Luke Sky Wachter is the pen name (as well as his son’s name) for Joshua Wachter, a prolific self-published writer who is the author of the Spineward Sector series, with several spin-off novels, and the Rise of the Witch Guard. The Spineward Sectors is one of my favorite sci-fi series and Admiral Who? 
MBS: What made you decide to start writing?
Joshua: I started reading fantasy at age 11 or 12 and playing dungeons and dragons in my early teens, I was game mastering by the time I could drive. I found I not just enjoyed the stories but I had a knack for telling them as well. Then back in the early 0’s I discovered you could read free sneak peek chapters on Baen’s Bar for authors such as David Weber, John Ringo and Wen Spencer. I also stumbled upon the Slush Pile thread where hopeful authors were putting up chapters, and sometimes entire books, free for us to read and make helpful comments on. I discovered a few gems and a lot of stinkers and I said to myself I can do better than this! Of course I couldn’t, it was a little harder than it looked but I spent the next 10 years doodling around, writing a chapter here and a chapter there but I couldn’t write as fast as I could think and I never got anywhere. I kept giving up in frustration. It just felt too boring and too much like work to stay focused when your brain was going a million miles a minute and your fingers at 20. Fortunately, I met my wife and her demands for daily emails when we were courting eventually got my typing skills up to where I could type as fast as I could think but I was busy with a day job and I had work to do. After a few years of marriage we eventually moved to the Philippines and in 2011 a business I had started over there crashed, our house at the time was half built (the outside was good, the inside not so much) and I was upside down financially with no income, so before I had to return to the USA to work for an unknown amount of time (turned out to be 9 months) I sat down in December of 2012 and decided to crank out a novel. That’s the dream right? You’re on a tropical island with nothing better to do so you write a book.
Now at that time I had a half book that I’d been working on for a couple years and hadn’t finished, mainly for fear of ‘ruining’ it so I decided to make a somewhat light hearted stab at space opera and the military science fiction genre. Giving myself license to write a bad book and have fun with it I proceeded to write Admiral Who?.
Long story short I launched a book that proceeded to do nothing. I sold maybe 50 books in April and 25 the next month so I went back to the states to work, happy I’d done it but convinced it was a flop. A nice hobby maybe but nothing else. Then late July 2012 something strange started to happen, my sales of 1’s and bulls-eyes began to double every week until I topped off at 50 sales a day in August. I wrote the second book while working a full time job and then two more as soon as I came back to the Philippines and here we are!
MBS: When you write do you have a general outline of where you want the story to go, or do the stories go surprising places as you write them?
Joshua:When I started off I didn’t. I knew the beginning and the end but I only had a chapter or three outlined ahead of time but as I got deeper and deeper into the series I found I had to build an outline just to keep track of everything. When I started the more I outlined the more likely I was to abandon the project as not very stimulating or fun. But now if I have a good outline I write at a much faster pace than when I don’t. I always know where I’m going but sometimes how I get there can be surprising. Also an off handed comment earlier on in the books can end up having a major impact later on. The nicknames ‘The Little Admiral’ and ‘The Tyrant of Cold Space’ come to mind.
MBS: There are quite a few books in the Spineward Sectors Series so far. Do you have a general idea of how long you want the series to go?
Joshua: As long as you guys pay me to write the little admiral I intend to keep on writing! To be honest I have plans for three arcs. The first is almost complete. Two more books and I should have the Spineward Sectors ARC all wrapped up. The Gorgon Front ARC will start immediately after book 14 and I’m thinking that since it will almost entirely take place in the Gorgon Front and not the Spineward Sectors that I’ll launch it as a second series. Right now I’m thinking it’ll take maybe 6 books but we’ll just have to see as I’m not really the best when it comes to guestimating how many books it takes to do something. After that is the Birth of a Data-God ARC which should take at least three books maybe more and all I’ll say for now is Jason does his duty by both humanity and his Wife. It’ll have Elders and
Ancients and AI’s and aliens and…. More later.
MBS: Do you have anything in the works beyond stories in the Spineward Sector?
Joshua: I already have 4 books in a fantasy series, The Rise of the Witchguard, and while it has a few dedicated fans it never really took off like the Admiral. It needs another book to finish off the first ARC and if enough people wanted it I’ve already got a second ARC plotted out. I also have that half written book I mentioned before originally titled Military Insect which I want to finish this year if I can. I’m a writer so of course I have lots of ideas that I’d like to put out there if I only had the time. There’s no shortage.
MBS: I know your brother is also involved in a series called Imperium Cicernus, does he have anything else in the works as well?
Joshua: He writes a Spineward Sectors spin off series that starts off with No Middle Ground featuring Captain Middleton a minor character in my books, that’s already 7 books deep and he has a fantasy series to boot! To be honest he actually has more series going on than I do right now.
(read this book of Caleb’s I really like it. Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy Book 1)
MBS: What is your favorite book?
Joshua: Boy that’s a hard one. When I first started reading it was definitely Flint the King, a Krynn novel and probably the second full length novel I read. But as I grew up things changed. Right now I have several favorite series I follow.
MBS: What is one food someone should try if they travel to the Philippines ?
Joshua: They make really good barbeque. Meat on a stick, almost always pork, and it comes with soy sauce mixed with a little vinegar and some small chilly peppers are optional. The other one is they have are made using what they call cooking bannana’s, I think they’re like plantains, and they put two on a stick covered in fried caramelized sugar. It looks just like fair food and tastes good. As for me I lived in the Philippines for 7-8 years and just moved back to the states a year ago.
MBS: What is one food you can not do without?
Joshua:When I was in the Philippines they try to feed you rice with each and every meal and if I didn’t have some small cut fried chicken to go with it, I felt like I was going to go insane from all the rice. But since coming back to the USA I wouldn’t say there’s any food I can’t do without. You really don’t appreciate your food options here in the states until you’ve spent at least half a year in another country.
MBS: What do your kids think about you being an author and do they read your books?
Joshua: My oldest thinks it’s cool and I think I inspired him because he and a friend at school started a small comic book series about Santa and Dinosaurs. My middle boy knows it’s my work and it’s just what his dad does while number three is too young to know anything except Dad’s writing when he’s on the computer. They’re all a little too young for the books.
MBS: What is a questions I should have asked?
Joshua: I think you covered most of them.
MBS: I enjoyed all your answers! Do you have a question for me?
Joshua: Sure. How do you like the books and where do you see things going with your new website?
MBS: I’ve really enjoyed the books so far and I am excited to see where Jason and Akantha end up. It is one of my favorite scifi series for sure. For the website I have a lot of plans but it all depends on if I can get a stable readership which I am working on cultivating. Now that I actually have the website up, I am working on totally redoing it so hopefully that goes smoothly.
Check out Admiral’s Nemesis Part II