Leveling the Playing Field

This post has almost nothing to do with writing! I say almost because I know me and I expect that, by the time I finish writing it, I’ll have found some way to mention or pimp my books out. I’m crafty like that.

Instead I’m going to talk about computer games. I’ve been into computer games for as long as there’s been computers with games on them. I started on the Atari 800 and then the Atari 2600 game console. Yeah, I was there from the beginning but I’m still young at heart. I’m having some friends over next month for a good old fashioned LAN party. For those who don’t know, that’s when we all bring our computers together and hook them up on the same network, then proceed to eat pizza, drink beer, and scream obscenities at each other while shooting one another in computer games. Male bonding at its finest! Although, for the record, we’d happily include any female gamers into the bloodshed as well if we knew any.

So I’ve been doing a little research lately trying to find some new games to play. The preferred medium is first person shooters, and so far it’s looking like some of the vintage classics are still holding their own (the early Battlefield games, Unreal Tournament(s), counter-Strike, Half Life and HL2, etc.). But I’ve found some fun new ones as well.

Left 4 Dead 2, for example. Zombie blasting has never been so fun! The only problem is that it’s only a 4 player cooperative style game, although it can be boosted to 4 vs 4 if one team is willing to play zombies. We tend to like the coop games because while most of us are well rounded contributors to society, there’s usually one or two that have spent far too much time gaming and are unstoppable. At that point all I’m left with is threatening to make them work out with me and dropping a few hundred pounds on their chest.

Another fun one I just discovered a couple of nights ago was Borderlands 2. Pretty neat, once you get into it, but it’s another game with only 4 person cooperative play available (and no deathmatch). Since I’m expecting at least 8 guys that kind of defeats the purpose. Another complaint I have about Borderlands 2 is the same I have with any RPG game that bases survival on a player’s level. That includes most of the otherwise outstanding games from Bethesda (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, etc.).

Even taking suspension of disbelief into consideration there’s just no realism for having characters based on a system of leveling. Why Bethesda does a decent job in basing their levels off of skills, at least, but it still annoys me to have extra health occur because of that. There’s a role playing game out there that I used to love called Shadowrun. The characters had skills and attributes (stats that helped define their physical and mental abilities) but every character only had 100% health. Depending on how their attributes and armor played out was how they determined if they could be killed. So anybody could kill anybody, just like reality, but it ruled out flukes and ridiculously lucky die rolls (e.g. Bard shooting the dragon in The Hobbit with the legendary “Black Arrow”).

So why can’t game developers deliver a skill and attribute based game that makes sense? You want more health, pick up some weights and eat healthier (meaning improve the applicable stats in the game), don’t just magically improve because you wacked 10 frogloks in the head with a rusty spear.

Okay, rant over, now back to exploring games. For example, Last night I got my hands on a brand new FPS. Aliens: Colonial Marines. It takes place after the second Aliens movie (directed by James Cameron), when the Marine ship has discharged the pods due to contagion and it’s returned to orbit LV426. It shows promise, though I’ve only tried it for about 10 minutes so far. Cooperative play and deathmatch (against people playing as aliens). Cool stuff! I will say that in those first 10 minutes very early this morning the game set the mood very nicely and had me sufficiently freaked out.

The LAN party is still more than a month away so if there are any PC gamers out there with suggestions, I’d love to hear them! Until then I’ll try to sneak in a few minutes here and there exploring and expanding my recent game knowledge. Maybe blast some more aliens and feel inspired to write another Vitalis book. Some of the critters in that book have similarities to the aliens, at least as far as the gestation of young aliens inside a living host that will soon eat its way out.

See, told you I’d find a way to work my books in…

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Amazon Done Good, part 2

Last week I wrote an article (linked here) where I talked about Amazon’s hunter/ killer strategies when it came to seeking out reviews they felt were unfair. Reviews by authors on other author’s books, for example. Their hope is to kill bogus reviews written influence customers, either positively or negatively. I wondered if there campaign would have some bearing on a series of novellas I wrote that had a few people slam them into the gutter with one star reviews blasting me for asking people to pay $.99 for books that ranged from 15,000 to 32,000 words.

