Terrence Zavecz's Blog: The Joys and Worlds of Fiction

Hailey Sharpe and the NullBot Swarm

"A hurried flight, fleeing on a starship to new friends, amazing science and dinosaurs."

Now available on Amazon (Print and Kindle editions) - This was a book I really enjoyed writing, a story inspired by my Grand Daughter.

Hailey Sharpe and the NullBot Swarm - Book III of 'The Crucible Series'

Preview Book Link:
https://www.createspace.com/Preview

Preview a ten-page segment on CreateSpace, now. Just follow the link below. Book available first half of March 2018. A novel of teenage Hailey Sharpe’s adventures in the last days of the Cretaceous era, the age of dinosaurs. Hailey finds much more than the common bloodthirsty monsters of the media, she discovers a world of unbelievable beauty, science so advanced it seems like magic and strange friends who have never experienced the world of the twenty-first century. Travel with Hailey on a trip of discovery, adventure, maturation and deadly peril

Preview Book Description:

Hailey Sharpe and the Nullbot Swarm
Hailey’s father accepts a job. Her world shrinks to one bag and a hurried flight, fleeing on a starship to new friends, amazing science and dinosaurs. A universe of time travel, robot societies, human augmentation, tachyon synaptic beings and multi-dimensional forces clashing in an ancient struggle.

"Crucible of a Species" was just released onto the Amazon Kindle Market on May 21, 2016. With it came a very surprising revelation.

The major problem of any author, or a publisher, is obtaining a measure of how well the work (book) is received by the reader (customer). Of course, the greatest challenge falls on the shoulders of any author whose name is new in the market and "name-recognition" is not yet established with the readers. The problem for an author therefore is to find out how well their latest story is received; will it last? For a publisher, the problem is finding the great authors of the future before deep funding for marketing is presented.

Historically, the most direct method is to look for reviews from readers. This is easily misdirected by intentional paid entries or proper pre-sales marketing.

A second method is to examine overall sales volume. This too can be biased by pumping enough money into marketing and active distribution ... i.e. get a good agent. All too often, a good agent will introduce the book into the market and initial volume will be great but then sales dry up. Why? The author's work didn't meet the quality of the agent's marketing so rather quickly sales dry up with time and the publisher's investment is lost.

So what is an author or publisher to do. One new tool I've just encountered in the Kindle Direct Publishing world is called the "Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP)". This is I believe a great solution BUT it works only with digital editions because the feedback of the number of pages read by the reader per day is plotted.

KENP is a graph of both 'paid' or 'free unit sales' for for the book plotted as the number of pages read per day. Remember, 'Free unit sales' are not 'giveaways' but books selected by Kindle Unlimited customers.

An author or publisher will find 'success' defined as the number of pages read each day divided by the number of books sold.

Consider, if a story is one that captures the reader, then


ReadCrucible of a Species

Novel: "Crucible of a Species"
Series: "The Crucible Series"
GoodReads: Crucible of a Species

As of this writing, February 2018, I received Aimee Ann’s published review of my novel “Crucible of a Species”.

A disclaimer: Aimee Ann's is a paid reviewer's service and, in spite of reading many of her previous reviews, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of praise lavished by her on the novel.

I immediately wrote back to her, questioning the validity of the review. After all, it’s not often that descriptions of one’s work include the accolade of ‘genius’ and ... well, let's just say I’ve known myself for a good number of years.

Aimee courteously replied by asking me to contribute a bit of the story’s background in the blog commentary.

“Crucible of a Series” is the first of a series and there is a fair amount of pain involved in its maturation. A little more about that shortly.

Personally, I love this story. It’s one of my favorites and various forms of it had been lurking in my mind for years mainly because I wanted to present a tale that was a true adventure about time-travel and the military but with solid science behind it. Most of all I wanted a positive, upbeat story line that brings out my optimistic view for the future of humanity, the wonders of science, and the magic of our universe rather than blaming them for the problems of the world.

I am fascinated with people, cultures, history, military history and science. My mother introduced me to literature and science fiction at a very young age. Because of this love I eventually received my bachelor’s degree from a great university and was lucky enough to work with the people of Bell Labs for thirteen years. These people, part of the crew that created Telstar, our first communications satellite, and Univac, an early computer, taught me real science and something else. The brought a level art and beauty to their work for every one of them was a skilled artisan as well as a researcher. After that I worked in science, marketing and business worldwide, met wonderful people and saw beauty as well as some things and people that I never would have believed could exist. (Great seeds for strange tales.)

