Back To BattleTech

This morning I ordered the Wars of Reaving BattleTech source-book from Barnes and Noble's website, finally remembering to use one of those e-mail coupons my membership entitles me to. Between the 20 percent off and the free express shipping, I saved $10. That covers around a fifth of the two years I've had a membership there, a lot more than 10 percent off an in-store purchase would.

Why am I discussing this purchase? Because I've decided to try my hand at BattleTech fiction once more. In 2009, I sold a short story entitled "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," which covers one of the early battles of the Clan Wolf invasion of the Inner Sphere, to BattleCorps, the official tie-in site for BattleTech fiction. However, due to some matters I'm not going to discuss, I set aside some partially-written stories and focused on other work.

However, things changed and I decided to give one of those stories a look. The BattleCorps guidelines advise new writers to stay away from established characters and well-known areas of the BT universe, lest a good story be rejected for conflicting with established canon. "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge" describes part of the Battle of the Jallington Vale, which took place during Clan Wolf's invasion of the Oberon Confederation world of Drask's Den. That conquest is described in the 1990s Clan Wolf manual I own as being something resembling the Persian Gulf War--much of the Oberon army was destroyed from the air before ground combat even took place--and I'd researched the Gulf War a fair bit for other projects. There also appeared to be no mention of it beyond the entry in the Clan Wolf book, so it was fair game. And considering how they bought it, it all worked out.

My next story, "El Hijo de Hermano Abdullah," takes places in the Deep Periphery, in the wars between the Ummayyads and the Castilians. That aspect of BattleTech canon is also not well-developed, at least in comparison to the Inner Sphere. I pitched the idea to one of the BattleCorps editors, who suggested I purchase War of Reaving to see what's been going on in the Deep Periphery since then. Given how the Clan worlds are considered part of the Deep Periphery and I had heard there'd be some major doings related to the Ummayyads and the Castilians not mentioned in the Periphery source-book I bought for "Skirmish," I figured it would be a wise investment.

Plus the Wars of Reaving that ravaged Clan Space at the same time as the Word of Blake Jihad trashed the Inner Sphere could be a good source of stories. I am not a fan of the FedCom Civil War and WOB storylines and figured I'd center my BattleTech stories on the Clan Invasion Era in the Inner Sphere and the Periphery other times, but the WoR, which take place outside the Inner Sphere, would also work.

"Free express shipping" means 1-3 business days. Maybe when I get it, I'll review it here.