You see I took those seven novellas down last year after I was hit below the belt by the handful of people (handful as in I had a few fingers left over when I counted up the negative reviews I received, even though they went out of their way to post 1 star reviews on multiple books). I’d sold thousands of copies of each, bringing them into the top 10 and top 20 lists in their genres (science fiction), but not that many positive reviews that a few stinkers couldn’t drag the books into the rubbish heap. I compiled the novellas into an omnibus (Vitalis Omnibus) and then later wrote a full novel length sequel to it (Vitalis: Resurrection). I have plans for future Vitalis books as well, but I haven’t had a chance to revisit those yet. I even left the first novella (New Beginnings) on Amazon but set it so that it was free to download. My way of apologizing to people who might think I was trying to screw them over.

Five or Six months later (as in, last week) I got to thinking that maybe a few pricks were sucker punching my books because they wanted to help their books reach the upper ranks on Amazon. One reviewer even commented in his review that there should be enough 1 star reviews to knock my books out of the rankings. Yes, he really said that. I don’t know if that review is still up or not, Amazon has removed several of them already. I received my 4th quarter results from Smashwords and since I’d removed them fro Amazon I never put much thoughts into the novellas. Well they were still on Smashwords, and that meant they were still out there on iTunes, Sony, Diesel, and others. My results weren’t earth shattering but I sold enough of the various books to let me know that no, I wasn’t crazy. People did like them and they weren’t pissed off about the rock bottom price I assigned to them. Especially considering so many other writers ask more for works that are even shorter!.

So now they’re back and I’m excited to see how they’re doing. The results aren’t great yet, after a week, but they’re promising. I’ve seen some action on them. A few sold here and there. A far from the 5000 a month I was selling in April and May of 2012, but I’m patient and I’m happy to get whatever I can out of them. They don’t need to be bestsellers, I just want to know that people don’t really think I’m trying to screw because, damn it, I’m not!

And to my fellow writers out there. Knock that shit off. People read what they want to read. You don’t do anybody any good by trying to beat somebody else down. Try helping instead. I have writers ask me things all the time – a hookup to a cover artist or an editor or tips on how to do something. I help them and I’m happy to help them. They, in turn, come right back and help me when and if the need is there. Good will goes a lot further than bad.

As another example, Gayla Drummond, a writer and blogger in her own right, had some discussion with me on the prior post and that prompted her to hop up on a soapbox and vent her thoughts on the matter (linked here). G.L. Drummond’s site can be found here, by the way, and I’m happy to recommend checking her out. Not just because she’s got a heart of gold and agrees with me, but because she’s an intelligent woman with talent. That will lead to good books every time. Agreeing with me and having a heart of gold also helps, by the way.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Did Amazon Do Something Right?

I was chatting via email to another writer the other day who was asking for some tips on getting his first book out there. The man was an English Lit professor and here he’s asking me for help with words. I found that ironic. But I shared what few tips I have. It boils down to writing a lot, accepting criticism, writing some more, making sure you find decent editors, and then doing some more writing.

I also touched on the reviewing process (part of the criticism speech) and how bad reviews can sink a book. I mentioned how Amazon is trying hard to eliminate bogus reviews, although they take some good ones along the way. I went on to talk about how my Vitalis series, when I sold them as novellas for $.99 a pop, were butchered by a couple of people that slammed them  in reviews because I was allegedly trying to abuse Amazon’s system and being greedy. Nevermind that the price for buying the Omnibus is the same as it was for buying all seven novella length stories.

I had a possible epiphany while writing that. I took my novellas off sale after the abuse I received for them. Prior to the hateful reviews they were ranked in the top 20 and top 10 in their categories (sci-fi). Was it possible the bad reviews were actually bogus reviews written by other writers? In some cases I even had identical reviews on multiple books from the same person! It got me wondering, with Amazon’s push to eliminate bogus reviews would my novellas possibly stand a chance of being popular again?

With that thought in mind, I’m going to re-release my Vitalis novellas. Book 1, New Beginnings, will remain free. The rest will be $.99. Here are the links if you’d like to check them out – or at least try the first one (it’s free!).