Forty-two years of this life and I decided to slow down so I scaled back my company and relaxed. Three days later my spouse told me she had enough and said, “Do something besides working around the house. Write a novel, you always loved science fiction.”

I thought, why not? I like to write. I’d written papers, technical articles, books as well as articles for science magazines. Heck, I’d even written fiction -- after all any business proposal or DARPA grant must have a good story line behind it.

My favorite authors are Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Silverberg, Asimov -- whom I met and had supper with one time -- and a few of the ‘modern’ authors such as David Drake, whom I'd love to meet. My first thought was how to bring what they brought to a market but with a twist to make the story stand out.

Now, I’m a great fan of military fiction and admire the style of Bernard Cornwell. The end of his books always included a summary of how his story of the Napoleonic Wars varied or correlated with real history. I thought I’d do something similar.

My first two novels, “Nodal Convergence” and “Hunter’s Moon” reflected my love for Paleontology so I wrote about time travel and dinosaurs. At the end of each chapter I put up a reference to background science and a summary of what was known science and what was enlightened fiction.

The books went over reasonably well but the greatest complaint was the presence of references and summaries.

In my heart I knew something else was lacking, drastic measures were needed.

I contracted Steve Alten, “The New York Times Best Selling Author of MEG …” and many other blockbusters to coach me. NOTE: Watch for Steve's MEG movie coming to the big screen this summer with Jason Statham in the lead role.

I must admit, this was a less than perfect fit. He liked monster novels, had a less optimistic view of the worth of humanity and preached politics that were completely out of phase with mine. We had one thing in common, a stubborn streak supported by a confrontational nature. Steve bludgeoned me along a path that I’m sure he found very frustrating. We fought, laughed and nearly broke off many times but three years and a few verbally delivered black eyes later, we parted ways and “Crucible of a Species” was born.

Steve taught be a lot. I will always be thankful for him and what he taught me about the art of writing true fiction. I'd do it again in a heartbeat and recommend his services to anyone.

My third novel in the ‘Crucible’ series, “Hailey Sharpe and the NullBot Swarm”, will go to a publisher soon (2Q/2018) although I just started looking for a taker. This story started out as hard Sci-Fi but changed along the way. Let me explain.

My granddaughter, Hailey, is the inspiration for the book’s heroine. Hailey is an avid, very critical reader and, when she took to the story and refused to return the draft copy, I decided to scale it over to YA for its final form. Hailey insists that YA and Hard Sci-Fi do indeed mix although I must admit there’s a lot more science in it than the YA I’ve read.

Time will tell me if Hailey is right, she usually is so I have high hopes.

I certainly hope you’ll read “Crucible” and draw as much from it as I have. I enjoy hearing from and working with my readers so please feel free to email me and stop by my website at Zavecz.net, read through some other writings, and leave a message.

One last thought

There's perhaps one thing I feel I should mention about my writing. Whether it be Sci-Fi or Historic Fiction, I attempt to stay as close to real science and true history as possible in my stories. My focus is to provide a good story that you will enjoy without being bored by a lecture on science or history. I'm a firm believer that we learn from life's experiences and that schooling only provides the tools needed to follow your goals in life. As a result, you will learn by living the story not from a dry explanation of science.

So, all of you who perhaps dread those days spent listening to dull lectures in science, mathematics and history class, fear not. My stories use the reality of science and history only to enhance the magic, beauty, and adventure of our universe. At the end of the tale, you may walk away from the world I took you to having learned nothing but if you enjoyed your visit to my world and want to go back to it, then I have accomplished my goal.

A brown manila envelope from England through Sweden just came in the mail, the contents were disappointing ....

Six days back I went on Amazon and bought a new set of matched-key doorknobs for my home. I installed them and think they're pretty neat, Alexa even congratulated me on the purchase. It is a bit annoying, every time I leave the house now, Alexa says my grip should be firmer on the back door and when using the front door, she nags me about my blood pressure and heartbeat.

A bit annoying but now I can lock my house from anywhere in the world using my iPhone. I even set it to lock/unlock when my car's wifi signals that I'm leaving or entering the driveway.

