Category: Dronefall

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Answering Questions Nobody Asked About Dronefall Four

 The release of the fourth book of the six-book Dronefall series is fast approaching. Finally. Whether you’re new to Dronefall, a longstanding reader who’s been with me from book one, or a casual bystander who might have stumbled across this post by accident, I want to treat you to a quick self-interview to answer the questions that may or may not be going through your mind right now.

So, let’s start with a couple of basic things for the newbies here.

What inspired Dronefall?

I’d done a lot of novel-writing prior to starting the Dronefall series, but I hadn’t ever ventured into dystopia before. Neither had I delved too deep into fiction with more explicitly Christian content. I was in a place in my life and growing awareness of the world around me that made me think it was high time. And looking back over the years I’ve been working on the project, I can’t help but think I was right.

I actually wrote a whole three-part series here on Stardrift Nights telling the story of how I got inspired to take on Dronefall. If you’re interested in a more in-depth answer to this question, definitely check that out. (part one, part two, part three)

Who is Halcyon Slavic?

Halcyon Slavic is my main character. A young twenty-something left to her won devices by a society that has isolated and estranged her for reasons she doesn’t know for certain. In the beginning of Dronefall she finally drops out of mainstream society entirely to live with her Christian friend in a rough part of the city who happens to be a drone-sniper.

Everybody has their own reasons for making a lifestyle out of shooting down the city’s surveillance drones. The deeper Halcyon gets into the netherworld of hackers and trackers and sharp-shooting thrill-seekers in cyberpunk Budapest, the more she realizes something is up. Things are not what they appear, some somebody somewhere behind all those flying cameras seems to have a problem with her. If you want to learn more, check out this two-part interview I did with her. (part one, part two)

And now, we get to questions about book four, Nightstare. Firstly…

What took you so long?

Boy, I don’t really know. There won’t be another gap this long between books in the series, I promise. I really wouldn’t do that to you after you’ve read Nightstare. That would be terrible.

I think part of the reason this book took me so long is because I had a major growth spurt as a writer while I was working on it. I’m probably still too close to the project to see it, but I bet some of my readers are going to notice there’s something stronger about book four, whether or not they can put their finger on just what it is. I hope it makes for better reading.

What did you learn while writing Nightstare?

A ton. I’m getting deep into all my characters at this point in the series. I’ve been studying all I can about character-driven storytelling and learning to plot in a much tighter but more holistic way than I ever have before. I’ve learned to love the second act. That’s a giant leap in my development.

I actually feel really confident about my pacing and character arcs, now. I think I can guarantee the second half of the series will be even better than the first half. Things really start to pick up in Nightstare.

What makes Nightstare so momentous?

Book four is huge in the scheme of things. A lot blows up in this book. (Figuratively and literally.) Things are starting to tie together, even as things fall apart for the characters. We’ve officially hit the big midpoint of the series, and from here, everything is just going to escalate. I’m really excited for it.

This would be a really smart time to catch up on the series, if you’re not up to date yet. The first three books are all available on Amazon, and all ebooks are temporarily 99c each. They’re also available in paperback and on Kindle Unlimited, if you’ve got a subscription for that.

So, keep an eye out for updates. We’re getting really close to liftoff, here. 

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Dronefall Halftime Tour Wrap-Up

This post is a bit late but there you have it: my first-ever attempt at running a blog-tour for my books. Once again, many thanks to the wonderful bloggers who volunteered to collaborate with me for this event. If you missed it, here’s the roundup:

