The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Odat: Orbital Drop Armor Team by Ltc(r) Alexander R Armor Ca Tambascia

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Odat: Orbital Drop Armor Team by Ltc(r) Alexander R Armor Ca Tambascia Amazon.com Are you ready to embark on a thrilling journey through the pages of a Military SciFi series that will take you to the edge of your seat? Look no further than "ODAT: Orbital Drop Armor Team" - a story unlike any other in the genre. Based on the personal experiences of a US Army Armor CAV Officer, this series is a gripping account of his time in KFOR/SFOR, OEF, and OIF. But here's the twist - it's all written as science fiction! Buckle up and get ready to immerse yourself in a world of action, adventure, and futuristic warfare. This series is not your typical military SciFi story - it's a true account transformed into a captivating and imaginative tale that will leave you wanting more. With the same spirit as Kurt Vonnegut's autobiography, this series is a must-read for fans of the genre. Don't miss out on the latest news and updates from the author - sign up for the newsletter today! You'll be the first to know about upcoming releases and exclusive content. So what are you waiting for? Dive into the world of "ODAT: Orbital Drop Armor Team" and enjoy the ride!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here for thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome home. Ladies and gentlemen, make some special welcome to the show. As always, for 2,400 episodes, and 16 years we've been bringing the Chris Voss show with all these amazing folks with their stories, their journeys, their lessons of life, the different things that they share with you to help improve the quality of your

life as always help improve the quality of other people in your life as well. If you would please go to Goodreads.com for forward says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com forward says Chris Voss and Chris Voss one on the tick tockety. As always, we have amazing authors on the show. Today we have another one amongst us. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. He's the author of the newest book that came out August 5th, 2023 called ODOT Orbital Drop Armor Team by Lieutenant Alexander Tabaska.

And we're going to get into some of the details of his experience and his knowledge on the show and his books and why some of them might be an autobiography. Welcome to the show, Lieutenant Alexander. How are you? Thank you. Thank you for the invite. I really appreciate it. It's Lieutenant Colonel, just so you know. Lieutenant Colonel. Oh, that's right. Let's see. Lieutenant LTC are okay. I'm on the book. I'm retired. That's my retired marker. Oh, lots of markers. Give us your dot coms or any place you want people to find you on the

interwebs to get to know you better. I have a profile on amazon.com. Of course I have a fan group on Facebook, a very active fan group. It's called Imperial Command. We have, you know, for a brand new author like myself, I already have close to 300 interactive people that follow me. I give all my book secrets, sneak previews, early, early release information and discount codes to my fans via that page.

To learn more about my book series, ODAT and future books and things like that. early release information and discount codes to my fans via that page. To learn more about my book series, ODAT and future books and things like that. I definitely recommend that people should go to Facebook and check out a PO command, I'm working with some of my fan base to try to expand your PO command to like Instagram and X, but you know, it's not as easy as it seems. That's true. There's, you know, some, some, some, some platforms you just do better on. I've had that where there's certain things that do better

on certain platforms and other platforms you can't get any traction on. It's, it's kind of how that works. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's in the ODAT book? ODAT is a science fiction that's based on my personal war history. It was written in the same spirit Aldous Huxley did Brave New World. So it's an autobiography set to a

futuristic background backdrop. For those who aren't familiar with the reference, Aldous Huxley of Brave New World was about his personal struggle with drug addiction. Most people don't really know that. So a famous, uh, sci-fi author I met really encouraged me to write. And, and when I try to push back saying I'm not, I'm not a right, I'm not creating, I'm a guy who sits in a giant, 80 ton beast and shoot big guns. He, he, he dropped that reference on me and I'm kind of like putting an argument, so I had to write, I had to write the ODET series. And when did you start the series? I guess this one book was published in 2023.

Is that correct? I started in 2022. The book series first started out as my way to contribute to the veteran community, the help, because I talk about things, about things we have to deal with as individual soldiers and the dark side that comes with it and how to cope with it. So it started out with that and I kept with that theme across the book series where it's definitely not, I don't go into the Hollywood flashbang type of it. It's more of, you know, there's, there's action, but I also talk about the aftermath of what, of what people go through after a battle.

