The third installment of the award-winning Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer series is here!

A nobleman from an infamous family, imperial legionary officer, fighter and a right proper bastard of a man…Captain Ben Stiger has successfully thwarted the attack from an army of the Cyphan Confederacy. Now Stiger, his men, and his new dwarven allies have fallen back behind the great walls of Castle Vrell. Stiger finds himself named Legate of the Vanished, the long lost 13th Legion. This title and his own word binds him to the terms of the Compact, an ancient and mystical alliance formed nearly two thousand years before. The snows have come and the mountain summit into Vrell is impassable. On one side of the pass sits an army of the Cyphan Confederacy some twenty thousand strong. On the other sits Stiger, his company, the remnants of the 13th Legion and a dwarven army. Each side is waiting for the spring thaw.

Abandoned and cut off from friendly lines, Stiger takes the fight to the enemy! A nobleman from an infamous family, imperial legionary officer, fighter, and a right proper bastard of a man…Captain Ben Stiger captured Castle Vrell and rid it of a minion of a dark god. Now he finds himself cut off from the empire with a hostile rebel army marching on the legion’s fortress where they guard the entrance to the Vrell Valley. It is not in Stiger’s nature to simply wait for the enemy. Badly outnumbered and facing odds greater than twenty to one, he sets out to impede the enemy’s advance and show them the steel that the legions are made of. To help him on his way he has the services of his friend, Eli one of the last remaining elven rangers. As if matters could not get worse, an army of dwarves is preparing to retake Castle Vrell, a sacred place they name Grata’Kor.

There are forces at play greater than Stiger can imagine. To survive, he must not only contend with a well-supported rebel army, but a hostile dwarven nation intent on fulfilling a mysterious prophecy that has the potential to shatter the world and bring ruin to the empire.

Writing is hard work. Leading up to publication it is exhausting work… especially if it is your hobby, you have a deadline and you have a full time job and a family with three little girls all demanding the attention they rightly deserve. It means that after everyone gets put to bed and read to… (Harry Potter for the oldest and Goodnight Moon to the youngest) daddy goes back to work, putting in four to six hours of work. Then you wake up… walk them to the bus stop… go to work… rinse and repeat.

I saw JJ Abrams recently interviewed on Star Wars. He was asked what he would be doing when Star Wars premiers. His answer, “sleeping.” I would normally have considered that a joke… but after having put so much time and effort into writing… publishing two books in less than a year… I got it! He was mostly serious. Of course… if you have a passion for something and want to make it good… it requires hard work and that is exhausting. Translation… hard work = success.

For me… I love writing. It is my passion and with a little effort and some work… perhaps it will become my full time occupation. I am currently working on three books… scratch that… two books. The Tiger is officially out of my hands… this week heading off to be formatted for Ebook and Print. Yes!!!
Last night… was the first time in a good long while I had to myself. I logged into Armored Warfare and played a handful of games with a few friends before climbing into bed at 10… fully 4 hours early. I actually woke up this morning requiring less coffee. ?

Well… if I want to be successful at this thing called writing… I guess I had best get back to it! My goal is to deliver Book 3: The Tiger’s Curse Fall 2016… along with two other unrelated books!
Oh… and make sure you sign up for my newsletter on my website… I am considering releasing a few shorts… covering some of Stiger and Eli’s earlier adventures prior to release of book 3.

Best regards,
Marc Alan Edelheit

The life of a legionary sounds exciting, dashing perhaps. Even today there is a mystique and sense of excitement surrounding the Roman legions of the ancient world. Many roman youths thought so too and willingly volunteered for service, others used it as an opportunity to escape the slums and crushing poverty of the cities, some were even condemned to service for petty crimes. The simple truth was that a hard and difficult life waited for all who served with the legions. The life of the legionary was far from dashing. Excitement, in the form of a fight, was something nearly every legionary wished to put off but could never truly avoid.

The lives of legionaries were pretty regimented and rather boring by nature. They saw near daily drilling and training, supplemented with all kinds of backbreaking labor and duties. Drill could be quite brutal, seeing everything from minor wounds, to contusions and numerous blisters on the hands and feet alike. Chafing from armor was a constant problem and irritant.

