From the Desk of the Cannon CEO

Got some really good books dropping lately!!!! More Fallen Empire and a new Post Apocalyptic series start! Plus Athenaeum: Dark Heart of Dixie is up for Presale, drops in June.

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Four SEALS against ... the universe?

In the aftermath of global nuclear war, humanity was sliding slowly toward the brink of annihilation. Out of the starry darkness came salvation in the form of mysterious aliens willing and able to save humanity from suicide. Samaritans who gathered Earth's bedraggled remnants into safe Enclaves to begin healing their wounded planet.

They offer youth, health, and access to an augmented reality that allows Citizens to live in their ravaged world without replaying the psychic trauma of those final days between war and salvation. Of course relief comes with a price, and the Samaritans have theirs. Humanity must help them in their great Effort, a building project far out in space that they are unwilling, or unable, to share with their new human Citizens. In deed, if not word, mankind are now slaves to their new masters.

There are always some, however, who are too stubborn to bow to the aliens. They’re called Outsiders, scratching a living at the fringes of the growing Samaritan presence. Some are simply trying to survive, and some prey on their fellows survivors. Reavers and warlords, smugglers and scrap collectors, farmers and warriors and the wasting slaves. The survivors and the dregs.

And some … fight. Four men who are able to seize a piece of alien technology that might hold the key to infiltrating the Samaratians' mysteries. Once Navy SEALS, now maybe humanities' last chance at freedom.

A brand new post apocalyptic series from the author of the best selling Fae Wars: Vendetta

Jocelyn Wimmer is a bitter, battle-scarred ex-doctor who spent her best years patching soldiers back together, only to be chewed up, spat out, and blacklisted by the same military she served. These days she’s drunk more often than sober, and she likes it that way.

Ken Kamakura joined the Terran Union Army Medical Corps to save lives and never got the chance. Stranded after demobilization, he’s desperate for the next low-resource, high-body-count war zone that actually needs him.

Their paths cross in a seedy bar on a backwater world, Wimmer brawling with three bruisers twice her size while Ken interviews with a mercenary outfit. Through the haze of alcohol she sees a younger version of herself in the idealistic kid. The galaxy is going to eat him alive. So she sobers up just enough to talk her way onto his contract.

Together they ship out to Eden Crescent, a desert world still bleeding from the collapse of the Grausian Empire. Local warlords fight over empire’s remains, and when a rocket turns their transport into scrap metal, Ken and Wimmer are dumped straight into an ever-shifting hostage crisis thick with culture clashes, shifting alliances, and traditions that treat slavery and sex as currency.

In a place where today’s friend might shoot you tomorrow, two broken soldiers finally feel at home. One never saw combat. The other saw too much. In the chaos, maybe the kid can find purpose..And maybe, just maybe, the veteran can find …

Redemption.

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UP FOR PRESALE!

Athenaeum, Inc. Named after the goddess of knowledge and warfare. A Private Military Contractor that provides intelligence, if you have the right price. And usually the right ethics, which sometimes ticks off various governments, other times angers, say, shady people with lots of drug money and lots of guns.

Through luck and preparation, the company won a vicious and bloody high body count fight against a ruthless opponent, and now it’s time to pick up the pieces. The Professor has new nightmares, and struggles with the rising cost of command as the company moves forward into the unknown.

Corpses are piling up from Atlanta to Dallas, and up into the Kentucky Bluegrass. Mexican cartels are expanding into the old Cornbread Mafia territories, turning a night out in Nashville nearly fatal. Making it worse, a dead foe’s bloodline comes out of the shadows, wanting the scales balanced for their own loss.

It’s going to be a long and ugly journey into The Dark Heart of Dixie.