I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to Rogue Angels for having the daring to be the first up to host “The Fourth Law” on its virtual book tour!
If you’ve questions or comments as a result of what you read there, please let’s chat in their comments section. Also, please look around the rest of their site; so many interesting things!
“Where’s the world going?”
Alright, so that’s a bit clichéd. Nonetheless, well sponsored by GoddessFish Promotions, almost a year on, I’m finally getting ’round to promoting “The Fourth Law.”
This virtual book tour includes interviews with me, with some of the characters, blog entries… all sorts of neat things! I’ve much to say not only about this story, but also about creative writing, editing, and self-publishing. Almost each and every day I’ll be hosted by a new website, with their own series of questions and/or comments. I promise to do my best to attentively address whatever anyone may want to discuss about “The Fourth Law” and Machine Civilization.
I think this is going to be a tremendous amount of fun, and look forwards to it very much!
Mild spoilers below the fold. I may be getting ahold of editing on WordPress….
Apologies all around: my awful “day job” – which takes place at night – has me to the point where I see my children for four freaking minutes each evening before I go to work. Not happy about that.
Anyhoo. I’ve been a tick busy getting questionnaires answered and blog-posts typed for an upcoming Virtual Book Tour for “The Fourth Law.” Sure, I’m almost a year late doing this… I’m old, dammit.
Some of the questions are straightforward; a few have been very thought provoking. Much more dangerous are the requested blog entries. For example, the one I’m working on now said ‘topic: author’s choice.’ Ooo! What trouble I can get into! In fact, that’s exactly what I want to do. So, I’m writing a little (~600 word) entry about Lily’s Catholic faith. Honestly, it’s something you really don’t see in current science fiction much, and I had some early reviewers tell me that “it will turn off some readers.”
Fine.
Politics is downstream from culture. I want my daughters to have a better life than I have, and, honestly, that looks iffy these days. If I can nudge WestCiv culture in a way that I think might help them – even if it costs me readers and sales – I’ll do that. In “T4L” I have Lily freely admit that although she grew up Catholic, her faith meant little to her, until she was on her own at the hospital and orphanage. Much of how she thinks and acts towards God and the Church now are heavily drawn from Niven and Pournelle’s two books about the Inferno. A sharp eyed reader of “T4L” will see that every time Lily cries “…God! Help me…!” things suddenly change for her, but not in a way she expects. Getting your prayers answered is like that.
Lily’s witness to her Catholic faith is so important, that by the end of the first book of Machine Civilization, one of Ai’s family is well on her way to a conversion… which will be played out when my 20-page children’s book is completed in a couple of months (go Claudia go!). It is also something that sustains her on her trek across the former southern States of the US in “Echoes of Family Lost.” In both books, her faith, and her charitas towards her friends, define who she is.
I’m tired and rambling. Need to get back to that guest-blog entry. Thanks for reading… and… (grins)… prayers would be welcome!
I’m trying to get things sorted with a great illustrator in New Zealand for my next book: a little 20-page thing about Henge (pronounced “hen-geh”), the youngest of Machine Civilization.
In the mean time, I wrote a short about what happens there. It’s not much; the book will be better, but sometimes, you have to say something. As always, please forgive WordPress butchering my formatting below the fold.
Okay, maybe I do have one friend: my 3-AR Studios business partner. It’s just that we’d not talked in months. So, with me sans family, I invited him over to dinner a couple of weeks ago. Drinks, steaks, more drinks. Then talk.
He talked about this vertical, scrolling format for webcomics he’d run across. It got rid of the annoying page-turning, and also allows for a certain unique consistency and flow of story. We went on to talk about ideas for content… hmmm. What’s been on my mind recently?
Okay: self-aware machines. That’s a start, he said. Go further: turn it past eleven. More drinks. Okay, I replied: vampire androids. We talked more. The next day, I started writing.
Below the fold, in WordPress’s usual hackneyed format, is the prologue of what I’m tentatively calling “Poisoned Hearts.” If you like that, I’ve also added chapter one. I’ve written chapter two and have notes for three. That’s enough raw material for about three 30-‘page’ comics. My colleague still has his own projects, but is making sketches. Cat is cuter than I’d imagined her. Lots of work detailing Christopher’s eyes. Need to write more….
Apologies for the utter dearth of posts. I’m a rather uxorious person, and in the last month a cousin of my wife, along with his daughter, has been out visiting from Hungary. That means I’ve been alone for the last month. No, really: I don’t have any friends anymore, either. So, in my spare time, I’ve been drinking myself to death.
On of the nice things about working third shift is that you don’t have a sleep-time, just a series of naps. That helps with the psychosis.
4th Book-wise, I have imagined so much! Sylvia’s recruitment, her thoughts of error, her arrest – just as she is arresting the police chief of Albuquerque – Clive on the stern of the ‘Death Ship’ just before the Chinese orbital kinetic energy weapon…. I really need to find a reason to write all of this down.
In the mean time, here’s one of the triggers for my first novel. Really!.
Although I really don’t much like his stuff, Hemingway was one hell of a writer. One thing of his that I do take to heart is his quip of “write drunk; edit sober.” I’ve got one visual and two traditional novels out of that dictum.
Which brings me to this: the very short story below the fold was made with just the opposite formula; I’ve been drinking coffee all night, and just switched to cheap wine around 0500 so I can pass out in bed and go to sleep around 0730. I’ll take a look at again when I wake up.
SPOILER WARNING! The event below the fold takes place about one year after those in “Echoes of Family Lost.” For anyone who’s read that, the “reveal” is not really a surprise, but if you like to make your own way through a story, then please shy away.
Usual apologies for how WP screws up .doc formatting.
I’m very pleased to announce the release of my second novel. “Echoes of Family Lost” is a sequel to my first book, “The Fourth Law,” and takes place in my future history of Machine Civilization. The story of Ai’s and Lily’s families – and how they are increasingly intertwined – continues.
Hardcopies are available here and the $0.99 Kindle version is here. Thanks to everyone for your on-going support! I hope to have a very short story from this series posted tomorrow as a way of saying thanks.
I keep asking myself. I think I know what I want to write… there’s just, oh, what to say, no fervor in the idea. Likely, if I set an irrational deadline, it will get done, but I keep messing about. Rambling and mild spoilers below the fold.
machciv 