Vitalis books:

Episode 1: New Beginnings

Episode 2: The colony

Episode 3: Parasites

Episode 4: Screamer

Episode 5: Squatter’s Rights

Episode 6: Evolution

Episode 7: Matriarch

or the Vitalis Omnibus (parts 1 – 7)

Vitalis: Resurrection, the novel length sequel

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Fallen Heroes

I’ve been so caught up in writing that I missed some big news this month. Lance Armstrong, who most of you are probably sick of hearing about, admitted to using performance enhancing substances to win all his medals. I hope this doesn’t come as a shock to many people, but if it does, I’m sorry you had to witness the fall of a hero.

Does it change his accomplishments or his victories? Not really. He still won all those races and he still beat cancer. As Mr. Armstrong himself put it in his interview with Oprah Winfrey, he was leveling the playing field.

That’s what I’ve been telling people for years. No, not that I’m doping up to compete because, well, I don’t compete in any physical venues these days. Although I did spend a year as a competitive powerlifter before a catastrophic injury sidelined me, but that’s another story. From the college level of sports and above (and sometimes even in high school, sadly), athletes are doing whatever it is they need to do in order to compete. They’re told to win and that the end justifies the means. So as soon as one guy grabs a needle then the next guy knows he has to grab one too or he’s not going to be able to stand a chance against him.

The thing is, enhanced or not, these athletes are playing on a level field. There’s no competitive advantage, it’s all about training and hard work. You can’t inject 1000mg of testosterone every week and expect to become the world’s next home run king without working out and swinging a bat thousands and thousands of times. You can’t bench press 800 pounds without spending years working your way up from 135 pounds to 225 to 315 and every five pound increase in between. You can’t skate hard for over sixty minutes while pounding other players into the boards and shooting a puck past a goalie to win the Stanley cup in triple overtime. You can’t survive being pounded by 300+ pound linebackers every time somebody hands you a football and still go on to win a Superbowl ring. And you can’t win umpteen Tour de France and Olympic medals in cycling against an international level of competition. These things can’t be done without years of incredible focus, determination, and hard work. And if even one guy is using a little something extra to get a boost then if you want to win you have to use it too.

The International Olympic Committee and the Tour de France stripped Lance Armstrong of all his medals. Big deal. The guys that got moved up know they didn’t win. Sure, they got a shinier medal now, but they know they did the same thing that he did, they just didn’t get caught for it (yet). And even doing the same things they still couldn’t beat him. But by stripping him of the medals he spent years working hard to earn they sure taught him a lesson, didn’t they?

The lesson, sadly, is that you do what you have to do in order to win and then you have to lie about what it really takes to be a champion. This is one of the reasons why I admire bodybuilding and powerlifting so much – there are no stupid rules that say we want you to do superhuman things, but you can’t do what you need to do in order to win while you’re doing it. Oh, sure, there are drug free federations and competitions and those are definitely worth watching and competing in (that’s what I did, for the record), but when it comes to the pro circuit – the guys everybody looks up to – there’s no hypocrisy involved. And get this – the guys lifting crazy amounts of weight that admit they take testosterone, masteron, trenbolon, deca, anadrol, anavar, winstrol, and a host of other performancing enhancing substances to get there? They’re lifting the same weights that you see in the Olympics or other world class drug free sanctioned events. The same weights that are physically impossible to lift without those performance enhancing drugs and years of hard work.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said it but I’ll say it again. To the IOC, Tour de France, and other legislative bodies made up of scrawny or overweight armchair coaches: Knock it off. Stop being blind and stupid. Stop demanding the impossible and then punish people who find ways to do it. To be fair the world is at fault for wanting superheroes to be real, then demanding that there be nothing super about them. Or as Dash put it in The Incredibles, saying everyone’s special is another way of saying no one is.

Now to twist this into more than just a rant, I can get around all these complications. I do it in my books all the time. I write science fiction and fantasy stories and in those, performance enhancement is the name of the game! Sci-fi offers opportunities beyond anything you can imagine, and I try to make it legal and ethical when possible (unless it’s a bad guy, of course). Fantasy, on the other hand, is the realm of magic. Anything’s possible when you’ve got magic. The hard part about magic is finding balance, otherwise things will spiral out of control and bad things happen. Bad things like villains taking over the story and world and people losing interest because there’s no challenge or adventure anymore.