If someone comes to the door, I can see them and speak with them. It works like a charm but my Echo Dot has started to turn on the stereo automatically and gripes when I come home if she doesn’t like the music I was playing in the car.

I was about to complain to Amazon when the package arrived. Inside were, of all things, printed sheets of paper. I mean, who in the world uses such things anymore? The first packet was stamped “Secret and Classified”. Apparently it was a transcript complete with Date/Timestamp and IP address between several CIA agents.

The CIA agents were arguing about the fingerprint and DNA samples taken from a device using an extended string of letters and numbers to ID it that, strangely enough, looked familiar. It took me a while but I found the string molded as a serial number into the front doorknob I’d just purchased.

The second, separately formatted packet was a discussion between three IRS agents who referenced a discussion by two ‘other’ agency members ID’d by a codename with the same string of letters and numbers (obviously the CIA agents). The IRS agents were laughing at the confusion suffered by the CIA and at the same time arguing between themselves about the images taken by my Samsung Smart TV compared to my doorknob’s images. They also mentioned something about uncooperative transmits between my Alexa and the Samsung audio channels.

The third panel had a hand written note (would you believe in PENCIL? Again, who uses a pencil? My kids don’t even know what a pencil is!) marking it as NSA. The NSA packet was a report confirming the accuracy of the video and audio contacts as verified by the automated night-lights on my electrical outlets and the audio taken by “stationary orbital platform Sb7D5332 from “E7 Window Vibration Acoustics”. The report also commented that there probably is interference issues in the new Amazon chip compliance circuitry with the other agencies.

A fourth and final panel contained a summary of emails circulated between some Google executives in three departments in Siberia, China, Sweden and Canada (again, ‘Google’ was pencil annotated). They discussed the three sets of US agency conversations, reporting their own internal data gathering systems confirmed the sensor communications problems and were deciding whether they should notify the corresponding agencies in China, Afghanistan and Russia about potential problems and the best way to do it.

The package had a very nice letter from the WikiLeaks Staff attached. (Actually typed on an old typewriter! Neat!)

So, I’m returning the doorknobs to Amazon today. Not sure about an excuse for the return but they’re pretty good about refunds after all, the doorknobs aren’t working properly.

There is an art to the Elevator Description of your Novel. The challenge lies partly in the need to summarize your work into a line or two of conversation while at the same time selecting the best lines to capture your customer's imagination.
Example and perhaps valuable feedback for me, vote on the description you like and perhaps say why for the Novel "Origin of a Species":

1) "OUR FIRST INTERSTELLAR MISSION should have been easy, after all, we had help.
2032; The Asteri gave gifts resolving energy and social issues with one demand; we visit.
The Argos launches & responds flawlessly until a terrorist bomb detonates. Inhaled into a cosmic maelstrom, the ship limps back to Earth only to discover everything has changed. The Argos and its crew are 99 million years in the past; Earth dominated by dinosaurs. … and the Asteri are not the kind who easily forgive favors spurned."

2) A new, Science Fiction/Adventure/ Time Travel novel.
In 2032, a mysterious extraterrestrial intelligence began transferring technology to our planet resolving energy and social issues. One demand accompanied the gifts – our ET friends required humanity to visit their home world aboard a vessel of their design – the Argos.
The fates intercede, drawing the Argos into a cosmic string and they emerge 99 million years in the past to find an Earth dominated by dinosaurs.

3) A burning question lies exposed in the ‘Fermi Paradox’ regarding humanity’s isolation in the universe. Physicist Enrico Fermi calculated that for each grain of sand in our world, there exist a hundred Earth-like planets in our universe. Yet, we find no trace of any civilization beyond our own.
So, where are the extraterrestrials -- why are we alone?"
.... and why is the answer so closely tied to the dinosaurs?

"Crucible of a Species" will be released after Christmas.

Space, Time-Travel Mystery with Action and Adventure 99 Million Years Ago

I've entered "Crucible of a Species" into the Kindle - Scout contest and if the book receives enough invitations then all those who nominate it will be receive a free copy and "Crucible" will received marketing support from Amazon.

You will have to either sign on with your Amazon Login or create a login to vote.... it will cost you nothing. Click the link below:
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/TL9F...