I’ve published three long SF novellas in the last few months. Metal Immortal is free today, so click that beautiful Kit Foster Design cover to get on board for some kick ass military SF reminiscent of War of the Worlds.
It’s a robot uprising that’s pulpy fun. Before Asimov made robots three laws nice, this is what robot mayhem looked like: the Next Intelligence taking over the world, subterranean subs and giant Zilla Class city-killers lumbering across the landscape. Lt. Avery is a Sand Shark pilot on a recon mission in the desert. Things go wrong quickly and get worse.
What’s different is the experiment: four novellas build one big novel.
I love novellas for their lack of fat. This is action, action, action with nary a break. You’ll love Deborah Avery for her competence and jokes, but characterization comes through action. It’s still hefty enough at 30,000+ words, but it will go so fast, you’ll think it’s shorter.
You can read each of the three novella as stand-alones. The stories are interconnected, true. However, all the threads come together in Book 4 of the Robot Planet Series. The characters that survive the robo-apocalypse join forces for the final epic battle in book 4: Metal Forever (coming in December.)
As usual, nothing’s usual. Big surprises and fun ahead. Please click the pic to join the adventure and, if you dig it, I’d really appreciate it if you left a review. Thanks!
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week…it’s a huge, stressful rush, isn’t it? And for good reasons. There are deals to be had and the retail environment has changed. A lot of people don’t have a lot of money to spend on Christmas gifts. Many of us work two or three jobs to cobble together one low-paying job. The loss leaders and door buster items lure people to grab a sleeping bag and hang out all night outside of Best Buy (hoping to avoid getting crushed or murdered over a waffle iron.)
If that’s not cheap enough for you, how about free?
I’m revising my novel on Wattpad in front of God and everybody so you can see it new and fresh as I upload it chapter by chapter. Click the cover below to get started on an amazing trip into the paranormal with a girl from Iowa. Armageddon awaits. Expect twists, jokes, secret armies, magic spells, swordplay and lessons on how to survive the end of the world. We’re probably doomed anyway, but…well…you’ll find it surprisingly upbeat.
Don’t miss this. It can’t last long because it will go up for sale by Christmas.
Cool? Cool.
Happy Monday and Merry December, everybody!
CLICK THE COVER to have a look at the beginning of my new series, free on Wattpad.
Graphic designers make a big difference to readers and the success of authors. A snarky writer once told me I was a hack, too concerned about the look of my book covers. Once.
Everyone else knows, yes, of course we do indeed judge books by their covers.
You can say it shouldn’t matter all you want, but beautiful people and beautiful things get more attention. I won’t find out if you have a great personality and keen intelligence if, when I spot you from across the room, you appear to be surrounded by flies because you’ve rubbed dog feces in your hair. That’s life. That’s science.
Kit is my friend and ally. He helps to make my existence matter. He’s helping me get my message out, subliminal and subtextual. It’s that important. All my books are about escaping who I was. They’re about all of us rising to the higher potential of what we could be. Everything I write is about making our existence — yours and mine — matter. Book covers are the come hither stare that lets me into your brain, to play in the Mindfield, to turn the words, to entertain, laugh and think. That’s what it means and why Art matters.
That’s the why. A book cover with solid art is part of the how.
Between awkward pauses and wondering if my cow lick is showing, I ask, “So, do you like music?”
“Sure! I love music!”
“Great! What kind of music? Jazz, something heavy you can groove to or…?”
“Oh, you know…just…I don’t know…music.”
“Um…okay…how do you feel about comedy?”
“Love it!”
“Carlin or Hedberg? Stewart or Colbert?”
“Oh, you know…comedy.”
The little speed dating bell rings signalling our time is up. We both collapse onto the tabletop. “Oh, thank god! Next!”
I’ve set up something that doesn’t happen in this cute little scenario, of course.
People don’t go out for a night of music. They go out to dance to a beat or to listen to music or they want it played low and far away so they can talk.
People who love comedian Joe Rogan might just storm the stage if an improv troupe shows up. If that same improv troupe makes all their jokes through the magic of interpretive dance, the audience might just murder the performers and not a judge in the land would convict.
And so it is with books.
Some people (not enough) love reading, but there’s more to it than that.
I write across genres, but people who love my take on our collective dystopian future (killer pandemic starting any day now) won’t necessarily snap up my crime novels. I’d argue the sensibility and voice are similar and the jokes are still there. However, (a) nobody argues their way into a sale, and (b) even the most avid readers are often specific about which genres they will and will not read.
If I had to do it all again, I’d try to focus on writing in one genre and try to dominate that field. However, that’s not really how my mind works and plays. I should say, if I were a different person, I would have done things differently. D’uh. Useless!
But even within a genre, there’s plenty of variability.
If you want a zombie apocalypse with a lot of military action, This Plague of Days probably isn’t for you. There are military elements, sure, but there aren’t any robo-Rambo zombie-killing machines in This Plague of Days.
Instead, the series features three strains of the Sutr virus, each with different effects. The zombies aren’t your classic rise-from-the-dead variety. They’re infected bio-weapons. Instead, ordinary people gain some supernormal capacities and it’s humans versus zombies versus Maybe That’s God versus the crazy stuff that comes next.
Mostly, the story is about what underdogs do under pressure when all appears lost. As for Jaimie Spencer, my protagonist on the autistic spectrum from Kansas City, Missouri? I guess I’ve dominated the autism/zombie niche. You won’t find a lot of Aspergers in this genre.
I always set out to be entertaining, but different.
My Cuban assassin, Jesus Diaz, was kidnapped as a child and abused. Now he’s a hit man who loves movies and makes a lot of jokes to cope with pain. He wants to escape into a Hollywood daydream the same way we dream of winning the lottery. Even though both of them were military policemen, Jesus is not Jack Reacher, not that there’s anything wrong with Jack Reacher. Bigger Than Jesus is different, that’s all. (Somewhere, comfortably ensconced in a platinum writing palace, Lee Child is chortling and happy not to be me.)
I see the actor's picture. I think it's Sam. Sam...what? Sam... I look him up. Sam Elliott. For some reason, I neve… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…5 days ago
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