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The thing about writing novels is that you can’t just learn to write novels, you have to learn to write that novel, and BattleTech: VoidBreaker is definitely a novel I had to learn new things for as I was preparing to write it and while I was writing. That’s one of the things I love about writing, though, to stretch my skills and push myself.
I love setting out to write a novel by trying to push myself. When I initially spitballed the story for VoidBreaker with Ray Arrastia (the line developer for BattleTech) at our creative summit, I got really excited because I realized the sort of story we’d be telling was essentially a spy thriller, and I hadn’t really seen that in BattleTech before. I mean, we’d seen elements of espionage, and we’d seen political machinations, but a straight up Ian Fleming, James Bond sort of thing? No way.
I don’t think folks know this about me, but I know more than any human should about the 007 movies and books. I really love them and the books are so different than the movies and the Fleming novels have this intensely readable quality. Moonraker, which is one of my favorite Fleming books (and one of my least favorite Bond pictures, go figure) spends the first full half of the book with Bond merely working to discover Hugo Drax’s method of cheating at Bridge at the club as a personal favor to M. But it’s absolutely riveting and you want to devour it, chapter by chapter.
So when VoidBreaker fell into my lap, I decided I wanted to really deconstruct and analyze those Fleming books (as well as my favorite 007 movies, and some other espionage and war thrillers I enjoyed ranging from the Mission: Impossible films to Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen) and figure out exactly how they ticked and why and figure out how I could apply it to BattleTech in a way that was honest to what makes a BattleTech book a BattleTech book. I tore through the Fleming novels again, reading my vintage paperbacks, listening to them via audiobooks at the gym, just soaking them in and diagramming them out. Then I’d do the same with all the movies and really try to understand why they were making all the decisions they were and figure out how to apply those story lessons to the original story we were telling.
I learned so much.
If you’re going to embark on something, anything, challenge yourself and do the homework. Bite off a little more than you think you can chew and I think you’ll find that the results are worth it and you’re going to learn a lot in the process.
That’s really the only way, in my mind, to get better. I always want to learn something new with every book. Every time I take a bite at that apple, I want to try to get better at my craft and VoidBreaker opened up a whole new world for me. I just hope it shows and people enjoy it when they read it.
BattleTech: VoidBreaker comes out January 24, 2005. You can preorder a copy here or you can get signed copies straight from the author.
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Bryan Young (he/they) works across many different media. His work as a writer and producer has been called “filmmaking gold” by The New York Times. He’s also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He’s been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and was the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! In 2014, he wrote the critically acclaimed history book, A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG and has written five books in the BattleTech Universe: Honor’s Gauntlet, A Question of Survival, Fox Tales, Without Question, and the forthcoming VoidBreaker. His latest non-fiction tie-in book, The Big Bang Theory Book of Lists is a #1 Bestseller on Amazon. His work has won two Diamond Quill awards and in 2023 he was named Writer of the Year by the League of Utah Writers. He teaches writing for Writer’s Digest, Script Magazine, and at the University of Utah. Follow him across social media @swankmotron or visit swankmotron.com.
Next week is Gen Con. I actually don’t know how many of these conventions I’ve gone to (more than 10? 15?) but, I suppose, at this stage of the game it doesn’t matter.
This year is going to be a little bit different for me. I do not have a table in Authors Avenue. I chose not to have one because I’m at a point in my career where it is not necessary. Also, there are other newer, more hungry authors out there who need that spot. Thus, I bow out. Also…honestly, I’m feeling my age a little. I cannot vend in the Dealers Hall and do workshops/panels for the Writers Symposium. There is a half mile jaunt between locations which is a 12 minute brisk walk one way (ask me how I know).
Thus, this year I am only participating in the Writers Symposium, the BattleTech/Shadowrun group signing at the Cat Labs booth, and various business meetings. The Writers Symposium is located on the 2nd floor of the Downtown Marriott and will have much signage to help you find it.
Here is my schedule for the Writers Symposium. The link will take you to the events page and my official schedule. You can search for any author’s schedule in this place. In addition to my panels and workshops, I will be doing three signings:
Finally, the Symposium will be releasing the first-ever Gen Con Writers’ Symposium Collectible Drive! This USB drive will only be available in person at Gen Con 2023, and limited to 500 drives. It contains 19 retail books, including 2 new releases and one pre-release. GCWS-exclusive collections of previously unpublished short fiction from E.D.E. Bell, Jennifer Brozek, and Richard Lee Byers. The drive also includes several bonus short stories, music from The Road, and an audiobook narrated by C. S. E. Cooney.
