It didn’t take long for me to discover that adventure stories, especially military adventure stories, were what I liked best. And it was at some point during that time that I made a vague ill-defined commitment to be a writer someday. A science fiction writer, or so I hoped.
Years passed… No, decades passed. By then I was a writer. A news writer, a television writer, and a marketing communications writer. Everything except a fiction writer. All the while promising myself that I would write a book by the time I was 40.
Well, when 39 rolled around and I hadn’t started, I knew it was time to man up. So I wrote a book called War World, later changed to Galactic Bounty, and sent it off to ACE (now part of Penguin) where, after sitting in the slush pile for a few months, a young editor was kind enough to read it. The rest is history. I sold my first book on my first try. And here’s the connection between that Galactic Bounty first novel and Into The Guns.
Although it is about a futuristic bounty hunter rather than a young female army officer, and the soon-to-be president of the United States, the major themes of Into The Guns are consistent with the content of Galactic Bounty. Those include the eternal battle between good and evil, the virtues of courage, loyalty, and honor, a man who’s willing to fight for what’s right, a woman with the capacity to lead during a time of tremendous danger, a romance forged within the heat of war, a willingness to make a commitment, and the characters (good and bad) who surround and have an effect on them. That’s the kind of story I love, and that’s what readers should expect when they read Into The Guns.
Here’s the set up: On May Day, 2018, sixty meteors entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded around the globe with a force greater than a nuclear blast. Earthquakes and tsunamis followed. Then China attacked Europe, Asia, and the United States in the belief the disaster was an act of war.
After meteor strikes decimate the nation’s leadership, surviving elements of the armed forces are left to try and restore order as American society descends into chaos. While refugees battle the military over scarce resources--corporate oligarchs seek to restructure the country for their own benefit.
The story centers around a young Cavalry officer named Robin Macintyre, and United States Secretary of Energy Samuel T. Sloan. Macintyre, better known as “Mac,” must struggle to keep her troops alive during the post impact chaos, even as Sloan makes his way home from Mexico, only to fall into the hands of the oligarchs. Both characters will meet eventually. And when they do, it will be in the context of a battle that will presage the coming of a second civil war. Each volume of the America Rising trilogy will have its own story. But the overarching plot story will continue with volume 2, Seek and Destroy, and volume 3, Battle Hymn.
Thanks, mom… And a special shout out to librarians everywhere.
Into the Guns is now available on-line, on audio, and in bookstores in the U.S and the UK. For more about me and my fiction please visitwilliamcdietz.com. You can find me on Facebook at:www.facebook.com/williamcdietz and you can follow me on Twitter: William C. Dietz @wcdietz.
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About William C. Dietz: William C. Dietz is the national bestselling author of more than forty novels, some of which have been translated into German, Russian, and Japanese. His works include the Legion of the Damned novels and the Mutant Files series. He grew up in the Seattle area, served as a medic with the Navy and Marine Corps, graduated from the University of Washington, and has been employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, and television news writer, director, and producer. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Dietz served as director of public relations and marketing for an international telephone company. He and his wife live near Gig Harbor, Washington. About Into the Guns: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Legion of the Damned® Novels and The Mutant Files comes the first novel in a post-apocalyptic military science fiction series about America rising from the ashes of a global catastrophe... On May Day, 2018, sixty meteors entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded around the globe with a force greater than a nuclear blast. Earthquakes and tsunamis followed. Then China attacked Europe, Asia, and the United States in the belief the disaster was an act of war. Washington D.C. was a casualty of the meteor onslaught that decimated the nation’s leadership and left the surviving elements of the armed forces to try and restore order as American society fell apart. As refugees across America band together and engage in open warfare with the military over scarce resources, a select group of individuals representing the surviving corporate structure makes a power play to rebuild the country in a free market image as The New Confederacy...