To be fair, there are dangers involved in using performance enhancing drugs. They vary by substance and a host of other factors, so I’m not in favor of blind acceptance by any means. But, on the other hand, there are dangers involved when communing with an extra-dimensional deity exchanging future favors and promises for the ability to summon fire from the sky and raise the dead. It just goes to show that there’s no such thing as a free lunch…

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Back in Time for the Party!

My Internet and cable was supposed to be installed this morning. I managed to sweet talk Brighthouse into sending out a tech yesterday morning instead though. But then I had to drive back to Ohio to pick up the last of my things so I couldn’t enjoy it anyhow. Not having to use the tiny screen on my phone for all my Internet needs is a wonder though! And yes, I consider the screen on the iPhone 5s to be tiny – but I’m using my new 39″ TV that I got as a Christmas present for a monitor. I’m American – go big or go home, right? And for the record, no, I’m not compensating, I just believe that size matters.

So we’re almost completely moved in now up herein Novi, Michigan. Haven’t really met any neighbors, it’s cold and nobody is crazy enough to spend much time out in the snow. But we love the house and the neighborhood thus far. I start my new job on Wednesday, which I’m excited about, and I should have both less stress and more time for writing. Heck, I’ve got my own office at home now to spend time writing in!

But before I launch into 2013, what about 2012? It was a challenging but good year, overall. I saw amazing reception for my books and while they stagnated in the second half book sales have started to pick back up in December for what I hope is a blockbuster 2013. I even intend to release some semi-official numbers when the dust from 2012 settles – which should be tomorrow. Just to give my fellow writers an idea of what’s possible if you’re willing to write your ass off and find some quality people to help you out along the way.

My only regrets from 2012 (and before) is that it wasn’t until the tail end of this year that I find the write working mixture of a support crew (editors, artists, etc.) to really polish my books as I release them. But hey, I’m heading into 2013 with a solid team in place and we’re not stopping until we’ve achieved what we’re after. That may take the rest of my life, but that’s a good thing as it keeps me out of trouble!

So my friends, I’m back to working on Victim of Fate, book 2 in the Blades of Leander series as soon as the unpacking allows. I hope to release it as soon as February. I’m slowing down, I know, but with any luck that’s only a temporary hiccup. After Victim of Fate I’m tossing a few ideas around – a 6th Voidhawk book, the third Blades of Leander book, the third book in the Dark Earth series, or perhaps something completely new in a science fiction venue. So many choices! The good news to take away is that I’ve got a lot of ideas and stories yet to write, so stay thirsty (for words) my friends!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

 

Signing Off

Because shopping, family visits, making kids happy, and Christmas in general isn’t a complicated and stressful enough, we decided to move at the same time! Yep, the boxes are packed and the furniture’s lined up in the garage waiting for the moving truck to show up tomorrow morning. We load it and head off to Michigan. Two years in Ohio and, aside from an overly intense day job complete with ignorant people in strategic positions, it’s been a good time. We met some great people here and I’m sad to leave them behind. We’ll be less than 4 hours away and we have every intention of keeping in touch, but it still sucks that we can’t take them with us.

Another item that sucks is my new Internet won’t be installed until the 31st of December! Yeah, 5 days without Internet. Big deal, right? Well yes, it is. A sizable part of my income is generated by having Internet access. Losing it for the better part of a week has me irritated. I’ll have my smartphone, but that’s nowhere near the same thing.

Ah well, maybe it’ll give me time to write…in between unpacking and settling in. And more visits from family. Well I’ll try! I’m at or just beyond the halfway point of Victim of Fate and it’s a great book! Had another neat idea for a new one yesterday too, one that would be a stand-alone sci-fi novel. I admit, it was inspired by the new Total Recall (entertaining and fun movie, but it doesn’t replace the original for me. It can stand beside it though, unlike the new Conan the Barbarian which was nothing compared to the original). But don’t worry, I don’t have any plans for recreating the altered memory storyline at all.

So until either the 31st or maybe even 2013, happy holidays to everyone and have a great time! And thanks for reading my random musings as I come up with them!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Hidden Treasures

It might surprise you to learn that this article is not going to be about the Megadeth album released in 1995 that contained previously recorded but unreleased tracks from prior albums. I’m sure that’s what you were expecting, right?

