Unexpected space combat reduces the four Commer brothers to two. After the Final War, the evacuation of a ruined Earth, and telepathic Martian terrorists, is eldest brother Jack fit to lead the United System Space Force? Includes The Martian Marauders; Jack Commer, Supreme Commander; Nonprofit Chronowar; Collapse and Delusion. 776 pages.

Jack Commer, Supreme Commander: Complete Series Part 2

Supreme Commander Jack has held onto power for decades with the newest rejuvenation technology. But has he ever recovered from the responsibility of overseeing forty years of futile time war with the Alpha Centaurians? Includes: The Wounded Frontier; The SolGrid Rebellion; Balloon Ship Armageddon. 666 pages.

I’m moving beyond Jack Commer in favor of the Supreme Commander Laurie series which grows out of it, but the original series is seven fine novels which I’m still very proud of. They aren’t the entirety of my literary output but have always been central to it. After all, I wrote the first draft of The Martian Marauders in the eighth grade before returning to complete it twenty years later.

But at the McKinney Literary Festival in May, I realized that having all seven Commer series volumes piled on my table took up too much real estate for a series I’m finished with. The thought hit me that the solution was to render my 2025 one-volume omnibus, hefty and lovely in its own way, into a two-volume paperback edition–especially after festival-goers laughed at 531,000 words ridiculously crammed onto 800 pages of tiny Times New Roman 8 font.

So I just finished Jack Commer Complete Series Part 1 and Jack Commer Complete Series Part 2. The font is now normal and comfortable, and the two wraparound covers look great, as do the front covers in themselves–a quality I sometimes forget about when I get enthusiastic about the full canvas of back, spine, and front as one artwork.

Though these two books replace the monstrous one-volume print, its eBook edition is still entirely readable and remains on Amazon, Smashwords, Books2Read, and other online vendors.

This two-volume omnibus not only refreshed the Jack Commer series in my mind, but in giving it a proper farewell, these books infused new energy into the Supreme Commander Laurie series and its third book in progress, Exile and Renaissance.

Along the way I managed to get all seven Jack Commer novels down to a one-sentence blurbs-which is never easy. Here are the 52 words summing up several decades of work:

1. Telekinetic terrorists contest Earth’s toehold on Mars.
2. Jack ruins Alpha Centaurian peace negotiations.
3. Time war threatens the fabric of the cosmos.
4. Jack’s son revives an ancient star empire.
5. A race snuffs out stars in the name of art.
6. Rebels disrupt a fascist telepathic network.
7. Robots pilot balloon warships above a toxic waterworld.

copyright 2026 by Michael D. Smith

cover designs by Michael D. Smith
image credit on the new paperbacks: iStock/Zauberschmeterling
image credit on the eBook Omnibus: Deron Douglas

Jack Commer series – more information
Supreme Commander Laurie series – more information

But I began to reconsider that whatever gets somebody writing might be a good way to develop. I also began thinking that I’m doing a similar thing with series fiction; am I not in essence writing my own fan fiction? The characters have been created, the world has been created, and I embark on a new novel with that secure foundation. I don’t necessarily have to invent new archetypes and new emotional resonance with characters I feel I already understand.

So is using artificial intelligence for writing fiction much different from fan fiction or series writing? You give a prompt for parameters to include and obtain a result.

I’m not desirous of entering the AI debate other than to say that I’ve decided that all my future novels will carry the disclaimer that no part was created with AI, and also the recent common boilerplate against AI scraping of the text.

It may be argued that the framing of the prompt is a human-created act, but going for the quick final result via superfast, computerized auto-complete means you’re basing your work on everything everyone has already said before.

It’s tempting to cut corners is, to take the unknowable aspect of creation and skip to the finished product that will complete a psychic gestalt or result in a marketable product. Although creation is a joy, it also comes with responsibility and it’s inherently messy and difficult, sometimes even impossible. Writers do encounter blocks. It’s certainly alluring to ask a computer: “What comes next?”

At least fan fiction and series fiction involve human courage and deep curiosity. Asking feedback from other people or participating in collaborative projects might be viewed as cutting corners, but this includes human resonance, emotional give and take, and opportunity for learning.

Cutting corners may give us an alluring product, but we’ve avoided the psychic work necessary to explore ourselves. It curdles my soul to think of giving my notes for my ongoing Supreme Commander Laurie Book Three (working title Exile and Renaissance) to a chatbot and having it churn out the finished merchandise in a few seconds.

I now look at my own series writing and wonder where I may be cutting corners. Am I adding just one more “okay” artwork to our Tower of Babel cultural pile? Am I pursuing what the core self needs to be doing?