And so you, you basically framed an autobiography for you as a Skype, as a sci-fi novel. That's, is that correct? Yes. Okay. And so now there's two books in the series that are out now. There's a one and two that people can order. How, how does that series work and is there more coming? I started out doing this trilogy.

It starts book one covers my experience with K four S four book two is my Afghanistan experience and book three is my Iraq experience. Okay. So just to get a definition on that, what is the K S four? I think you said for S four that was Serbia and Kosovo, that whole area. When we had those, those conflicts with the server, every, and I still remember that the Balkan wars, I think this, what they

were called, there's probably a number of different references to them. But that was a real shit show in the 90s, right? Robert McDonald Yes. Yes, it was. And so the books basically cover, book one just basically covers my experience going from armor school, graduating armor school, to going into combat. And I cover a lot of the realest stuff of, you know, we just don't get on an airplane and fly over. You know, I cover a lot of the administrative nightmares we have to go through, you know, to give it some realism, you know, that all the stuff you'll never see in a movie. Yeah. It's kind of funny how everything magically happens in a movie, right? You don't see all

the moving parts. And certainly when our military moves, there's a lot of moving parts and planning and, you know, logistics to it. Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is, you know, for every one soldier, regardless of their MOS, you know, maybe an armor even more, but military occupation, especially, you know, regardless of the amount, there's at least 1000 people in the background helping to get that soldier down range. I mean, dealing with mission planners, logistics, supply, there's, you know, it just isn't as simple as I get my go bag and helping on their plan. And suddenly you, you defeat the warlord enemy of the world and everything's good at the end.

And then you leave with the chick at the Hollywood end of the movie, right? Yeah. I've been through four deployments. I never ended up with the chick at the end. So I don't know. It must be for only the Marine Corps that gets there. Maybe, maybe some of those hundred people in the background need to arrange a date or something.

I don't know. But no, I mean, you're right. It's interesting how Hollywood can present that whole thing. And I guess if you only got an hour and a half or two hours of film screen, it's hard to show all that stuff. But so tell us about the characters in your book. I clearly, I guess they're kind of based on you, but who's the main protagonist and some of the people in the book that use his characters?

David Morgan Okay. So I actually cover this in the very, I have a note to the readers explaining this. The book is based on everything through my eyes. And so I'm actually playing I'm actually writing as Myself, you know, the main character has my name Okay, and a lot of the names of the people I mentioned in the book either with their straight Real name or I change it a little bit because they wanted to be an alien character So I alien by their name are all Actual people I've met and known in my career. So every character in my book is based on someone I met in real life. You know, it's basically like I tell people is all the major events are based upon real instances in my life. I just put with a sci-fi background

and those who served in these battles, they know exactly what I'm talking about. And those who've never served, they'll just be entertained with the action. People love military novels and war stories and things like that. The premise of the book is orbital drop, armor team. What is this orbital drop? How does that work in the sci-fi nature? I've been a big sci-fi geek and anyone who's

been a tanker in armor, they all know about David Drake's hammer slammers. And I basically took his concept of when his book tanks drop, you know, from planet, from orbit down the planet side, but you. But it was more based on a lot of what I call fantasy sci-fi, science that is so far advanced. We will be dead and buried, and our great grandkids will probably be grandparents themselves before that technology comes. So I got out my physics book, my slide rule, and I said, okay, if we're going to

brought, got out my physics book, you know, my slide rule. And I said, okay, if we were going to drop a tank from orbit, what, how would it be done? And I, I basically gave a very scientific, very physics based method of how tanks are basically dropped from orbit onto planets, and they take, they create the beachhead. You know, so it's, you know, everything's very plausible, pretty much in my book, that science fiction technology is if money was no option, we actually know we had no money was an option. This would be technology we would have by 2030. This is fun. That's basically how I did it. You know, some true hardcore science five fans have written me, they said, they feel that that's not science fiction, you know, they wanted to see, you know, science, but I wanted my book to be something people can relate to. I want something

to feel that they can say, yeah, I can see that in five years. And so it's, I want it to be more I wanted it to be more human, more realistic than, you know, sci-fi fantasy, you know, with people, you know, people who fly spaceship, but yet uses some magic to choke people. So I didn't want to go that way. What demographics seems to be your largest readers group? It sounds like you built a good Facebook support team for the book, which a lot of authors should do. Yeah. 90% of my fan base is military of veterans or active duty. Uh, a good 5% is, is government civilians who work, you know, people who work in government and that's not only in America, that that's across the world.

