• About Oren
  • Edited Anthologies
    • The Odds Are Against Us
  • Fiction by Oren Litwin
  • Lagrange Books
    • Calls for Submissions
      • The Future of Audience-Driven Writing
      • Archives
        • Call for Submissions— “Asteroids” Science-Fiction Anthology
        • Call for Submissions— “Family” Fantasy Anthology
        • Call for Submissions—Military Fiction Anthology
        • Call for Submissions—”Ye Olde Magick Shoppe” Fantasy Anthology
    • The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family
    • Ye Olde Magick Shoppe
  • Politics for Worldbuilders
  • Scholarship

Building Worlds

~ If You Don't Like the Game, Change the Rules

Building Worlds

Tag Archives: Military

New Release! Telling the Stories of Women Veterans

01 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by Oren Litwin in Lagrange Books, Military

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

afghanistan, biography, iraq, Military, new book, veteran, women

My micropress, Lagrange Books, has just published a new book by Ron Farina, Out of the Shadows: Voices of American Women Soldiers. You can read the blog post there for the official announcement, but for the purposes of my personal blog, let me just say how very proud I am of Ron’s book.

Ron spent many, many hours talking to these incredible women about their experiences. He then wrote nine harrowing stories, and the two of us pored over each word, making sure that Ron had captured the essences of the veterans in the best way he could. Out of the Shadows is the product of the hard work of Ron, our brilliant cover designers at Deranged Doctor Design, skillful editors, our sponsor the Arenberg Foundation (and particularly the indefatigable Col. Roger Housen), and more.

For me, this project was especially meaningful because of my own family’s connection to the military. Both of my grandfathers served (in World War II and Korea respectively), and other family members served in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The tremendous sacrifices that we ask of our servicemen and women are easy to glibly acknowledge with a “Thank you for your service”; but it is harder to truly understand what they mean, and the obligations that they place on us in return. I hope that Ron’s writing helps to redress the balance, at least a little bit.

Advertisement

New Release: The Odds Are Against Us

22 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Promotion, War, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anthology, Kindle Unlimited, Military, new book, new fiction, new release, short stories

I’m pleased to say that Liberty Island Media, our publisher, has just released The Odds Are Against Us for Kindle! Check it out!

Plus, if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you can read the book for free!

The paperback edition will be coming soon, and I’ll let you know when it does. We’re very excited to finally get this fantastic book in people’s hands. Enjoy!

If you like the book, please help us out by leaving a reader review on Amazon. It only takes a few sentences to tell people what you liked about the book, and it makes a big difference. Thanks!

How Not to be Overthrown by Your Army

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Oren Litwin in Military, Politics for Worldbuilders, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

civil-military relations, government, Military, worldbuilding, writing

(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Being a ruler can be hazardous to your health. The safety of your country depends on you having a strong enough army to repel invaders, and the safety of your regime depends on that same army being able to deter rebellion. But an army strong enough to do that is also strong enough to overthrow you by itself; history is full of ambitious generals who did just that. So what is a ruler to do?

There are many strategies that can be employed, such as keeping your soldiers fat and happy with tax revenue, or using ideological indoctrination to secure their loyalty. Here, I want to focus on army composition, and how it can be used to secure the regime.

By “army composition,” I don’t mean how much infantry you have versus cavalry, or battle mages versus dragons, or whatever—though that is clearly important. And if you do want to think about that kind of thing, questions of unit type can easily fit into the model we are about to discuss. But as Samuel Finer discusses, a ruler fundamentally must build his military from among three kinds of armies: popular militias, a professional national army, and foreign mercenaries.

The popular militia is the cheapest and easiest option, if your objective is to defend against invasion (or, sometimes, to do a spot of invading yourself). Responsible for their own training and equipment, the populace does not represent a drain on the treasury as other types of soldiers do, and they can be raised quickly when needed. However, they tend to be relatively poorly trained and armed, and are therefore less effective in battle than a standing army. More importantly, to the ruler, is that the popular militia is loyal to their families foremost, their nation second, and the regime a distant third—if at all! Especially if you plan on being a squeeze-the-peasants sort of ruler, allowing the people to organize into armed units would be the last thing on your mind.

A standing army remedies many of the defects of the militia. Soldiers are better equipped and better trained, dependent on the regime for their pay, and also more easily indoctrinated politically (if that kind of thing is a feature of your regime). However, professionalized armies take a long time to train up, and are fantastically expensive; Finer estimates that the vast majority of state spending throughout history was on maintaining armies. Moreover, while soldiers in a standing army may be more loyal to the regime than your average peasant is, they will still care more about the nation as a whole—and might decide that the ruler needs to go for the public good. Alternatively, one of your commanders may decide that he wants your job, and convince his men to back him. A standing army thus represents a permanent threat to the regime, more urgently than the populace as a whole does.

