An Omnibus Renaissance

Jack Commer, Supreme Commander: Complete Series Part 1

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: