E.S. Martell's Blog, page 9

Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade – Part of Chapter 8

I’m relieved. I just finished my latest story — title above — and it was a bit of a struggle. The final section had to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and it gave me a fit. I generally feel more at home writing straight action sequences, so putting things into the context of a meeting was a little more difficult.

Just to give y’all a feel for the story, and, yes, it’s time-travel again, here’s a section from Chapter 8. The main character, Logan Walker, has just arrived in the past, and is still trying to adapt to his unexpected situation.

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The moon was high, its bright rays shining through the oak leaves. The light made strange patterns and shapes on the ground between the trees. The blotches of darkness seemed impenetrable, making it impossible to see what lurked below.

Despite his thirst, Logan had managed to sleep for awhile. He wasn’t sure how long it had been. The moon was now nearly overhead. It hadn’t even risen when he had dropped off to sleep.

He carefully studied the ground. There was no sign of the cat creature. Perhaps it had left, looking for other prey. Surely there was something to attract it, something easier to catch than one scrawny human.

He thought about climbing down to look for water, then rejected that idea. Even with the moonlight, he couldn’t see well enough to be sure that something wasn’t hiding, waiting for him to make a stupid move.

The tree seemed to be intent on impressing every nuance of its rough bark on his posterior. He found that changing position every thirty minutes or so made the fork of the branches barely tolerable. Thirst bothered him more and more as the stars wandered towards sunrise. All-in-all it was an amazingly long and restless night.

Logan had always slept late, but now he was beginning to think that the sun had stopped. When that thought first popped up, he snickered, but then stopped to consider his situation.

He was in a tree, trying to avoid some kind of big and really toothy cat thing, and trying to hold out until morning so he could get a drink. He’d been in the front yard, fallen into the drainage ditch, and then this place had somehow grabbed him. He hadn’t consciously wanted to come here. He’d…Oh! He’d wanted to escape that woman. Before that he’d eaten that brownie. Maybe something in it was giving him a bad trip. She’d said it was very strong. Still this didn’t seem like an hallucination. Everything was too real. It had that unmistakable feeling of reality, not like a dream or any kind of altered state of consciousness.

Whatever had happened to thrust him into this situation, it was beyond his understanding. It may have been related to the brownie or it may simply have been chance. It seemed that somehow he’d fallen through a hole, ending in another world, or…and here he paused…another time.

The cat-creature gave him one clue. He hadn’t looked too closely at it, being more concerned with avoiding its jumps, but it had a tawny, sort of stripy coat and a short tail. The most obvious feature was its huge teeth. He’d thought that it reminded him of a saber-tooth tiger, but they were extinct. Only maybe not in this place. Maybe here they weren’t extinct.

Logan gave up trying to figure out what had happened. In a sense it didn’t matter. He was here now and he had to learn how to survive until he could get back to where he’d come from. It really was that simple.

The thought crossed his mind that he might not be able to go back, but he shoved it away. That wasn’t something he wanted to consider.

By this time it was getting light. The sun was peeping over the horizon somewhere out at sea to the east and its light was gradually infiltrating through the foliage that surrounded him. Somewhere a bird started up, singing its morning song. The song quickly changed, and then changed again. It was a mockingbird; had to be. Nothing else sang so many songs at peak volume.

He heaved a sigh of relief. At least he was still on Earth. He’d thought for a moment that he might be on another planet. All he’d had to go on was the impossible cat or tiger of the saber-tooth variety. A mockingbird was at least familiar and made the place seem very Florida-like despite the lack of people and houses.

Logan maneuvered around and stood up, trying to stretch the cramps out of his neck and back while he waited for his left leg to regain its circulation. He’d been sitting in such a way that it was wedged tightly into the fork of the tree and now it hurt and tingled.

He carefully edged over and rested his hand on one of the more vertical branches, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself. The stream spattered on the dried leaves below. There was no answering sound. He’d half expected the cat to come charging out at the noise.