Um, so I have like Australian fans, British fans, German fans. So that big chunk is, is that breaks. And the rest of my fan base is just pure science fiction. People who never serve, they just like science fiction and they like military sci-fi and that's the rest. So a very large demographic is the, is military. What do you think, what do you think, what do you think attracts people to the details? Is it because you're writing, you know, a lot of military experience that was real that you had, you know, it's, it has a realism to it or what?

I think it's because I, I make, I'm very real military. It's like even in the movies, you'll see things like, you know, a, a chief would never talk to an officer like that. I make I'm very real military. It's like even in the movies, you'll see things like, you know, a chief would never talk to an officer like that, or a junior officer would never talk to a superior like that and things like that. So when they read my book, it you know, it's very regimental, it's very you know, what it is in real life, how enlisted and officers interact, how things are done. And it seems that many people appreciated that part of it and also the details of how the go through things.

I had one person write me said that in my life when I did my first knife kill and I was very detailed in how I did it. And he wrote me saying that that was the most realistic description he's read in his life because he says he's done a lot of those types of killings. And he says, you know, no one has been that accurate. And in a morbid kind of way, I kind of appreciate that comment saying, you know, I did a great job. At the same point, I'm going, you know, I just don't want to be known for that. So let's see, what's the other question I have for you? There's something about notes that were

sent to me from your PRH and about wearing a Stetson in hat in public. A Stetson hat in public. I'm a cab officer. And one of the signature things is our most famously, you know, Robert Duvall. I was going to say, yeah. In that's aircraft. So those are all the people who fly in the choppers, but there is actually a ground cab called the armor cab. We are cavalry officers who basically ride tanks and a few of us are

going to humbys and MQs, but we don't talk about them that much. So we go through hell to earn these. We, we, we, we earn our sabers. We earn our spurs. So when I got mil retired medically from. We, we, we, we earn our sabers, we earn our spurs. So when I got mill retired medically from the military, you know, this is the one thing I wear because it sets me apart. It's, you know, it's something that is earned, not given. And I, you know, the green brace, they just think about their beret jump.

People say things about the jump wings, you know, you got to earn it. And that's why I wear it in my book is CAB focus so I also wear it in you know as part of my me and my book series So it's kind of a dual Function, you know, it's the show that I know I served and it's really nice when I'm like shopping I'm in Supermall and wearing my stats and I feed me to fellow cab guy and it's, you know, you instantly bond. You just, it's that instant barring mode. You know, when you meet other cab guys, you know, I'll be at market basket.

And I live in North East here and we have market baskets and I'll hear across the place, someone's screaming Gary Owen. And I'm like, you know, he's a cab guy. Now does your character in the book where the cat sets in everyone who's member, all members of ODOT we're statin. And I actually talk about, you know, the importance of the stats in the book and why, you know, if you, if you do meet somebody, you don't touch their stent, your stats and why, uh. You can get a bar fight very quickly.

You do that. It's my room. It's never touched the sets and yeah, no, you know, we're very protective of that. But it's you know, I talk about it, you know, we all wear them and it's more in the book. It's more of a you know, we were in non combat role. It's more of our you know, class a class B uniform. And because in our combat uniform I have, you know, we were in non-combat role. It's more of our, you know, class a class B uniform and our, because in our combat uniform, I have, you know, we're wearing combat helmets. Yeah.

What a classic scene for it with Robert Deval from Apocalypse Now. Yeah. Just brain just completely farted. Apocalypse Now. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. I just love the narrative that goes over that where it's, where it's the, the, the main actor and he's, you know, this was the guy who was going to go home untouched and there, you know, nothing was going to happen.