I also need to reevaluate a point I often make, that my writing is fun. I repeat this a lot. But I know I’m not really looking for easy expression, for pleasant entertainment to pass the time. “Fun” is more like compelling, joyous investigation.

So … what sort of new storytelling is out there?

copyright 2026 by Michael D. Smith

Supreme Commander Laurie Lachrer

Petite, red-headed Laurie takes up the responsibilities of Supreme Commander of the United System Space Force in May 2076, but by November she’s exhausted by the endless administrative hassles and the growing disrespect shown to her. But what’s this about changing her last name to Morgan?

Lt. Commander Rod Morgan

Brilliant and upcoming physician/engineer at thirty-five, assigned to saucer Pegasus II, Morgan is tall and slender, with well-defined pectorals, prematurely gray hair, intense deep-set gray-blue eyes, and is seemingly irresistible to women.

Captain Mavis Wheeler

Stunning at six-foot-one, the author of On the Use of Xon Technology as Electromagnetic Pulse Disruptor in Space Combat is appointed captain of USSF saucer Pegasus II, but soon finds herself disturbingly at odds with her mentor Laurie.

Cardecu

Chairman of the Dream’s Committee of Six which formed on the planet Umbrae when the Counselors came into contact with Jack Commer’s son and dog Trotter. Like his fellow committee members, Cardecu has adopted a permanent Beagle-human shape to better interface with Sol.

Lt. Commander Cadagasgar Wirlmann

Sandy-haired, ruggedly handsome, graduating top of his class at the USSF Academy, Cad was unjustly demoted to a Detention Services goon, but was determined to win back his piloting credentials. He’s now Laurie’s copilot aboard Pegasus I and shows far more initiative than anyone thought him capable of.

Carla Posttner

Sociopath jailed for her attempt to overthrow the United System in April 2076, but freed by her lover, President Robert Easterling, her a month later and reappointed director of USSF Detention Services. But in league with Easterling, she repeated the power grab the very next month and was jailed a second time. Then she’s chosen as Sol’s ambassador to the Dream.

Commander John Perkins

Director of  USSF Detention Services and Laurie’s bête noire, Perkins apparently exists to be of constant loyal service to Carla Posttner.

Cassie Wolfduy

A shrill, frizzy blonde with beady blue eyes, Cassie is the mother of the airman Laurie had to kill in self-defense. With assistance from Detention Service Director Perkins and the Anti-Spacer Foundation, her civil suit against Laurie gets upgraded to a murder charge in November 2076.

Airman Encar Wolfduy

Corrupt, dimwitted Detention Service goon killed by Laurie amid the brutal firefight aboard USSF saucer Pegasus I, May 2076.

copyright 2026 by Michael D. Smith

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books2Read (offers numerous distributors)
Smashwords

paperback: Amazon

all words and images copyright 2026 by Michael D. Smith

The Benign Incursion, Book Two of the Supreme Commander Laurie series, is now available.

paperback:
Amazon

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books2Read (which offers numerous distributors)
Smashwords

Synopsis

Supreme Commander Laurie Lachrer finds herself overwhelmed by galling administrative headaches in her first six months as supreme commander. In addition to resistance throughout the United System bureaucracy, she’s being sued by Cassie Wolfduy, mother of the corrupt USSF Airman Encar Wolfduy whom Laurie was forced to kill in self-defense the previous May. Laurie is also politically stigmatized as an inept Commerist, subservient to former supreme commander Jack Commer. But all these troubles pale in comparison to her guilty attraction to subordinate Rod Morgan, the brilliant young physician/engineer on spaceship Pegasus I.

Meanwhile, Laurie’s protégé Mavis Wheeler captains Pegasus II to a planet 92.5 light-years away to initiate first contact with an alien race called the Counselors, who offer to introduce humanity to what they call the Dream Culture. But the Counselors, who’ve taken the form of six-foot Beagle-human hybrids to interface with Sol, also turn out to be eager and influential spectators at Laurie’s murder trial.

Excerpt (Chapters 1-3 in PDF format)

Main Characters

I’m refreshing the character illustrations; those shown below are from 2025.

Supreme Commander Laurie Lachrer
Laurie takes up the responsibilities of Supreme Commander of the United System Space Force in May 2076, but by November she’s exhausted by the endless administrative hassles and the growing disrespect shown to her.

Lt. Commander Cadagasgar Wirlmann
Sandy-haired, ruggedly handsome, graduating top of his class at the USSF Academy, Cad was unjustly demoted to a Detention Services goon, but was determined to win back his piloting credentials. He’s now Laurie’s copilot aboard Pegasus I and decides to show far more initiative than anyone thought him capable of.

Lt. Commander Rod Morgan
Brilliant and upcoming physician/engineer at thirty-five, assigned to saucer Pegasus II, Morgan is tall and slender, with well-defined pectorals, prematurely gray hair, intense deep-set gray-blue eyes, and is seemingly irresistible to women.

