M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 64
October 1, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons Wins Award
[image error]It’s official now! Adam’s Stepsons won “Honorable Mention” in the Readers’ Favorites yearly contest in the “Best Short Story/ Novella” category. Stoked!
Read the reviews on Readers’ Favorites here:
https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/adams-stepsons
And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a Kindle version of the novella!
https://readersfavorite.com/giveaway?sort=title
(Don’t forget to check out the author’s interview on Literary Titan!)
July 15, 2017
Scammers Break The Kindle Store
How clickfarming broke the Kindle Store (if it wasn’t already broken…):
https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/scammers-break-the-kindle-store/
On Friday, a book jumped to the #1 spot on Amazon, out of nowhere; it quickly became obvious that the author had used a clickfarm to gatecrash the charts.
The Kindle Store is officially broken.
This is not the first time this has happened and Amazon’s continued inaction is increasingly baffling. Last Sunday, a clickfarmed title also hit #1 in the Kindle Store. And Amazon took no action.
Over the last six weeks, one particularly brazen author has put four separate titles in the Top 10, and Amazon did nothing whatsoever. There are many such examples.
I wrote at the start of June about how scammers were taking over Amazon’s free charts. That post led to a phone conversation with KDP’s Executive Customer Relations.
Repeated assurances were given that the entire leadership team at Amazon was taking the scammer problem very seriously indeed. But it was also stressed that the…
View original post 2,302 more words
June 22, 2017
Excerpt from Adam’s Stepsons
A new excerpt from Adam’s Stepsons is now available.
Thanks are due to Cindy Harris, who kindly allowed me to post information about the book on her blog, Cindy’s Notebook.
(The back cover blurb appears back to back for some reason, but that shouldn’t detract from the excerpt itself!)
Check it out!
https://blacklilackitty.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/adams-stepsons/
May 22, 2017
What is Reality? Adam’s Stepsons author interview
Recently I was interviewed by Literary Titan, who asked for background and philosophical underpinnings of my SF novella Adam’s Stepsons.
Check it out!
Source: What is Reality?
May 16, 2017
Final Day for Adam’s Stepsons Giveaway!
It’s the final day for the Goodreads Giveaway for Adam’s Stepsons!
Enter by 5/17 for a chance to win 1 of 5 signed copies of “a masterful novella”!
May 10, 2017
Extensive Reading: Getting Kids to Read
A joint Nara Chapter-ER SIG Event DATE: Sunday, June 18th VENUE: Yamato Conference Hall TIME: 10.00 a.m. — 4.30 p.m. Speakers: (1) Ann Mayeda Integrating ER into the Curriculum (2) Paul Goldberg The benefits of doing extensive reading online with Xreading (3) Mark Brierley How to persuade them to read (4) Ann Flanagan ER: Building […]
via All You Ever Wanted to Know About ER — Nara JALT
I’m an educator. And also a reader. And of course a writer.
“I cannot live without books.” (Thomas Jefferson)
We cannot educate with books. If you’re in Japan, stop by Nara on June 18th and find out how we can help our students enjoy reading.
April 19, 2017
Marquez, the general, and his labyrinth
[image error]
When I first started writing the kernel of what ultimately became Adam’s Stepsons, the multiple/mixed genre story The General in His Labyrinth had just been published, by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I’d been searching for character names, desperate not to have them all sounding like the people I knew at the time (i.e., white guys in my rural hometown).
So “Marquez” sounded like a great name. I had a general in the story. General Marquez fit. Why not.
Ironically, the general (and the other characters, as well) do actually find themselves caught in a labyrinth – just like “The General,” Simon Bolivar – and it is a labyrinth of their own making. In their attempt not to lose a war, they break their own religious rules by twisting logic and ignoring ethics, and once the Pandora’s box is opened, they can’t stop it.
I’d add something more insightful here, but due to time limits I’ll just say that, yes, the image is from “The Labyrinth,” not Mr. Marquez’s book.
Hail, David Bowie! Although I still think “The Man Who Fell to Earth” is his best movie.
Adam’s Stepsons
Reviewed by the Hungry Monster!
Three stars…because he wanted more!
“Adam’s Stepsons is a fun addition to the long canon of science fiction that dares to ask the “what if” of the future. It also seeks to ask the “should we, if we can” question that not enough science fiction is retrospective enough to ask. A good read for any science fiction lover, especially of the Heinlein or Asimov variety.”
Source: Adam’s Stepsons
March 27, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons: The Professor and Sam Adams
[image error]The main character of my new SF novella Adam’s Stepsons, Dr. Johann Heimann, was modeled after a professor at my undergraduate college named…ah…let’s name him Professor R. He had the biggest office on campus, and he kept Sam Adams in a small fridge tucked under his desk. And he shared them liberally with students who stopped by. And he told great stories about Chevy Chase. A perfect model for a fictional scientist.