Well instead this is about the current chaos we’re living through over here. We’re moving in eight days. Got the moving truck lined up plus a bunch of trailers. We’re headed from Howland Center, Ohio to Novi, Michigan. Higher cost of living but a magnificent house. Come to think of it, just about everything costs more up there (health insurance, vehicle insurance, gas, food, the list goes on and on). So why do it? Security. The security of a job working for the US Army. No, I didn’t enlist. I did that once almost twenty years ago (Air Force). I’m going to be writing code and working with databases for the army in relation to their tanks. For the first time in a long time I feel like I have a job where I’m actually contributing to something useful. I’m not helping people sate their addiction to gambling, I’m not helping con artists sell snake oil in the guise of super-foods, and I’m not building random parts for automobiles that aren’t particularly enjoyable to drive. Maybe I’m acting silly, but this time around I’m going to be part of a force that can make a difference in the world.

Self-righteous justification aside, this maelstrom of boxes and bubble wrap we’re wading through brought some things to light that had been long lost and forgotten about. An ARC copy of Voices from a few years back. A printed rough draft of Bounty for editing purposes, and a hand written outline of a fantasy story I’d dreamed up ten years ago or so called Silver Arrows.

Silver Arrows, as I now remember it, was the story of a fantasy ranger that lost his fire. He was bitter and sick of just about everything he’d encountered but still pushed on because he was too damn stubborn to do anything about it. Then he saves a young girl captured by slavers and takes her as his own daughter to raise her and teach her his ways. He finds his way again through her, but then I think something bad happens to her and he has to go and rescue her or prove some other form of his bad-assery.

Looking back on it now, it needs a lot more to make it work, but it’s a good baseline to start from. Instead I think I’m going to ditch the entire thing but use it as inspiration for a book down the line in my Blades of Leander series. I’m on book 2, Victim of Fate, right now and it’s clipping along nicely when I can sneak some time in for writing. It’s going to be a doozy of a book, longer than the first one I’m almost certain. Book 3 will end the unofficial trilogy, so perhaps Silver Arrows can be book 4 in the series. Of course I’ll tie this new ranger guy in with Alto and the other Blades of Leander, so he won’t be the central focus of the story but still a major character. I see a lot of great fun to be had with it, as well as some heartache and the requisite bad-assery.

That’s not the only thing on my plate though. I’ve still got the third book in my Dark Earth series to write and I’m coming up with a new idea for the next Voidhawk book. Believe it or not, I found some cool Windows 8 themes that I loaded onto my aging laptop and one of the desktop backgrounds is a really neat fantasy picture that sparked the beginning of some amazing Voidhawk style ideas. I’m not letting them burst into full flames yet though – I’ve got to finish Victim of Fate first. But the great news is that there will be more Voidhawk coming down the road.

Inspiration comes from the strangest places. For me it can be wilderness / nature or a picture on a screen. I wrote an exceptionally long book many years ago that was not fit for publication based entirely off a picture of a woman that captivated me. I’ve been inspired by songs before (Evanescence and Megadeth, to name a couple of bands that made great muses for me), by events, and even by other stories I’ve read or movies I’ve seen. I’ll grab anything I can that gets the creative juices flowing and run with it!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Vengeance, Vegas Style

I’m cheating here – this article is one I posted on a fellow writer’s blog a week or two back. Leah Rhyne, writer and zombie afficionado, was the lovely young lady to host it for me. She’s a talented writer and a classy lady, I encourage anyone interested to head over and check out her blog at http://www.leahrhyne.com/. Last I checked she and her husband were working hard on raising money for a charity, St. Jude’s, I believe, and her hubby offered to shave his head if they reached their goal.

Now then, on to the blog post, it’s a blatant attempt on my part to promote my latest book, Bounty. But amidst all that promotion I think it’s got some interesting bits and a touch of humor. Definitely worth the sixty seconds it takes to read the blog, not to mention the minimal cost of buying the novel and enjoying Carl, Jessie, Tanya, Sarah, and Allison’s exploits!

 

Sin City has a history of organized crime and preying on the weak and innocent. Bounty, the third book in the Wanted trilogy, lives up to that legacy.