This guy, he could just stand there as bombs are dropping around him. It was, it was just kind of, it was an interesting thing. And the funny thing about apocalypse now is a lot of the stories that are in the book, the movie are, they were, they were going, I think they were filming in the Philippines, Apocalypse now. And so they were getting a lot of the Vietnam vets that were coming out of Vietnam to round back to the States. And they were hearing the stories of them. And so a lot of those stories that are real from Vietnam vets experience, they were putting in the book and stuff like that was just crazy, man.

But Charlie can't surf. Yeah. Actually, that reference is in one of my books. Oh, is it really? Yeah, I have that reference. A little homage to the old Robert Duvall. I mean, it's such a great movie too. Anyway, I mean, it was a dark war. So I think we have somebody else coming on soon from the Vietnam war. And we had somebody this week. I didn't, there's still people alive for it. So have you ever considered your book as a big screen TV series or anime adaptions?

Actually, yes. Yes. Me personally, I'm leaning towards anime because I'm the Gen X generation. I grew up in the golden age of anime from 1977 to 1991, the sweet age of all the great animes. So I always start being that way. A lot of my fans wanted to see it in the big screen. They want to see the movie. Many of my fans wanted to be a series on Netflix or Hulu. So I have been talking to people. I have been engaging in that built type of discussions. And it's, and I'll be honest, it's not as easy as, you know, you just bring your book in, drop it off a producer and they make it. There's a lot involved and not even going into the legal side, just trying to get, you

know, for all intents and purposes to Hollywood or anybody who makes these type of productions, I'm a nobody. So it's very hard to go in using agents and stuff to get that FaceTime to give them the eight minute elevator speech about why they should consider your story. You know, I'm in the process of doing that and it is challenging. You know, I'm actually having my agent trying to get me in front of production. I, they, maybe, you know, they're the anime people that doesn't ghost in the shell, apple seed. They've done the most, the very famous Kaiju number eight, which everyone is very

fond of. And many of my literary people I work with, my screenwriter who's, who's actually doing the adaptation said, you know, anime would probably be a better route because the amount of sites, sites, sites, SFX, you know, anime will probably be a better route because the amount of sites, sites, sites, SFX, you know, special effects are going to have to do to make a live action. Just my big break the budget, but you know, it doesn't cost much for an anime. It's, it's whether you, it's a lot of explosion, little explosions. It's still the same cost for the audience.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, there's so much they do a CGI now though. It's pretty crazy what they can do with CGI. It's, it's wild. You know, they just go in these big green screen room studios, if you ever watched it and they're just like, you know, making shit and yeah, it's pretty wild. All the stuff that goes into it. I, I've, I find it just impressive as hell, but you know, I mean, yeah, I may probably can give you that, that cool sort of anime look and rush.

I mean, I remember growing up, does speed racer count as anime or? Yep. 1977 speed racer. You know, you know, when you see the, you see the, you know, it's racing down the road and the sort of animations that go on with the, to affect that can be kind of cool looking. So with the series, my next question for you is, do you have a preferred studio? If a filmmaking studio could make it

definitely production. IG, you know, you know, I, I've met machine me, she, Rue many, many years ago at a convention. You know, I was always been impressed by his artwork, his books, his his animes. So when he started production IG, and you know, they you know, the large portion of their art, you know, their product is based on his artwork, you know, so by hands down, I want to be with production IG and be part of that legacy of great animes they produced. Um, you know, it's like I said, the most famous being ghosts in the shell all closely by the apple seed series, kind of your number eight.

And a lot of many, many others that they've done, you know, so it's, it would be, it would be an honor if they would, would adapt. I'd make an adaptation of my story. Ah, let's see. What else do we have up here on deck? You say it's meant for the Gen X reader and you, you, you're seeing it sort of applied to all. Why, why do you think it targets Gen X and identify with it so much?

A lot of the references in the book is from the Gen X, you know, I make references to Buck Rogers, Star Blazers, you know, guy King in different ways. I have a lot of things, you know, a lot of AC DC references, you know, so the band AC DC or. Okay. Yep. Okay.