Cardecu
Chairman of the Dream’s Committee of Six, which formed on the planet Umbrae when the Counselors came into contact with Jack Commer’s son and dog Trotter. Like his fellow committee members, Cardecu has adopted a permanent Beagle-human shape to better interface with Sol.

Carla Posttner
This sociopath was jailed for her attempt to overthrow the United System in April 2076, but President Robert Easterling freed her a month later and reappointed her director of USSF Detention Services. But in league with Easterling, she repeated the power grab the very next month and was jailed a second time. Then she’s appointed ambassador to the Dream.

Captain Mavis Wheeler
Stunningly beautiful at six-foot-one, the author of On the Use of Xon Technology as Electromagnetic Pulse Disruptor in Space Combat is appointed captain of USSF saucer Pegasus II, but soon finds herself disturbingly at odds with her mentor Laurie.

Commander John Perkins
Director of Detention Services and Laurie’s bête noire, Perkins sports a gray tunic, a thin black Sam Browne belt across his chest, and a huge black shattergun holster at his hip. He’s constantly in service to Carla Posttner.

Forces Clamoring for Book Three

The character situations by the end of TBI are getting me thinking about what would happen with these people in a third novel. That’s a good feeling. I can’t just ignore what happened with Rod and Laurie and expect a normal third book.

The disarray of the United System, left hanging at the end of TBI? Laurie left in exile? Still on the run?

Is Laurie actually pregnant from her single encounter with Rod? This is only mentioned as a fear in TBI, and maybe this can be used in Book Three.

Where does Laurie and Rod’s relationship go from here? Do they remain estranged, yet still deeply connected? Does this feeling of connection continue to grow?

How can she recover from the scandal image she now has? Marriage to “the adulterer Morgan” may make things look better to society, but she might feel guilty to be exploiting the marriage for PR purposes.

How does Laurie go about asserting her leadership? Since most civilians think of her as a scandal at this point? Or does she blow it all off? Maybe she offers her services to a distant star empire?

Maybe she goes to a Buddhist retreat and becomes the supreme commander of her Inner True Self.

Cad Wirlmann and Carla Posttner are slated for major roles in Book Three. Likewise Mavis Wheeler, promoted to even more responsibility at the end of The Benign Incursion.

I’m definitely continuing to phase out old Jack Commer series characters. Joe, Jack, Ranna, Amav, or Dar don’t need to constantly be mentioned, or return. Nor does exposition from the older books need to figure in.

Does Rod really retire from the USSF? What would be meaningful for him at this point? Maybe he joins a mercenary space outfit, or joins with the rebellious Maroxins at Groombridge 1618 who have developed their own space force.

Rod demonstrates cleverness and insight near the end of TBI. But he’s an adolescent. Is he worthless after all? He’ll have to grow a lot to deserve Laurie. Maybe by a Book Ten …

Does he vie for being a Supreme Telepathic Leader of Sol? A side effect of the Counselors is that he learns how to amplify telepathic powers. He seeks power to win Laurie back, or to at least equal her. They remain at odds throughout Book Three. Though the two travel back to Mars at the end of Book Two, wouldn’t they remain distant and awkward? Maybe they discuss his new telepathic powers and his ambitions upon leaving the USSF.

Laurie would need to renew her ties to the Fools of the Fire.

Does Rod decide to substitute a robot version of himself?

The Rather Existential Question Remains

I’m enjoying starting a new series featuring Laurie Morgan, and The Benign Incursion was a fun and high-energy project, but … what sort of writing do I really want to be doing? Could it be that I need to write some long experimental stuff, however disordered and strange it turns out, returning to the SCL universe from time to time to explore this sort of series SF?

This segues into musing that it’s true that we readers like series, like to see our favorite characters come back in fresh installments, and like the expected tropes of the genre we prefer. So … that’s familiarity. Ease of engagement.

But consider that, from the author’s perspective, it’s also familiar and easy. Do we end up writing our own fan faction about the initial world we built long ago? Where’s the experimentation? Where is asking the reader to think and feel their way forward into this difficult investigation, in order to learn and grow? Yes, I know that may be too much to ask; usually one reads for enjoyment and dislikes straining through something that probably looks like a calculus test. And if the reader is in fact inclined to search out new understanding, why would he or she take the risk of engaging with an unknown author’s long experiment?

So … much to muse on here after completing this novel.

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

The Supreme Commander Laurie Series
The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander Series
Published by Sortmind Press

Three attic boxes disgorged model airplanes dating from as long ago as 1967. I think I’ve built around eighty or ninety since then, most in the sixties and early seventies, but I occasionally still do a few. Forty-eight still exist. The models obviously don’t approach the level of art, but they do represent 3D homages to beautiful flying objects, and several connect to my fiction.

