Beware of Monsters

NPC Is Here!

June 30, 2020 / JRobinson / 5 Comments

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I’m well known for writing books that are balls-to-the-wall action from start to finish, but every now and then, I dump a bit of my deeper, darker self into a novel. Books like INFINITE. And ALTER. They become bestsellers. They win awards. And they expose my personal struggles. INFINITE explored my physical pain, which I’ve been experiencing daily for the past five years now (ugh). ALTER delved into my psychological struggles, which are are linked to the diseases causing my pain. NPC tackles the struggles I have with the nature of reality and my Christian faith. Diseases have affected my body, my mind, and on occasion, my perceptions. I’m not quite losing my mind, but I often can’t shake the feeling that none of this is real. I explored the subject some in INFINITE, but I felt like I didn’t do it justice in a real world scenario.

Kane Looks Back – Callsign: Deep Blue

October 14, 2020 / JRobinson / 0 Comments

[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]

And then there was Deep Blue. So, I was working with Jeremy occasionally, but I’d been in contact with him on e-mail probably daily for a year or two by then. I’d edited TORMENT and the first LAST HUNTER book. I’d also finished my first novel, RESURRECT, and Jeremy had read it and blurbed it for me. I suggested to Jeremy early on during the Chesspocalypse editing and releases that he do a sixth book—one that focused on the team’s mysterious handler, Tom Duncan, the former President of the United States. The man was a former Ranger, and had set up the Chess Team prior to PULSE, and at the end of THRESHOLD he pulled the team away from the military (and pulled a whole lot more resources along with them) and was setting up his own little fiefdom in a captured bad guy base in New Hampshire. I, for one, was fascinated by this character, and I wanted more back story about him. I nagged Jeremy that he should do a Deep Blue novella, and what was more, I wanted him to do it on his own, without a co-author. But Jeremy, who was already doing the co-writing work with a bunch of other authors, putting the final tweaks on edits for SECONDWORLD, was writing the LAST HUNTER books, and who was already starting to write the story that would become ISLAND 731…well, Jeremy was understandably swamped. He said: “Why don’t you write it?”

Kane Looks Back – Callsign: Knight

October 9, 2020 / JRobinson / 0 Comments

[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]

The fifth of the originally planned Chesspocalypse novellas, CALLSIGN: KNIGHT was co-written with Ethan Cross, who, at the time, was the only bestselling author involved in the Chesspocalypse project. Since then, several of the authors involved have become USA Today and International bestsellers, while Jeremy himself has become a New York Times bestseller. Whatever way you look at it, the Chess Team was good for all the authors involved.

As I recall, there were very few edits or changes needed for the Knight story. Ethan Cross drafted a taut story of Knight attempting to take a well earned vacation when he was whisked away to a ghost city in central China to face a creature he had already faced once before—the Hydra (from PULSE). Only this time it had been tweaked and hybridized, in an attempt to create a Chinese superweapon, by a drug addled maniac.

Kane Looks Back – Callsign: Bishop

September 30, 2020 / JRobinson / 0 Comments

[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]

Erik Somers, the original Bishop, was sent to Iran to deal with an abandoned Manifold Genetics laboratory and a bioweapon. Coincidentally, another operator in Iran discovers information about Bishop’s true parentage, and the adventure begins. Gunfights, espionage, and terrorism ensue. Although this was one of the titles where Jeremy needed to adjust a lot of David McAfee’s first draft to bring the story in line with Jeremy’s vision for the team and with Bishop’s character, the resulting novella brings a lot into the story that Jeremy might not have brought, and that’s thanks to David’s approach. The tension, the pace, and threat, with Bishop conflicted by his own inner turmoil over his adopted upbringing and the discovery of his true parents distracting him in a time when he cannot afford to be distracted.

Kane Looks Back – Callsign: King 2 (Underworld)

September 23, 2020 / JRobinson / 0 Comments

[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]

So, yeah. The plan for the Chesspocalypse was one novella each for the five members of Chess Team. But in the months that it took for Jeremy to collaborate with the other authors, and for me to edit the stories, Sean Ellis was hard at work. And he’s relatively fast. And so is Jeremy. With these stories, when it came Jeremy’s turn to tweak the initial drafts, he either had a lot of work to make the stories adhere to his vision for the Chess Team universe or very little, depending on the authors with whom he was collaborating. He either had a lot of changes to keep characters consistent with who they were shown to be in the first three novels—or who Jeremy had plans for them becoming in his head—or very few changes. Sean Ellis really understood the team, and what Jeremy wanted. So, a perfect storm of Sean being fast, Jeremy needing to alter little, and delays with the other books because of writing schedules or editing process, all meant that a second novella with King was ready before the Bishop and Knight books.

Kane Looks Back – Callsign: Rook

September 16, 2020 / JRobinson / 0 Comments

[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]

This one was kind of a slow burn, but that’s what was called for with this character. At the end of the last full-length novel, Rook was exhausted, demoralized, and crushed with guilt over the deaths of a team of men under his command. He was on the run, in hostile territory. So, he slips out of Russia to the north, aboard a boat. He has a fateful meeting with a woman destined to play a huge part in his life. Then he lands in Norway and hikes across the countryside. It’s clear he hasn’t quit Chess Team altogether. But he needs a breather. It’s less a case of him abandoning the team as taking an unannounced and very needed personal break.