Writing Wanted was a strike of luck for me. It seemed like a great idea but I found myself hung up from time to time figuring out what came next. It deviated drastically from my original plans but thanks to a moment of inspiration I was able to turn that deviation into a great book. I didn’t realize how great a book it was until it became a bestseller and topped multiple Amazon charts.

My readers called for a sequel, they weren’t happy with the story of Carl, Jessie, and Tanya ending so soon. That allowed me to write Ice Princess, but it was even more of a trial than the first one was. I was very happy with the finished product, thanks to a few more random bubbles of creativity along the way. As a matter of fact, with the end of Ice Princess I felt myself getting choked up as I identified with a couple of the characters personally. In particular Jiri Kurkova, the father of Tanya, Miss Ice Princess herself.

After Ice Princess I was spent. There was nothing more I could do with these characters. They’d done it all. They’d been dragged through the mud. They’d been shot, beaten, stabbed and worse. What more pain could I inflict? Well that’s a stupid thing to ask a writer, especially one with an occasionally macabre sense of humor! The concept came to me out of nowhere  one day on my way into to work at 6:30 in the morning. What concept? I won’t spoil it, but I will say it involves an incredible fear of loss that all of us experience at one point or another. Here’s one of the tweets I’m using to promote it as well: “My new release, Bounty, focuses on family values and why you shouldn’t try to kidnap Carl Water’s family.”

Check out Wanted, it’s a free ebook, and then once you’re hooked look up Ice Princess and then Bounty, the incredible conclusion to the trilogy.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Bounty Posted!

There are so many cheesy ways I can have fun with the titles of my sci-fi trilogy, Wanted. So of course, I’ve been doing my best to maximize the corniness for my own amusement! Take the title of this blog article, I’m specifically talking about how I just released it this morning in a print version available on Amazon or Createspace. That makes the entire trilogy available. Hmm, makes me wonder if I should make an omnibus out of it? That’d be a doozy of a book though.

In the meantime, I’m working hard on Victim of Fate, book two in my Blades of Leander fantasy series. Simultaneously I’m hunting for a new day job. That’s tying up a lot of time, I have to admit. I’ve had a few interviews and I’ve got more coming. I wonder how many I have to go through until I get a free set of steak knives?

Worth mentioning for my fellow computer programming geeks out there – I spent some time this weekend and this morning teaching myself hyperthreading. It’s pretty cool and I really wish I’d learned it earlier. So many windows and web applications I’ve written in the past could have benefited from it! C’est la vie, at least I’ve got the basics down now and I can boost it for the future – and talk about it intelligently during an interview!

Now enough about me, time for you to get yours! Here’s the links to Bounty:

Bounty on Amazon

Bounty on Amazon UK

Bounty on Barnes and Noble

Bounty on Kobo

Bounty on Smashwords

Bounty on iTunes (coming soon)

Bounty on Sony (coming soon)

Bounty in print

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Guns and Boobs

What better way to spike testosterone in a man than to give him a hefty dose of boobs and guns? Maybe throw in a little 80s rock and before you know it hair will be popping out of his chest and muscles bulging! Well, it sounds good on paper. It certainly wasn’t my intention to focus on boobs and guns in my Wanted series of books but I just received a couple of great four star reviews from a reader that posited the books were filled with both. I was very entertained!

The reviews were positive and the reader claimed he enjoyed them very much, even if he felt they were boob-and-gun-centric. He questioned whether I was targeting an audience or if that’s just the way I roll. Well, I confess that I did grow up hunting and enjoying guns. I’ll also confess that I’ve participated in a few breast cancer events. Beyond that, I have no problem looking a woman in the eyes.

The third book in the Wanted series that became available yesterday is called Bounty. Yes, there are guns and yes, there are boobs. I think it’s fair to say there’s more of the former and less of the latter, but one of the main characters is definitely a free spirit that loves to shock people. Ultimately though Bounty uses the science fiction medium to tell a romantic story. Sure, there are guns and obscenities along the way, but the ultimately it shows the lengths some people are willing to go to – the sacrifices they are willing to make – for the people they love. Or, as I put it in a tweet, Bounty shows why it’s a very bad idea to attempt to kidnap or hurt Carl Waters’ family.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.