Two Stars for Six Days

Six Easy Days got a review on Amazon.com.

2.0 out of 5 stars Find and Replace March 22, 2013

By E. L. Sapp

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I really wanted to love this book. The idea behind it was really cute, and so much could have been done. I understand that it's supposed to be a parody of "No Easy Day." But rather than being a parody, I feel like the author literally did a find-and-replace of terms from the original book. And even then, he didn't do a very good job of making changes.

There's references to cars and trucks on a planet inhabited by Bugs.

[ed note: "oops"]

At one point, there is a reference to a failed raid on the AI in 3007. Except it says 2007.

[ed note: "uh, oops again"]

The books says it took 17 hours (including layover) to fly between star systems.

[ed note: "well yeah, that's how long it takes! You can't just drop into hyperspace in a heavy gravity well, you have to rocket your way away from local planets. That's just how it is."]

To add insult to injury, the author tried to tie the book into "Starship Troopers" by Heinlein. I question whether the author has ever read "Starship Troopers," because the author connects Navy SEALS to ST's Mobile Infantry. MI were soldiers, but more equivalent to Marines than SEALs.

[ed note: "I don't know if that really adds insult to injury. The problem with the MI's is in fact that although they were Army, they behaved and were organized like Marines, who are in the Navy. So making Navy SEALS into Army Mobile Infantry who are really Marines doesn't seem like such a stretch. It was a pain though dealing with DEVGRU."]

What is Mine and what is Elsewise

A friend asked me recently how much of Six Easy Days is from Mark Owen's No Easy Day. 



Which part of this is "yours" and which part is from No Easy Day?

Well, I feel you can sort of tell when it goes into my own voice. Paragraph-to-paragraph it's mostly the structure of the original book. But all (or most) of the sci-fi things have been made sci-fi-ish. So guns, details about his armor, the existence of androids, those sorts of things I just made up.

Obviously the android stuff is new. But what about the story? Is the way the story unfolds from being on the way to the Xenomorph AI's compound and then going back and describing other missions the way it worked in No Easy Day?

By and large, yes. The structure of No Easy Day is very very good. 

There are two major bits of story that I altered. Well, three actually. One is the story of the search for an Army soldier who was captured and still hasn't been found. I felt uncomfortable about making a parody story about that so I made it about a Skinny General who'd defected instead.
The other thing is finding the Brain Bug. In Owen's story the whole point to that mission was that they did a hard mission but were successful and they had no casualties. Instead, I made that mission have a whole impact on the rest of the War.
The third major thing I altered was the way the "helicopter" (which is actually a drop boat in my story) crashes. I give a reason for it. Plus I make the narrator more of a hero by having him figure out how to save the mission.

Owen's parents were missionaries, but obviously not for the Machine God. Obama is now Atredes and Washington is Beijing. The "Skinnys" and the "Bugs" (or Pseudo-Arachnids) are from Starship Troopers. Of course I had to be snotty and make it so that although we're fighting the "Skinnys" we'd been concentrating on the males rather than the females and the narrator is deliberately and spectacularly unreliable.

I do make fun of Owen's complaining about paperwork and treatment of prisoners and "Governor Atredes". Also, I cut out the very ending of the book because it wasn't interesting. Obviously Owen does not have a chip in his brain which helps him control combat armor. And Usama bin Laden was not a Xenomorph Artificial Intelligence. As far as you know.

So, why on earth did you do this?

I thought it was funny. When I was reading the book I thought "This would be even better if they were wearing servo-powered armor and were hunting the Xenomorph AI."

You wrote/re-wrote/heavily edited a book just because it amused you?

You got it. I read No Easy Day and thought that the story was so cool it needed to be retold in space.

Other than Starship Troopers, what else do you reference?

Man, there's a lot of stuff. Very briefly there's The Forever War (the bit about the blades inside your armor cutting off limbs and sealing you in, also the notion that there's heat-venting at the back of the suits). Also the notion of the HUD and the chip in the brain is a cross between Old Man's War and the Jeff Somers Avery Cates novels.

What about the Machine God?

There's a Machine God in the Warhammer 40,000 novels. But I think I was thinking more about the God-Emperor in the Dune universe. I can't think of a direct analog of it. 

How much of your inspiration came from Owen's anti-Obama stance? 

Well. A lot actually. It made me think about how unreliable narrators are. And I wanted to see the logical conclusion of Owen's ideology. I thought that it was interesting that although Owen is so clearly (I mean, he says so) anti-Obama yet every single successful mission he talked about occurred after Obama became President. I thought that was interesting. So the "parody" part of the book is mostly about that.

+1

270 people downloaded my book in the US.
Then like 27 in the UK, 7 in Germany, 1 in Spain, 3 in Italy, 2 in Japan, and 1 in Canada.
In addition to that I actually sold two Kindle versions in the US.

This. This is exactly what the point of the book is.

I'm just gonna go ahead and rate this experiment a success. Yay. Me.

Hard Copy

I got some hard copies of my new novel Six Easy Days. Mmm... I really like the feel of the cover. Very nice.

Andrew Bellware Books
The book is only $8.99 at Amazon. It used to be $8.50 but then my brother complained that the book was too expensive so I raised the price fifty cents. If he complains again I'm going up to $10.99.
It's also available on Kindle. And I think it's available in Europe.


Get your parody of No Easy Day now! ;-)

Six Easy Days Released

I now have an author page on Amazon.

You can buy the Kindle version of Six Easy Days (just click on the image below):

And you can buy the print version of Six Easy Days. I believe it will take up to a week for the book to be on Amazon. But it should be available worldwide when it gets on Amazon. Oh wait. It's on Amazon now:


Yes, the cover art is Brian Schiavo from Clonehunter.

Six Easy Days is a parody of Mark Own and Kevin Maurer's No Easy Day. But in Six Easy Days the time is a thousand years later and the Mobile Infantry, not the Navy Seals, hunt down the Xenomorph Artificial Intelligence, not Usama bin Laden.

I had a lot of fun writing it. And if you like military-style science fiction I think you'll enjoy reading it.

I'm Not A Wise Man

Which is why I do things like this.

This is the free book cover design for Createspace. The book is 228 pages.
I think it'll be available on Amazon and as a Kindle book in a week or so.

Six Lazy Days

I'm spending way too much time on this. You can make your own here.