Four Horsemen Universe Box Set

Plus some history of how the Queen Elizabeth's Own came to be. Tenacious and Versatile!

The Four Horsemen Universe has been an amazing opportunity for me, and I’m so proud of what my Foresters became.

If haven’t started it, you can now get the 8 books that provide the foundation for the entire universe as a box set for $9.99. That’s $1.25 per novel.

Here’s the link at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GLH3448T.

As I say, I’m ecstatic that I got to be a part of this sandbox. The Queen Elizabeth’s Own Foresters were a lot of fun to write.

Some choices I made to make things tougher on myself went very well. For one thing, I initially designed them to have less than modern equipment. My model for them were the corvette sailors of WW2, the ones who went against the best of the German U-Boats in wooden-hulled ships. Crappy ships but tough, hard, and skilled sailors.

Then I went looking for a regiment to base things off. I chose the Grey and Simcoe Foresters because my grandfather enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1916 at the age of 14. They assigned him to the Forestry Corps, which was basically the support unit that cut down trees for trenches and helped transport dead and wounded from the front.

That shaped the kind of unit they would be. I wanted a unit that would take CASPers into constricted terrain, like forests and forest analogues. This was in part to contrast with the assault element of Cartwright’s Cavaliers. The Foresters had to be different, not simply just CASPer drivers but CASPer drivers that did something in particular.

This also gave me a motto! Tenacious and versatile!

Then things got bigger along the way. The first story created some of the basic flavor. The second story built the forest analogue aspect and also really pushed the idea they’d try crazy stuff if it worked. That also started building the hidden enemy concept.

Then came the novel. That expanded on everything. It also let me use stuff I’d used before.

You see, the first story I submitted was the one where a Forester lieutenant gets executed by a Peacemaker. But that wasn’t the first one I wrote.

The first one I wrote was about Blaine. It ended up being a chapter in The Feeding of Sorrows, at least most of it. However, if I’d have finished it, it would’ve been too long to be a short story. It held all the hidden conspiracy stuff that I baked in, plus the fun idea of the hacker and e-warfare.

So when I wrote the novel, I realized I could include it plus all sorts of background stuff on Blaine that made a cool spy element to the story.

But I had problems finishing that novel. At one point, I was at 145k thinking to myself that all I needed was one more push to conclude the final battle.

Then I realized I needed to do two books. Thankfully, Chris let me do that.

So basically, the final battle became two battles, with the second battle in The Ravening of Wolves.

But that created a whole new fun set of challenges. I decided the second battle had to be fought almost immediately, which meant the Foresters had all sorts of new challenges. Get new recruits to fill out the numbers. Incorporate their new allies. Learn the new equipment.

And do it all in 3 months.

Talk about an insane training cycle, so a lot of that book is them not fighting a battle, but rather fighting the challenges of training in too little time. Thanks to a bunch of buddies for telling me of various training incidents they were a part of or knew about.

This was also the battle where I added the idea of using odd equipment no one else wanted to use. Thanks to Benjamin Tyler Smith for letting me use Jackie Warren and her crew, and with that I gave Mark Wandrey major headaches.

Basically, to try new things, I needed to make sure they matched the universe, but that meant I had to pepper him with all sorts of thoughts. He shot some down, but accepted ones that worked. Overall, he had to be rolling his eyes all the time.

But even with the battle in The Ravening of Wolves, there was too much of the story left on the table, so I asked to write The Feasting of Vengeance to complete the trilogy.

Again, Chris assented, and again, I’m thankful.

This was the hardest to write. I mean, the basic plot is Blaine has to hunt down the bad guys so the Foresters can bring the hammer down. But that is only one thread. Meanwhile, the Foresters have to be doing something while Blaine goes from place to place.

So that meant side quests!

And that meant reasons for side quests. So I spent lots of time thinking in the shower, how can I do X, Y, and Z. Plus some Q over there, some e and pi to add some math to things.

Getting all the threads that needed to be tied up was tough. Doing so within the structure was a challenge. Making it fun and exciting too? Even harder.

But at the end, the words just came out. I have never been so productive as I was in November and December of 2023. Things just poured onto the page.

And that was the end.

Or was it…

Anyway, buy the Revelation cycle if you haven’t already. The series is finally coming to a close in a couple of months, at least in terms of the main line events. It’s an explosive conclusion, at least from what I’ve seen. Chris, Mark, and all the rest who have contributed have done well by their readers.

I’m proud to have been a part of something so awesome.