War theories

Watch this. It’s John Arquilla and Victor Davis Hanson talking about developments in warfare with Peter Robinson. Some of the conversation is about Iraq and how things went between the invasion in ‘03 and the Surge in ‘07. Hanson makes the point that attrition played a huge role in making the Surge possible. I would add that the middle period was also needed so that the U.S. could get to know all of the customers in the saloon, so to speak.

Allow me to unashamedly segue to my thing.

I’m going to go slightly off message about Corpse in Armor, my new novel, a counterterrorism thriller. Amidst all of the action and the mind-bending story is a theory of asymmetrical warfare that seeps up through the tale and should scare the hell out of you. Much of the war-fighting takes place from a “cloud” — like the one discussed in the video with Hanson and Arquilla — but it is an even more rarefied cloud than the one they discuss. Way more software than hardware, would be a way of putting it.

This is the war we are fighting, right now. Note that one of the central characters in Corpse in Armor, Ryan Schell, spent five years in Iraq.

First reader review at Amazon

Linda Morgan gives Corpse in Armor a five-star review at Amazon:

If she hadn't been so meticulous an attorney and so protective of her client, Mara Rains might never have learned about her intended role as an incidental dupe in a mind-boggling terrorist plot. She'd almost certainly have become one of its hundreds of thousands of victims.

Also says it's "fantastic" and should be made into a movie.

And there it is: 'Corpse in Armor' debuts on Amazon

I spoke too soon in the previous post.

Corpse in Armor is now available from Amazon.

I'm absolutely thrilled. Amazon is the world's bookstore.

Still waiting on the Amazon release

But Corpse in Armor is available right now from Amazon's cousin CreateSpace, and I do a little better there on the royalties.

The Amazon release might take another week. I'm not privy to how it works or why it works that way, but since these outfits don't get in my face, I'm not going to get in theirs, for the moment.

I understand that readers who already have an Amazon account and are familiar with their routine are not necessarily anxious to open another account with CreateSpace. But give it a ride if you're in the mood.

Stepping over the corpses

One of the things I had to do to write Corpse in Armor was to step over all the corpses of my unfinished novels, which had accumulated behind a lifetime of writer's block. When I was done writing it I thanked God, first thing, for helping me get there.

And the reason I chose to use a woman narrator was to get myself out of the novel and let the characters take it over. That has to happen, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I handed the story to Mara.

It's not a schoolboy (or schoolgirl) first person narrative. Much more complex than that. I didn't want to use an omniscient third person. I wanted the horizon limits of the first person, and I wanted that to play an important role in the story. And it does.

Each purchase comes with roughly eight hours worth of squeezing your adrenals

So, Mike, just be careful for about 24 hours after you're done.

Whittaker Chambers meets Vince Flynn

That would be the historical nutshell description of Corpse in Armor.