Author Archives: yakovmerkin

A Greater Duty Preview

A Preview of A Greater Duty Yakov Merkin PROLOGUE What am I doing here? Nayasar Khariah resisted the urge to lean her lithe, leonine form back in her chair and rest her feet on the console in front of her, instead settling for tapping the desk in front of her with the clawed tips of herContinue reading “A Greater Duty Preview”

Introducing A Greater Duty, Part 2: What This Story Is, Plus a Discussion of Genre and Realism

Last we ended things with the little introduction to A Greater Duty, and before I get into talking about the book itself, I’ll include the back cover blurb/synopsis (which is subject to minor change) once more. (And as a note, the image accompanying this article is the color sketch of A Greater Duty‘s cover, not the final.)Continue reading “Introducing A Greater Duty, Part 2: What This Story Is, Plus a Discussion of Genre and Realism”

Introducing A Greater Duty, Part 1: How We Got Here

There is still some time before the release of my debut novel, A Greater Duty, but it shouldn’t be too long now. Thus, I believe the time is right to begin introducing this story, the product of over a decade of (on and off) work, to all of you. As I stated above, the initialContinue reading “Introducing A Greater Duty, Part 1: How We Got Here”

Thoughts on Rogue One, and My Growing Problem with the Star Wars Franchise

Let me start off by making it clear that I love Star Wars. Ever since I saw the originals (on VHS–lucky me!) I’ve been in love with the universe. Years back, I read many of the Expanded Universe books (though I did take issue with some of them, but more on that later), and played aContinue reading “Thoughts on Rogue One, and My Growing Problem with the Star Wars Franchise”

Thoughts on being The Only Pirate at the Party (or the only sci-fi/fantasy writer in history class)

So, this post has been a long time in coming, but it was one that I wanted to be sure I finished (for point of reference, I first started writing this over a year ago). Back then my hair was short, my thesis was months from completion, and I was still querying agents. My, howContinue reading “Thoughts on being The Only Pirate at the Party (or the only sci-fi/fantasy writer in history class)”

Writing Talk: Interplanetary Civilizations (Case Study: The Galactic Alliance) Part 2

In Part 1 of this short series of posts, I talked about the first part of Planetary Defense Command’s series of posts about galactic empires, or interplanetary civilizations in general, where he went into actual science to look at how densely populated a galaxy would theoretically be, and some of the ramifications of this, andContinue reading “Writing Talk: Interplanetary Civilizations (Case Study: The Galactic Alliance) Part 2”

Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker

I would’ve shared this excellent post by Brian Niemeier sooner, but I haven’t had reliable internet access. I have some now, though, so here’s a fascinating and enlightening post he wrote about Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, the first novelization of the original film, written from an earlier draft of the film’s script.Continue reading “Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker”

Writing Talk: Interplanetary Civilizations (Case Study: the Galactic Alliance) Part 1

Recently, a set of blog posts over at Planetary Defense Command was brought to my attention, and before I knew it I’d read all four parts. The posts in questions, the first of which is linked here (and each part has a link to the next in the series) discusses a very interesting sci-fi relatedContinue reading “Writing Talk: Interplanetary Civilizations (Case Study: the Galactic Alliance) Part 1”