This year saw an urge to build several more planes as well as to investigate the ancient ones I’ve retained all these decades. First, I purchased an old 1978 edition of an F-102 model airplane kit to renew, I think, my subconscious inspiration for my Jack Commer series’ Typhoon I spaceship, seen in Trip to Mars.

Then I spent a week putting together the astoundingly complex German W.W.I Gotha G.Vb long-range bomber, which was akin to building a ship in a bottle; I’m surprised the producers of the kit didn’t have me installing 1/72 scale spark plugs in the engine. I still boggle at the idea of being one of the three crew aboard this contraption somewhere over the English channel, at night, summer 1918.

Next I got a 1/48 scale Fokker Triplane and built it as an homage to my first 1967 triplane, translucent crimson and unpainted. Somehow that led to buying two more triplanes, painting one in camouflage and one in a dark green like the one my father built for me in the fifties.

Then the  B-17 dredged up awe at my father flying this bomber in World War II, as well as memories of the couple times I’ve walked through a real B-17. Matching its colors to my paint-spattered art table was challenging, and I decided that, commercial model or not, this well-camouflaged ship is now a mini-sculpture; it definitely supersedes the model airplane concept.

This led to dealing with two other models that had been sitting in boxes for years.

One was a 1971 edition of the Boeing F4B-4 carrier biplane from the 1930s, which I’d bought to represent the Mystery Yellow Biplane of Evil from Asylum and Mirage, in which frightened young urbanites cannot bring themselves to admit they’re hallucinating yellow biplanes–which are in fact real. Thus no 1930s decals on the mystery biplane.

Then I finally built the F4U-1 Corsair carrier plane, a glorious shape and a 2017 birthday present from a friend.

In addition to doing minor repair on fragile plastic airplanes crammed into boxes, I wanted to restore two items.

First was the German Albatros D.III, which somehow survived having a six-foot coat hanger-and-cotton ball flame glued to it as it was shot down by a Sopwith Triplane in my dorm room my first month at Rice. The plane remained basically intact for fifty-five years and just needed new paint and a snazzy gloss overcoat.

The other model brought up my 1979-80 fascination with the German W.W.II Me-163B rocket fighter, and the first version of The University of Mars which featured it. Yet I discarded any Me-163 models I built then, the same the way I’d trashed eleven or twelve Me-262 jet fighters from the seventies. I think rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich brought home the fact that these swastika-tailed devices were murder machines in service of a totalitarian empire, and I decided I wanted nothing further to do with them–though I did discover in the attic boxes three FW-190s and 2 Me-109s from my sixties era; one FW-190 was an early experiment in cotton ball flames.

In any case,  cut to this 1/48 scale Me-163 I built in the late eighties; I preserved its aesthetic shape by painting it in glossy non-regulation colors with no decals, I guess so I could think of it as a lovely object somehow divorced from Nazi Germany. Maybe that was fine at the time, but when I opened the attic boxes and saw this thing, I was disgusted with the cover-up it implied.

So I painted it flat gray with a reasonable approximation of camouflage. I’ve ordered decals for it, and will at least acknowledge the ghastly mixture of technological genius and collapsing empire this machine represents.

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

More background:

Trip to Mars
Asylum and Mirage
The University of Mars

Fabulous Marsport featured on the cover

A sixth-grade boy reports that World War IV has rendered the planet uninhabitable, and that Jack Commer and the crew of Typhoon I must spearhead Earth’s evacuation to Mars.

Paperback from Amazon
Paperback from lulu.com
eBook from Amazon
The Complete Book on YouTube

Typhoon I blasts off for Mars

Porting Trip to Mars to Amazon was an experiment in translating the 2017 lulu.com paperback, 7” x 9” and still available there, to Amazon’s widest landscape format at 8.5” x 6”. At some point I may see about making a larger size, but for now, I’m happy with the Amazon version; its size feels right. The slight difference in rectangular ratio between the two versions mandated some finagling with the images and with font sizes for best fit, but that was again a good learning experience. But the images and text are the same as the 2017 version.

Einstein’s special theory of relativity explains why the moon is about to explode.

Along the way I learned about formatting images for bleeding off the page; all in all this has been a worthwhile endeavor, and I hope having the book on Amazon offers it to a wider audience. I had fun illustrating this book and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on it. Even its sixth-grade origins have a certain charm for readers.

I also elected to put Trip to Mars out as a Kindle eBook, even though I expected a picture book to be a bit rough in eBook format. But the landscape images work well when viewed in landscape. Yes, that means you have to turn your phone or tablet sideways.

