Still Falling Audible Preview

Click the image below and listen to the first chapter of STILL FALLING on Audible.

--Order STILL FALLING here!

The Oscars

I fell asleep about 9:30 last night while watching the Oscars.

Even before I fell asleep Mad Max: Fury Road was ahead in the award count. I was glad to see Ex Machina to get one as well.

The Big Short and Spotlight got the Oscars for Best Writing.

Here is the full list of winners.

Chris Rock was awesome.

--Lots of guns in Fury Road. Gotta love Hollywood.

Coffeeium?

How did you know you were a writer?

John Irving talks about how old he was when he knew.


--That was true of me as well.

Fast Friday Indie Interviews: E.P. Clark

Tell me about yourself, Elena?

I guess the most relevant moment in my life for our purposes here is that I moved with my family to Russia shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and spent the next couple of years undergoing immersion training in Russian and witnessing the desperate struggle for survival that was post-Soviet Russia, but also going skiing, ice-skating, mushroom gathering, and picnicking in the woods.  Since prior to that I had spent most of my time horseback riding and camping in my native Kentucky, doing outdoor things and communing with animals and with nature seemed like a natural thing to do, and I incorporated a lot of that into my work.  After Russia (sounds like a book title, doesn’t it?) I lived in England and Italy for a while, before returning to the US.  I ended up studying Russian in college and in graduate school.  While I was in grad school I spent a couple of summers studying Finnish in Finland, and discovered that communing with nature is a big thing there too, so I spent a lot of time outside soaking up the midnight sun (and eating doughnuts.  Doughnuts are big there).  I did go on an adventure above the Arctic Circle, like my heroine, but it was in midsummer, not midwinter!  Maybe one day I’ll visit the Arctic again; I’d like to see the Northern Lights in person.

Tell me about your current Book:

When a group of explorers ventures on a mapmaking mission beyond the sunline, Slava, second in line to the throne of Zem’, must face what she discovers on her journey and gather her courage to do what must be done, or else a treasonous curse could destroy her and everyone she cares about.

In “The Midnight Land, Parts I and II,” the first installment of the Tolstoy-meets-Tolkien epic fantasy series “The Zemnian Trilogy,” we meet Slava, younger sister to the Empress of all of Zem’.  Tormented and half-outcast due to her gifts of empathy and clairvoyance, Slava tries to escape the intrigue of her native kremlin by joining a mission to explore beyond the sunline, the unmapped Northern edge of the greatest country in the Known World.  But instead of escaping her destiny, Slava is plunged even deeper into internecine plotting, and finds herself and her gifts the target of the spirits of the forest, and even the gods themselves.  Hailed as “a tale of power, fear, and bravery set in the brutal and beautiful landscape of the frozen north,” “a surreal, almost mystical-feeling book,” and “Beautifully unique and rich in a Central European and West Asian feel that comes together with a surprising and wonder-filled world,” “The Midnight Land” combines the genre of high fantasy with the “big questions” of Russian literature in a subversive exploration of gender, culture, and morality.

What are you working on now?  

The next installment in “The Zemnian Trilogy,” currently titled “The Breathing Sea.”  I should mention that, although the trilogy is indeed a trilogy in that it has three stories about three central characters, each book so far has been so long that I’ve had to split them up into multiple volumes.  If you like to read, you will not go away hungry!
What is your favorite beverage while you write?  In the morning I drink this ostensibly healthful (or so I tell myself) concoction that is basically a mocha but also has things like turmeric in it.  In the afternoon I drink kombucha.  I was very excited to discover that kombucha is a traditional drink from Siberia and Central Asia!

What is your favorite Website?

Well, I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, since if you want to find out, say, how to say “The Lord of the Rings” in Russian, Wikipedia is an awesome resource for that.  Also, since I do a lot of translating, Russian translation and morphology sites like Multitran, Slovari.yandex.ru, Wiktionary, and Starling.ru.

Links:

Email: elenapedigo@yahoo.com
Amazon: The Midnight Land
Blog: http://epclarkauthor.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/epclarkauthor/
Twitter: @Andreyev7
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1025652.E_P_Clark

Quotes of the Week

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
—Hemingway

If I didn’t write I would die.
—Isaac Asimov

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
—Orson Welles

Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
—John Cleese

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
—Stephen Fry

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London

Reading this Week: Career of Evil

This week I am reading Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith. If you didn't know already, this is a pen name for J.K. Rowling.

This is the third installment of the series following the exploits of Cormoran Strike.

