Ryk's Log Comments

I second that, Congrats Ryk! Thank you for making me late to work and bed to many times 🙂

Three comments.
1. I am excited that Ryk is now full time on the frontiers saga.
2. I have been reading sci-fi for fifty years. Started with The Time Machine and 1984. I have completed all nine of the Frontiers Saga and I am "hooked"
3. So now that you are full time, hurry up with number 10, Liberation.
Bill

I find Ryk's story makes me happy. I think of him as "one of us" who happened to find success. More power to him.

The current trajectory looks like he is finding more success with each book. Apparently with each book released, the previous ones all find new sales as well. That bodes well for Ryk and his family, since he has 15 laid out in this cycle. What I am really curious about is how the second cycle will do. I read Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series up to the end of the first cycle, then dropped out for several reasons when he went into his second and third cycles. Part of it was irritation at high ebook prices, part of it was not wanting to get engaged in a series that would take several years to reach the end. Ryk seems to have directly addressed each of those concerns. 🙂

Although I am pleased with Ryk's work ethic, I hope he takes some really nice vacations so he doesn't get burned out. Maybe a trip to Winnipeg? 🙂

Hey, have you seen Ryk's ranking on Amazon lately?

Amazon Author Rank
#3 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction
#4 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure
#4 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
#10 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy
#38 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction

I guess the older books are selling again, now that there are new ones as well. 🙂

I also wanted to congratulate you, Ryk, on a job well one. I've been reading your books faithfully since May of 2012. It's amazing how I can read through an episode so quickly! I agree with bakuto... it's always a late night or two when a new episode comes out! 🙂

Numbers just 5 days later

#4 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction
#5 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure
#5 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
#17 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy
#46 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction

I guess the numbers peaked, although they should still be good. I hope Ryk can keep up the production.

New to the forum, Ryk, congrats on making a go of this. On your blog post, you have a link to this forum that appears to be the link during the beta phase before you went live. You'll need to update this link ( http://66.147.244.146/~frontim2/forums/) with the live version: https://www.frontierssaga.com/forums/

I am really enjoying the books. There are a few things that drive me crazy though.
1. The Aurora CV-01 is named I think in at least two recent scifi books, neither of which are as good as this series. But, I download a TON of books, and trying to remember one from another is getting harder and harder, specially when they have the same names!

2. The book descriptions on Amazon are not helpful. If you read a lot of books as I do, trying to remember if I have already read a book becomes challenging. I rely on the book descriptions on Amazon to jog my memory. Your book descriptions are far too brief, and very non-specific!

3. I think the author could stand to learn a bit more about the military, and the Navy in particular. There is a vibe on board every ship, made up from its crew, and their interactions with each other, doing things the military way. It's tangible and ethereal at the same time. To get a sense of it, read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-War-ebook/dp/B00A1VFFVM/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

4. Lastly, 75 books in this series? Are you kidding me?

No response from Ryk, but the link in the blog post has been fixed.

nwoods: Thanks for your post. And thanks for the tip on the link problem. I can't really do anything about other books using Aurora as a ship name. And I certainly wasn't going to search every sci fi book looking for how many people had used the name before. I simply googled it and found no significant listing on the first few pages. The reason I chose the name is because it means "New Dawn." The story is exactly that; it is a new dawn for the people of Earth. Also, the people of Earth saw the Aurora, which to them was an attempt at diplomacy rather than confrontation, to be a new dawn in the sense of approaching the problem of the Jung with a different (less destructive) solution.

The book descriptions were intentionally made brief as I did not want to give away the story line. So many blurbs (book descriptions) ramble on and literally give away so much of the plot as to spoil the book. Also, I wanted to add to the sense of it being a TV series or movie. To me, the individual lines are like clips in a movie trailer, showing you just enough to give her a tiny taste, or smell, or what's to come.

I have a military consultant who reads every scene immediately after I write it to help me keep the military side of things real. Still, I get lots of comments from those who serve/d (and thank you for your service) about this or that not being how it "really is." I get that, I do, but you have to remember several things. First, this is set 1200 years in the future, on a ship built by an Earth that lost touch with its past and had to rediscover itself from the ground up. Things are going to be different. I have to strike a balance between making it familiar for the reader (so they can get into the story easily) and making it "real". For example, the military loves to use acronyms, but the majority of my readers wouldn't understand those acronyms, so I try to restrict them to only a few of the most obvious ones. Second, every person's military experience is different. There are differences between each branch of the military. There are also changes as those branches evolve. How things might have been at the time someone served, may not be how they are today. Lastly, no matter how hard I might try to "get it right" there are always going to be people who think I got it wrong. I can't worry about that. I can only do it the best way that I know how, and in a way that fits the feeling and flow of the story.

