Introducing FRACTURED STATE

Posted on by Steven Konkoly

Fractured State coverI’m so excited to get this book into your hands, I barely know where to start. Seriously, I’ve been staring at the same few sentences for the past ten minutes. I’ll make this easy on both of us, and start with an emotionally charged statement.

Fans of my previous novels will absolutely love this book! I know that’s a bold claim, but I really believe it. Fractured State brings the best of the Black Flagged and Perseid Collapse books to life in a fast paced, stylish thriller series. At its very core, Fractured State is a story about an innocent family—inadvertently dragged into the middle of a lethal struggle to determine California’s fate.

I’m going to vastly over simplify the story here, but picture Alex Fletcher and his family ruthlessly pursued through a near future, dystopian southern California, by a Black Flagged-like group with unlimited resources and an unquenchable thirst for murder. Unlike Alex, the new main character, Nathan Fisher, doesn’t have the hard skills required to keep his family alive against professional killers. He’s crafty—the son of a retired Marine Sergeant Major—but he’s in way over his head in Fractured State. Nathan gets help from an unlikely source—a Marine officer thrust into the situation by chance. Together, they fight to stay one step ahead of the shadowy group’s relentless efforts to silence the Fishers. You’re going to love these characters just as much as the story.

PREORDER FRACTURED STATE NOW! (That’s just a suggestion)

For those of you thinking — “Wow, Steve couldn’t describe one of his books to save his own life!” Here is the official description for Fractured State.

“In 2035, the southwestern United States is ravaged by drought, reeling from an environmental catastrophe that has left the landscape a chaotic, depleted ruin. California, still viably inhabitable due to its oppressive social controls, marshals state-of-the-art surveillance technology and totalitarian policies to preserve its fragile hold on rapidly dwindling resources and an increasingly unsettled population.

After a prominent California congresswoman is assassinated for her support of the state’s secession from the United States, Nathan Fisher—accidental witness to a clandestine military-style operation—is drawn into an unraveling conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of power and threatens the lives of Fisher and his family.

Hunted by ruthless killers seeking to ensure his silence, suspected by the authorities, and aided only by a loyal Marine officer with a mysterious agenda, Fisher and his loved ones must somehow stay a step ahead of their relentless pursuers, navigating a ruined world in a desperate search for sanctuary.”

PREORDER TODAY!

Cover reveal and blurb for Point of Crisis: Book Three in the Perseid Collapse Series

Posted on by Steven Konkoly

Getting close to the end now. With a launch date set for July 20th, I thought it was time to reveal what I’ve been slaving over for three-month, in between boat work, garden prep, yard prep, spring school festivities, dance recitals, book revisions…a little sleep here and there. Poor me, right? Not really.  Take a look at Jeroen ten Berge’s knock out design for the third, and possibly the last installment to The Perseid Collapse series. I haven’t decided if this is the last Fletcher adventure. Truly, that’s up to you—the reader. I will return to the Black Flagged books next, no matter what you say. I promised, and I keep my promises. A teaser blurb follows the cover, so keep scrolling. I’m extremely excited about this story.

1114 Steve Konkoly ebook POINT OF CRISIS_3_4L

 

“In the aftermath of the brutal attack on his family compound, Alex Fletcher embraces his rapidly expanding role within the New England Regional Recovery Zone (RRZ). Fueled by a limitless drive to protect his family and a rekindled sense of duty, he enlists the reluctant aid of a local militia commander—to help ease the public’s fears of a federal government takeover and maintain civil order within the Security Area (SA).

As Captain Fletcher digs deeper into the government’s plans, he starts to question the federal government’s intentions—and capability to stabilize the situation in New England. With the region’s major port facilities destroyed and the nation’s electrical grid crippled, Alex can’t envision how the government can supply the camps throughout the winter. He predicts a human cataclysm, with several hundred thousand desperate refugees marching north—into Maine.

At the same time, Alex learns that Eli Russell has started to rebuild his militia. Obsessed with finding and eliminating the psychopath that attacked his family, Alex scours the back roads to find him before he can destabilize the tenuous security situation in southern Maine—unaware that Eli’s plans are far more personal.

