As for authors, I have to mention Kevin Killiany who puts a level of detail into his stories - be it background details like the context of Bad Water or technical details in his space stories (Pirates of Penance, McKenna Station) - that I enjoy very much.
Everything, and I do mean everything, written by Kevin Killiany. I cannot sing his praises enough. From Pitcairn Cross to the Chaos Irregular to the Ender Clusters stories he has never let me down.
Last Full Measure, Kevin Killiany
The set up in the story was wonderful, to give you all these scenes of the people bonding together and then realize they're on the wrong side.
Anything by Kevin Killiany, especially the Chaos Irregulars series.
Thanks for all the kind words.
I haven't been here in years, and didn't intend to be here now, but my new novel launched today and I could not resist doing a deep search for any mention of "Kevin Killiany."
First of all, despite BattleTech, in all its iterations, being one of my favorite universes in which to write, there's little chance I"ll be coming back to BattleCorps in any big way in the foreseeable future. My original series of young adult science fiction is doing well enough that I've got a multi-book contract that's going to take up most of my time and energy for the next year at least.
(I may regret mentioning this, but there is a very slight chance I'll submit a story late in 2017. Jason Hansa, a man I met through BattleCorps who has become a friend, and I have been kicking around a paired-story idea similar to our "Moment of Honesty" / "Harvest of Deception" match-up back in 2015. It's a small scale Crimson Crusaders / Jade Falcons match-up that's less than half formed. We've got our respective casts of characters worked out (I've come up with a plausible way for a character from "A Different Hope" to be serving under a character from "Dragons of Despair" and Jason's come up with an interesting group who challenge Clan stereotypes while being true to their ideal) and a general idea of how the running battle is going to go. But we don't know where they are or who wins or why. Like I said, we're kicking it around.)
(And, another thing I'll regret mentioning, maybe sometime in 2018 I'll get around to writing the Lex Atreus serial I've been poking at for a couple of years. And, as I mentioned in the afterword to Chaos Formed, the Chaos Irregulars will not leave me alone. No real story, but the characters keep popping up. Writers' minds are weird.)
Jason has also been one of the beta readers for my novels - reading the rough drafts and making suggestions - and no less than Philip Lee is my editor, so BattleTech is never far from our conversations.
I don't think I'm allowed to post links to my independent projects on the BattleTech forums - and it would be bad form even if it were allowed. So
if you happen to be wandering around Amazon, you might want to look up my YA SF novels
Down to Dirt and
Life on Dirt. Nothing at all like BattleTech, or anything else I've ever had published for that matter.
(And, you didn't hear this from me, but if those two books look interesting to you, you might want to drop by Kevin Killiany's page on Facebook and look for a post about reviewer's copies. Just sayin'.)
Once again, thanks y'all for reminding me why the BattleTech universe means so much to me.