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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 937
Location: Spain
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 Posted: 24-Aug-2025 10:51 Post subject: I am writing Battletech fiction |
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I doubt anybody would be interested, but the first story has been rewritten entirely in the appropiate format and I added a lot of scenes and material and is growing as I write new scenes.
Finally is getting some attention in another forum. I would rather not be associated with Catalyst, and this forum reads better and is uncensored and works better than the other one, here's the link for anyone interested
forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-mercenary-‘mechwarrior-and-the-comstar-nun.1243127/#post-113277548
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Memento audare semper
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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 937
Location: Spain
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| Posted: 11-Dec-2025 06:57 Post subject: I am writing Battletech fiction |
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Well I never expected thousands of visits but at least some comment from a reader that liked the Battletech world building essays throughout the narrative.
I think that's the problem with my fiction, I haven't read barely any literature but I am a late Cold War child and a history buff and war nerd. I know how military technology works better than professional soldiers, and I have read plenty of memoirs about war. Some one said in internet that "being into Battletech is the milennial dad equivalent of being heavily into WW2". I can relate to that. Historical wargames are daunting, I wanted to play Squad Leader or Panzer Leader and I ended playing Battletech because is the junk food of wargaming.
I see most of my prospective readers are American whose knowledge of war comes from Hollywood. Battletech is wargaming lite for people that have never touched a real wargame in their lives. The endless arguments about tech background issues of Battletech is because people haven't either the science and technology background of classic sci-fi fans, the Traveller nerd crowds (planetary descriptions coded in hexadecimal!) nor a basic knowledge of ballistics or armor like WW2 buffs have.
This knowledge I had was earned in the 1980s when military history book and magazines were common.The people I grew up with in the internet had learned about the WWII because their parents had served in it or they were model builders and read the books to know more about what cool airplane or tank they were building. Also, the European public was much more literate about world wars than Americans. After all Osprey publishing started in Britain.
So Battletech is a niche for a crowd that is neither kids playing Games Workshop nor the old wargamer grognards that had read a bunch of Osprey and Squadron Signal books at the very least. And newer generations don't read books anymore, just read websites, not even that anymore, just X posts. So the problem is that I am writing 1980s military sci fi when readers have been raised on the same formulaic Battletech pulp space opera novels recycled endlessly since the 1990s. I thought my fiction simply by being different and fleshed out would grab attention, but is too well done to be understood and enjoyed by a casual reader that just wants a page turner, some action and some political intrigue at best.
The dialogue, the wit, the different character registers, the moral complexity, the world building essays on how things are supposed to work, is too much for them.
I am fine with that. I am just frustrated with how few people do actually appreciate this and fewer still engage in conversation. I did get some comments after posting this in a Russian forum, but the Battletech crowd is very much the same as American gamers, so a lot of posters were hostile because apparently quite by accident I reinvented the wheel and I wrote classic Russian and Soviet literature they are sick of because they had to read in school, to me is new and original,for them they are too familiar with it.
I got into some heated off topic discussions and now my reputation is ruined and made some forum enemies that are always louder than the silent readers that liked and keep checking for updates. I am still publishing the story there since they created a subforum for it and has a loyal following of a dozen people. But this I mostly do for my enjoyment or to keep busy me through the boring office hours.
Honestly I don't know if people will enjoy the stories and the characters and the dialogue. I crack myself up, I really do, but art is about creating an emotion and it doesn't depend on me if people feel emotions about my characters. Like I said, I sabotaged myself and made my character loathsome because my personal opinions were controversial for some people, and they project them into my character, who is a different persona. It's unfair but it happened.
I really didn't expect to be a good story writer. I actually planned for that. It's my first try as a writer and I never expected to write good stories people would enjoy.
What I aimed for is writing good essays on world building explaining how the Battletech universe sci fi setting works and that we are not in Kansas anymore. The episodic nature of the story allows for enjoying those pieces without regard to plot or characters. But maybe I am mistaken. I used to think people, specially sci-fi readers, like to think, to know how thinks work. Seems most just want fantasy with lasers instead of dragons, like Star Wars.
So I have also given up in the idea of taking the essays out of the story and post them in forums. Speculative sci-fi doesn't get read anymore.
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Memento audare semper
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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 937
Location: Spain
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| Posted: 18-Dec-2025 13:57 Post subject: I am writing Battletech fiction |
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Anatomy of a failure
Anatomy of a failure
Dear readers!
I've been doing a lot of soul searching about why this story hasn't gotten more traction. It's over 130k words now, and I've put a ton of effort into the writing, the characters, the lore details and everything. It's not a problem of craft. I thought maybe the problem is that English is not my native language and I write badly, but after double checking seems it's right.
But the readership is still just a couple dozen faithful people per forum, with almost no comments. And I think I know why.