Jack flees a nuclear explosion with the secret plans for a new city of Mars.

For more background, I see no reason to repeat or plagiarize my previous post about the book, Trip to Mars, the Picture Book, or, How the Ship Became a Fantastical Theater Stage.

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

I’m again pleased to announce that I’ve produced yet another paperback, New Akard 1979, that no one can buy–just like Akard Draft One Art Objects and The Sortmind Draft One Project. I didn’t fully realize how happy New Akard 1979 made me until I received two copies of the paperback today.

Why Would Anyone Resurrect an Ancient, Abandoned Third Draft?

New Akard 1979 is the October 1984 third draft of the long and difficult Akard Drearstone project, which went through twelve drafts and two major reboots before final publication in 2017.

Why did I spend a month revamping the ancient, abandoned third draft of a novel, and why am I bothering to blog about it now?

I intended from the beginning to eventually publish the novel; this third version, crafted with publishable product in mind, represents the original idea of the book–at the exact time in 1984 when I realized I’d fully outgrown this work and dropped it.

Now I want to see where I assisted the novel’s vision under that publishing mandate, and where publication concerns diminished it. What worked and what didn’t?

So in May and June I scanned and edited the 861 typewritten pages of New Akard 1979 with the goal of being faithful to the October 1984 version. I only made minor changes for clarity’s sake, such as standardizing title formats and correcting spelling. But there’s no overall style sheet; usage may employ 24 or twenty-four; AM, a.m., or A.M.; traveling or travelling. I left odd or inconsistent capitalization and almost all comma-separated run-on sentences, though I occasionally interrupted one of these with a period for ease of comprehension. The non-published paperback from lulu.com runs 308,752 words in 699 pages, and it came out looking very nice.

The Path to NA 79

The twenty-three-year-old’s sprawling, weird, experimental first draft of Akard Drearstone consisted of 1,587 pages in thirty-one chapters, an astonishing learning experience despite its many flaws. I knew as I wrote it that it badly needed major revision. The goal of Draft 2, 1978-1981, was to eventually produce a final typed manuscript and start publisher queries. Many of its thirty chapters went through third, fourth, or fifth drafts, and I experimented with all sorts of tricks and techniques, such as reformatting narrative into articles and transcripts, trying to make a long novel more palatable.

Before beginning the manuscript project, Fall 1980 to September 1981, I cut the first three slow introduction chapters and an unnecessary flashback chapter. Twenty-six remaining chapters, 1,128 typewritten pages, became the basis for my typed manuscript. I then typed 377 pages of MS. through September 1981, but at that point, dreading the continued typing duties and realizing I needed new forms of expression, I put the project on indefinite hold.

Three years later in October 1984 I bade a final farewell to the novel–so I thought at the time‑‑by cutting six additional chapters and making a photocopy of the novel for off-site storage. Now I called the novel New Akard 1979 because the events were set in 1979–another nod to consigning the book to my writer past. It was good to realize that the manuscript’s 861 pages were a refreshing 54% of Draft 1’s length, but what I basically felt was relief at having finally consigned the book to the desk drawer.

Old Publishing Concerns and Writer Ambition

Of course New Akard 1979 has major flaws. The first two long chapters are especially disappointing. They seem like safe, dull writing in service of “trying to get published.” In fact, most of the first chapters have a fearful editor-pleasin’ flavor which instead broadcasts a tone of insecurity about the vast topics the book purports to cover. Yet later on outrageous ideas, humor, and quirks start flowing, the chapters get stranger, the characters deepen, and the novel moves down a much more complex and intriguing path.

Part of the reason for the initial dullness may be because, while typing from the last completed drafts, I was still doing some amount of rewriting during the manuscript phase, tidying passages and trying to make them worthier of editor respect.

It certainly wasn’t as if my whole urge to revise was to knuckle down to what I thought publishers might find acceptable. The entire novel experience from 1975 to 1984 was complicated, an exhausting long haul of good and bad writing, revisions, surprises, unfolding energies, and many experiments to correct and consolidate.

It may be that I got discouraged because of that play-it-safe mode; I think that if I’d had word processing at the time, I might’ve rearranged the novel again in 1981 and essentially started over. A typed manuscript is just a notch above stone-carving, after all, and the 377 pages of typed manuscript were a formidable obstacle to any concept of reboot.

I know that my endless involvement with Akard and its published 2017 edition have answered its karmic role in my life, but there’s always been that feeling of regret at not seeing the 1981 typing through. It’s informative now to re-experience how ambivalent I felt about the concept of publishing back then–being both ambitious about a writing career and scared about how to pursue it.

I’d completely forgotten some chapters that never formed part of the final 2017 Akard Drearstone. A couple are really mindblowing, with excellent character interaction, and it was wonderful to bring these energies into the light.

Overall, NA 79 is not a bad attempt. I even think my goal of it becoming a publishable novel could have been realized–IF I’d found an editor who could’ve correctly seen that the first chapters are rather dull and convinced me to cut them and then start with the same concert bust where the final Akard does begin.

AI Makes Me Laugh

Okay, I’m shocked. I uploaded the PDF chapter scans into Google Drive, then used Google Docs to OCR them. Then, out of curiosity, I used the “Summarize this file” feature for each of them. The result was twenty-five single-spaced pages of mechanized zaniness and bizarre conjecture. The one for the first half of Chapter 1 says:

The document “01-FourHorsemen-A” is the first chapter of a story titled “Akard Drearstone.” It involves characters named Jim Piston, Akard Drearstone, Richard Autograph, and Crystal Synapse.

Here’s a summary of the chapter’s content:

• It takes place at a farmhouse where people are gathering for an evening. There’s a history of “dope oblivion parties” at this farm on Fridays and Saturdays.
• Akard can identify cars by the sound of their engines. People arrive, and Akard identifies some of them by their vehicles.
• Richard and Crystal are expected to bring a significant amount of money. They have a history of drug deals.
• The characters smoke from a shared pipe that belongs to Richard. There’s nostalgia associated with it.
• The farmhouse is described in detail, including its layout and surrounding structures like a barn and a shack.
• People at the farm engage in activities like throwing cinder blocks at wrecked cars.
• Richard and Crystal bring in $1500. The group discusses past and future drug deals.
• The group members discuss their financial situation, past musical projects (like the “Stompin Fuckholes”), and plans for future music.
• The ownership of the farm is explained. Akard owns 50%, Pete Sponge 25%, and Jim 25%. Richard, Crystal, and Bill Punish live there but own nothing.
• The group plans to play music later in the evening, possibly after taking acid.
• They move around the property, including the barn, and have conversations about their music and other philosophical topics.
• The chapter ends with preparations for a night of music and drug use, with several characters involved in various activities and conversations.

Is any of this true? Cogent? Valuable?

The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

I’ve always thought that the 1,587-page rough draft of Akard Drearstone consisted of one good novel, one bad novel, and three mediocre novels, and that by the time I got to the published 2017 Akard, I had the good, satisfying novel at last, truly about 20% of the original draft’s length.

So, back-of-the-envelope calculation, I would say that New Akard 1979 represents the good novel, though still interlaced with two of the mediocre ones. Still, it was quite the educational experience, and I’m glad to remember that the bad novel got vanquished so early. It’s been fun to take a refresher course about this entire process. I now have a polished version of very old, speculative, and unfinished energies that I feel also speak to my future writing.

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

 More info on Akard Drearstone

Book Two of the Supreme Commander Laurie series finds Laurie plagued by endless administrative headaches in her first six months as supreme commander. In addition to resistance to her appointment throughout the United System Space Force bureaucracy, she’s being sued by Cassie Wolfduy, mother of the USSF airman Laurie had to kill in self-defense in Book One. She also finds herself politically stigmatized as a “Commerist” subservient to former supreme commander Jack Commer. But all these troubles pale in comparison to her scandalous attraction to Rod Morgan, the young physician/engineer on spaceship Pegasus I.

Meanwhile, Laurie’s protégé Captain Mavis Wheeler flies saucer Pegasus II to a planet 92.5 light-years away to help Jack’s son Jonathan James Commer deal with an alien race called the Counselors. The Counselors assist the races they encounter by creating a committee in the physical form of the new race. But Jonathan James is so inextricably linked with his Beagle Trotter that the Counselors assume they must be a single entity, and their resulting Committee of Six mistakenly takes on the permanent form of six-foot-tall combined Beagle-humans. When Jonathan James mentions that Sol may still be having trouble with the remnants of the Wounded, a deadly enemy hiding throughout the Orion Arm, the Counselors gladly use their long-range telekinetic powers to exterminate all nine thousand enemy operatives. But Captain Wheeler now understands that the giant benevolent Beagles can also wipe out Sol in a second if the United System fails to meet their increasingly strict requirements.

Draft 1 More or Less Finished

Draft 1A is 270 pages, 78,751 words, close to the length I’d originally envisioned for it. This is my twentieth novel. I’ll most likely take a break from it before polishing it to its final Draft 1B, which I feel will bring out the best sense of this first effort. Then Draft 2 will open the book to major restructuring; I already sense several areas that need work.

I’ve seen how important it is to give my new fiction project a title. A quick draft cover also helps.

Earlier parts of the novel now seem distant. “Who wrote this third chapter? I don’t remember it at all!” That’s both amusing and a sign of buried, unrefined energies. It’ll be interesting to see how this thing unfolds in a rereading. I also need to refresh myself on Book One, Supreme Commander Laurie, to make sure Book Two is congruent.

I can’t make a judgment yet on The Benign Incursion’s worth. Sometimes it feels sprawling and disconnected, other times I feel some interesting characters struggling for a voice. But it’s pleasing that the themes of the novel are aligning with where I’ve been the past couple years.

An odd spur to this novel dates from 1966. My 2023 post The Unknown Ending for The Martian Marauders explored my March 1966 notes for completing my unfinished eighth-grade draft of the foundational Jack Commer universe novel, The Martian Marauders, later rewritten and published in 2012. After the eighth grader’s last handwritten page 110, three notes glued to a sheet of notebook paper follow. But when I examined these notes in July 2023, the atrocious 1960s brown glue gave way on the right-hand note, and I saw a character name on the back, “Rod Morgan,” never used in the novel, no doubt intended as a heroic masculine character triumphing in the heroic masculine denouement of the novel. But now I knew I wanted to use Rod Morgan in a new Laurie novel. And I also realized that Laurie Lachrer, which began as a tossed-off name for what began as a minor character in The Martian Marauders, would sound much better as “Laurie Morgan.”

The Twenty Novels as I Count Them

(unlinked = not published)

1. Nova Scotia, 1973-1974
2. The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, 1973
3. Akard Drearstone, 1976-2017
4. The University of Mars, 1980-2024
5. Zarreich, 1981-2024
6. Parts I and II/Notice and Dream Topology, 1985-1992
7. The Martian Marauders, 1986-2023
8. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, 1986-2023
9. Sortmind, 1987-2019
10. CommWealth, 1990-2023
11. The Soul Institute, 1994-2024
12. Nonprofit Chronowar, 2000-2023
13. Jump Grenade, 2008-2019
14. Collapse and Delusion, 2011-2023
15. The Wounded Frontier, 2012-2023
16. The SolGrid Rebellion, 2014-2023
17. Balloon Ship Armageddon, 2018-2023
18. Asylum and Mirage, 2022-2023
19. Supreme Commander Laurie, 2023-2024
20. The Benign Incursion, 2025-

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

The Supreme Commander Laurie Series

That about sums up the seven novels of the Jack Commer series. You may not want to read all 531,743 words in one sitting, but you now have the entire Commer universe in one place.

Paperback
Amazon

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

The thick object almost has to be held in your hands to be believed. I needed Times New Roman 8 to fit over half a million words into 823 pages, just shy of Kindle’s paperback limit of 828. Amazon reports that the book weighs 2.96 pounds. The eBook versions may be easier to hold.

The strange statistic for the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander – The Complete Series Omnibus is that the entire process just took one week. I bundled seven novels into one Word document on April 7th, finagled the document over the next few days, published it on April 12th, and received the paperback proof on April 14th. What started as a curiosity to see if I could arrange seven books into a printed omnibus turned into a project I’m now in awe of.

The physical paperback looks good. As I tweaked formats and repeatedly scrolled through 823 pages of my writing history, I found the omnibus evolving into a karmic treatise on my long involvement with this series. The published versions of the seven novels date from 2012-2021, but the series goes back many decades into childhood writing.

Yes, the type is tiny, but it’s readable and the inner margins are good. And who knows, I may sell a copy here and there. Again, the eBook is probably more readable for many people, and of course it’s just like having the complete Mark Twain on your Nook or Kindle reader, available at any time, right?

I hadn’t intended to make a bookmark for this tome, but the idea came for one that works well.

The omnibus was also a way of re-engaging with the Jack Commer books as I work on the spinoff series, Supreme Commander Laurie. Draft 1 of Book Two, The Benign Incursion, nears completion.

Quick Summary of the Murky Origins

My first fifth-grade story about Jack, “Voyage to Venus,” electrified my nine-year-old self.  Wow, this is cool, this is where I belong, this is what I want to be doing. In the seventh grade came a two-thousand-word effort I called a “novel,” Trip to Mars, positing a Final War so destructive it mandated the evacuation of the Earth in late 2033, a timeline still in place in the finished Jack Commer Series.

In the eighth grade I wrote 110 pages of The Martian Marauders, basically a Hardy Boys adventure set in space. It described the four Commer brothers’ discovery, after humanity evacuates to Mars, of telepathic Martian terrorists bent on taking back their planet. But halfway through I abandoned the novel, leaving two brothers dead and surviving Captain Jack and copilot brother Joe hanging helplessly in the ventilation shaft of a Venusian prison.

But twenty years later, after writing several literary novels, I ran across the handwritten manuscript and I knew I had to spring the Commer boys. So I typed out a hundred or so pages to conclude the story with new adult themes. This was all such fun space opera that a sequel soon followed, Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, where I explored the embarrassing ramifications of one-way Martian telepathy, a physician’s hopeless infatuation with Jack’s wife Amav, and Jack’s desperate attempts to keep his crew sane on his doomed expedition to Alpha Centauri.

But both novels remained rough drafts, with minor handwritten corrections, for the next couple decades, until a third Commer novel, Nonprofit Chronowar, presented itself and made me realize that Jack’s brother Joe had serious trauma issues about the Final War and the evacuation. By this time I considered the three manuscripts as a trilogy, and I revised The Martian Marauders and Jack Commer, stabilizing the three novels with massive fact, character, and chronology files.

The Martian Marauders was published in 2012 by Double Dragon Publishing. By 2021 there were seven published Commer novels. For a while I was embarrassed to admit that I’d begun my first published novel in the eighth grade, but finally I realized this was a wonderful asset for the series. Who publishes their eighth-grade novel?

Chronology Issues, with a Nod to Heroes and Villains of the Thirties

For those ready to fly to Hollywood to make Jack Commer movies and Jack Commer action figures, Book Four, Collapse and Delusion, already anticipated that. The first three books in the series are set in the timeframe 2028-2036; the next four go to 2075 after everyone’s been rejuvenated to look thirty-five. However, in the 2040s entrepreneurs come up with clunky AI robots marketing Jack and company’s early heroics, branding their robot set Heroes and Villains of the Thirties. These full-size HAVOTTs are based on both major and minor characters, and thousands are released for collectors who stage mock battles.  But these contraptions start wreaking havoc throughout the last four books as they get upgraded to astonishing levels.

Pushing up the years got me away from having to be too close in time to events that the books, after all, expect to occur in the next few years. It also allowed me to resurrect minor figures from the early novels and develop them into major characters in later ones. And of course I could bring back Jack’s insufferable dead brother John, or anyone really, as a robot.

The Last Words Challenge

Before writing the final novel, Balloon Ship Armageddon, I dared myself to end the book and the series with “And Jack Commer shot his spaceship directly into the sun.” So that’s how the giant omnibus ends. Did he and his crew survive this stunt? Supreme Commander Laurie posits the result.

Questions from the Overview

Spaceship Typhoon I’s shocking suicide reduces four Commer brothers to two. After the Final War, the evacuation of Earth, and telekinetic Martian terrorists, is eldest brother Jack fit to lead the United System Space Force? And has he ever recovered from decades of futile time war with the Alpha Centaurians?

And a Partial Answer, from Balloon Ship Armageddon:

“At the first shock of the unknown Jack Commer tended to veer straight into hysteria, then at the last second accept whatever circumstances were in front of him and start working with them. And bring everyone out alive. He was really quite endearing that way.”

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

more information on the series
The UR Jack Commer: A Look at the Childhood Beginnings of the Commer Saga
The Irregular Origin of The Martian Marauders
The First Childhood Appearance of Jack Commer, September 19, 1962
Trip to Mars in Paperback
Supreme Commander Laurie

After all the trite and momentous journal and scrapbook entries, I began the novel last night, the first chapter, “Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

Well, I probably won’t have a writer’s block through all this–the only thing that stops me is physical fatigue–my mind could go on forever with it, except that I do get mentally weary of concept structures, unless they are particularly good.

My concern is not that I can’t write it, the house is great for writing & I will have time. But I’m concerned that the whole effort will be permeated by this Vonnegut-Brautigan cuteness which I really hate but which seems to perform automatically. Humor is fine, but it must be used as a tool like everything else. I want the effort to be cold and hard & precise. Not exactly “serious.” The first draft I’m going to blow apart, fight against my shallow tendencies. The second, condense it.

Influence of Kafka through this. A little fucky, but there is something to be learned from this “imitation.” I will ride with it for a while, then shake him.

The note presciently outlined a concern that was only resolved by writing the novel: the schism between seriousness and humor, left from my Wiess Crack editor days at Rice; should I write and publish dire, turgid, literary creations, or have fun with bizarre, even trivial concepts? Somehow Akard merged them into one expressive voice.

The first draft was much influenced by the style of whatever author I happened to be reading at the time: Kafka, Mailer, Dostoyevsky–as well as the New English Bible.

I’ve made no changes to the entry except to capitalize sentences; I usually left them lowercase in the journal. The photo shows the original final manuscript, 661,581 words after scanning to Word, and the published 2017 paperback, 122,360 words, or 18.5% of the rough draft. A much tighter and more focused novel.

copyright 2025 by Michael D. Smith

An Archeological Excavation of Akard Drearstone, Draft 1
More on the modern Akard Drearstone