I’m really looking forward to Gen Con this year. I hope to see you there.
Wrapping up stuff that happened at the end of 2022 and started this year. Releases, reviews, and interviews!
Miscellaneous: I finally made a linktr.ee site. https://linktr.ee/JenniferBrozek Just cause.
Release: My new FiveFold Universe novella, Truumeel’s Light, has been released!
Review: Review of Truumeel’s Light. They like it. Yay!
Review: A lovely compliment about me as a BattleTech author. Sometimes all you need is a brief, unexpected compliment to make an author’s day so much better.
Release: My latest Shadowrun YA novelle! Shadowrun: Unrepairable. This is my third standalone YA Shadowrun novella. Gotta tell you, things don’t look good for the home team in this one.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Video Interview: This was on GenConTV with Rem Alternis interviewing the entire FiveFold Universe author crew. It was good fun.
As the world continues to spin and time slips away, life happens. I’m back to writing as well as editing while trying to ignore social media. In the meantime, here’s what’s crossed my desk.
Awards: BattleTech: Crimson Night, Rogue Academy Three, has been nominated for a Scribe award! It’s always an honor to be nominated, but just look at that lineup. I’m in such good company.
Interview: I was interviewed on the Douglas Coleman show. This was a fun one. Listen to it on Youtube or in Podcast form.
Open Call: Announcing the 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology open call. All genres of flash fiction fantasy. One month open call from July 15-Aug 15. (Also, might I direct your attention to: Round One of Slush Reading from the 99 Tiny Terrors call. Or The Reinvented Detective Slushpile Tweets round up for insider tips and hints on making it through a slushpile.)
Publication: For the HWA Of Horror and Hope anthology: Words to Fill the Well. I wrote this one because I was in a terrible mood and needed to write it out. It did me so much good.
Released: New thing I edited now for sale from Priebe Press… 2d6 Superfast One Shot character sheets and game mechanics! It’s a fun, quick system to use.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Leeloo in my suitcase, trying to make sure I don’t leave without her.
Despite the fact that 2021 was another emotional kick in the shins for me, I did produce a number of works I believe are worthy of notice.
Short Fiction
“Seven Steps to Immortality” – Daily Science Fiction
Science fiction/Fantasy
(I am particularly pleased with this one.)
“Unsavory” – Boundaries: All-New Tales of Valdemar anthology, DAW
Fantasy, Tie-in
Novella
Shadowrun: See How She Runs, Catalyst Game Labs
YA, SF, Tie-in
Novel
BattleTech: Crimson Night, Rogue Academy 3, Catalyst Game Labs
YA, Military SF, Tie-in
Anthology (edited)
99 Tiny Terrors, Pulse Publishing
Flash fiction horror anthology
Audiobook
BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident, Catalyst Game Labs
YA, Military SF, Tie-in
If you are on the jury for anything you believe these works qualify for, contact me and I will send you an electronic version of the work.
Deadlines, like lemmings, all rush to the same point. Same thing with updates and book releases. July was a huge month for me.
• Audiobook Release: BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident audiobook. This is my award-winning YA BattleTech book read by the ever-talented Liisa Lee. 
• Reading: Shadow Bytes for Wily Writers. I read the origin story for By-the-Numbers for Wily Writers, a group that is designed to help all writers succeed. This was one part of Shadow Bytes hosted by The Violent Life podcast. (YouTube video.)
• Release! Shadowrun: See How She Runs. YA Shadowrun novella set in Barcelona. Ridley Ruiz has plans. Big ones. However it seems that the shadows have plans for her, too. 
• Release! BattleTech: Crimson Night, Book Three of the Rogue Academy trilogy. Just released! Can Jasper and Nadine Roux save their planet from a rogue Draconis Combine warlord? Winner takes all in this explosive conclusion to the Rogue Academy trilogy.
• Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Behold the beauty of my newest cover reveal!
Book Three of the Rogue Academy trilogy!
Icing on the cake? Cats Labs updated all of the Rogue Academy covers. They are all beautiful. The cover artist for all three is the ever-talented Marco Mazzoni.
