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| The front cover for The Chasm of Color. Photo is edited from one by Matt Donders, via Unsplash. |
The Chasm of Color is almost done! I made my final pass through the story today, and I've brought it up over 15k words with some additional character details and interesting thoughts and reactions (I hope). That makes it technically a "novelette," somewhere between a short story and a novella.
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| Part of my cover photo, edited from a picture by Matt Donders, courtesy Unsplash. |
My next work is another fun bit of science fiction, with another reference to the luminiferous ether, as in What the Soul Still Fears! However, instead of a story set in the modern day, The Chasm of Color takes place at around the same time as the Michelson-Morley experiment, in the late 1880s.
The protagonist, an assistant professor at the fictional Lexington University, has read the Michelson-Morley paper but is not convinced. However, he is unable to figure out a good reason for his uneasiness, until one morning over a year later...
In the last week, I read through E.E. "Doc" Smith's book Triplanetary, which is a very weird book in a lot of ways. Most of it was written in 1934, but Smith added a bunch in 1947-1948 to link it up with his Lensman series.
Today, we have to read it with a healthy, thick grain of suspension of disbelief, but it's a pretty cool book with some fun ideas, especially considering it was written nearly a hundred years ago.
Check the video for full details!
My friend Justin Fraser, author of The Good Guy and some other books, recommended this book to me because of its interesting plot twist at the end. What I found was a surprisingly fun and extremely creative little fantasy adventure that you'll probably enjoy as long as you don't hate puns.
A Spell for Chameleon has a few "big" fantasy ideas that are pretty interesting, but where it really shines is in the huge number of "little" fantasy ideas that Anthony packs into the book. The main characters are interesting and well-written, and the pacing is just right--not too fast but steady and constantly moving.
The dialogue is very good, with different characters having very different voices.
The tone is a little strange, with a bit of a childish/storybook feel through most of the books, but enough adult situations to put it in the upper range of young adult. Nothing too raunchy, but descriptions are detailed, funny, and frank through the whole book, including the adult situations.
Kind of the language you might expect a teenage boy to have in his head, but hopefully enough sense not to say out loud.
All in all, a good read as long as you don't mind puns. I really loved the creature-craft, and that alone makes it worth looking at again. Anthony's creativity is seemingly unbounded and a good inspiration. Probably will check out the sequel soon, but I'm not drooling over it.
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I created a short, 60-second trailer for my book, Missed Contact. A little bit more involved than the short teasers I made for some of my short stories, this one uses several pictures and a little bit more thought, since it's not an excerpt from the book, but a "three act" (that's what the Internet told me I should write :/ ) script about the setting, characters, and plot.
For those of you who have been kind enough to visit my blog, I'll note that even though the video says to go check it out on Amazon, it's also available at a variety of other e-book retailers, too.
I'd love to get some more feedback about this book. I really enjoy the mixture of mystery and science fiction that I created for this one. It's a quick, fun read that should be perfect for one night of reading.
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Today I've got a very positive review for a book that I read recently: The Forge of God, by Greg Bear. Watch the video for all the details, but I'll reiterate here that the characters are very strong, the author presents a good number of novel and interesting science fiction concepts, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing about who is telling the truth and who are the good guys--if there are any.