Here is the description from Amazon:

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg.

Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible--and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them...

Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. 

--I love this series. I expect movies soon.

Addiction can be a horrible thing...

T-Shirts

I started a T-Shirt shop! I think it's hilarious! I can make what ever I want! I did a few basic designs and I am sure there will be more! If you want something specific, let me know.

--Drink Coffee. Make Stuff Up.

Fast Friday Indie Interviews: J. C. Steel

J.C. Steel

Tell me about yourself, JC?

I’m an author these days. Despite reading anything I could reach (or climb a bookshelf to get to) since the age of about three, it never actually occurred to me to write my own books. It took a friend telling me point-blank I should write some of the stories I told myself down to actually get me to put pen to paper. Since then I’ve written obsessively, in classes, on coaches, and occasionally by torchlight under the bedclothes while I was still in boarding school. At this point I've been writing for about twenty years – and I finally got around to publishing my first two novels just last year.

I was born in Gibraltar – almost no one knows where that is, as the entire country’s a whole 6 kilometres square, but it’s a British territory in the south of Spain, just north of the Straits of Gibraltar that divide Europe from Africa. I didn’t get to stay there long: my parents lived on a yacht at that point, and six months later, after my first Atlantic crossing, we were already in the British Virgin Islands. We moved to central France when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in York, England, which was a bit of a shock after the Caribbean and southern Europe. In sincere hopes of moving somewhere warm, I first tried to join the Royal Navy, and then went on read languages at Aberystwyth University when that plan didn’t come off. As I now live in Canada, I’m still not doing too well on the ‘warm’, but the scenery’s a huge improvement.

When I’m not writing, I read a lot – I’m an unashamed dinosaur and prefer paperback, but I’ve recently started reading a lot more indie e-books. I also practice a variety of martial arts, which I class as book research if someone asks, and I hike and kayak around my home.

Tell me about your current Book:

When Ilan is nearly killed by a highly-placed enemy on Corina Base, she escapes off-world, but when she finds herself in the middle of an armed rebellion, she has to risk trusting a human and confronting one of her oldest enemies to keep her allies alive and her command intact.

Cortiian politics are lethal, and never more so than when the Councils are involved. When an attack by the elite Council bodyguard nearly kills Khyria, only an unlikely association between her  most subterranean allies gets her off-world in time to keep her alive – but the safest place they can find is about to break out in a shooting war. Meanwhile, Wildcat Cortia is trapped on Corina Base under a second in command they don’t trust, with Khyria’s enemies circling on all sides to bring them down. If Khyria shows her face on Corina, she’ll be killed. If she stays where she is, Wildcat will die. It’s a sign of interesting times when the outbreak of an armed rebellion offers the best chance of survival ...

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on the third book in the Cortii series, the sequel to Fighting Shadows. Ilan has been sent alone to investigate a primitive civilisation, and the rest of the Cortia is under Zarlan’s less-than-secure command off-world, walking a thin line between mission parameters and a quagmire of interracial politics. Currently it’s in edits, and I’m hoping to publish sometime in summer.

What is your favorite beverage while you write?

Depends on the time of day, but the reliable one is the writer’s staple of coffee.

What is your favorite Website?

Lame as this sounds, Wikipedia. I’ve researched everything from the residue of supernovas to herbs believed to provide protection against witchcraft on there. It’s a great research spot – there’s an overview of the topic that doesn’t usually bog you down in more detail than you need, and there’s almost always source material if you need more.

Links:

Amazon: Through the Hostage and Fighting Shadows
Blog: http://byriteofword.blogspot.ca/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JCSteelauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/steel_jo
Website: http://www.byriteofword.ca/

Ray Bradbury on Writing Persistently

--The Internet and the world has changed everything...

Quotes of the Week

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. —Hemingway

A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.
— Da Vinci

We all have time machines...Those that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams.
— HG Wells

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
—Paul Theroux

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not read for I have renounced life, I read because one life is just not enough for me.
—Abbas Al-Akkad

Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.
—Sylvia Plath

What I write is smarter than I am, because I can re-write it.
—Susan Sontag

I'm always pretending I'm telling someone a story, and I don't want them to get up until it's finished.
—J Patterson

Images that Inspire

In my Solstice 32 Saga, there are all terrain vehicles called Emergency Modules. They are spider like walking machines that also contain AI computers.

The image below is a prototype called the Mantis. Imagine this design 600 years in the future...

--I want one!