Iron Dawn and Ghost Hour look wonderful. What do you think? If you haven’t read the first two books, now is a good time to catch up. I didn’t get to celebrate the release of Ghost Hour. I will get to celebrate the release of Crimson Night at Gen Con and Origins this year. Woot!
Bryan Young is a convention friend of mine who also does a lot of media tie-in writing. Today, he tells me about tackling an unexpected BattleTech project and everything he had to overcome with it.
I wasn’t supposed to be writing about the Clans in BattleTech. Everything I’d pitched for BattleTech over the last few years had been in wildly different directions. And the few ideas I had involving the Clans, none of them involved the Jade Falcons. That didn’t mean I didn’t like the Clans or the Jade Falcons. I just knew that as a brand-new BattleTech writer, Clans would be the hardest thing to get right.
So when I got my first book assignment to tackle a BattleTech book and was informed it would be Clan Jade Falcon, maybe I panicked a little. I’d really focused a lot of my research on mercenaries, on the Davions, on the Kell Hounds, on the Jihad. I’d only skirted around the Clans. But now I had a tight deadline and a lot of catching up to do.
Honor’s Gauntlet was the end result.
I crammed everything I could and was incredibly grateful for the fact check team to help me through everything else. I’d avoided the Clans to my peril, because I found so much interesting material to work with The Jade Falcons are currently tearing up the Inner Sphere in their march to Terra in hopes of becoming the ilClan and they’re doing it in the most horrific ways possible. But some Jade Falcons stand against the war crimes and I got to tell a story about a Warrior who worked his hardest to thread that needle. How do you serve your clan that has clearly got an unethical bloodlust and still remain true to the actual tenets of honor in combat?
That’s the central question I tried to throw at Archer Pryde, the man who would become the lead character in my book. He’s different than other Jade Falcons and Clan Warriors. He commands with respect for competency and encouragement rather than the fear endemic to the Jade Falcon command structure and he gets results. But the leadership of the Falcons, starting with Malvina Hazen, right at the top, didn’t really like that. And that’s what built the political drama of my story. The big stompy ’Mech action was the easy part.
And now that it’s done, I’m proud of the result. I think I was able to create something unique and interesting in a sprawling universe that sometimes takes a while to get your bearings in. And I had to do it fast, which just goes to show that deadlines spur creativity rather than stifle it.
I hope people enjoy it, but whether they do or not is secondary to the fact that I had a great time and learned a lot doing it.
***
Bryan Young works across many different media. He worked as a writer and producer of documentary films, which were called “filmmaking gold” by The New York Times. He’s also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He’s been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG in 2019 and in 2020 he wrote a novel in the BattleTech Universe called Honor’s Gauntlet.
This year, I decided I wanted to work on Fantasy Jenn. IE: the Jennifer I think I want to be or think I should be. I’ve been doing one-month sections at a time. And yes, CoVid did interrupt this little exploration of shifting fantasy to reality, but I’m still keeping on as best I can.
First up, Fantasy Jenn and pretty polished nails. You might remember in the past of 2-3 years ago, I spent a significant amount of time with hard gel on my nails. I got my nails done every 3 weeks or so. It was expensive, but I was doing between 10 and 14 events a year. I considered it image upkeep. Then my fabulous nail artist moved. Her apprentice did pretty well, but she was much farther away and the gel nails popped off. This was something that didn’t happen with my first nail tech.
Thus began an 18 month attempt at not doing gel nails and only getting shellac done the day before a long convention. Otherwise I did my nails at home. Badly. Thus, this month, I’m officially giving up on polished nails. Regular nail polish doesn’t last. One chip and I start picking at it. And during The Great Pause, I’m working at home anyway. It is sad, but I’m saying good-bye to Fantasy Jenn nails for now.
Next up, Fantasy Jenn and stretching. I’m happy to say that I’ve kept up on this “should have” habit. I can’t touch my toes yet, but I’m getting closer and steadily better. I spend time, on average, stretching five days a week. So, not all is lost when it comes to Fantasy Jenn. That’s a nice feeling.
Finally, Fantasy Jenn and cutting the cable cord. This is the newest decision for Chez Brozek. Now, me and the Husband have talked about it for years. The last time we decided we were going to cut cable (keeping internet), we got talked into lowering our bill and getting even more channels. It felt like a loss then and I decided to keep an eye on what I actually watched. What I recorded on DVR. What would I miss?