And you know, I, the heavy metal, the, both the music and the movie, there's a lot of iconic things that people who grew up in the, they were growing up in the eighties and early nineties, they know exactly what I'm talking about where the newer generation, they'll probably have to Google half the stuff I'm talking about. You got to Google it. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your life, your background. Obviously, you spent some time in the military, but tell us about some of your experience of life and then also, when did you start writing or knowing you kind of had a knack for it?

Jim Okay, I entered the military at 17 and a half. I spent my whole adult life in uniform. 28 years, I've done six years enlisted made staff sergeant. I went to officer came to school became an armor officer as enlisted. I was a red leg also known as a gun bunny. I worked in field artillery. Yeah, they're called they're called gun bunnies. Okay. The and I know if there's any red legs listening that probably laughing their ass off right now. Then I went into you know armor the I grew up in Jalwint too. Yeah. So I went to Cav and you know that's and I spent a lot of time there. I was deployed four times, you know, S4K for Afghanistan, Iraq. Most like some of them have been back to back like literally I didn't even get to go home

from Afghanistan. I went from Afghanistan to Iraq. It's just how it was. You know, you know, my wife has been very supportive, very helpful. I met her just after becoming an officer and you know, we had the perfect marriage. We never fought once for the first five years we were married because I was deployed for those first five years. So we're the first couple to ever last that long.

We don't have an argument for you. You know, when you're not around, it kind of makes things easier. So she's been very supportive. We had a daughter back in 2010. She was murdered when I was on my third deployment. When I was on my third deployment and that was painful. And, but luckily, you know, I was blessed with a second child. Her name is Alita. She was born five years later in 2015. So I get to enjoy things, my life, sharing my life with her. She loves my Odette series. She keeps begging me, daddy, when can I be a

character in your book series? And I'm like, maybe when you're older. But she's very, she's one of my biggest fans. And it kind of gives me that little daddy thing. I like it. She even says to me, daddy, I want to grow up to be a tanker. And of course that brought my chest out. Yeah. to be a tanker. And of course that brought my chest out. Yeah. You know, how I got in the writing, it's really funny. When I got medically retired, the VA basically said, Hey, your terminal, we're giving you about five to six years, you know, based on your exposures and, you know, and other vets in your profile, you know, so I met Jonathan Yanez and I basically, you know, told him, hey, you know, I'm gonna, you know, if I'm on terminal, I don't want to die. Not having one never remember who and what I was. Can I be a character in your book? So I'm remembered somewhere.

And he agreed and I got, we got very close, you know, we talk about things and finally, he started pushing me, you know, write your own book, write your own book. And I finally told him, I said, listen, you know, I'm, I know I'm a sci-fi geek, but I can't write autobiography. I fall asleep. This happened. Just trying to write it myself. And he, and he looked at me and he says, you know, you know who Aldous Huxley is. I said, yeah, brave new world, you know, old great thing, you know, for beta's things like that. And he goes, you know, that was a book about his drug addiction and his own autobiography. He put the sci-fi format. I go, Oh, I didn't know that. Then he looked dead straight at me. He goes, if Aldous Huxley can do it, why can't you? And hence the birth of ODAT.

I started writing in 2022. Book one was released in 2023, followed by book two is in 2024. And book three to complete the trilogy is coming out this summer. I'm working with Hoyt audio productions from Florida. They are they're going to make trilogy into an audiobook for audible. They're they're very, very good people. And I was kind of lucky because most audiobooks, with the exception of those that are dramatized, usually have one narrator male or female. I actually got, I made a deal with them where I have both a male narrator for male characters and a female narrator for female characters. So it's adding a really good level of narration for a book that's not going to be dramatized. So they're really good. I'm planning once I complete book three, I'll be

starting a whole new series based in the same universe. So the same ODOT universe. So if you read the first three books, you're going to know exactly what's in my universe. But it's going to come from a different perspective. It's going to be 100% fictional. But it's that I'm also with that series, I'm going to be working with the very famous anime artist Steve Bennett. And with Steve Bennett, we're going to be, you know, making a online comic in conjunction with the book series.