With the world swiftly unraveling around him, Alex will face his most difficult decisions ever…”

Black Flagged Vektor

Posted on by Steven Konkoly

Black Flagged Vektor is finally in the hands of my editor and several beta readers, leaving me in that awkward phase, where I find myself waking up at 4:30 in the morning and watching You Tube videos for 30 minutes, followed by Facebook for another 30…then finally on to something related to writing…sort of. Blog updates. Book reviews. Tardy emails. The list more or less confirms that I’m lost without a book in the works. I still have some work left to prepare Vektor for a mid to late June launch, but it’s not the kind of intense industry that surrounds spinning a story.

Once the story board comes down, I stare out of the window a lot, turning to my computer sporadically. I gave myself one important thing to accomplish this week, among dozens of smaller tasks. Vektor’s synopsis or book blurb. This is often harder to write than a full chapter of the story itself. How do you condense the book into a summary that draws readers into the book, without giving away plot twists? You spend three days of wringing your hands over it, constantly coming back  to change a word, shorten a sentence or trash the whole thing.

I started this on Monday and have been $@#!ing around with it ever since. I think this is nearly the last iteration. Let me know what you think.

Black Flagged Vektor:

“With the recent bioterrorism threat to the United States neutralized, and Dr. Anatoly Reznikov in custody, CIA Deputy Director Karl Berg proposes a permanent solution to prevent future bioweapons attacks against the West.

A covert raid by General Sanderson’s Black Flag unit against Vektor Labs, deep inside Russia…to destroy a program that should have ended with the Cold War.

The U.S isn’t the only country looking to tie up loose ends. The sudden abduction of a CIA officer in Stockholm exposes the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) ruthless campaign to discover the truth behind the massacre of an elite Spetsnaz team sent to silence Reznikov.

When the SVR investigation takes a turn that could threaten the mission against Vektor, Berg goes “off the books” like never before. Through an intricate web of unsavory alliances, deviously orchestrated political maneuvers and shockingly brutal black-ops action, Karl Berg will set in motion an unstoppable chain of events with the potential to ignite a new Cold War.

Black Flagged Vektor continues the series’ tradition of gritty, unapologetic storytelling, plunging readers even deeper into the murky, shark infested waters navigated by covert operators and their puppet masters.” 

BLACK FLAGGED REDUX hits the streets….

Posted on by Steven Konkoly

Running!

It only took me six months to bring this one to market. Black Flagged took me a year and The Jakarta Pandemic spanned three years. I’ll have the next one done in three months…probably not, but I’ll try.

I think you’ll enjoy the second book in the Black Flagged Series. I have significantly upped the ante with Black Flagged Redux. Frankly, I have no idea how I am going to top this one. As one of my pre-readers, told me:

“Steve, you have a big problem with this novel.” I froze on the phone, wondering exactly what I had done to screw this one up so badly, especially since I really value his opinion as a reader. I waited until he broke the silence. “This one makes your other two look like @$%!”

Well put, Bill. I agree…in a way that doesn’t imply that my other books are crap.

Similar to Black Flagged’s launch last November, I am once again sponsoring a charity campaign to support our VETERANS. A hefty portion of May’s book sale proceeds will go to the Wounded Warrior Project. You can check out the the details of this charity campaign here:

Black Flagged Redux Charity Campaign.

Purchase Black Flagged Redux  Kindle Book

Purchase Black Flagged Redux Hardcopy

Purchase Black Flagged Redux for the NOOK

BLACK FLAGGED REDUX

Posted on by Steven Konkoly

I think everyone knows what this means by now. I’ve finished Black Flagged Redux. Some of you might remember seeing this board in an earlier post…EMPTY. If you don’t believe this was ever blank, you’re not alone. I can barely believe that I finished the second novel of the series, in little over three months. To top it off, the novel is about 20K words longer.

Here is the blank chart as proof:

I’ll release some  sneak peeks over the next week or so, as the finishing touches are put in place. For now, you can check out some of the extras I have added to Black Flagged Redux:

1.) Weapons and equipment primer

2.) Updated Sample

For now, take a look at the Geography of Black Flagged Redux. I think you’ll quickly see that I have upped the ante with my second book. Each red box represents key locations to the story. Right now, I’ll leave it up to your imagination to guess which of these locations will need to hire another coroner to handle the influx of bodies.