Well, here it is ladies and gentlemen! My first SF Novel in print. Currently available on kindle for £2.06 in the UK and I think it’s $3.44 in the US. I actually wanted to release it for free on kindle as a promotion. I thought it was possible to do this as I have seen books sell for £0.00 on kindle and it’s how I was introduced to some fine writers, but when it came time to do the deed Amazon would not let me do this. I put it in at the lowest price they would permit and I hope a couple of bucks will not break your bank if you decide to give it a read.
The initial reviews I have had from my test subjects willing friends who have given it a read prior to public release are very ,very encouraging. For your own entertainment let me divulge a little of my testing practices.
I try to select a diverse small crowd so that I get as much different feedback as I can from people quite different from me, with as varied an interest base and background as I can get. Fortunately I have always had an eclectic and wide-ranging group of friendships and I know more misfits, sex freaks, criminals, engineers, childhood buddies and cubicle employees than most people have a right to. And that’s just the girls. Being a similarly reasonable sort of chap myself, I gave everyone I sent a copy to, a full two days to give me their reviews before publication was due.
Currently the demands on my time are obscene, and that had something to do with it, but it is also not a bad idea to tell your guinea pigs very good friends, that you would really appreciate it if they could give a read to your work real soon as it has to be off in 48 hours. If they even glance at it might be a measure of your friendship, but if they do and then carry on reading, unless you have insanely loyal followers instead of actual friends, it’s probably a good indication that the work may have at least some merit.
I fully expected no one to get back to me and planned to name all the vile characters in the sequels after my friends. I was instead flabbergasted. Almost all of them (85% at least) actually got back to me before the work had to go off to Amazon!
And some of these people have actual jobs and real busy lives, so my thanks to them in a public forum is definitely due. Guys and girls: THANK YOU!
If I ever become Stephen-King-Wealthy, I will be sure to buy each one of you a small villa on a warm beach somewhere.
Even more pleasing to my fat ego, was the fact that several of these happy people not only burned through a novel in 2 days (some did it in less than 24 hours!) but they went on to provide me with amazing feedback and great suggestions. And at least a couple of them have told me that after reading it they can’t stop thinking about the implications and some of the character plot-lines.
So if the government needs me to write something for the fomenting of the masses: You know where to find me David.
As a last aside, for those of you that might be a little intimidated by the cover image, let me be very clear: I am in no way, shape or form any kind of pro-Nazi, or subtle Nazi sympathiser. The Nazi regime has been without doubt the perpetrator of the most horrific evil the world has seen in known human history. My novel does not glorify Nazis. What it does do, is take note of some of the history concerning that time of the relatively recent past which has been carefully omitted from the kind of history we learn in school. And then of course I extrapolated it for the purposes of the story.
Nazi Germany made technological advances in war machinery that were decades ahead of anything the Allied forces had. The reason the Nazis lost, was the result of literally taking on more than they could deal with in the time-frame of 1939-1945. But technologically speaking, things are quite different. Very different.
Consider that rocket technology, stealth technology (now used on planes mostly), jet engines, infrared fuses, lasers (or death rays as they were then known), optical and communication advances, uranium enrichment and energy generation mechanisms that are still not discussed today (look up the Hans Coler device), were all ‘invented’, or perhaps it would be better to say re-discovered, by the Nazis while the rest of the world stumbled along and won as a result mainly of America’s ability to produce men and equipment at a rate the Germans just could not keep up with while simultaneously fighting the whole of Europe.
And the reason Nazi Germany was so technologically advanced, is due to a fact that is intentionally ridiculed, omitted, and presented as ‘madness’, fetishism, or an obsession with the occult. The reality is that Nazi Germany was so far ahead of the rest of the world because they were trying to re-engineer technology that they thought had existed before in the ancient past. This fact gets buried under the general label of ‘occultism’ today, and scant thought is given to the fact that the many secret societies which used to be pervasive in Europe and particularly in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, and from which Nazism ultimately got its inspiration in terms of more than just a few ideas, were more than a little interested in the rediscovery of technology from the ‘mythical’ Atlantis, Mu, Ancient Egypt and many other supposedly legendary ancient civilisations.
If you want to understand why Nazi Germany was so ahead in weapons technology, you really need to note the link between the Nazis and –not occultism, but rather– archaeology.
Anyway, my novel is science fiction and not hardcore history, or politics, though I do use a lot of real information to tell the story. And much of it is information you may think is science fiction when instead it really is science fact, so with any luck you will enjoy it as much as my test group seems to have.
Or maybe they just focussed on the sex scenes. In any case, I hope you will be entertained by it.
The book will be available in print too in a few weeks, hopefully before the end of the month, so those of you without a kindle can get a copy soon too. keep an eye on this blog and I will let you all know when it’s out.
testing commments….12345656
Ok..seems like they are back!
Jesus. You write books faster than I can read them. Must… read… more!
That’s right…hurry man, hurry! 🙂
Oooh looks exciting! I’m getting a Kindle for my birthday off Mr V. This is not until September, which means my feedback to you might be a little way off yet but these things are always worth waiting for!
That would be very cool! The print version will also be out sometime soonish, so it might be easier to get that in the meantime, I’ll people know when it’s out so that a co-ordinated attack (err..) mass purchase on Amazon can result…good to have comments back. I think I am psychic. All forms of communication short of shouting are failing around me. The whole of O2 is down, my home phone was buggered yesterday and the comments section was down here…if I were paranoid I would say the solar flares are aimed at me personally 🙂