This section is a distillation in synopsis form of what is known about the authors planning from web fora posts and their websites. It is about a future or forthcoming thread of action, though one well founded on the naval actions in the novels 1633 and 1634: The Baltic War, which have set the table. The later work also foreshadows a planned "screw-powered frigate" class of ships under development in Magdeburg by Admiral John Chandler Simpson
Busy best selling authors David Weber and Eric Flint in 2002 (writing 1633 and Ring of Fire originally contracted together and with Baen's Books to co-write the five "main series" books. When working on the long delayed 1634: The Baltic War novel and with the prolonged and ongoing demand for the series sequels, and considering the already experienced delays imposed by the difficulty of getting schedules between themselves synchronized (It took three planned "windows-of-opportunity" before one worked in The Baltic War) well enough for the two to have the three to six months or so needed to collaborate successfully given the attention-to-detail needs, general reasonableness, and characteristic "historical accuracy" imposed by Flint from the beginning[1], the two decided to alter their original planning and spin off a new thread—one based on the United States of Europe as a naval power, which historically alters the fact that Gustavus's Swedish Empire was not (Many are unaware that Sweden did colonize north America—colonies which were absorbed into British North American colonies behind the wall of ships helping the nascent British Empire come into being during the Seventeenth century).
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- ↑ How it all started (Baen Bar Authors forum post 2 March 1999): I'm posting a new topic in a shameless bid to enlist aid and assistance in my next book. Y'all understand this is a serious and solemn project and there'll be none of the usual badinage, disrespect, wild-eyed-opinion-spouting, surly remarks and the other stuff that routinely transpires in the Bar. (Yeah, sure. And pigs will fly.) OK, here's the problem. The novel I'm starting on, Fire in the Hole, requires a wide range of knowledge to write properly. Some of that I have (the history of the period, for instance). Some I can get, from friends. But some of it requires me to scramble like a monkey. Any help I can get will be appreciated. The setting of the novel is as follows: For reasons I won't go into here (read the book when it comes out, heh heh), a small town in West Virginia finds itself transposed in time and place into Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The time is spring/summer of l630 AD. The place is Thuringia, in central Germany. The Americans are in the middle of one of history's worst wars and they have to survive (and hopefully, prosper). In order to do that, they have the resources available to them which would be in any small town in the area. I'm going to be leaving in three days to spend some time there (I used to live in the area -- near Fairmont and Morgantown -- but it was twenty years ago; things change). One of the things I'll be doing is to catalog the resources available. But the kind of problems the West Virginians will face include: ...[Several paragraphs and lists omitted] The basic rule is: NO CHEATING. There will not be any "convenient" stuff that wouldn't likely be in a small town. (No military convoys which just "happen" to be parading through town, for instance). On the other hand, the population of the town (which includes a lot of coal miners from the area who are in town that day for a wedding) are the type of blue-collar folks who can jury-rig damn near anything if the stuff is either there or can be obtained. Finally, a TIP. Alternate history novels have a tendency (for obvious dramatic reasons) to focus too narrowly on the military dimension of the problem. I want to cast a broader net. ... (more)}}