Tag Archives: scifi

Pre-Order “Spring Into SciFi : 2022 Edition” Now!

scifi

Cover art for the Cloaked Press anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2022”

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You can now go to Amazon to pre-order the Cloaked Press anthology Spring Into SciFi 2022. Here’s the announcement from Cloaked’s newsletter:

You can now preorder the ebook edition of our 5th Spring Into SciFi. This series has been very popular over the years and we are excited to introduce a lot of new members to the Cloaked Press Family. Our release date is set for March 21st, 2022.

This year, my space opera short story “Tiamat Descending” is included in the collection. Here’s a small sample:

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One 4 and one 5 star rating for “The Fallen Shall Rise” on Amazon

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The Fallen Shall Rise, my latest SciFi novella published by Starry Eyed Press as part of the 224-verse series has only been available for a week. It already has two Amazon ratings, one 4-star and one 5-star.

I won’t post the entire review, but it says in part:

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Interviewed by Starry Eyed Press for “The Fallen Shall Rise:” A 224-Verse Novella

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As part of the promotion for my latest SciFi novella The Fallen Shall Rise, I was interviewed by the publisher Starry Eyed Press. My story takes place in their shared 224-Verse, which includes millions of spacefaring civilizations in the Andromeda galaxy.

The interview begins…

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Book Review of “Leviathan Falls”

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Cover of the novel “Leviathan Falls”

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This is it. I just finished the ninth and final book in the Expanse novel series Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey (really Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). I checked it out of my local public library like all the others. It’s a new book, so I put a hold on it December 1st and finally got my hands on it February 9th. I have to give it back after two weeks, so I’m pushing things a little.

The quality of the series held up, which is important. I’ve read a lot of book series that started out great and then fizzled at the end. That’s usually because the author (or publisher) decides that they’ll make more money on more books people like, but don’t have a clear vision of the end from the beginning.

I’m not sure Abraham and Franck did either when they wrote the first in the series. Some things got a little repetitive in some of the stories. It seemed for a while that going from an earlier book to a later book meant the disasters got bigger and worse. That didn’t happen this time around, but there’s definitely a resolution. There’s not a lot of room for the characters to reappear in the long haul except Amos and maybe Jim. No, no spoilers but I’m not above dolling out a few hints.

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Third 5-Star Review of “Ice” on Amazon

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Hooray! Frankly, I’ll take just about any sort of review on “Ice” just so it’s noticed, but I love how all three (so far) are five-stars on Amazon.

Click on the link to find the review and read it. If you’ve read “Ice” and haven’t reviewed it on Amazon and Goodreads, please, please, please do so. Even if the review is less than complementary, I’ll learn more about how to improve my writing.

Here’s my “blurb:”

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“Tiamat Descending” Accepted into the Anthology “Spring Into SciFi”

scifi

Cover art for the Cloaked Press anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2022”

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My SciFi short story “Tiamat Descending” has been accepted by Cloaked Press for the 2022 edition of their annual anthology Spring Into SciFi. I’ve proudly had stories published in this anthology series since 2019.

The cover displayed above will show the names of the contributors in its next iteration and the expected publication date is March 21st.

Here’s part of the official announcement on Facebook:

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69415

69415
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I suppose the number seems mysterious, but it’s born out of curiosity. I’ve written and submitted eleven short stories between December 2021 and today (February 11, 2022). One was already rejected, so I didn’t count it, but ten stories are still “in play,” still submitted and being considered.

Of those ten stories, the word count total is 69,415 words. A small novel basically.

So I thought I’d share a little bit of each of them. There’s no guarantee that any of them will be accepted for publication. But it’ll still be fun to share the first paragraph of each one in no particular order.

Story 9390

The Mahli war cruiser attacked the starship Raeb from below the system’s ecliptic plane, accelerating from behind a ring of asteroids where it was hiding to mask its waste heat. It took less than three seconds for their weapon to form a transitory miniature singularity. It distorted and then shredded major portions of the Raeb’s hull, exposing over half of the ship’s interior to space. But that would be the only shot they’d get.

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Review of Spider Robinson’s “Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon”

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So I was having a discussion with my grandson, actually playing a game with him over the phone, and realized I needed a bar. That is, I needed a bar as one of the scenes for our game. Author Spider Robinson (apparently his given first name is a jealously guarded secret) wrote a collection of short stories in the late 1970s called Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. I remembered reading it when it was first published and I remembered liking it, but that’s all. I had long since gotten rid of my original copy, so I bought the digital version.

After reading the first couple of short stories, I not only realized I had remembered this collection wrong, but found it was totally unsuitable for what I had in mind for the game with my grandson. I immediately set to work at creating my own “fantastical” saloon which, as of today, I also decided to incorporate in a short story I’ve just plotted out.

But that’s neither here nor there for this review.

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Book Review of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time”

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Cover art for “Children of Time”

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I decided to read and review Adrian Tchaikovsky’s SciFi novel Children of Time when someone on twitter called him one of the top three living science fiction writers in the world. Wow! That’s quite a testimony. I was curious if that statement was anything close to being accurate.

I asked another person on twitter what would be the best Tchaikovsky novel to start out with. He mentioned a book that is hard to get outside of the UK and then the “spider” tome I just finished.

There are three basic “voices.”

The first is Dr. Avrana Kern who is running an ambitious experiment. With Earth at the height of its technological civilization, we are terraforming exo-planets in the galaxy. Kern’s planet is to be populated with primates and then a nanovirus is supposed to be introduced that will rapidly accelerate their evolution. Another scientist is supposed to wait in stasis in an orbiting platform to periodically wake up and observe their progress.

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