To say there will be 75 books in the series seems to confuse people. (To be honest, I wish I hadn't have said it.) They see "75 books" and think that's how many they'll have to read to finish the story. Nothing could be further from the truth. The way they are being written is as if they were five really big books, each a stand-alone story that can be read without reading the one before it. I couldn't sell them as a single, 1.5 million word book for $45 each, no one would buy them. (Especially from an unknown author.) Each set of 15 episodes is called a "part". By the last episode of the part, you have completed the entire story. The next part may use many of the same characters and is in the same story-universe, but they take place years after the previous part and are a completely separate story. So in essence, I am only asking the readers to read one massive book, but I'm allowing you to do so in chunks, without having to risk a large sum of money and time until you are sure that you want to do so. It's a bit unusual, I admit, but it's the only way that I could have done this. Had I tried to write the entire first part (15 episodes) prior to release, I never would have been able to finish it as life would've gotten in the way. (In other words, I had to make money at writing in order to spend time writing.)

I hope this helps. Thanks for reading, and thanks for posting.

Ryk

Sounds good to me, Ryk! I was in one part of the US Military, but I worked a lot with other branches and with other nation's troops. The culture is going to be different, so don't worry about it.

A few things I personally saw: Germans believe strongly in the separation between ranks, where a Lieutenant would never socialize with a Sergeant. Commonwealth troops (UK/Canada/Australian/Kiwi) consider it natural to have some alcohol in their field rations. Americans are more loose than most when in the field, where a Major I know put on Corporal chevrons so he could go into the Enlisted Man's club (the Officer Club was temporarily closed). Canadians danced naked on the tables, because there were no women around for 400 miles.

But these are just some of my personal experiences. Someone on a submarine would have a totally different viewpoint. And the time difference would compound the issue. So don't worry about it, and just keep writing. Your stories make this old Marine happy. 🙂

It seems like you really mean to say "75 books in the Frontier's Saga universe", or whatever you've call it call your universe.

I would like to know, in the broadest possible strokes, what is the deal with the Jung? I mean I get it that a 1000 years is a long time, especially if no contact with Earth was possible, but a few more clues in the books would be welcome. I want to know more about the enemy, at least as much as the EDF guys know (which is not a lot, as I gather). For one thing, a bit about their background. Which world do they come from (eg do they come from a world settled ony by Scandinavians and Russians (Vladimir mentioned that some worlds were settled only by certain races eg a Russian world, and the Jung seem to be of pale skin, blue eyes, blonde hair), Was that world better off during the Plague cause they had religious reasons prohibitng advanced tech, their population was more dispersed, they had an autocratic government which used harsh measurs to contain the Plague....?? That sort of thing). Something about their language, customs, government... That was also my issue with the Takarans, we essentially knew nothing about them except that they had nobles, that those nobles endorsed the Emperor and that the Emperor was a nasty piece of work. That was all. And they were the enemy everyone feared. They needed to be fleshed out a bit more. I liked, for example, how in Resistance we get a glimpse, in the very end, of the traitor Scott talking with a Jung officer, IMO having a few pages here and there in the book where they are discussing Aurora, the war in general, enemy tactics and countering them would go a long way towards us disliking them even more and being happy that their plans were defeated by the crew of Aurora and the Alliance.

Oh, and one more thing, the interpreter of the Corinari PM, the one who was constantly being a loudmouth and arguing in front of the PM, I wonder what the deal was with that? I can appreciate the idea of having a highly placed spy but seeing that the PM was essentially silent when the man was arguing (not translating for him) and being docile in front of Nathan.... That does not compute, politicians are a separate breed and they like to control things around them, the PM acted in a very unusual manner for one. And I never really understood how come the PM was the only Corinari over 50 who did not speak Angla? Why was that? Even Nathan wondered and I was hoping for an explanation which never came when one sentence on the subject would have explained a lot. I know I am nitpicking here but I really like the books and the characters and as they say "Devil IS in the details". But apart from those few minor issues I really loved all the books and I like the characters a lot.

Oh and lookking forward to reading the next part of this awesome story!

@Luka:
It seems like a lot of the info about the Jung currently available is second-hand or worst. The Jung don't seem to care much about talking about themselves. That being said, it seems like in the next 1-3 books a lot more info will be available as the Aurora and allies start to push back.

One of the things I do a bit differently is that I don't always give all the answers. I do this because in life, you don't always know everything, and sometimes you simply never find out why something happened. I try to limit the exposure to the enemy so that the reader doesn't know any more about them than the protagonists do. (Except when absolutely necessary.) I have been dabbling in "the enemy's perspective" a bit more in recent episodes, and I probably will do more as the FS universe expands in later parts.