Reading This Week: Cryptonomicon

This week I am reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Here is the description from Amazon:

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia—a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

--This is another classic I am revisiting. This book is 1200 pages long. So I doubt I will finish it this week.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Birthday Pris!

Fast Friday Indie Interviews: Richard Schiver

Richard Schiver

Tell me about yourself, Richard?

I’m a big softy. As an independent author with limited resources, what I’m able to save to put into my writing is used to have my work edited before it is released. As such I’m unable to afford the covers I would like to see on my work so for the past couple of years I’ve been designing my own, while teaching myself how to use Photoshop to create covers. I’m pretty damned proud of what I came up with for All Roads Lead to Terror. I wanted to touch the potential reader on an emotional level while at the same time showing that the story within the covers was about leaving your childhood behind as one stepped into adulthood. Of course what better way of showing innocence lost than with an abandoned teddy bear. I tried several different routes, all with little success, until I staged the photo myself.

I picked up the stuffed bear from Goodwill for a couple of bucks. When I carried him out of the store he was in pretty good shape. Once I got him home it got a little interesting, even though I look like a grumpy old man, I can be rather emotional at times. I believe a writer has to be very much in touch with their emotions in order to properly convey the feelings of their characters on the page. It was this familiarity with my own emotions that stopped me at first from doing what I knew I had to do. It’s just a stuffed bear, I kept telling myself. That might have been but before he went to live at the Goodwill it was obvious a child had taken good care of him.

In the end I quickly removed his left leg and ear. A bit of black paint and some hard rubbing gave me the look I wanted for with his fur, a matted, unwashed appearance. Adding the sling was a final touch to show that though he had been abandoned at one time he’d been cherished by a child that shared its sorrow for a world turned upside down.

He has no name, yet. But his sacrifice has earned him a place of honor in my office, he sits on the top shelf of my bookcase, watching over my shoulder as I work, occasionally he will sit in my lap as I write, to help me connect with the emotions that I strive to bring to the page. He will also appear on every subsequent cover in the series.

He serves as a constant reminder of what I hope to achieve with The Dreadland Chronicles that will focus not on the brutality of the world in which they live, but the undying hope of the young as they struggle to rebuild a shattered world that has been left to them, and make a better place for those who will follow.

Tell me about your current Book:

When several children are kidnapped from the compound where he lives,  Meat sets out on a journey with his friends to rescue them before they are harmed or die trying.

The horrors of the past meet the brutality of the present.

Four boys strengthen the bonds of their friendship, while taking their first hesitant steps into adulthood, as they face the brutality of an old, new world. They will be tested at every step in their journey, as they travel through a blasted land where the only hope is for a swift death followed by an endless sleep. Survival lay in the firepower they carried, coupled with their willingness to use it, and their ability to trust each other with their own lives.

The world has become a wild place filled with wild things, and into this new reality each of them had been born. Coming of age at the end of days, where savagery was the norm, and man's inhumanity to man was on daily display. Where the only law was the firepower one carried and the only hope was for a swift death followed by an endless sleep.

Meat was born at the height of the Zombie apocalypse, upon his birth his mother took one look at him and pronounced him meat. He grew up in a reality where they were all nothing more than walking bags of meat, so in his mind the name fit perfectly.

Window, his best friend, is very quiet, and ever watchful with a quick hand. To him friendship was the most important thing in the world. His family had perished in the ruthless times after the awakening and his temperament had been forged in the fire that took them from him. His friends were all he had left so he watched over them with a jealously protective nature strengthened by that sense of invulnerability all boys his age embraced. Further backed up by a quick hand with the .44 he'd used to kill the men who had raped his mother.

The remaining members of this quartet are Einstein who had been born within the compound at Bremo Bluff after the apocalypse. Having spent his life behind the fence he had no first hand knowledge of how brutal the world has become. As his name implies he's the smartest in the group, as well the most innocent. While that innocence helps to soften the ruthlessness of the other three, it will serve to drive a wedge into their friendship. On this trip he will discover just how terrifying the world beyond the fence has become.

The final member is Billie-Bob, one half of a set of twins who appeared outside the fence several years earlier. Your typical class clown whose mouth runs a mile a minute, if he isn't sharing overused jokes about Zombies, he's whispering the passages from a book his mother used to read to him when he was younger, a chant that provides him with a degree of comfort. Billie-Bob is unique in that at the tender age of eleven he has proven himself to be a natural born sniper with a willingness to use his special talent to protect his friends.

