with, I met
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with.
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So, they're in the book.
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And it is...
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And the biggest thing most people have said about my books is the character is very human,
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very relieved.
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My character is not a super soldier.
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He's not...
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Well, I hate using this reference, but he's no captain in America.
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He's no super, you know, he's not Rambo.
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He's not...
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He's just an average Taran who gets to play with really big toys.
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And he makes mistakes.
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You know, a lot of the book is very self-deprecating because I do talk about a lot of stupid things
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I've did and survived.
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And a lot of people say that, you know, that makes him very...
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Very relatable as a hero.
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And in fact, I...
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I purposely glorified a lot of the people I served with because they did some really
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amazing things.
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And sadly, a lot of people won't know...
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Who don't read the book won't know about them because, you know, they never got to come back
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home with me.
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So I kind of felt, you know, an obligation that if I'm going to write about them, I want
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people to know about how these people really serve and do a lot who are, you know, their
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country.
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And, you know, and what I kind of found very funny is is I do have one British character in
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my book based off a real British SAS member named...
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His name is Captain Smite.
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And I met Smite early in my career when I first started doing overseas work in K4 and
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S4.
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And I made the mistake of confusing his...
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You know, UK SAS, Australian SAS, and I got a very long lecture on how they're different.
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I do, I bet.
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But I find a lot of people, you know, a lot of people from your love, Captain Smite and a lot
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of people said I really captured the British humor.
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And he was a really nice guy.
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And I really enjoyed being with him.
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The way he would talk about, as he would say, "You yanks do crazy shit."
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And I'm like, "Well, you know, I said, you're talking to a group of people that when you stood
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out there and read and read codes in straight lines, we stood behind trees."
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"Tanny, you good."
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So we got a lot of that painter.
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And the one thing I always loved when we were serving together is every Fourth of July,
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he would always send me a card saying, "Happen, happy treason day."
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So we had...
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Oh, that's quite funny.
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So I really admire him.
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And I'm really sad that I, you know, as our careers went off and we won the different things,
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I kind of lost touch with him.
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So I hope if he's alive, he happens to see this or see my book, he reads it and, you know,
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he enjoys how I pick, how I embody this character in my stories.
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But the ODAT series is not...
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If I was going to tell someone who's not a military, I don't know, please civilian, do just
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a side part.
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I have to...
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I tell them, you know, my book is not the traditional sci-fi military war football that you would normally
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read written by Jeffrey Haskell, Evie Larson, you know, Jonathan Yannis.
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And, uh, who...
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Get his name.
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Michael Douglas, you know, where my book is, you know, it's the technology, you know, there's
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a big divide in the technology where a lot of stuff that my main character and Terrence
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use in general are very typical modern stuff that we have.
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And, you know, the real science fiction stuff is used by aliens mainly, you know, you
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know, or it doesn't have its own spaceship.
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We don't have hyper drives.
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We don't have any of that technology.
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So, you know, when you're reading this, you're seeing from a perspective of a, a group of
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Terrence thrown into, you know, intergalactic warfare using conventional weaponry to
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fight.
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And, you know, it's, you know, in my book, the first, you know, variant of, you know, I came
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out of the future variant of the M1A4 Abrams main battle tank, which ironically last year,
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the US Army actually developed.
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I don't know if anyone read my book and decided to do that or not, but they, you know, it's
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a real tank now.
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But, back when I wrote it, it was a fictional tank.
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A lot of the, that tank was based on very near future technologies that defense contractors
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wanted to bring to the platform.
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So, it's very familiar technology.
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I think the most advanced weapon I have from, you know, Terra.
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And, you know, for those of your fans who don't know Latin, our Earth's proper term is
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Terra firmware.
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So, what we call Terra.
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Terra is, you know, the rail gun, which is the main gun of the Abrams tank because, you
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know, you have Abrams run on very big engines and they have the power to, you know, use a
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rail gun.
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But, you know, a lot of the technology in it is very relatable.
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You know, there's nothing far fetched with it.
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I do, you know, a lot of my philosophy in the technology is like Arthlett C. Clarke's
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version, you know, any science, anything that's science, you know, advanced science is magic.
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And that's how I kind of do it is that the really advanced stuff to us seems very mystical,
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very science.
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It's like the chief engineers of these ships are called tech mages.