Feb 3rd: Nicki Chapelway at Myths, Magic, and Madness (spotlight)
Feb 4th: SHINE at hauntingghosttown (interview)
Feb 5th: Bree Dawn at The Long Voyage (interview)
Feb 7th: Oceane McAllister at Oceane’s Writing Rambles (interview)
Feb 8th: Elizabeth at Elizabeth’s Corner (interview)
Feb 9th: Nicole Dust at Legend of a Writer (interview)
I also want to take the opportunity to thank my readers and friends and followers who have supported me up until this point in the adventure of writing and publishing the Dronefall Series. I hope you had some fun learning a bit more about me, and about Dronefall and the story behind it. 
I’m really excited to move on to the second half of the series. I promise, if you’ve gotten this far, it only gets better. All those crazy clues I’ve been scattering all over the first three books are about to start exploding, and all those odd little hints at subplots are going to start expanding and weaving into the main narrative. Your patience will be rewarded.
I thought now would be a good time to give you some updates on my progress on book four, Nightstare. 
My current word-count for Nightstare is 93,118. (My anticipated final word-count is ~120,000, making it the longest Dronefall book yet, and bypassing End of the Saros as the second-longest novel I’ve ever written.
I’m a couple of pages into chapter nineteen, which is tentatively titled “Clearing the Sky.” Nightstare will ultimately be twenty-two chapters long, if I don’t cut or add anything too drastic.
After finishing the first draft, I’ve got a few edits I know I have to make before going on to my alpha and beta readers. I’ll be seeking a small army of beta readers when the time comes, so stay tuned. I might call on you. 
Oh, and two more quick announcements: I have an Instagram now. @albuehrerauthor. And the Dronefall series is now on Kindle Unlimited! You’re welcome. 

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Dronefall My Books The Birth of Dronefall

The Birth of Dronefall: The Story

I’ve had a lot of dreams like this: Who are they? We don’t know. What do they want? Can’t say. But they’re peeping at the windows, and we’ve got to hide.

I was researching for a project in college when my interest in drones and mass-surveillance solidified. I started to conjure up a future where drones ran the world. They dominated the airspace, delivered the packages, cleaned the chimneys, kept the peace, and few questioned it. This was a world that believed constant surveillance was the only way to protect the public. But in the end, humans still had to call the shots. Someone had to decide who was a threat.
For my main character, I picked out a cynical young woman who believes she’s irrelevant and invisible to society—until someone behind a monitor (or is it just an algorithm?) seems to target her as a threat. So, she takes off and joins her only friend in a neighborhood full of Christians that have their own reasons they wish they were invisible.
I don’t know. A story about a gang of people who hunt surveillance drones just sounded kind of fun to me. There was just enough escapism in the sci-fi concepts to pull me in. I wanted to write a dystopia, but I didn’t really want it to be a non-stop bummer story. The fact that so much of my thematic material was going to hit a lot of readers close to home made me want to make an effort to try to add some contrasting material—explosions, fascinating technology, unusual settings, vibrant characters, and even a decent bit of humor, if I could really pull all that off.
Most importantly, I wanted to give something great to Christian readers. I never meant Dronefall to be an evangelism tool. Life goes on after you get saved. It isn’t easy, either. I wanted to write as a ministry to other Christians, like me, who wanted to step back from the chaos and confusion of life and see life’s spiritual battle from a new vantage-point. I wanted to show them people they could identify with in a world rougher and scarier than their own still standing up for the things we believe in.  
I don’t think the goal of Christian dystopia is to be alarmist or get everyone dreading the future. Instead I want to make Christians aware of the direction the world is headed around us. Because no matter how it looks, it’s a good direction. It’s God’s plotline. You’re a hero in his story and a part of the most thrilling and magnificent epic imaginable. 
If you read the Dronefall series, you’re going to start recognizing elements of it in the world around you. But I hope, beyond the pain the state of history gives you, you’ll discover a sense of exhilaration. Now is the time to stand up, speak out, and shine brightly with the truth of Jesus Christ. This is what you’re on earth for.      

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The Birth of Dronefall: The Seeds

Through the heart of my Alma Mater’s main campus runs a railroad. A slow freight drags through a few times a day, typically, covered in weathered graffiti. Whistle wailing and detuned bell chiming, it shakes the library where I lived most of my college days.

