Give Me Liberty!

Martin Sketchley’s The Liberty Gun is out this month, third in his Structure series of literate, violent military SF. Earlier I reported that Publishers Weekly said, “Sketchley excels at depicting the futility of endless cultural conflicts, but readers should be prepared for some stomach-churning alien love and birthing scenes. ” I’d add to this that Sketchley excels in aliens in general, and that the Structure books are collectively the most action-packed books that Pyr has yet published. (Close second/possible tie: the Cassandra Kresnov series from Joel Shepherd.) Of the three Structure books, this third one is my personal favorite for one particular reason: The Affinity Trap and The Destiny Mask were already delivered to Simon & Schuster in the UK – and the first book published – when we came on the scene, so our editions follow the UK ones. But Martin handed the manuscript for The Liberty Gun into me, and I rolled my sleeves up and dove in to the elbows. Also, as often happens in publishing, the illustrator, Dave Seeley, was painting the cover while Martin was still working on the book. Dave is the type of illustrator who reads the whole manuscript when he can, and he had a lot of good and relevant thoughts on the first draft of this one, so Martin, Dave and I entered into a three way dialogue that I think greatly benefited the revisions and positively affected the shape of the final manuscript. I hope you all like the result!