The Invisible City is Free on Amazon

For this weekend only, The Invisible City, first book in The Stolen Future trilogy, is free on Kindle.

The Invisible City is the story of Charles Clee, a World War I infantry officer scouting out an enemy position, who falls victim to an ambush and runs through a strange door to escape–all the way into the 863rd century. He is immediately pursued by the Time Police, charged with eliminating threats to the time stream by any means necessary.

Eluding the Time Police, Clee finds himself in a world of telepathy, of humans conquered by their own children returned from the stars, and of hideous creatures born of centuries of genetic engineering and recombination. And he finds himself wanted not only by the Time Police but by the Nuum, Earth’s alien overlords, who see in him the secret of time travel.

But Clee’s only goal is to go home–until he finds himself thrust into the violence of this future world, when a woman he meets is kidnapped before his eyes by a Nuum. Stung into action, he will embark on a voyage across the world, revealing wonders he could never imagine, and terrors he may never forget.

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Look Before You Leap, or, How Not to Fall into a Plot Hole

So there I was, thinking my WIP was chugging along at a steady, if not swift, pace, and along comes the realization that if my book is going to end up where I want it to, and my characters are going to arrive at their destination, that I am really going to need a map. Or if not a map, then at least a diagram showing the safest route through the reefs, so I don’t end up grounding on a shoal.

See, I tend to write down a lot of notes (well, a lot for me), but I outline my novels in my head, and not all the way through. I plan out the first 10,000 – 15,000 words so that I can get started, hoping that by the time I reach that point (weeks later), I will  have gained the trust of my characters and they will have deigned to disclose to me enough bits of their life story so that I can theorize what happened next. (And if I get it wrong, trust me, they let me know.)

It’s a terrible strategy–kind of like the Allies playing for time in World War I, figuring that eventually the Americans would come over and upset the stalemate–but it’s mine. And it although it works–eventually–it’s terribly messy and you really can’t recommend it to your friends.

Anyway, I’m about 17,000 words in now, and I’ve passed the point where I need to do some serious planning or the rest of the book is going to be an unreadable mess with a meandering plot and a deus ex machina ending. I know what constitutes the book’s plot point, the world-altering discovery that will change everything my hero thinks he knows and put his life in far more danger than it’s already in (which is considerable), but I need to know how he gets to that discovery–and he hasn’t told me.

Needless to say, I find this annoying, but not for the reasons you may think. Some authors would view it as disloyal, but most of my protagonists are rather self-effacing sorts, and the fact that they are telling me their stories at all is a favor to me, not something they do for themselves, so calling it “disloyal” would be an error. Rather, it annoys me because it slows me down, and if I could outline things better in the first place I wouldn’t need their help.

Having been down this road many times, I know how it works. I spend a few days cajoling them for ideas, begging to hear the next leg of their adventures, and they harrumph and order another beer and in the end give me nothing. Then it will be my turn. I’ll stop begging and go back to writing. And I will write how I think their story continued. And they’ll harrumph even louder that I got it wrong and bang their mugs on the table and beer will go sloshing onto the floor and they’ll gripe at me not only for being a lousy hack but also for wasting good beer.

Which is character-speak for, “You’re buying the next round.” Which is a joke, because I bought the last one.

Characters. Can’t live with ’em, can’t write without ’em.

#SFWApro

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Cover Reveal and Pre-Sale

The cover for The Killing Scar is here, and the book is available for pre-order at a discount price!

A German scientist pursued by Allied agents…a victim of mob violence…both believed dead by the world at large. But the history of their struggle, begun in the chaotic months after the Great War, will come to a fateful conclusion in the days of the Great Depression, deep in the wilds of a ravaged Europe, where a deadly secret weapon is being developed which could change the course of history!

After the War, Eric Reinhold pursued the murderer Captain Skorzos for two years, until their final confrontation on a night the Eric still will not talk about, twelve years later, but which is widely believed to have ended in Skorzos’ death. Since that time, Eric himself has wrongfully been declared dead, the victim of a gangland shooting. But now it appears that both men are still alive–and their next meeting will have consequences that could shape the fate of the world…

The Killing Scar will be released on February 28 for $3.99, but you can pre-order through Amazon and Smashwords at the reduced price of $2.99. Plus, in celebration of the publication of book #3 in the Nemesis saga, the first book, The Choking Rain, will soon be available for free on all platforms.

And don’t forget, the fourth book in the series, Marauders from the Moon, comes out this summer!

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The Invisible City on Sale

I have decided to make The Invisible City, first volume in The Stolen Future trilogy, available at a great discount: free. (You can find it here and here.) That is 120,000 words of swashbuckling planetary romance, suitable for all ages, for the price of clicking a button.

Several years ago, I found an old manuscript in an attic. It told the story of my several-times-removed uncle Charles Clee, a lieutenant serving on the front lines in France in World War I. In escaping an enemy ambush, he finds himself an unwitting traveler–through time. Catapulted 800,000 years into the future, he discovers a very different Earth, where an alien race dominates humankind, the mutated products of 800 millennia of scientific experiments roam the landscape, and strange and dangerous sights await the unwary traveler.

Struggling to survive, Clee learns that a time machine may exist which could send him back to his own era, where he represents the only hope of rescue for the men of his command. But to do so would mean abandoning the people of the future, for whom he may represent their only chance for freedom.

Rescue the past, or save the future? Either way, he will lose.

 

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Marketing: Not Just for Cons Any More

 

I was very happy to (with the invaluable assistance of my better half) procure business cards before Worldcon. After all, I reasoned, if one is going to have business cards, and if the primary reason one has business cards is because people have asked for them at cons, then it makes sense to have business cards before one embarks for the biggest science fiction con one is going to attend all year.* And for one brief, shining moment, my logic (which only rarely matches with Spock’s), seemed sound.

Silly me. (And for that matter, silly Spock.)

Because I gave away three business cards the entire time I was in Kansas City, and only one did I give away at the con.

The first was to a friend, the second to a docent at the National World War I Museum, which we were visiting because I am planning a novel at some point which takes place during the Great War,** and the third on the plane home, to a stranger with whom we struck up a conversation when the subject of my writing came up.

Now, I think I deserve props for getting my card out to people whom one would not normally consider prime candidates, but when you consider that I did not give one out to any of the thousands of (unknown) SF fans at the con itself, I don’t think overall my marketing skills are yet up to snuff.***

But hey, it’s a start.

“Excuse me, buddy, would you like a business card?”

ETA: I am reminded that I did pass out one card to a fellow author at the con (and took hers in return). So now I am apparently so good at this I can’t keep my successes straight. Progress?

———-

*Or, as it turns out, next year, too, because Helsinki is not a likely destination.

**Not to mention that The Invisible City starts in WWI, and I took a picture of a map showing where my hero was when that book began.

***To be fair to myself, I did intend to give one to an editor I was supposed to meet, but it didn’t work out.

#SFWApro

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