Finally, we have mercenaries—they come pre-trained, only care about getting their pay, and have no sentimental attachments to the populace. Indeed, the populace may view them with resentment or hatred, deepening the mercenaries’ dependence on the ruler who signs their paychecks. On the other hand, mercenaries are notorious for their lack of fight-to-the-death commitment, are prone to switching sides, and even are known to overthrow the regime and take over—as Machiavelli notes in great detail when discussing the Italian Condottieri.

One classic way that tyrants would mitigate these risks is for the ruler to have a small number of mercenaries as his personal guards. They would not be strong enough to credibly challenge his rule, and would be at risk of massacre by the locals if the ruler ever died; but they can still keep him safe from the standing army, and indeed their own welfare depended on it.

Likewise, most regimes would maintain a relatively small standing army as the core of the military, along with a much larger popular militia to be called up during wartime. The standing army would serve as shock troops in battle, improving the effectiveness of the military as a whole, and would also defend the capital city from any restiveness in the outer provinces—all for a relatively low cost, compared to an entirely professionalized force.

Of course, a wealthy enough regime that was not loathed by its people could have the luxury of a powerful full-time army; the United States is one example today. But even the U.S. still maintains a distinction between the Army and the National Guard, which could be seen as a rough parallel to the “popular militias” discussed above. A better example would be the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein; the bulk of the military was poorly equipped and paid, while the smaller Republican Guard—recruited exclusively from Hussein’s own clan—was a relatively elite force whose performance, and loyalty, were more assured. Meanwhile, several small African or Pacific Islander states relied in recent years on mercenary groups such as Executive Outcomes or Sandline, because they were viewed as more reliable than the regime’s own military. With good reason; these regimes tended to have a long history of military coups.

So the militia/standing army/mercenaries model is broadly applicable. In your worldbuilding, consider the strategic problems that a regime faces from its own military. They are sure to generate some gripping stories, if you want to write them. Key points to consider: the cost of an army, its loyalty, the loyalty of its commanders, the need for more loyal units to deter mutiny by the more marginal ones… and trading off all of the above against military effectiveness. Remember too that some rulers can more easily survive defeat in war than they can a military coup—and will therefore treat their own military as their greatest threat.

******

(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. There are only two days left! Check out the announcement and start writing!

Plus, the associated Kickstarter project is now live! We’ve got a fancy video and everything…)

We Need Your Short Stories!

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anthology, aspiring author, call for submissions, fiction, Military, military fiction, NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, short stories, short story, writing, writing contest

If you have visited this blog since the new year began, you might have noticed a new series of pages in the top menu. It’s part of a new concept I would dearly like to develop, which should provide more opportunities for authors to find paying work as well as giving readers more influence over the books that get written. I blogged about audience-driven book writing at the end of December, and now you can join with me to make the concept a reality.

I am accepting submissions for a new short-story anthology in the genre of military fiction (chosen mostly because it seemed to be underserved, compared to its reader base). The deadline for submission is March 1. Stories should be between 3,500 and 7,000 words long. Selected authors will be paid for publication rights. And in a few weeks, I will be launching a Kickstarter project to raise the funding for publication.

If you want to learn more about submitting your writing, check out the full description and short-story requirements here. And if you want to be notified when the Kickstarter project goes live (whether you are an author or a reader), sign up here. (If you want to suggest a new genre for the next anthology, please do so in the comments below.)

The full vision is for groups of readers to pool their funding, and pay authors to produce the works that they want to read. This anthology is Step One towards fully realizing that vision. For it to work, we need your stories—your talent, your craft, the vivid characters and gripping situations that you want to show the world.

If you have friends who are authors, or who are readers, please share this post and let them know of this opportunity. Again, this is a paying gig—and if the Kickstarter goes well, we may be able to publish stories from more authors than the minimum, making the anthology even more attractive for readers. This is not a zero-sum game; there are no limits. The more people who join together, the more that everybody wins.

Show the world what you can do.

Recent Posts

  • Uncertainty and Value
  • Taxation and Conflict
  • Pirate Ships
  • Trading with Bandits
  • Different Kinds of Finance

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Not a fan of RSS? Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 269 other subscribers

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • July 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • December 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2013
  • August 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Categories

  • Better Fantasy
  • Credit
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Finance
  • Health
  • History
  • Homeschooling
  • Investing
  • Lagrange Books
  • Manifesto
  • Military
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Politics
  • Politics for Worldbuilders
  • Real Estate
  • Revolution
  • Self-Actualization
  • Self-Promotion
  • State Formation
  • Uncategorized
  • War
  • Weapons
  • Writing

Blogroll

  • Discuss
  • Get Polling
  • Get Support
  • Learn WordPress.com
  • My Other Blog
  • Theme Showcase
  • WordPress.com News

Personal Webpages

  • My Other Blog

Writing Resources

  • Ralan—Publishing Market List
Links on this site may lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Building Worlds
    • Join 122 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Building Worlds
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar