I was wandering around my local library looking for an action packed sci fi book to read. I had recently re-watched Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger on Blu-ray and wanted something like that to read.

Sci fi had always been a favourite genre of mine every since I learned to read. The fantastical journeys these writers took the reader on were simply breathtaking in their scope. Visiting new worlds or living out in space in some station or a starship just sparked my imagination making me want to write my own stories.

As I wandered around the library searching for something to read I became increasingly frustrated. In the end nothing sparked my interest and I returned home empty handed.  I had been dabbling in writing and had churned out some ideas for sci fi novels which all resembled either Star Trek or it’s bastard offspring, Star Wars none of which satisfied my creativity. I had read somewhere in an article aimed at potential writers that if you were starting out as an author the best book you could write would be the book you wanted to read because you would never get bored in the process.

With this in mind I set out to write the book I wanted to read at that moment. That book turned out to be Ronin, the first book in my Col Sec series.

To simplify things I set the book in the mid twenty fifth century so that I could imagine new locations and also if I chose to set any part of the book on Earth I was confident that the locations would be inviolate to scrutiny.

In Ronin we meet Kurt Stryder, the hero of this story and when we first meet him he is a typical soldier in the Special Forces of Col Sec, or Colonial Security called Recon Delta. He has a strong moral compass that steers him toward doing the right thing no matter the cost, something his father instilled in him when he was a boy. He told him that for evil to triumph all that is required is that good men do nothing. It was something that guided Kurt throughout his childhood and on into the military. He had a burning desire to make a better world and joining the military was his way of doing that. When the offer of joining a special program was presented to him along with others in Recon Delta, a program that would help change the future of the military and perhaps the entire human race forever, he jumped at the chance and eagerly volunteered. This program had been sabotaged by the Colonial Confederation’s main rival, The Elysium Alliance who having learned about the program and what it was set out to produce sent in an agent to make it appear as if it was useless but steal all the data pertaining to it. Kurt was the only survivor once they find out about the infiltration.

Kurt is changed beyond anyone’s imagination. The program was supposed to improve a soldiers ability to heal so that battlefield injuries would heal faster making the soldier capable of withstanding much more and to be able to carry on in combat with heightened endurance. The medical applications alone would be worth billions on the open market and the military applications were beyond a price. Kurt had indeed been changed, enhanced to a degree whereby simple cuts and bruises healed almost immediately and major injuries such as broken bones took slightly longer. He was virtually indestructible.

The Elysium Alliance  plans to learn the truth behind the Confederations claims that the program was a failure. General Solon sends agents to capture Kurt to force the truth out of him and General Sinclair, his opposite number in Col Sec has agents in play to prevent the same.  What ensues is a power play game with Kurt caught in the middle.

In this first book of the Col Sec series Kurt Stryder is forced to make a number of choices that will determine not only which path his life will take but perhaps millions of others in the galaxy. Fast paced, the action races across the galaxy from a Research station in deep space to Earth then across to several other planets while this deadly game plays out to the inevitable outcome after which Kurt must come to a decision. Does he continue as a pawn of his government, a soldier in Recon Delta or remain a soldier but one without a master, a Ronin?