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And the reason they're called tech mages is that from a tearing point of view, the technology
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they use to make things happen is magically to us.
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So even though we understand that it's really science, I kind of bring in that Arthlett C. Clarke
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metaphor into the books.
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I just make it a little bit more of a practical application of how it is.
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And the story, you know, crutches, you know, the free burns and the universe is very big.
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My fan base has come to me and said, you know, they want to know more about different aspects
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of my universe.
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So I have several story arcs now.
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The book, I have a book coming out this December, which is based on a story of Odette Universe,
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which is called Imperial Private Year, which focuses more on Navy combat.
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Because all my fans are like, it's really cool, you know, you get all the ground cup up.
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You know, we want to hear more about space combat and space warfare.
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So I created that series to give that fan base, that, you know, that enjoyment.
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I have other fans that say, well, how is law enforcement done in your universe?
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So I created a new story arc I called Imperial Marshal Service, which actually got adapted
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into an anime that's actually running on Mochi TV and YouTube.
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There's an anime adaptation of that story that's out there, you know, for those who like
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law and order and that was type of thing.
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So it's a very big universe that I created.
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And I'll be the first one to honest say, I never expected it to become so big of a universe.
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It was really my fans coming in and saying, hey, you talked about this in book one or book
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two and I wanted to know more about it.
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And I'm like, oh crap, now I could actually, you know, come up with backstory.
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I think, do make it.
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Yeah.
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You know, like book two, oh my, I talk about the Imperial Intelligence Corps.
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And, you know, and that was based because during a lot of work in Afghanistan, I worked
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with intelligence.
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Flicks like, you know, I brought them in and then that has more because I had people that
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we're all wanting no more about intelligence because you know, they're, you know, they're
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big spy fans, which, you know, a lot of them are chain bonds fans.
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You know, I got a lot of people asking me, sending me fan mail saying, hey, does the
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impurities, you know, does the impurities tell us to have like a James Bond up their
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organization?
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And I'm like, and then I turned around and I said, you know, no, there's, there's
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definitely no James Bond.
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I don't think any alien race is refined enough to, to end up a pure British culture of
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the whole hunt and I win them ones to offend and Fleming.
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I mean, that's his creation.
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Ian Fleming did a great job and I don't think I could do justice by making a alien sci-fi
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version of that character.
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So I got to make it, you'd have to make it completely.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, like an alien one or something, you know, whatever, really, I guess that's really interesting.
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Yeah, sorry.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, another thing is it's like, you know, at some point when you have an alien
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jizz bond, you know, where does he stop becoming like Captain Kirk who sleeps with every alien
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he meets?
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So it's how do I, both the same, really?
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Well, yeah, exactly.
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So, you know, I do a lot of talking here and trying to, you know, introduce everybody, but, you
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know, they sit the questions or anything you want me to expand on about my background,
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my story, my characters.
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Well, you know, as you've been talking, it's been wonderful because you've basically ticking
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off all the questions.
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Yeah, you've been very good-sized, which is great.
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Really, thanks for that.
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I mean, even the futuristic weaponry question I had is out the window because, you know,
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we're talking about how the technology is near future.
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So basically, it's incredible to think that, you know, that imperial outfit basically
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comes to Terra and enlists the human race into their army kind of thing, I guess, right?
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And then says, right, bring your tanks.
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We're going to put them on these sleds and we're going to throw you out the edge instead
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of an end of a plane, right?
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And one of those, I know, galaxy things or whatever that, you know, you guys have.
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And instead of out of the back of one of those, you're going out of the back, you know,
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in orbit.
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I mean, that's incredible, isn't it?
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I mean, was it fun actually thinking about all the ways that you could talk about the
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tech of that working rather than just being parachuted out of the back of the plane?
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Oh, yes, yes.
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It came in.
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When I started doing it, I first did a lot of research on physics.
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You know, academically, I have a doctorate of science and I said, okay, well, I'm going
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to do this.
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I've got to do it the right way because there's going to be that one science geek who's a
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site happens to be a site and he's going to nitpick every factor.
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So I developed the drop sleds and originally they were just a sled that was quasi-piloted
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by the driver of the tank that really was heat dissipation and, you know, retro-rockus
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to slow it down.
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So it doesn't come a big crater when it hits.
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And as I was writing it coming in, you know, I started coming up with all the questions
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like, well, what happens if they hit ADA on the way down?