And so we're going to basically have a dual media presence. And you know, he's going to make visual a lot of the things in my book, I have a lot of people asking me what do these aliens really look like, you know, you describe them, but they're trying to picture them. So this will be a way to give this to my fans of, you know, what the various races look like. So I'm very honored that you'd be doing this collab with him. And I'm also going to be doing another collab. I was invited to do a collab with T.E. Butcher, who does the Panzer series. We're going to be co-writing a whole new series together called Ice Troopers. So we're going to, I'll be supporting him on that one. I'm not writing my other books. So it's, I'm a very brand new author, new author, compared to Jeffrey Haskell, Jonathan Yanez, Richard Pathwell. These guys have been writing for years, years. So I'm definitely the youngster in the room. But I have to admit that when those famous people have read my book,

and they've told me they think it's really good content. And that meant more to me than being number one on Amazon or New York Times list, just having these famous people read my book and come to me and say, hey, for the first time you really get amazing jobs. I really respect that. Pete Slauson Congratulations, man. You're a burgeoning author and you're working on book three. Now, is it going to be the same sort of setup in universe in Burke book three is you've used in book one. Different planet. It's going to be on a desert planet, you know,

because it's going to be mainly focused on Iraq. So, you know, there's some dune references, sorry folks, but there's going to be some dune references because I'm on a desert planet. You know, it, it just just the gen X in me, I just had to make those references. But, you know, so it's, it's going to be on that world, and it's going to have a different dynamic to it. It's going to be seeing things from a different perspective, because by the time I went to Iraq, I'm much higher ranks on more in the, you know, I'll be talking about the mission planning phase of things and how we do the

landing and how we do the actual salt versus book one, where I was more of the, you know, being a platoon leader. You know, I wasn't part of the mission planning. Like the commander handed me the mission plan. I did it. You know, it's a big difference between book one and book three, how I change roles from being the executor to being the planner and executor. And there's a lot of dark humor in it. You know, the dark humor is a theme through all three books, but some of my test readers really appreciate the very subtle humor. Some said it almost borders like that Monty Python line because it's sometimes sometimes it's, it's, it's written at the right point in the right time.

It's such the right type of context. It just is hilarious. They tell me, and I'll be honest with you, I don't even realize I'm doing it. You know, if you've got that gift where the characters come to you and everything, like a lot of people have that, they, they come to them and, and they're, they're familiar with what's going on and, and all that stuff. I mean, that's, that's great. I mean, not a lot of people have that. They come to them and they're familiar with what's going on and all that stuff. I mean, that's great. I mean, not a lot of people, I don't have that. None of my characters talk to me. Of course, I write nonfiction, but I probably write fiction if I had, you know, we've had so

many people come on the show that they're just like, yeah, the characters come to me and talk to me. And I'm like, God, I wish I had that. Who's the favorite character in the book that your readers tend to resonate most with? This is kind of funny. There's a character called Gunny. She's a female Gunny Sergeant in the Marine Corps and a lot of people love her. They flock to her. And then there's another character who's who takes second place. She's a a anamorphic fox based species, not a furry.

I want to say that right now, folks, she's not a furry, but you know, she has a fox tail, fox ears, but everything else is human. She has a following number two. And then the third place is not my character, but my characters AI. Everyone loves my characters AI. And I asked people, where do I rate my actual character? And I'm like five or six in the list. And the one thing is, a lot of fans have come to me, the reason they like the book is that even though the book is about me, I don't, I'm not the hero of the stories. I'm not I'm, you know, I, I talk

about all the screw ups I've done and survived. So it's, you know, you know, most people think, oh, if I'm gonna write myself a book, I'm gonna be the hero. I'm gonna be the John Wayne. Actually, I'm not. I'm not, you know, I give those who really did the work the credit and I'm not, you know, I give those who really did the work, the credit and I'm, I'm just, you know, and, and I'm very honest about it. I'm here today because of dumb luck. I mean, some of us, I think we all are kind of in a way when it really comes

down to it, right? Just surviving in life is kind of dumb luck. There's probably a million times where, you know, you, you, you might, you know, make the wrong turn or miss that car by just a few milliseconds, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, it has been a few things in the times of my life where things have been kind of weird. Let's see. The next question I had for you was with the books, are you going to branch out into other

areas of sci-fi? Yes. Yes. After I finished my branch off from this book, the next book series I have after ODAT, which I'm going to call Imperial Privateer. After the Imperial Privateer series, I'm thinking about doing a dark, heavy metal urban fantasy type storyline. Basically, it's like in the same spirit of the series called Bastard.

