I’ve spent the past few months writing ten serialized short stories. Each story is about 6,000 to 9,000 words in length (approximately 30 pages) and builds on an overall story arc. There is a paperback book version as well as all ten stories in one e-book titled “The Patrol Ships.” The paperback book is over 400 pages long. All of the e-book versions are available on Amazon as Kindle Unlimited.
What is it About?
The series centers around an officer named Mackenzie Steele (a.k.a. Mac) and his crew. The patrol ship fleet is a hastily assembled fleet of small ships that were commissioned to patrol the edge of the United Alliance Systems (U.A.S.), a collection of planetary systems. The Arcnals are a race of aliens that humans ran into over a hundred years ago. Their initial contact resulted in a war that ended when an armistice agreement was signed.
Very few people alive remember the war with the Arcnals. The Arcnals are an aggressive race that will start a war if given the chance. The U.A.S. politicians want to kick the can down the road forever. The conflict of goals between the U.A.S. politicians and the Arcnals causes the politicians to look the other way when the Arcnals attack outer worlds. As the Arcnals ramp up their attacks, the U.A.S. government decides that they need to do something about it. If they commission another fleet, the people will know that something serious is going on and suspect a build-up for war. The compromise is to commission a large number of cheap patrol ships that can patrol the outer planets. The patrol ships are used as a tripwire to warn the fleet that an attack is in progress and buy time for a capital ship to arrive, and deal with the incursion.
Mac and his crew are assigned to the PS-801, a small ship with an initial crew of five. As the story progresses there are upgrades and some crew rotations. The base that they operate out of is located on a small planet name Elia. Elia is a tropical world that sits in the backwaters of the U.A.S. They are one of the last bases to receive upgrades or funding, leaving the crew to be creative.
Is That All?
Of course not! I’m currently working on the next ten short stories to continue the saga. My overall story arc will lead up to war with the Arcnals. It’s inevitable. The Kingdom of Draco is a system of humans that are independent of the U.A.S. They do not have a military alliance with the U.A.S. and they will make an appearance at the end of the first ten episodes. The Empire of a Hundred Suns will come into play in the second ten episodes. I suspect that there will be another ten episodes after eleven through twenty, bringing the total to thirty short stories. When the war starts, I plan to switch to writing novels.
This is an unusual method of telling a story, but it started with one short story and I just couldn’t stop. In fact, I plotted several stories after I completed the first one. Then I wrote five or six stories. That’s when I decided to group them into ten episodes. The plots for episodes eleven through twenty are already outlined and I’ve finished the rough draft of four of those (as of this post). Writing a rough draft takes one to two days, then it’s the lengthy editing, starting with the details of plot lines between episodes.
About the Series
My original plan was to get the stories on Amazon and wait until they completed their review before announcing the series. It took almost three days before all the books were in live status. I am still waiting for Amazon to finish reviewing the series part (that connects the books together). Unfortunately, a different group of reviewers handles the series parts of books and they are behind. I checked the sales status of all of my books and I noticed that readers have found my books! That means I’m going live, ready, or not.
To help any readers that want to read the books in order, I have listed the order here:
- Stealth Ship
- Enemy Outpost
- Alien Special Forces
- The Siege of Elia
- The Fighter
- Upgrades
- The Replacements
- The Code Breakers
- Spy
- Rescue
I hope you have as much fun reading the stories as I have had writing them.