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What if they hit anti-orbital?
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They, how do I want my countermeasures?
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And so I added countermeasures to the sleds.
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They have flares and chaff.
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They have a very unique missile system called Amso's, which are anti-missile sand-ordinated,
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which is a missile that when it's fired towards incoming missiles, it explodes and leases,
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you know, very fine medical particles which are basically like sand at near-like speeds
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to incoming warheads to make them dead.
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And so, you know, I really came down to them and in my book, in chapter, you know, one of
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my later chapters in book one, I explained the whole ordeal from being dropped and the
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sensation of dropping, you know, you're going through away from the drop carrier and then
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you start hitting the atmosphere and going through the atmosphere of founding landing.
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And, you know, I did, when I did my research on that and going through it is, you know, I
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even read the transcripts of the pilot conversations from when the shuttle Columbia was coming
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in back to Earth. What was that? What did they go through? What they see and hear? And because
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in many ways, you know, the drop sleds work the same principle. And, you know, talking about,
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you know, the blackout period and when you trust and do the, and from the mesopherent tetrasphere
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and that ionization causes a blackout of communications and sensors and stuff where to the point where,
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you know, it comes back and it's literally, the way I try to put it in the book is, you know,
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they're pretty much blind until they get out of that. And then, you know, it's like they're
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in the middle of a warfare, you know, I'm incoming and everything like that is happening.
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So I try to capture all that to make it as believable as possible of how this would be done in a realistic
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way. And I really liked, you know, doing that. And I kind of kept that throughout the book on all my
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various technologies, you know, and I also try to incorporate the many cultures that need that are
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in, you know, the military services across our country, I mean, our country, our world. Because in book
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two, I actually have, there is a New Zealand combat unit. And, you know, I actually have before,
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they're going into into into combat, they're doing a hawk dance in their battle armor. And I'm
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describing, you know, how, how they're doing this in power armor. And someone actually said that,
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you know, that's, that would be such an awesome but scary thing to see. And I'm going, that's the point.
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Yeah, exactly. It's like it makes so scared. I didn't know something like that, right?
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You know, it is one line in book two where I get a classic slide is, you know, there's an
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operation and smides like, well, can we get this done in 30 minutes? And my character says,
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smite going, why 30 minutes? He goes, I have tea time in 30 minutes. I'm not going to miss my tea from it.
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Nice fair. Yeah, absolutely. He's got the right ideas. He's got the right ideas. Yeah, right.
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Yeah, I see you mean, well, listen, that is not the, we front out of time. I mean, can you believe it?
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I mean, it's kind of amazing really that I mean, I've listened to you. I'm thinking, man,
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I've got to read these books. These, this is good stuff. I love it. I love the technology. I love,
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I should, what I like about it, you know, coming from it from a non-military background is,
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as you said about the tech, I mean, you know, I like tech. I like sci-fi and stuff, but I quite like the,
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oh gosh, I was going to use a big word that juxtaposition, I guess, between the near future tech of
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Terra and then, as I've said before, you know, this proper, I guess, integral act, not,
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are they integral act, or just into Stella, you know, last bit of a difference there, isn't there?
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Integral act, all right. So, I mean, in that case, say you're talking like big time,
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you know, technology there, because what, even Star Trek's not integral act, is it? I mean,
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for us Trekkies, we know these things. But anyway, it's, yeah, it's one of those things. I think
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this sounds absolutely fascinating, because you've actually, as you've said, you've spoken to, or,
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you know, you've, you've responded with people who have served as well, and, you know, they've given
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you their seat of approval, right? On a lot of the combat and a lot of everything else. And I think
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that must be the toughest thing, do you think, to try and do that and to try and get it as accurate
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as possible where your peers, wherever they are, and whichever, you know, service they served in,
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actually can look at you and say, yeah, you know what, we're brothers, we understand exactly what
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you felt, and you got it right here, which is what you said about the guy of the bayonet, right?