As a student, I wore a lot of dark eye-make-up and went around with my backpack slung over one shoulder, which was bad for my back. I was there for academics only and typically sat in the back of the class avoiding participation. I made good grades and no friends, but I didn’t really care. I had an idea for a new book.

The idea was born under vaguely hostile conditions. The vagueness, in fact, was part of the inspiration. As it turns out, mainstream society, even in my small town has some kind of a problem with Christianity. There were a few occasions when this was very obvious, but most of the time it was just subtle enough to make me wonder if I was imagining it. Maybe I just have that “Christian Persecution Complex” they talk about. That weird paranoia that evangelicals have where they suffer from delusions that the world is out to get them. No idea where such absurd thoughts would come from.

And yet, why did so many professors feel the need to use their classes as platforms to spread their anti-Christian beliefs? In Ethics, Christianity was an outmoded faulty guide to right and wrong, in Logic God was impossible and ridiculous, in History we watched a video on the Scopes trial that took up a disproportionate amount of class time and portrayed Christians as truth-hating loonies. I learned that Christianity was an enemy of art, science, progress, personal responsibility and free thought. It promoted racism, sexism, slavery and fear and hatred of other cultures.

And it wasn’t just on campus. I remember one incident in particular on a chat-group on Goodreads. It was one of those groups where sophisticated adults have sophisticated discussions about world events. There was a thread about Islamic terrorism. Almost immediately, the topic was hijacked and changed to a slightly different subject—the increasingly relevant problem of “Christian terrorism.” Someone mentioned the Crusades and how it was probably “in their DNA” by now.

Everywhere I looked, I could see the true face of Christianity being hidden from the world and a grotesque caricature replacing it. Christians are told to keep their religion to themselves or else they’ll be discriminating against those with other beliefs. But Christianity isn’t going to be forgotten. If God’s people keep their heads down the rest of the world will have no problem building a hideous strawman in the void.

How long will society emphatically deny that they have a problem with Jesus Christ, his truth, and his followers? How long will the post-Christian world insist Christians are delusional for noticing the world is hostile to them and their God?

That’s what I wondered in that train-rattled library during my college days.
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The Birth of Dronefall: The Gap

I think I was thirteen years old when I dropped Return to Harmony on the floor and didn’t bother to pick it back up. I told my mom I didn’t like books that were about quote, “people’s lives and how they feel about them.” I really wasn’t that into the fluffy inner struggles of young ladies and how their bland love interest’s hair smelled.

When I was thirteen, I liked stealth military aircraft and meteor showers and those little kits where you can hatch things. Honestly, I still prefer those things over reading stories about people’s lives and how they feel about them. I actually have a kit for triops on my desk as I write this. I can’t wait to get it started. Hope it works.
So, I noticed fairly early that the Christian fiction market was a little lacking. There are quite a few sweet romances out there starring heroines with rather obvious problems who learn rather obvious lessons and get the guy who was rather obviously designed for them. Apparently, this appeals to Christian women. I have no idea what male readers are supposed to pick up. Maybe Christian men don’t read fiction.
I started writing fiction of my own when I was about that [author name]-dropping age. There was a frolicking joy in the process of invention that I found addictive. Naturally, I leaned toward science-fiction. At last, my inner worlds took shape as real places—planets, alien landscapes full of fantastic geography, bizarre life-forms and near-magic technology.  My teenage adventures in The Stardrift Trilogy saw the first manifestations of my writer’s voice, and on that journey, I learned the dark art of finishing novels.
I didn’t stop writing after The Stardrift Trilogy. I had a mission—a gap to fill. I wanted to write thrilling imaginative stories that took Christian fiction far outside its stale narrow box. The truth of Jesus Christ isn’t restricted to the tidy easy messages and quick prayers of light inspirational women’s fiction. It’s vast and wild—reaching through all time and space, deeper and wider than any of us could ever imagine. So much unexplored potential was tantalizing to me.
As I grew up, new facts of life came into my broadening horizon of awareness. The world around me was changing—faster and faster. The future was coming. It was right at the door. It was a strange exotic future, full of horror and hope. I began to realize something about the future. Much of it can be seen in the present. In fact, the closer you look, the harder it is to see the line between the two. 
I graduated from high school not really knowing what my personal future was going to look like. All I knew for sure was that I was going to keep writing, and keep following God. Eventually, I chose what seemed to be the path of least resistance to me. I was going to study music at the university in my hometown.

