I'm low vision, functionally blind in most situations. As you can guess, my degrading retinas restrict what I can do in the real world. I love skiing, scuba diving, and a host of other activities I can no longer do, or do how I want to do them. This fighting retreat has been the story of my life since being medically discharge from the Army at the old age of seventeen, following my diagnosis.
Simply put, I can't live the life I want to so my imagination has become my keep. My final impenetrable stronghold, impervious to the ravages of my affliction. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's an escape I utilize regularly.
Maybe it's just me because my mind is so desperate for new material to chew on but I'll grad ahold of a minor piece of information and build an entire universe around it. That's how my latest novel, BattleMaster was born.
Several years ago I saw a short segment on TV about the US Air Force's experiments with craft controlled by a pilot's brainwaves. The pilots were hooked up to simulators but the results were still very interesting. A female subject remarked that initial findings suggested women were better at this method of operation.
The seed had been planted.
That fact whispered in my ear for years and I combined it with others I picked up. Such as, knowledge the female brain is wired to maximize multitasking while males are superior at focusing on a single objective. Both have their advantages and are likely a result of survival demands Datong back millennia. Men hunting and providing protection while woman cared for the young and performed any number of important tasks.
These two bits of information are what formed the roots of BattleMaster. I asked myself, if women are better at multitasking and the future of warfare is drone based, wouldn't they one day reign supreme on the battlefield? My imagination went from there and the story blossomed until it found its way to the page.
So, pay attention to the world around you. Seeds of imagination are adrift everywhere.
It's a women's army, men are privileged to catch bullets in it.
Private Michael Stanner is continuously reminded of that fact but he refuses to give up. He will fight for victory and the chance to become something more. That is, if he can avoid getting killed on New Calcutta.
Members of the all-female BattleMaster Corps are the elite warriors of the modern battlefield. Their naturally superior multitasking abilities allows them to control teams of drones in combat more effectively than any man through neural links.
The Corps is the cornerstone of the American colonists' decades long struggle for dominance in the Eden System. As three powers fight for control of a terraformed world left vacant by the mysterious disappearance of the Indian colony ship, questions linger about the true motivation for the war.