This time when the Husband brought up the idea, I jumped all over it. I told him to cut it because the only thing I would really miss was PBS and we could get that over streaming. So, he did. And, wonder of wonders, they didn’t try to hard sell him an upgrade. Possibly because we were keeping internet. In the end, after adding PBS Passport to our streaming line up, we are saving $90/month on the cable bill. That’s over $1000 a year saved.
I wondered if I would miss it. I don’t but I have noticed that I really need to be much more deliberate about my TV watching. I can’t just turn it on and flip through channels until something catches my eye. I like this. It means I have the shows I want to watch and I have time to do more reading/listening to audiobooks (another Fantasy Jenn thing that I’m not specifically working on but I want to).
Next up for Fantasy Jenn…Declutter Round 3. As of the end of August, I will have not decluttered for a full year. As I’ve decided The Great Pause is the new normal, it’s time for me to get my declutter on. I suspect it’s going to be harder this time around. More emotions. More to think about. More difficult to get rid of things.
Though, it may have to wait until October. I need to get BattleTech: Crimson Night written, edited, and turned in first. It’s what is taking most of my cycles right now.
Hello everyone. I wish we were at Gen Con in person but circumstances have dictated that we cannot be. I miss you. Considered yourself hugged, or given a handshake, or a smile and a wave. I will be on twitter to celebrate one of my all-time favorite conventions.
Below are the books I have available. If you already have them all and would like to support me, please buy me a coffee. I really am made of caffeine and I sincerely appreciate your support. You are the reason I write. (That and the fact that I need to feed my cats.)
BATTLETECH
BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident. Eight cadets and a general on a PR event gone horribly wrong. This one will break your heart.
BattleTech: Iron Dawn, Rogue Academy One. A pair of war orphans lead their academy to rescue their own when the adults can’t do it.
(New!) BattleTech: Ghost Hour, Rogue Academy Two. After sibling cadets, Jasper and Nadine Roux rescue Emporia’s MechWarriors and ’Mechs, the enemy fights back because they—like the siblings—have nothing left to lose.
SHADOWRUN
(New!) Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. When Sartorial meets Kintsugi at a jabber—an illegal warehouse party—they fall in love as only teenagers can do. But the world conspires to keep them apart…as do the secrets the teenagers hold. (Novella)
Shadowrun: Makeda Red. It was supposed be a simple extraction from the Brussels2Rome party train. With an eclectic crowd, a willing target, and a lot of nuyen at stake, what could go wrong?
Shadowrun: DocWagon19. DocWagon—saviors of the needy, rescuers of the desperate. Reporter Amelia Hart has embedded herself with a DocWagon team to see what their life is really like. When the past comes to haunt the team, Amelia is in for a wild ride. (Novella)
URBAN FANTASY
The Karen Wilson Chronicles. Omnibus. Karen Wilson is a 911 operator in the city of Kendrick, who receives a very strange phone call and discovers that her city is not at all what it appears to be. Pulled into Kendrick’s hidden, supernatural world, she finds herself appointed as the mysterious Master of the City’s visible representative to-well, everyone-and then gets adopted by a baby gargoyle. Can things get any stranger? In Kendrick, they probably can.
Join Karen and her allies as they fight to protect not just themselves, but the entire city and its denizens, from dangers within that threaten to consume them whole. This omnibus contains all four of the Karen Wilson Chronicles novels (Caller Unknown, Children of Anu, Keystones, Chimera Incarnate) as well as bonus content including a never before published short story, “The Fool’s Path.”
A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods. Bram Stoker award finalist anthology edited by Jennifer Brozek. The ongoing battle against the immortal Elder Gods enters the modern age. Magic, mayhem, and murder no longer reign in dusty books discovered in decrepit libraries. Today’s monsters can be called by more than uncanny rituals in candlelit basements. Madness lurks on the internet and lives in the locker room. It breeds in the mall and ambushes its victims outside the club.
But those who fight this vast evil have also moved into the modern age. Teenagers from every walk of life use whatever they can to defend our world. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. Sometimes…they give into the temptations of eldritch power.
If you didn’t find anything you liked, check out my podcasts: Five Minutes Stories and Shadowrun: ShadowBytes.
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.