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Rainchill Cover & Blurb Reveal


So, remember that, uh…thing that chased Halcyon for several grueling blocks at the end of Lightwaste? Well, you haven’t seen that last of it.

Dronefall Three, Rainchillis finally in the process of being released. I’ve hit several delays, as usual. I realize I keep telling people “It’s coming out this month,” and not making good on that promise. I’ve got many hundreds of thousands of words worth of novel manuscripts at this point in my career, but I’m still completely baffled by how some debuting indies actually release their books on an exact date which they tell the world a year in advance.

Actually, I don’t really know how anyone plans anything a year in advance.

But I will say now, you’ve got less than thirty days to wait for Rainchill. It’s coming! So, I think it’s about time I’ve released the back-cover blurb and the cover. Take a look:

The Official Rainchill Blurb:

Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Halcyon Slavic’s brush with the hostility of mainstream society has left her scarred and wary. As the darkness of winter slowly lifts, she only wants to continue her drone-sniping in secret. But dark places are disappearing all over Budapest, and District Three Point Five can’t be spared. Soon, they’ll be under the same oppressive drone-grid Halcyon came to escape from.

In the midst of the stir, a monster of another kind emerges behind Three Point Five’s back. A canid robot takes the Enclave’s eyes from the sky to the streets. And before they can be certain what it’s come for, it’s made its first kill.

The drone-snipers are forced to face a new reality. Three Point Five is changing. Chaos lurks around every corner. The police won’t lend their aid. And the Christians are stalked by their most deadly threat to date: They’re called hellhounds.

Now, the cover isn’t actually the Official Final Cover, but this is more or less the design and the feel you’re going to get, probably plus a couple of small changes. But I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer, so here it is.


Rainchill is book three in the Dronefall series, and I’m excited to announce that, due to recent reconsiderations, it will be the third of six Dronefall books. Yes, I’ve been telling you five all this time, but as I write book four, I’m realizing that I’m going to need more room, so I’ve expanded. The Dronefall series is now plotted as a sextet.

I can tell you want hints about the content of Rainchill beyond what you’ve got. I’ll be cryptic, but I see no reason to keep any rumor-fodder from my theory-loving readers. Here are some whispers you may have heard:

·         Somebody ends up with a major injury

·         A couple of characters prove to have…complex loyalties

·         The first fatality of the series occurs

·         It becomes apparent that the dynamics between a certain two characters is going to be dangerous in the future….

Well, there you have it. There’s more to come on the subject of Rainchill, and the Dronefall series in general within the next several weeks before publication. Subscribe if you haven’t already!

  And also, if you’ve read any of the Dronefall books, or have any intention of doing so soon, I highly recommend you go here and sign up for my email list, and the free Guide to the World of Dronefall that comes with it. The guide is just my little attempt to help you get oriented in the rather complicated world where Dronefall takes place. There are a lot of forces in play, and the guide is a resource I created so that you can have all the facts in one place. It’s bound to enrich your reading experience.

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Lightwaste Excerpt

So, I promised you an excerpt. Here it is. it comes from Dronefall Two, Lightwaste, chapter Four: A Maze of Questions. She has been back at her old school campus, the place where she was raised, seeking answers to the mystery of her inaccessible legal identity files. Her success has not been great, and she is now bound back for District Three Point Five. She’s being careful that no one traces her back to her new neighborhood and has just jumped off a train and landed in an embankment that turns out to be alongside an old churchyard.

The song she sings to herself is part of the same song Reveille is singing in the end of Dronefall. Without really meaning to, I’ve introduced a new verse of this song with each new Dronefall book. We’ll see if it actually turns out to be five verses long.