Having a character like Dark Schneider and that type of world, I want to try to branch and explore that part of it. But I'm also in the pure military sci-fi, Imperial Privateer. I'm going to do another book called Old Man. Right now, this is just a temporary title that I call it the Old Man War series. It's going to talk about a retired guy who goes to a planet to retire just wants to be left alone and you know, everything keeps bringing them back to having to fix the problems. You know, that's going to be probably my third series I'm going to go on to but Imperial Privateer, which is going to be the next

one after Odette. I think I've had a lot of fans embracing that and I'll be Frank. I don't think my fan base will allow me just to stop at book three on that series, I want books four and five. It just from the, the feedback my fan base has been giving me. Oh, I mean, that sounds like a great thing. You're building there and then there'll be more people that want to take and do it and all that good stuff. So now you're, are you a full-time writer now?

And what's your, how does your working and writing affect your family life? I'm not full-time writer. I'm a part-time writer. I take, you know, one dedicated day of the week to writing, which is a Sunday, but throughout the week as my brain is constantly thinking about things, if I think of something, I write it down. So when I go to write, I have it there. I do work as a civil servant for the Department of Defense. I'm a GS-15. I work in engineering. And so I do that, you know, for the taxpayer, Monday through Friday. So my weekends, you know, I spend, I try to dedicate Saturdays

with my daughter and then Sundays. I'm, you know, I'm writing content and I'm hoping that, you know, when I do get old enough for the quote unquote retirement from civil service, then I'll, that I'll be a full-time writer then and be able to crank out books faster than one a year. Cause that seems to be my, my one book a year. I want to try to speed up to two books a year, if possible, many of the full-time authors. But my wife is very supportive of my writing. Pretty much she's become my de facto business manager now. So she handles all solicitations, everything. My daughter is my number one fan. She loves my book. She loves the artwork of the books. You know, so it's challenging, but you know, in the same way, you know, I just, you know,

maybe I'm just because I'm a dad of a nine year old, I just love to see the trinket of my daughter's eye when she sees me autographing books and doing things. And you know, she gives, you know, she pumps her chest out, you know, that's my dad. That is wonderful, man. That is Doing things and you know, she gives, you know, she pumps her chest out. You know, that's my dad. That is wonderful, man. That is wonderful. And you know, it's, it's hard to write books. People don't realize it's a challenge to finish just even one book. So you're doing good. I really thought it was the hard writing was the hard part.

I found out the hard way. Writing is the easy part. It's getting it published as the hard part. Yeah, definitely. And, but you know, you're doing it smart. You're building an audience. You've got your own Facebook group. I learned that from a lot of authors.

You always want to, you know, build out your, your group. You want to build out your thing so that people can, you know, know more about what you're doing and you can have the support for your advanced copies. What do they call them? ACRs your copy delivery and you know, then that way you can get those great, you can get those great McCulloch. So anything more we need to talk about before we go. Yeah.

The one thing I just want to shout out, you know, one of the things that I do, I mean, I'm not per se very active in the community, but I am a very strong supporter is the working canine community. I actually have my partner from my military life as a working canine. You know, she, she was in Fallujah and I try to donate a portion of my, my royalties that come back to me, I do donate to working canines so they can get a home when they're retired. So they're not, you know, put down, you know, so I really, you know, so tell everyone who's watching, you know, if you're interested in getting a pet, you know, please consider the working canines. They are loyal. They're lovely. You

know, you know, you kind of think former police dog gets scared. They're not scary. My dog was, is an army, is an army canine and she, she loves my daughter. So, um, you know, so when you get my books, I do make an effort to contribute a good sum of money to the working canine fund, you know, every year, you know, please, you know, you don't want to support me at least support my work in canines. Please support a veteran's work. That's very important as well. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Give us any dot coms or any places you want people to check you out and follow up with you on future projects. First, thank you for inviting me. I was such an honor to be on your show. I know it's not going to have you sir. Best place folks, if you really want to get in touch with me and know my community and know about my work is my Facebook group, Imperial command. It, it's a very unique page group.