Finished, he began to edge onto the connecting branch to the magnolia tree. He’d descend carefully, then see about a drink. The idea of water tormented him now, and he had to mentally restrain his movements. It wouldn’t be good to slip and fall. He had to be careful.

He reached the magnolia with no sign of his attacker. Just to make sure, he broke off a rotten stub and threw it into the bushes. It made a gratifying rustle and crunch. Then all was silent except for that mockingbird. It continued to sing somewhere over near the edge of the stand of trees.

That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Logan thought that birds might be quiet or sound some kind of alarm call if anything dangerous was nearby, but he wasn’t sure about that. All he had to go on was his brief experience at the dig site, and, years ago, a week at summer camp with the Cub Scouts. He was realistic enough to recognize that he couldn’t really rely on the information he’d seen on TV.

“I wish I’d read more prepper-type stuff on the Internet,” he muttered as he climbed down the smaller tree.

The last branch was about five feet up, and it decided that his weight was too much this time around. It snapped, precipitating him onto the ground in an undignified fashion. The fall knocked the wind out of him, but he jumped up, looking wildly around, preparing to either run or to try to climb the tree again. Nothing happened. The saber-tooth must have given up and gone elsewhere for its meal.

I’m rewriting the first draft now, cleaning it up and working on the flow, so it will read easily. It’ll go to my editor in a few days, then (I hope) be ready to publish by July 1. (I know. I’m optimistic.)

Namaste!

Eric

What sort of weapons might an alien civilization have?

Interesting question, isn’t it? Especially if one imagines that we humans could conceivably be on the receiving end of said weapons. Of course, we’d have to meet the aliens first (or they’d have to discover us) and the relationship between our two species would have to be one where aggression made sense. That last is probably the most realistic assumption, considering our inability to get along with each other.

Our historical tendency towards international (possibly interstellar in the future) aggression and our distrust of those who are not members of our own self-identified group is actually the motivating point of my Gaea Ascendant trilogy. It starts with a sneaky alien invasion, works through multiple attacks, and ends with an attempt to structure a way for humans and two allied alien species to co-exist peacefully in an interdependent manner.

In the process, my hero, Declan Dunham, asks one of the Sunnys (a non-aggressive species that provides a lot of the advanced technology to the fledgling confederacy) how one of their primary weapons, an anti-matter projector, works. Below is a section from “Confederation”, the third book in the trilogy, wherein Frazzle attempts to explain the weapon. You’ll notice that Frazzle’s command of English is only fair. Humans cannot speak the Sunny language at all due to their use of whistles and supersonics that are beyond our capacity to reproduce. As an aside, Frazzle and Red are a mated pair and Dec has interrupted them in the middle of a moment of alien romantic cuddling.

Here’s the section:

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Frazzle let his shoulders droop and I knew that he was upset, but Red suddenly gave him a hard shove. “Get over dat!” she said. “You and me both know dat there be plenty of need for the shooters. Tell Dec what he need to know.”

Frazzle sort of shook himself and then asked, “Whats you want to know. I can talk about the technology an I tries not to think about the use.”

I considered how best to ask. “What I want to know is a simple explanation of how they work and what could go wrong with them unexpectedly. I don’t want to be surprised at a critical moment.”

He seemed to be thinking it over, so I added, “I’d also like to know about their limitations and true capabilities. I feel like I’ve been lucky so far and I need to know more.”

He drew a breath and began to explain, “Making de anti-matter particles normally takes much energy, but we cheats. The weapon creates a field that gathers positively charged virtual particles from the sub-field of space – ”

Here I interrupted, “What’s that mean?”

He continued, “You call it de quantum plenum. It’s full of particles of all sorts coming and going, so there plenty of anti-particles to grab with the weapon field. The power of the weapon, the little power packs for the hand weapons and the ship power for the big gun first are used to grab these particles. All sizes of guns work the same, just the smaller ones can’t grab as much particles.”

He paused for breath and I interrupted again, “What happens to the particles once they’re captured by this field?”

He smiled; a closed-lip tightening of his cheek muscles, and looked aside at Red. She nodded her head.

