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Ben Lyle Bedard

Goodreads Author

Born

in Lewiston, Maine, The United States

Website

https://benlylebedard.wordpress.com/

Twitter

benlylebedard

Genre

Fiction, Science Fiction, Nonfiction

Member Since

March 2012

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Born in Buckfield, a rural town in Maine, Ben grew up reading Tolkien, Stephen King, and Charles Dickens. When he went to college at the University of Maine at Farmington, he published his first piece of fiction in the local college journal. After moving across the country to study creative writing at Mills College, he began writing poetry as well as fiction. In his graduate studies, he published poems in several little magazines as well as a book of poems, Implicit Lyrics. He won honorary mention from the Academy of American Poets in the Friends of University Libraries Poetry Prize for his poem “All the Wind Points East.” During this time, he also worked on a collaboration with the painter Jackie Felix to produce the chapbook “We’re Really Born in Buckfield, a rural town in Maine, Ben grew up reading Tolkien, Stephen King, and Charles Dickens. When he went to college at the University of Maine at Farmington, he published his first piece of fiction in the local college journal. After moving across the country to study creative writing at Mills College, he began writing poetry as well as fiction. In his graduate studies, he published poems in several little magazines as well as a book of poems, Implicit Lyrics. He won honorary mention from the Academy of American Poets in the Friends of University Libraries Poetry Prize for his poem “All the Wind Points East.” During this time, he also worked on a collaboration with the painter Jackie Felix to produce the chapbook “We’re Really Happy”. Soon afterwards, he returned to writing fiction, his first love. While in Buffalo, New York and finishing his dissertation at the University of Buffalo, Ben finished his trilogy, The Slinger, a science fiction story told in a western dialect. The trilogy is set on a planet that is the unfortunate focus of two dueling superpowers. The first two books, The Equilibrium of Stars and Strange Bonds, were published with a small press, while the last book, All of a Darkness, along with the entire trilogy, was later released as The Slinger Trilogy on Amazon. In Buffalo, he met his future wife, Fernanda Glaser, a Fulbright scholar from Chile. To meet the requirements of her scholarship, she had to move back to Chile, and Ben followed her. They were married a year later, under crimson bougainvillea. Together they wrote and published a bilingual biography of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, Criatura Regional/Regional Creature. While in Chile, Ben dusted off a book he had written in Buffalo called The Island, a coming-of-age story wrapped in a zombie apocalypse. Unable to find a publisher, he decided to publish it himself. After much revision, Ben renamed it The World Without Crows and released it on Amazon. It won an IndieBrag Award and had many favorable reviews. Encouraged by fans of the book, he wrote the sequel, The World Without Flags, which takes place ten years after the first book. He is currently living by the Pacific Ocean in La Serena while he researches and plans his next book. ...more

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Do you think you will write more books in the vein of 'World Without Crows?' It was honestly one of my favorite dystopian/post-apocalyptic books written recently. (I still can't believe you couldn't find a publisher and had to self-publish!) I'm a librarian, so I should know good books when I read them. :) Thank you!!

Ben Lyle Bedard Amanda,

Thanks for the comment! I'm sorry it took so long to respond. I just came back from vacation, and I purposefully stayed away from the Internet.…moreAmanda,

Thanks for the comment! I'm sorry it took so long to respond. I just came back from vacation, and I purposefully stayed away from the Internet. . .

It's very flattering to get such praise from a librarian because you do know your stuff! It's heartening too, so I really appreciate the time you took to write to me.

Now, to answer your question: yes, I do plan on writing more books like "World Without Crows." In fact, I'm neck deep in writing the sequel to it, "The World Without Flags." I can't say too much about it yet, but it takes place ten years after the events of the first book. It's different from the first book, but it follows the same characters as they deal with a very different world than the first book. I don't know how much more time it will take me to write it, but I'm hoping I will finish before 2020.

Thanks again for your comment!(less)

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What made you decide to write the whole Slinger Trilogy in the imaginary western dialect and what point of view is the book written in?

Ben Lyle Bedard Hi Tina, thanks for the question!

The Slinger Trilogy began as a vague desire to write about pioneers on another planet. However, I didn't want to writ…moreHi Tina, thanks for the question!

The Slinger Trilogy began as a vague desire to write about pioneers on another planet. However, I didn't want to write a book from the perspective of cold, white walls and expensive science fiction gadgets. I wanted to write about how I thought the pioneering experience would be for most people. I wanted it to be down in the mud and real and I wanted to talk less about the people who change the world and more about the people who are caught up in that change.

That was my desire. I didn't know the best way to do that. At the time I was interested in dialect writing of all kinds and just in dialects in general. It came to me that a good way to talk about ordinary people was to speak in dialect, and what better way to portray a frontier world than the use of the western dialect? Once I started writing it, I thought it worked very well, and it propelled the entire Trilogy.

As to point of view, the book is written in third person, limited omniscience. The point of view changes from time to time from one character to another to best tell the story. Sometimes the narration pulls back into full-blown omniscience.

I hope this answers your question! (less)

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Ben Lyle Bedard’s books

Average rating: 4.22 · 212 ratings · 57 reviews · 12 distinct works

	The World Without Crows 4.18 avg rating — 168 ratings — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The World Without Flags 4.31 avg rating — 32 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Equilibrium of Stars 4.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Slinger Trilogy 3.80 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Kiltro 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2013 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strange Bonds (Slinger #2) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All of a Darkness (Slinger #3) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Equilibrium of Stars (The Slinger Trilogy Book 1) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strange Bonds 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Ben Lyle Bedard's Blog

The World in Audio

Years ago, I set out to write a story about a boy crossing the wilderness. This book turned into The World Without Crows, which eventually was produced by an audio book. It ended up winning an Audiobook Reviewer’s Choice Award, so when I finished the sequel, I began trying to produce the audiobook. But it was COVID time, and things didn’t work out as easily as it had with The World Without Crows.

Series by Ben Lyle Bedard

Slinger (2 books)
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Ben Lyle Bedard (Goodreads Author)

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The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak (Goodreads Author)

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Finding Beauty in a Broken World

by Terry Tempest Williams

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Little, Big

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Ben Lyle Bedard wrote a new blog post Prime Flow I’ve always liked to play with mathematics, and I’ve always been curious about this strange world of higher dimensions and infinities that somehow add Read more of this blog post »
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