The trail they follow leads them East, into the Dreadlands, from which those who had dared venture in the past never returned. There are places where the fabric of reality is at its thinnest. Where nightmare creatures roam the shadowy corners of a well lit world. Existing at the edge of man consciousness, an indistinct blur briefly glimpsed in our peripheral vision. Their presence felt on a primitive level that reached our consciousness as a faint whisper in the night. Their touch the soft caress of chilled fingers dancing along the spine like the half remembered terrors lurking within the childhood memories of every person who had ever feared the night.

In Richmond they will be confronted by a savage cult of children who worship a creature of the night. A nightmare being that feasted upon the fear of its victims, delving into their innermost secrets, revealing half forgotten terrors that lay like a rotting carcass at the heart of their souls. For these creatures, that were once considered nightmare imaginings, are now awake in a world where the population that once served as their food source has been reduced.

Awake and very, very, hungry.

What are you working on now?

Part two of the Dreadland Chronicles: Library of the Damned, as well as a full length novel titled A Father’s Love, and a novella titled: The Last Day

What is your favorite beverage while you write? 

Coffee as I write in the morning.

What is your favorite Website? 

The Passive Voice:  http://www.thepassivevoice.com/

Links:

Email: rschiver@gmail.com
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006MF80VI
Blog: www.richardschiver.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RickSchiver
Twitter: @RichardSchiver

An eighth Harry Potter book is coming out this summer

From altpress.com:

Harry Potter fans can rejoice, as the script for the highly anticipated upcoming play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child is officially being published as a book. J.K. Rowling confirmed that this play would be the official eighth installment of the Harry Potter franchise back in October, and now fans can expect an actual print and ebook version out this summer on July 31. 

I also welcome a movie.

--MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Quotes of the Week

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
—William Faulkner

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go.
—T.S Eliot

In order to write well, you have to be willing to write badly.
—Jacob Krueger

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
—Richard Bach

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
—James Michener

Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none.
—Jules Renard

Unlike a brain surgeon, the beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time.
--Cormier

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
—Marcel Proust

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.
—Arthur Miller

Art That Inspires

This image inspired an idea for a future story.

Read this Week: Ruins

This week I read Ruins by Dan Wells. This is book 3 in The Partials series.

Here is the description from Amazon:

Kira, Samm, and Marcus fight to prevent a final war between Partials and humans in the gripping final installment in the Partials Sequence, a series that combines the thrilling action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Blade Runner and The Stand.

There is no avoiding it—the war to decide the fate of both humans and Partials is at hand. Both sides hold in their possession a weapon that could destroy the other, and Kira Walker has precious little time to prevent that from happening. She has one chance to save both species and the world with them, but it will only come at great personal cost.

I am always a sucker for a good apocalypse story. I like it because it is original and good development of the characters.

--I wish authors would do better with gun details though.

I'm a writer! Honest, Officer!

Still Falling on Audible, iTunes and Amazon

The Audible edition of Still Falling is doing very well on Audible.com. It has far exceeded my expectations. As I write this post it has 112 reviews with an average rating of 4.2 Stars out of 5.

I mention this now because the second book in the Solstice 31 Saga: The Broken Cage will be out in a couple weeks!

There are also five FREE short stories in the Solstice 31 Saga.

As always, if you want a signed copy of either or both, made out of actual dead trees, email me at info@baytirus.com!

--Andrew Tell is an awesome narrator! Check it out!

Fast Friday Indie Interviews: Louis Lamoureux

Tell me about you, Lou.

Louis Lamoureux

When I was a child, I devoured books at the library. Our local library had a great collection of Middle Grade books. I remember rows and rows of Hardy Boys mysteries, but my favorite were the Tom Swift books: Boy inventor creates devices to solve a problem and stop bad guys. Sprinkle in some Star Trek reruns and you have the recipe for a boy who grows up to get an engineering degree.

While getting that degree, I took a semester long course on Sci-Fi that forever changed my life. I was introduced to William Gibson's Neuromancer. This was the first time I noticed how the construction of a novel affected the story (Years later, I'd read Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange and realize that the language also affected the story). To get through some personal issues, I wrote a book while in college. I knew it wasn't good, but didn't know why or how to improve it.

