Nicholas B. Beeson's Blog

Thanks to all those who entered my Goodreads giveaway. There were 598 entries. Congrats to the two winners - your books have been placed in the mail and should arrive at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

For those of you who didn't win, please pick up a copy and join me in my online Q&A discussion on Goodreads (June 4-29):

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/6...

I’m running a giveaway on Goodreads. Two lucky entrants will win a signed copy of Riemann Zeta: Zero Sum. The drawing ends on Friday 5/25.

Riemann Zeta
by Nicholas B. Beeson

Giveaway ends May 25, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win!

 

I first thought of the story back when I was only 17. The thought was just a concept from one of my science classes. A couple years later while driving to my grandmother's to do some construction work, I was listening to a Blue Man Group CD (yes, before everything was digital). Two songs on that CD became action packed scenes in my head. For some reason the characters in the scenes reminded me of the science class and the thought I had a couple of years before. I wrote out a couple of lines to the book, which became the opening for the book.

The story of the book sat in my head for the next ten years or so, growing. I added to it every time I got bored and needed something to escape to.

I reached a point in my life when I needed to fill my time to get out of hating my job. I tried going back to school, but that caused issues in my personal life, and I was willing to sacrifice getting a masters degree at that time for my personal life.

Yet, I still needed something to give me an outlet from my job. Around September of 2009, I started writing out the rough scenes for the book that I had been collecting in my head. In November of 2009, I had a lot of free time and needed something to not only distract me from my job, but also from the pain of an injury I acquired from work.

From the first lines I wrote all those years ago, there was no name for the driver because I couldn't think of one at the time. Then in 2009, as I wrote the new parts out, I made the choice to continue this, not because I couldn't think of a name or sex for them, but as a challenge to prove that the majority of readers would see the characters with a sex of their own choosing. I was told it couldn't be done and that the reader will need to know their sex to relate to and to like the characters. From the feedback I have received from those who have read the book, I have succeeded in accomplishing this goal. Not everyone I have spoken with views these characters in the same way.

Before the end of April of 2010, I had finished the rough draft of the book, and the fun part was over. It took over a year and a half to edit the book. But this book is so much better than what I had started out with, and I am so grateful to those that helped me get it done.