Anyway, here’s your excerpt:

A black wrought-iron fence materialized from the crisscrossing shadows of the branches and she paused to stare beyond it. At this point, she realized she was in a graveyard. She could see the ancient monuments outlined in the orange light like the skyline of a sleeping city. There was no good way to climb or vault the fence, so she made her way around it, eyes always inward toward the silent garden.

“Oh, would you stay awake and watch with me, ‘til we hear the trumpet sound?
You’ve always been my faithful friends, is there faith left to be found?
You know those weary wanderers you’ve been putting underground?
They’ll all be up and watching, when they hear the trumpet sound.
They’ll be back up and walking….”

  She stopped and her eyes anchored on the silhouette of a cross: a crucifix, two meters high. The church looming in the background had been ravaged and purged. “Faith is for everyone,” said the sign on the door. That meant all the ancient Christian art and distinctive features had been torn down or sealed in glass cases with a lot of commentary alongside so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. But not here in the cemetery.

  “It meant something to those people,” she remembered her tour guide saying in the Second Stage History of Western Religion fieldtrip. So did the church, she imagined. Times had changed, the guide said. Humanity was beginning to mature. And the old spiel would begin: at first man believed everything was a god, because they couldn’t make sense of the world any other way. Slowly, it evolved to more specific deities, then to one god—and this strict dogmatic view had a strong hold on people fearful of death and damnation, and had many negative effects on history and human relations. Now, at last, we were beginning to see the truth, and one day, we will live in harmony.

  And we will leave the body of Christ in the graveyard where we wanted it in the first place.

Remember, the eBook is still just 99c

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Lightwaste. Is. LIVE!

Dronefall Two, Lightwaste is finally available to the reading public!!!

I don’t usually use that many exclamation points, by the way, but I’m thrilled to be launching this bold dangerous little book into the world. It’s been overdue for a long time. Not only in the sense that I expected to publish it last summer, but in the sense that the YA climate is changing in a very different direction and it’s time to speak on behalf of a popularly rejected point of view—Christianity and its unapologizing truth.

But Lightwaste certainly isn’t all fire and brimstone. What you’re actually about to see is Halcyon coming to the realization that many of us have, that there will come a point where you can no longer hide and go along to get along. The opposition simply will not let her.

There’s a lot that could be said but I don’t want to give anything away or overexplain my own story to you. You probably want to read it yourself. You definitely should. I happen to know that book three is also coming soon, and it’s even better, so you probably want to get reading.
Find it here!

New to the Dronefall Fandom?

Hey, great news for you. Book one, Dronefall, is available for a mere 99c on Kindle. I’ll eventually take it up to full price, but now isn’t the time, I think. So, take advantage of it, and jump in. Get it here. Welcome aboard.

Also! (I always feel very German using that word.) Lightwaste is at promotional price. You can get the second ebook for 99c as well. Both Dronefall and Lightwaste are, of course, available in paperback for those who vastly prefer physical books, (like me.)

Stay tuned for the next post. (You might even want to subscribe.) I’ll be releasing an excerpt of Lightwaste for your enjoyment.

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Happy New Year! Goals, giveaways, etc.

Well, here it is. I can’t believe we’re now in the last year before the 20’s roar back around. It’s going to get weird, you know. We have such strong images of what the 20’s 30’s 40’s etc. represent that I don’t think anybody alive is really ready to adjust to the new millennium and a whole new round of decades by the same names. Or am I the only one who freaks out about things like that?

But anyway. This is going to be kind of a quick mishmash post. I’m just typing it up after work here at the library. Might as well. I’ve got a giveaway to publicize and I thought I might announce some semi-formal-ish reading and writing goals for 2019.

My artistic goals are really ambitious and I’m not going to write them all out here. Crazy stuff even outside of my writing life. Things involving producing two or three tin whistle CDs and learning digital art. I’ll be pretty excited if I even get half of this stuff done.