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Right. Yes, you know, that is probably the most, you know, satisfying comment I get, and I really
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take those to heart, sincerely, because I really believe a realism is correct. In fact, you know,
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in books, you know, one of my beta readers in book three, I had a, a, a different combat unit that
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I'm not familiar with, and I screwed up their fire command, and he actually came back when I
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beta, he said, hey, you got the fire command running, it's done this one. I actually corrected it to,
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to make it seem correct. But I think, you know, one thing I before we go, I want your readers to be
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aware of is that if they go to YouTube and go and type the @symbol at Imperial Information Network,
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it comes with my YouTube page. In there, I have documentaries of my various fractions of my,
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of my universe. I have, you know, this information about the North skin empire, the coolwill empire,
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the equipment, the units. So there's a lot of documentaries I have in there. They can also see my
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anime series there. So, you know, if they want to dive in, you know, the thing that I'm not covered
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in my book, there's a documentary I usually have posted on my YouTube to explain about that I have
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documented about each one of my races. So, you know, I think it's a, you know, the Jeff the Good
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Resource, I definitely want fans to take advantage of. And, you know, it is a, you know, I created it
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because I have a lot of fans come to me asking me a lot of questions and I'm thinking, you know,
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why should I, you know, and I do take the time and respond to everyone of my fans right now,
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you see, you know, instead of taking all my time and responding to this one person, how many other
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people have that same question? And I said, well, why don't I make a YouTube page and upload it? So,
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everyone can see the, you know, what's being asked and how it, what the answer is. So, you know,
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00:31:26,620 --> 00:31:32,780
that's, you know, and I'm very big. I've recorded it with my fans heavily in all my books,
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00:31:32,780 --> 00:31:41,500
several of the characters and my books are actually based on my own fans. I have twins who read my
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book, one who's a very, very, uh, sell it fans of mine. There, I have them as the
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twins in my old ad books and they have probably become one of the biggest fan favorite characters
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00:31:54,860 --> 00:32:02,620
I've had. So, but I do that because I appreciate my reader base. Uh, there wouldn't be an old ad
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universe. I wouldn't be here talking to you today if it wasn't for the fans,
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00:32:08,060 --> 00:32:13,660
buy in my book and supporting me and and encouraging me to give them more.
411
00:32:13,660 --> 00:32:19,020
Well, thank you to the fans. Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, it's been wonderful and we are, we are
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out of time. I'm so sorry. But listen, uh, we're tired. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Arten Bashir. I
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00:32:26,140 --> 00:32:31,340
mean, thank you very, very much for joining me today and giving us that whole picture of the
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00:32:31,340 --> 00:32:36,700
old ad universe and all the books and, you know, remember everybody that, um, you can, you can
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00:32:36,700 --> 00:32:42,140
actually go to, uh, Alexander's website, um, which is also, tell us the website address as well.
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00:32:42,140 --> 00:32:50,860
millscifiauthor.com. There you go. Millscifiauthor.com. And is it similar on YouTube as well?
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00:32:50,860 --> 00:32:54,780
If they look you up or look you up by name, which is the best way for people to find you yet.
418
00:32:54,780 --> 00:33:02,540
On YouTube, they have to use, uh, imperial information network is how you find me on YouTube.
419
00:33:02,540 --> 00:33:07,980
Hey, I like it. Imperial information network. Excellent. Love it. Okay. Well, that looks
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00:33:07,980 --> 00:33:12,140
on the, it's a shame because we could literally talk for hours, right? Because I think this is
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00:33:12,140 --> 00:33:17,020
just fascinating stuff. And I'm really glad that you shared all of that with us today. Um, I think
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00:33:17,020 --> 00:33:21,740
it's going to be fantastic. And, you know, the way that people can, can listen and get into everything.
423
00:33:21,740 --> 00:33:26,140
I mean, not just your fans, but you know, obviously new fans that will come along. So thanks very
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00:33:26,140 --> 00:33:31,260
much for coming along to all the conversations. Uh, it's been fantastic having you here. And well,
425
00:33:31,260 --> 00:33:36,540
thank you. And hopefully we'll talk again in the future. I would love to, um, in special when
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00:33:36,540 --> 00:33:42,300
after I release my new book, Imperial Privateer, I would love to come back on and explain that series
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00:33:42,300 --> 00:33:49,580
which is, um, my beta readers are raving about. It's been fantastic. As I say, I mean, I'm just excited.
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00:33:49,580 --> 00:33:54,140
I'm going straight to your YouTube and that. Um, take it easy. And I'll see you again in the future
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00:33:54,140 --> 00:34:08,060
that. Thank you very much for coming on to Author Conversations.
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[Music]
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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