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    Games People Play: Last Stand, #3
    Games People Play: Last Stand, #3
    Games People Play: Last Stand, #3
    Ebook98 pages1 hourLast Stand

    Games People Play: Last Stand, #3

    By Blaze Ward

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    About this ebook

    An old flame from Abigail's past turns up, still holding on the dream that she'll fall madly in love with him. When he won't take no for an answer, things get a little dangerous. Good thing Tessa and her crew are there.

     

    Book Three of the Last Stand, a shiny, new space western science fiction adventure series full of bright characters, messy worlds, and all manner of ethical conundrums.

     

    Start first with Lost Dreams and then continue on and pick up the rest of this series!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnotted Road Press
    Release dateMar 10, 2023
    ISBN9781644703304
    Games People Play: Last Stand, #3
    Author

    Blaze Ward

    Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

    Read more from Blaze Ward

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      Book preview

      Games People Play - Blaze Ward

      Games People Play

      Games People Play

      Last Stand

      Episode Three

      Blaze Ward

      Contents

      Background: The Last Stand

      Scene One

      Scene Two

      Scene Three

      Scene Four

      Scene Five

      Scene Six

      Scene Seven

      Scene Eight

      Scene Nine

      Scene Ten

      Scene Eleven

      Scene Twelve

      Scene Thirteen

      Scene Fourteen

      Scene Fifteen

      Scene Sixteen

      Read More

      About the Author

      Also by Blaze Ward

      About Knotted Road Press

      Background: The Last Stand

      A while back, there was a discussion on social media about the short-lived TV show Firefly. Six episodes and one movie. Fantastic casting, when you look at the careers of everyone involved, but it died pretty early on the vine, though not without making a major cultural impact.

      However…

      More recently, unflattering things have come out about the man behind the show. Bad things. Really bad things that I won’t repeat here, but a lot of folks no longer have any respect for the man, myself included.

      Part of the original discussion involved the fact that the main character (seen from 20 years later) really is something of an asshole to everyone, because the "creative genius creator and producer" did a Marty Stu and put himself directly into the show. In turn, folks asked what that show might have been like without that character, and without that asshole in charge.

      Two days later, write-brain hit me with "This is what it looks like…"

      Pull out the original main character, and the sidekick and pilot characters suddenly become central. Keep everyone else, but pull a couple of fast gender swaps to end up with a crew that is (technically: the best kind of correct) six females and two males, one of whom is happily married and kept and the other of whom only sleeps with girls he picks up in bars.

      For the setting, I also want to gag at people who set things in the post-civil-war United States, especially when we’re supposed to be rooting for the traitors. I have no doubt that, had the television series gone to season three, our main character would have donned a white hood and turned into a science fiction version of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. In all the bad ways. Icky. Burning crosses or something equally subtle.

      So I had to change things up, if I was going to have fun with this.

      First off, I had to change the background of the setting itself.

      David Drake (Hammer’s Slammers and many other series) studied a LOT of history and reads Latin in the original to translate Ovid, among other things. His creative style was to take actual historical events and settings and twist them around some for his space opera. I needed to do the same.

      For the Last Stand series, I started with a review of Napoleonic Europe, but with one, critical, historical difference. Instead of Napoleon destroying his army invading Russia, he won, conquering the Russian Empire (and functionally all of the European landmass) and eliminating the Russian aristocratic class. Or rather, swapping out most of them, as the serfs didn’t see any difference.

      For Tessa, my main character, badass, amazon, warrior babe, I also used Russian history. In her case, I based her on a taller version of (model/actress/etc.) Zhanna Zhumaliyeva. Gorgeous. Kazakh, because in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire was pushing south into the Black Sea area and conquering (and often wiping out) all of the tribes and nations that had previously lived there. That formed the basis of the Vlikine.

      Similarly, I needed the include a touch of the German Principalities (Altenfeld), mostly because they all got conquered by Napoleon but not absorbed in our history before Wellington and Friends sent the Corsican packing. Twice.

      Swiss neutrality got included in a more modern conception of Inleah, where they would happily sell anything to anyone with cash in hand. Always cash up-front. Mercenary to an amoral fault. Tessa’s husband Fin is from Inleah. And all he ever wants to do was fly.

      Ergrove is my British Empire, with all the foibles and charm of the original, pushed forward into space and twisted around. Some nice things. Some not so nice things. More accurate, if you will.

      Imperial France becomes Lorastir, the height of culture and sophistication, as Napoleonic France tended to be in those days. Wyatt and Laney both served in the Lorastir army, neither of them in the infantry, if you will, but I won’t spoil some of the surprises coming your way.

      There was a character in the television series who was everyone’s favorite, because she was a modern geisha. Educated. Eloquent. Beautiful. The series literally treated her like a whore, abusing her to no end in ways that any woman worth her salt wouldn’t have put up with from any other screen writer.

      I got lucky. Way lucky.

      As a writer, I have friends. Some are peers. Some are folks I mentor. One of the latter is someone I refer to as Renaissance Babe™ because she’s been a concert pianist, photographer, writer, and had to retire as a nude model when she turned 30 because she had aged out. (Dumbasses.)

      In Abigail, I created the Players. Geisha as they really were, rather than the fancy prostitutes that western media have since made them out to be. Raconteurs, chefs, musicians. Sex might be on the menu, if they like you, but maybe you hire them to come in and cook an incredible meal, then sit and talk for hours.

      My Renaissance Babe™ was an invaluable resource for creating Abigail, because she has literally been in those situations and could offer expert advice on how to fix things I got initially wrong. I considered it the highest compliment when she told me that she wants to be Abigail when she grows up. Better, she took the concept of the Player, and is working on telling her own set of stories with something similar. Not many people could get all those little details right.

      There are no original stories. There are only original takes. New ways to see a character or a setting. I’m utterly thrilled

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