First of all, the language. I grew up studying 20th century English before the Internet. Language has moved on. I don't speak the language of American 21st century. It's not just the language that is archaic; I'm writing something old-fashioned, obsolete even. The kind of book I grew up reading as Gen X: deep world-building like Tolkien, some darker introspection like Lovecraft, those society lectures like Heinlein in Starship Troopers, or Pournelle in Falkenberg Legion, or Chandler's gritty noir dialogue. Long conversations, slow revelations, and moral gray areas. There are no clear good guys or bad guys.
The problem is that I am going with the original vision of the BattleTech universe and made it realistic, not a simplistic fight of good guys vs the evil empire that Star Wars is. BattleTech is pre-modern Europe in space with different countries, constant warfare as a result of power and resources competition, and where different factions are all morally equivalent. It romanticizes war as the sport of kings, sanitizing it so it is not genocidal and the violence is restrained as in 18th century war; but it is realistic enough to show the consequences of total warfare with mass destruction weapons and the equally terrible incessant limited warfare. Perhaps an horrible end is better than an endless horror.
I am writing this as if it were both historical novel and in parts is actually history, this is the novelization of the tabletop experiences of the protagonist. That's what prompted me to write both his back story and his adventures beyond battles. I treat the characters as if they were real people not tropes or literary archetypes, and I treat the BattleTech universe as if it were as real as our own world. This is not entirely a novel, is also a travelogue, a journal and a war memoir.
I write a real romance like it is, messy and lonely people trying to connect, two steps forward and one back. Real romance is not about love, is loneliness, lust and lies. Repeat I am treating BattleTech as real history, fictional war as real war memoirs, and romance as real relationships. But what the reader wants in fiction is power fantasy. Space marines or space knights with giant robots, space opera, and romantic novel style romance. I do not go to the extreme of grim dark like WH40K that people accept because they do not take it seriously. Because if you did you wouldn't be able to bear it.
I have not been to war myself but I am not stranger to violence and death. As a reader desensitized, jaded, brutalized even, by reading hundreds of books about war, I write about war in a way that unnerves normal people, because it makes them reflect.
Giant robots are not "cool" here; they are walking tanks used to kill very real people. The Inner Sphere is a terrible post-apocalyptic society where children die of infancy diseases and a lot of people live in medieval squalor. That's the true horror. People dying for water filters. In BattleTech there is no Auschwitz or Hiroshima, at least not anymore, not in the Third Succession War, but it is a setting much darker than grim dark. Think the Twililight 2000 game of the 1980s, and imagine Third World War not just on Terra but across hundreds of planets. And the Successor Lords being fine with that. So a dozen planets were nuked? Big deal, we have hundreds more.
Post apocalyptic survival is not cool. Mad Max and zombie survival movies are cool until the reality of not having sanitation or antibiotics settles in. I did make a mistake to make my story life-like instead of fantasy. I don't show the gore and misery of war but it casts a shadow even when the characters are not in the front lines.
No pacifist or anti war rant. I do obviously enjoy reading and writing about something as grim as war. I know many warriors enjoy it. I just am honest about the consequences. I don't romanticize war, I just see it as the natural state of humanity.
Also I made a lot of unfortunate choices: a Russian protagonist in the current climate, the Succession Wars era when many new fans started with Clans, and a December-May romance that's heavy on quiet intimacy instead of 'Mech battles.
Some artist said that art is not about exhibiting the talent of the artist, but about creating an emotion. I think I am not lacking in technique or skill. The problem is that neither my characters or my story resonate with the right emotion for most readers. I cannot connect with normal people and neither do my characters. I am a man of another world, another time. And I cannot do anything about that. You can't force love on someone. It happens or not.
I'm probably writing the wrong story at the wrong time for the wrong audience.
This story has all the ingredients to fall flat on its face. And it's my fault.
Yet somebody reads it and enjoys it and keeps coming back for more. I appreciate that. This is not easy read and takes effort. The dozen or so (maybe hundreds) who follow every chapter? They get it. They stick around. And that's not nothing. It means a lot to me, even if I miss somebody to talk with about the story and the characters.
No regrets. This is the story I wanted to tell. I can't tell another story or don't know how tell it in another way. These characters and these stories came alive in my head and I must tell them. They whisper in my head
"Tell the world we lived and loved, killed and died."
Thanks for reading, those of you who do.
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Memento audare semper
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Mordel
Mordel.Net
Administrator
Joined: 03-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 6237
Location: United States
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| Posted: 19-Dec-2025 15:05 Post subject: I am writing Battletech fiction |
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All I can say is that you should only ever do anything because you love doing it. If you enjoy writing and it brings you happiness, that it doesn't matter one bit if others like it or not.
When I started this site, I did it because it was a hobby and I enjoyed doing it. It didn't matter how many folks visited or stayed. To this day I keep going because of the fact that it still is something I enjoy.
So, if you like writing in your style, keep doing it. Don't look for others to enjoy it or even read it. Just do it for you!
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