You'll see a tank and it says in big silver letters, Imperial command. Join it. You'll, we have a wonderful community of people. And I mean, I have fans that actually take on wrote my universe roles as my admins. One of my admins, you know, he wants to be called dropmaster because, you know, he, he associate with my, what a character in my books where he was a dropmaster. Definitely that Amazon, I do have an author profile on Amazon. So you can find me there. I'm also on LinkedIn. If you type in my name dash

author at the end, you will find my LinkedIn page and I do respond to fans. So every fan who reaches out to me, I do respond back to them, whether they have good things to say or bad things to say. I mean, you know, I appreciate all comments and you know, I respectfully and respond to everyone. You know, sometimes if it's bad comments, I just it'll be simple as thank you for taking the time to at least read my book. And, you know, because I kind of look at it, you know, people ask me, how do I take bad reviews? And it's sort of like, I think of the Pirates of the Caribbean when, you know,

Johnny, the British, Alfredo Lugo is Johnny Depp's character and says, you're the worst author I've ever heard of. And I'm not, and I'm not very over yes, but at least you've heard of me. Oh, don't, don't. So that's how I kind of look at it. Yeah, so.

Yeah, I had a friend, I had a friend that somebody did that to him once and he was fairly famous and he was like, he was like knocking my friend down and my friends, like and he was fairly famous and he was like, you know, he was like knocking my friend down and my friends, you know, like I said, fairly famous. And he, and he goes, and a friend of his that was also famous, he said, who's this dude that's, I mean, I know who you are, you're famous, but who's this troll that's sitting on you? So it was funny how that worked out for him, yeah

Yeah, I mean that's the best way I can you know That's the best way I deal with bad reviews because you know at least I know they had to read my book to make the battery You know what's funny is some of those people don't read your book like some some of them They'll just spread hate like they just I don't know they hate the premise of the book You know, I mean I've talked to a lot of authors and it's kind of funny some of the people that write the nastiest reviews They read like the first chapter quit. There's something, you know They're just they're just slinging shit like monkeys from the From the thing. Yes. I had one of those in my life and it was really, really shocking. In fact, I had a deal with Amazon to get it removed because he clearly didn't

read my book, but he wrote about how my book is homophobic and it's a, it's a book for white supremacy. It's a, it's a manic, you know, all this stuff. And the fact is I don't even talk about, you know, sexual orientations in my book. It's not there. It just, I don't even talk about, you know, sexual orientations in my book, it's not there. It just, I don't talk about race because from my eyes, everybody wears green. I don't care if you're yellow, red, purple, or single horn purple people

leader, you're in a uniform, we all wear green, we all fight together. And I guess that kind of triggered them that I weren't talking about those things, but they came off with this really bad one-star review saying all this nasty stuff. And you know, I knew there's some crazy people out there, man. Yeah. And I mean, it's, I wanted the right, you know, right. If I, if you see an Amazon, if you could, you know, talk about that, did you actually read my book? Because it's, I didn't know. I wish they could make you ask that on Amazon. Like you could follow up, you know, I like on Yelp or other places that are review sites. If you were, if you're the hosting body, you can reply to the review and say,

Hey, I'm sorry. You didn't like what happened, but you know, we're willing to fix it for you. You know, that sort of thing, right? Chris Yeah. Pete And that would be nice because it's kind of crazy. Thank you very much for coming on the show. This has been very exciting and interesting. And what a great mission you're on to share this stuff and imagine it helps veterans as well. And we are always supportive of our veterans and everything that happens.

So, thank you very much for coming in the show, Alexander. Thank you very much, Chris. This was a wonderful time and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my, my Friday night than sharing it with all your fans. And you too, as well. Thank you for your service folks. Pick up the book wherever fine books are sold is entitled ODOT, Orbital Drop Armor Team out August 5th, 2023.

Trick up the second book that's out and watch for the third. So thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Ford says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Ford says Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTok and the all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out as we like to say.