My kidneys failed in 2000. I was one of the lucky ones, my mom stepped up and donated a kidney for me. I was sick for a couple of years before the transplant and biked to alleviate the symptoms, but the surgery fixed me right up. I had so much energy, I felt like Superman. High on painkillers and a normal red blood cell count, I signed up for a bike trip across the country. I was an ultracyclist, spending hours in the saddle enjoying nature until my disease came back and destroyed my transplant in 2008. I was forced onto Dialysis, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It's cruel and barbaric, meant to keep a patient just barely alive. I was forced to sit in a chair for hours on end. I found a story I wrote for that Sci-Fi class in college and crawled inside to escape the hell around me.

My sister donated a kidney for me in 2010. I was back to feeling like Superman and I had a 100,000 word novel completed. I joined a writer's group to figure out how to make it better and released it several years later as Recalled To Duty.

Tell me about your current Book:

When a terrorist blows up bridges across the Mississippi, Joshua Kaine must rebuild them and capture the terrorist, before America's economy grinds to a halt and more people die.

Synthetic Salvation: One man's quest for redemption.

Joshua Kaine, a genetically engineered supervillain, undergoes surgical rehabilitation and is placed in the care of overzealous FBI agent Iris Halstrom. Iris would rather put a bullet in his head than see him go free on a technicality, and Joshua thinks that's pretty much what he deserves.

Joshua can't atone for his sins while chained to a desk job. He buys a bicycle, ditches Iris, and sets off to find salvation. Along the way, he's judged by the color of his skin, harassed by police, and assaulted by racists.
When a terrorist blows up bridges over the Mississippi, jeopardizing America's fragile recovery, Joshua agrees to spearhead the reconstruction effort and vows to catch the saboteur. Can he do both before the villain strikes again? And when he catches the terrorist, can he convince her to change sides or will she kill him instead?

A sequel to the novel Recalled to Duty.

What are you working on now? 

A fantasy trilogy.  When a portal opens, letting giant wolves through to our world, Beauregard Kingfisher gains magical powers that are unleashed when he sleepwalks. He must defeat the wolves and recover the amulet holding open the portal or his world will be overrun with wolves and demons.
What is your favorite beverage while you write? As a transplant recipient, I rarely drink alcohol and as an athlete, I tend to avoid soda. Nine point nine times out of ten, I have a very tall glass of ice water on my desk as I write.

What is your favorite Website?

My favorite website/App is Zwift.com. Riding indoors is inherently boring and mentally harder than riding on the road. I can plug my trainer into Zwift and it creates a virtual world on the screen for me to pedal through. I can do a workout, compete against people from across the globe, or just ride along. I've been able to do some pretty impressive distances that would have seemed unthinkable before Zwift came along. As an aside, ultradistance cycling is good mental training for writing a novel. They both require stamina, dedication, and an iron will to finish.

Links:

Email: Lou@TransplantAthlete.com
Amazon: Synthetic Salvation and  Recalled to Duty
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/U94llamoure/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/u94_llamoure

The Oatmeal!

The Oatmeal is a great comic. This one shows why I never wait for inspiration. I plan, outline and never wait for the fickle muse to help me out.

Quotes of the week

I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.
—Annie Proulx

When you're a writer sometimes you have to spend time poking at part of yourself...
—Vikram Chandra

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
—Umberto Eco

Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.
—Kim Addonizio

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
—G K Chesterton

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
—Leo Tolstoy

It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.
—Jack Kerouac

Never judge a book by its movie.
—J.W. Eagan

Good artists borrow, great artists steal
—Pablo Picasso

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
—Salinger

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.
—Arthur Miller

Art that Inspires

--This is the kind of image that inspired me as a kid. It would draw me to Scifi.

Read this week: Split Second

This week I read Split Second by Douglas Richards.

Description from Amazon.

What if you found a way to send something back in time? But not millions of years back, to the age of the dinosaur. Not even a minute back. What if you could only send something back a fraction of a second? Would this be of any use? You wouldn't have nearly enough time to right a wrong, change an event, or win a lottery.

Nathan Wexler is a brilliant physicist who thinks he's found a way to send matter a split second back into the past. But before he can even confirm his findings, he and his wife-to-be, Jenna Morrison, find themselves in a battle for their very lives. Because while time travel to an instant earlier seems useless, Jenna comes to learn that no capability in history has ever been more profound or far-reaching.

Now, as Jenna fights to defeat the powerful forces arrayed against her, nothing less than the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. . .

I really enjoyed his book AMPED and was not disappointed with Split Second. It is a new twist that addresses a small time travel paradox in physics and the motion in the universe.

It's fast paced and doesn't have too much handwavium or boring exposition.

--I liked it.