Getting into Land & Sea

 If you go to the right conventions, you’d be surprised what happens.

In 2023, the year I moved to Texas, I went to BasedCon in Michigan. For lunch on the first day, Blaine Lee Pardoe sat down with me and my wife.

Now, Blaine and I had talked a few times before then. He read Hell Spawn, and on subsequent occasions, asked me a question or two about Catholic prayers and such regarding specific circumstances. I was helpful enough that one of the questions ended up in his second trilogy of Land & Sea. (I think book seven or eight.)

It was at that meal at BasedCon that Blaine told me that he wanted me to write a Land & Sea novel.

A word of advice I picked up from Peter David (RIP):

When somebody asks if you want to write in their series, you say YES.

But what if you don’t know the property?

You LEARN. Simple as that.

I think I did okay.

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Who is Blaine Lee Pardoe?

If you know, you can skip this section. But I’m going to see if I can keep this short.

Blaine has written a whole bunch of novels. “Second American Civil War” novels. He has a Punisher Kills the Woke collection of novels. He’s written true crime.

However, the most relevant books for this discussion? Blaine used to write for Battletech, a mech-driven world that has RPGs (games, not grenades), video games, and enough media-tie in books to choke a horse.

Blaine wrote … 18? 20? Battletech novels.

For stupid reasons, he was fired from Battletech. Twice.

The first time, the woman in charge wanted to get rid of “all the old guys.” New guys would certainly be cheaper, right?

When they discovered how bad an idea THAT was, Blaine was rehired … and ended up being canceled by a stalker, who was deeply, deeply deranged.

After this second time, Blaine bounced back in about five minutes with a new series of his own IP: Land & Sea

What is Land & Sea?

For those of you who don’t want to read my reviews over at Upstream, I’ll sum up the series as fast as I can.

1. Splashdown: Aliens have been hiding under the sea for years, building up forces on Earth through various and sundry methods. And now they strike all the coasts of all the countries on Earth, all at once.

2. Riptides: Book one was just the preliminary attack. Now the war begins in earnest.

3. Storm Surge: The humans strike back.

Oh, yeah, and there’s going to be an entire RPG based around it.

That’s the really short and inaccurate version.

And Blaine invited me to play in this world, writing book #10.

Why me?

Why me? you ask. Great question. I’ve done some MilSF, but with all the usual cheats.

In one Land & Sea novel (Ratchet’s Run, if I recall correctly), Blaine had a throwaway line about how the Pope had declared a crusade against the alien invaders.

Blaine thought I knew enough about my own Church to flesh out what that would look like.

Did I have reservations? Oh, you betcha.

You see, I hadn’t read any of the Land & Sea books at that point. 

There were on the list...

But so are half of the books in existence.

I have some books to catch up on.

When Blaine said “crusade,” my first thought was “The Pope Declares a Crusade, Islam will stop fighting aliens and declare war on Rome.”

Etc.

Then I read the books … no. No human is declaring all out war on any other human. Humanity is too freaking busy. They might be trying to prep for the next human war after the aliens are beaten back, but a shooting war now is a bad idea.

My second reservation: I don’t… technically … write military science fiction.

You see, with White Ops, I use the cheat used by many a science fiction author. As Kai Wai Cheah notes, there are a lot of people who use the same cheats: I don’t write infantry or naval engagement. I make up a “SpecOps” group and work my way around real tactics. (Funny enough, my ignorance has led to … reinventing the wheel. I seem to accidentally land in actual tactics from time to time.)

However, Land & Sea is straight-up military engagement. I’d have to fake it.

After reading the first three books, I made my first mistake:

I started building a book in the fashion of those three books.

If you haven’t read Land & Sea (and you really should) Blaine manages eight character points of view, spread out over three novels. They all tell one story, to a degree where it feels like Tom Clancy is writing Baen’s War and Peace.

I started building multiple characters, spread out over multiple places, trying to tie them all together. And since the war happened on coastal cities, I needed (1) a coastal city (2) I knew well with (3) a significant Catholic presence.

So, what I tried to do was build stories in the three places I knew best: New York, Texas and Chicago. I lived in New York City all my life. I was now living in Texas. And Chicago, I had been there a few times; my wife had lived there and in Detroit. So we were covered. (Boston is an option, sure … except I barely remember what Boston looks like, despite being there multiple times.)

In any event … Nope. Wrong call.

Apparently, I needed to read the next book: Ratchet’s Run, where Blaine does his version of Kelly’s Heroes.

Ratchet’s Run tells one story, with one group of people, with no one from the main series. That’s what I needed to focus on.

Also, Blaine had plans for New York City… in books I hadn’t read yet. (It may not have come out by the time, if I recall correctly.)

And Blaine had already written Texas in a short story…

That left me Chicago and Detroit…

And Blaine told me what happened to Detroit …

That left me Chicago.

Crap.

Now I needed to make people care about Chicago.

Well, that was going to be a task and a half.

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