Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
EXODUS
ARISEN, Book Five

It's time. The epic conclusion to the first half of the ARISEN story – and the most terrifying and thrilling adventure yet – starts today.

ARISEN readers rave: “moves like an avalanche” … “Awesome, just awesome!!!” … “Prose so strong I thought I was reading a video game in action” … “Hold on to your hat - this stuff is addicting” … “Madness & total mayhem at every moment - just brilliant!” … “If I could give it six stars I would” … “BEST ZOMBIE BOOK EVER!! And I have read them all. These guys are frigging great” … “You can smell the smoke, feel the explosions, and hear the rounds headed down range” … “Damn it son - that was a thrill ride!” … “I am at a loss for words to describe this series - READ THESE BOOKS!!!” … “maximum action - like an ultimate thrill ride” … “had me holding my breath more times than I could count” … “pure adrenaline all the way through” … “Left me shaking at the last page…

cover of ARISEN, BOOK FIVE - EXODUS

THE KENNEDY STARES INTO THE ABYSS
The world’s last floating nuclear supercarrier looks into the face of oblivion – as her thinned, exhausted, and beleaguered crew face the largest herd of dead ever recorded. Soon, the ship’s five-acre flight deck will become the scene of a furious and desperate set-piece battle – like no combat any modern army has seen since Stalingrad. The ranks of the dead are infinite, and those of the living tiny, depleted, and running out of time… and of hope.

THE ABANDONED RUN AHEAD OF THE STORM
Surrounded, cut off, and left for dead, Wesley’s band of sailors and survivors race ahead of the city-devouring swarm, desperate for a way off the land. Air strikes and shore bombardment threaten to vaporize them at any instant, the inlet onto which they flee is surrounded on all sides and filling up fast, and the least hesitation will get them all killed, infected, devoured – or all three at once.

THE OPERATORS JUMP INTO MOUTH OF HELL
Having already dodged a hundred deaths by inches, the operators of Alpha team and MARSOC now fly into two converging storms of unspeakable violence, and must parachute in and reinforce the Alamo – the hopeless and doomed defense of the carrier. A thousand things must go right for them to have a prayer of survival. But it’s the job of the operators to succeed even when a million things go wrong…

Ride the human spirit to its utmost limit – in the most terrifying and thrilling ARISEN book yet: ARISEN, BOOK FIVE - EXODUS.

Available now, exclusively from: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk.


Alpha team will return in
ARISEN, BOOK SIX – THE HORIZON

Update! EXODUS has debuted at #2 in War, #11 in Horror, and inside the Amazon Top 500 overall – i.e. starting out at our previous highest peak ever. The sky's the limit from here.
New update! Well, a week and a bit in and we've crested to a new all-time high of #260 overall – plus #6 Horror. Pretty darned amazing!
As usual, we've also made Book One free for five days with the new launch. On the free lists, that climbed as high as #1 in War, #2 in Horror, and #65 overall.
Also: We're currently (29 NOV 2013) the #4 and #5 Amazon authors in Horror – right behind Stephen King and Dean Koontz; and just ahead of Max Brooks!

Finally… Looks like we peaked just inside the Top 250. Not so bad.

Free ARISEN, Book One
And to celebrate the launch, we're again giving away Book One TOTALLY FREE for five days.

Totally Free ARISEN Book One →

Please note that the sale doesn't start until November 24th, and runs through the 28th. (*)



As an end note: This was not only the hardest book I've ever written – but the hardest thing I've ever done. I think it worth reprinting my author note from the front of the book.

This is the ARISEN book that nearly beat me. Like all well structured stories, this epic project had a “dark night of the soul” – followed by an “all is lost” moment. And in that moment, I genuinely thought this book was too big, too hard, too complex, too daunting – and that my powers to make it happen were inadequate to the job. I’d seriously lost faith that I could make this story work – every chapter I’d written looked horrifying, and every new one I had yet to write looked impossible. I told Glynn I thought I was going to have to put the whole thing aside, and work on something else for a while, just to try and clear my head. He wondered aloud if we might be zombied out – and perhaps should wind up the series more quickly than we’d intended. For my part, I seriously wondered if we’d simply built a story both too intricate and too sprawling to manage anymore.

But, somehow, over the next 24 hours, instead of walking away from it… I made a decision. I decided that ARISEN was (by far) the best story we had to tell; and, much more importantly, I decided I was going to write this book if I had to do it five words at a time – i.e. even if the magic never came back, and the whole thing remained a complete soul-crushing struggle, fought inch by inch. But, somehow, as soon as I had made that commitment… the magic came back. All those myriad interlocking plot elements started to slot into place… the story problems all became tractable – or even started to look like opportunities… and the writing became fun and thrilling again. (Okay, there were actually about 100 subsequent occasions when it got hard as hell again, and completing the climax made me physically ill and wretchedly exhausted, but that’s not important – the main thing is it never again seemed fatally impossible.)

In retrospect, I think it was necessary that I pass through this crucible-type stage of the writer’s journey. But to get there, I had to embrace, in my weak and tiny way, the one quality that all special operators have burnt into their souls: RESOLVE. I had to be committed to achieving the mission – no matter what I had to do, no matter what it cost me. Or, as perfectly described by former Navy SEAL and sniper instructor Brandon Webb as the only answer to adversity: “Tough. Deal with it. Adapt and overcome.” With those last three words, you almost can’t lose at life.

There’s no question in my mind that each of these books has been harder to write than the last. But I’m equally sure that each one has turned out bigger, better, and more thrilling than those that came before. Long may it last. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us. Viva ARISEN.



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about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
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