Prof. R. was a teacher of social economics. Which is why he spent all his free time keeping careful track of tiny pieces of paper from the 17th to the 19th century detailing who was responsible for maintaining what part of what county and state roads in nearby towns.
By “careful,” I mean of course hundreds of cardboard boxes haphazardly stacked around his office and often mislabeled or labeled with handwriting so cramped that medical doctors would be proud. Couldn’t help wondering if Sam Adams were to blame.
I had heard through a friend just before the end of my final year in college that Prof. R. was looking for somebody to help him sort his papers. It was a part-time minimum-wage job lasting only the summer ($4.25 an hour back then). Since I was planning to stick around campus and live in one of the dorms until mid-August (rooms were 50 bucks a week; can’t beat that rent price!), I thought the job sounded appealing.
It was. I grew fascinated by the history represented by all those little scraps of paper. What’s more, the good professor usually stayed in the office while I sorted things out and had a lot of interesting stories to relate. He also shared his beers with me. Dream job.
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Chevy, that you?
His office was on the second floor of a dormitory, just above the common room area we used a lot for parties (by parties, I mean…ah…nevermind, this is a Rated PG-13 blog). One of his stories was that Chevy Chase (who supposedly quit my college because he was picked randomly out of a line for extras casting during an “internship January” between semesters but actually graduated with a “pre-med” degree…scary stuff…) had once shoved a teacher’s car sideways between two telephone poles so he couldn’t go home. Another was that Chevy walked a cow up the stairs to the roof of the dorm and that the police had to get a helicopter to get the cow down.
(Chevy apparently told The Today Show that he was expelled from Haverford for keeping a cow in his room.)
Like all such stories, it’s not the facts that are important but the way of telling…and who the teller is. In this case, Prof. R.’s mannerisms, personality, and great storytelling left a strong impression on the 22-year-old me — despite my having only worked in his office, sorting pieces of paper and drinking his Sam Adams with him, for less than three months. And, of course, he had a great big comfy green cloth chair, just like in my story. No clones, though (none that I knew of, anyway).
Oh. He also smoked pipes. At least I think so. My grandfather smoked pipes, and even now I love the smell of pipe tobacco. It seemed only logical to have the “father” figure of Dr. Heimann in Adam’s Stepsons smoke pipes and drink beer in his office. Seth and the General came later…
March 12, 2017
Adam and his stepsons: Raising Seth
[image error]It’s been a productive couple of winter months. I got over my sickness (contracted from my daughters), finished the academic year (classes end in mid-January here), brought a group of students on a study abroad trip to Hawaii, and completed editing my long-awaited novelette/novella, Adam’s Stepsons.
Long-awaited in the sense that the nucleus of the story was written in 1994. So if anybody complains, “This has been done before,” you can tell them, “Yeah, but he did it first.”
Clones are nothing new in science fiction. In fact, the idea of creating human-like beings dates back literally thousands of years. The concept of the golem influenced ideas in Adam’s Stepsons; golems have been made famous in popular culture through D&D and fantasy games, but originally stem from Jewish mysticism.
The Talmud states that Adam himself was a golem at first – an soulless “husk” incapable of speech. The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah) of the Middle Ages was said to give instructions on how to create golems, although there is no evidence that anybody actually managed to do so. However, some orthodox Jews still believe that a golem was created (and may still be present) in Prague. Other stories say a golem was also created in a synagogue in eastern Poland. A similar story claims a golem was attempted in Lithuania but stopped unfinished.
In all these stories, the creation of a golem is linked with language; using one of the Names of God (shem) on a piece of paper in its mouth or writing “truth” (emet) on its head. Hubris, or pride, and the perils of stealing the power of creation from God are constant themes in golem stories. Golems remain popular in modern works of science fiction and fantasy; Frankenstein is perhaps the best known example, but Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and Marge Piercy’s He, She, and It have more recently starred golems. Golems have even helped the Cubs win the World Series! (Well, not that they needed it in 2016, but before that…)
In Adam’s Stepsons, I combined the concept of the golem with possibilities of scientific cloning, couched in two frameworks: one from Biblical sources (Cain, Abel, and Seth) and one from Nordic/Germanic traditions (uncle/nephew relationship, revenge). Throw in a dysfunctional military theocracy desperate to avoid losing a costly war, and the stage is set for explosive personal tragedy.
More in future posts on more of the background of characters in the story: Dr. Johann Heimann, General Marquez, Dr. Tanja Beider, and Seth/Number Six.
Adam’s Stepsons is currently available for pre-order (Kindle). Paperback version to be released with the ebook version on May 15, 2017. For more information and a short blurb see this novella’s page.