But first off…

Reading goals:

  •  Read 50 books. I didn’t set a number last year, and I ended up kind of wishing I would have. I got kind of lazy. But 50 sounds doable this year…provided I read some fiction and shorter books now and then. *rents a 550 page biography of Einstein from the library*
  • At least 12 books on astronomy/cosmology/astrophysics/space exploration. This shouldn’t be hard for me. That’s my second language. I’m a major space nerd. Also, this biography totally counts.
  • At least 8 books on the craft of writing. I don’t intend to stop growing, and writing and reading about writing are some of the best ways to do that.
  • read certain classics that have been on my to-read list for way too long. Yeah. Got to do that eventually.
  • Read some non-fiction on subjects I’ve never read about before. I love exploring new fields and I’m going to make that a priority this year.
  • And fiction is apparently also a thing. So I’m aiming to try some novels. Maybe some mystery, maybe some sci-fi, maybe some dystopia…maybe even…*shudders*…some YA.
And…
Writing Goals:
  • PUBLISH SONGS FROM THE SMALL HOURS! Literally any day now. Just waiting on my final page proof. 
  • PUBLISH LIGHTWASTE! Also very soon. I promise. 
  • Edit and publish Dronefall Three, Rainchill. The first draft is complete. (It was my NaNoWriMo project.) It’s going to come out this Spring. I won’t make you wait.
  • Write, edit and publish Dronefall Four. I’m really excited to get the book four. The plot isn’t on paper yet, but I’ve got a cool and slightly creepy concept ready, and there are dual storylines…it’s gonna be fun.
  • Write and edit Dronefall Five. Yes, I actually intend to finish the Dronefall quintet this year. Kind of crazy. I highly doubt that Five will hit the press until 2020, though. I won’t push it that hard.
  • Publish a collection of short-stories. I’ve written several short stories and short story ideas breed like tribbles in my head. I might as well do it.
  • Publish a second book of poetry in the Fall. Are you counting? Yeah, I want to publish five books this year. Told you I was going crazy. 
Anyway. I’m sure you’re exhausted just reading all this. Don’t get too tired. You’ve got a lot to d yourself this year and we’ve only just started. What better way to start than to enter a book giveaway? I mean, getting more books is prerequisite to reading more books, right? So, I just thought I’d like you to the giveaway celebrating the launch of Reveries Co., which includes a paperback copy of Dronefall among the loot. 
Here it is. To The Giveaway! Happy 2019! 
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A Long-Expected Surprise

Guys! Guys! I have an announcement to make. Some of you might be able to guess it, but some of you won’t, so you’ll have to read on.

But not very far, because I’ll get right to the point. Dronefall is at last and finally available on Kindle. I caved and got professional formatting help, and Victoria Lynn did very well for a very reasonable price. I know a lot of people are hesitant to buy paperbacks. Even avid readers. Maybe even especially avid readers. Book-money is scarce, shelf-space is precious real estate and to almost everyone, I’m an unknown author. But a lot of risk just got removed.

It’s going for 99c right now. So, if you’re curious at all, you might want to swipe it while it’s cheaper than practically everything. If you’re ready to grab it right now, here’s the link. Not ready yet? Okay…here’s the link again. 

Alright, I’ll stop. But the fact that you are now able to hit a button and in seconds drop into a world I have been isolated in for uncounted hours is very exciting. Though I don’t have every scene planned from here to the end of book five, I have quite a map laid out, and my head is spinning with thrilling plot-developments. Well, they sound thrilling in my head, at least.

Anyhow, the first book of the Dronefall series with its colorful cast, non-stop mystery, unique setting and slow-burn suspense is waiting for you on Kindle. If you’re the kind of fangirl or fanboy that loves a complex story-world, quirky characters and a lot (and I mean a whole lot) of raw material for fan-theories, I promise you will have fun.

So, thank you for reading this post. I know it was kind of dumb and not very meaty. The meat’s in the book. And it’s currently 99c.Oh, and here’s the link..

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