The legions regularly trained their men to exhaustion and frequently continued beyond that point. Combine that with harsh unbending discipline and you produced one fine soldier willing to put up with incredible hardships, particularly when it mattered on the battlefield. It was sometimes joked that the real difference between drill and battles was that in battles there was simply more blood.

Legions typically had qualified engineers attached and as such were capable of building a wide variety of structures. Outside of drill and the occasional route march, examples of work could involve fortification/fort and general construction duties. Legionaries could also expect to be involved in road construction and infrastructure maintenance. One of the primary reasons for roman road construction was to make it easier for the legions to move rapidly about when needed. Should the Legate desire it, even assisting the local harvest of crops was not beyond the duties of a legionary. (Translation: the Legate was paid to loan out his men as a cheap source of labor)

Most of the time, it was drill, work, drill some more, stand your watch and then enjoy a nice watered down and heated jar of cheap wine with your comrades. (simplifying here but pretty close) If you were under punishment detail, then the legionary could expect to be knee deep, shoveling out the latrines and living on a diet of barley and water, making frequent visits back to those very same latrines he just cleaned out. Sounds rather fun doesn’t it? A real dashing life…

The legions went where they were ordered. Legionaries left the politics up to the politicians. Questions of right or wrong, righteous cause or not rarely if ever made it into their calculus. They were professional soldiers and were there for a reason, whether it was to put down a rebellion, invade some foreign land, repel an invasion, act as a deterrent or provide security for a province.

I’ve heard it said and argued that the legionaries believed that when Rome invaded a land they did so with the understanding that they were bringing civilization to the barbarians. This is a distinct possibility and likely entered into their thinking… though to be honest I don’t think the average legionary gave it too much thought. The grunts were more concerned with their (not in any particular order) salary, ability to regularly visit a prostitute among the camp followers, tending to their informal family (again amongst the camp followers… if they had one… they were usually not permitted to marry… hence the informal part), having a customary drink(s), increasing their pension, loot and making it through their required term of service to retirement, where having made something of themselves they could finally settle down and enjoy life.

Battle in the ancient world was a terrifying experience and in a number of provinces a very infrequent occurrence. For hours on end, a legionary could be expected to preform extremely gruesome work. Battlefields were filled with screaming, yelling, the cries of the wounded, rattle of armor, sound of sword on shield, shield on shield, or a mix, horns blaring… essentially think of the worst possible cacophony of noise, throw in no little amount of terror and you are pretty close.

The average legionary, in the midst of battle, generally had no idea how the battle as a whole was going. Sometimes the general did not even know. Battles were confusing to the extreme. The larger the battle the greater the confusion. The side that was the better trained, organized and disciplined generally held an advantage. (Please note: I am not omitting/excluding a discussion on morale, but saving the subject for a later blog.)

The real killing typically began when one side broke. Gruesome cannot adequately describe what occurred on the ancient battlefield. In the space of a few hours thousands to tens of thousands could be cut down in a small confined area. For those who lived through it, this was the kind of experience that in today’s modern world would require years of counseling and therapy.

It was this sense of the ancient world… the soldier’s perspective… a small cog in a great machine… the common legionary and the officer who led them, that I tried to bring you… with a touch of realism.

Writing is fun, until it becomes a job and then well… it becomes work. So to be successful at writing you need to work at it each day and for me it is that simple. When I start a project, a novel or new podcast… I make sure that each day, no matter how I feel I spend some time writing or working on the project. It does not matter what you write or how bad it is when you type out those pesky words or put pen to paper… just that you do write something… anything. Who cares if it is terrible? Just keep writing awful line after awful line. Life is too short to get held up on one line and when you move beyond that troubled line… or lines I find that my writing eventually begins to flow. The beauty of writing and putting something down is that you can always go back and improve upon it! Don’t get depressed, angry or distressed… just put your words down and move on, just move on. If it means you have to take a break do so. Just write each day, a little or a lot. Get into the habit of writing. Put on some classical music, some R&B, or angry German metal rockers… whatever your flavor… have a glass of wine or a beer… a warm cookie and milk… whatever. Just keep writing. Revisit those troubled and tormented lines another time, another day. Just keep writing. Just keep writing.