“Dat a good question and it’s the next thing that the power pack does. It powers a circular field that uses the strong magnet force. The positive particles pulled from the virtual plenum become real here and are trapped in the circle field. When the shoot button is pushed, the field opens and the particles, whoosh – ” waving his hand wildly, “fly out. The direction tube (by which I thought he meant the barrel) has magnetic field that keeps the particles in the tube and away from the sides. That field also makes the particles to go faster. It uses electric force to make them accelerate to close to light speed. An you know what happens when anti-particles hit regular matter. Fswhoosh!” He threw both paws up in a gesture intended to represent the resulting annihilation.

“Okay. That sort of explains how the things work,” I said, thinking about what he’d just told me. “What can go wrong with the system? Does it wear out or break?”

“De direction tube and the place where the circle field is can sometimes get eroded by leaking particles. This happens most when the power pack is low and the magnetic field not strong enough. So, we put limiter on the weapon. It won’t work if not enough power. The hand held ones have flashing red light when power packs get too low. But this not a problem for the big shooter attached to ship-power. It not run out of shots and power is enough to keep erosion very low.”

He scratched his nose and then continued slowly, “De only problem you have with the big ones is that regular atoms in air or space dust get dissolved and thin anti-matter pulse down. If too much dust, or try to shoot through too much air, the pulse gets used up and no damage to the target happen. Same happens to small guns if try to shoot too far.”

“Frazzle, I’ve always thought that anti-matter reacting with regular matter would create an explosion. Why doesn’t that happen?”

“The shooters project a long burst of particles. Not much hit at once, though very fast. Difference like dripping water on dirt compared to dumping whole bucket at once on dirt pile. Best I can ‘splain,” he shrugged in a very human-like gesture.

Our, or maybe I should say, my grasp of physics wasn’t up to much more than this anyway, so I went on to my next question, “How far and how fast do the big ship cannons shoot?”

“De direction tube on the big ones use lot of energy with each pulse. By time the pulse reach the end of tube, it going nearly light speed. That gives very fast shot. Distance determined by matter in between like I ‘splain. Only thing is shooting at long, long distance, pulse take a while to get there, so target can move,” he answered, waving his finger in the air with an attitude of admonition.

“Okay, so keep the targets fairly close. The atmosphere must not be too much of a problem for the big gun. It had no problem burning a wide path through the middle of the Pug-bears position from space.”

“Dat’s correct. It more a problem for the hand-held weapons. They’re not nearly as powerful. But when we shooted Boulder to get the Pugs, I boosted power in the gun so the circle magnetic field built up much more particles than normal. Can’t do that much and it take some time. Try too often and erosions becomes a problem,” he answered.

I judged that I’d gotten about as much information as I could understand. “Thank you! I’m going to go talk to Rudy. You two continue where you left off.”

They laughed as I turned to the transporter. I was still smiling myself when I came back into the bridge.

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That’s the section. Now, should you be so disposed, I’d be quite interested to read critiques of the piece, particularly the implied science.

Namaste,

Eric

BTW – Here are the links to the series on Kindle:

Note that I’m about to re-release The Time of the Cat. It is my first fiction novel and it is self-edited. I’ve now got an editor and we’re working to make the story an easier read. The new edition should be out by 5/1/2016.

The Gaea Ascendant Series

The Time of the Cat

Second Wave

Confederation

Reviews are important to the author. Here’s why:

Review of Heart of Fire  Time of Ice on UK Amazon.

5.0 out of 5 stars Physics yes, but adventure, romance, murder and intrigue are everywhere!

By Lewlew on 3 Mar. 2016

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

This is my first book by this author and I found the premise interesting and, unlike a recent reviewer, the physics lessons very much needed if you are to understand Kathleen’s predicament! She must master control over the positive and negative aspects of her discovery from years of research. Her life, and Cadeyrin’s depend upon it. I am not sure that the author is done with one book. When you finally reach the end of the book, you are wondering, how will the future be for her? Can she carry on functioning this way and be safe from further problems in the present and past?

I don’t want to give away anything as it is a book for discovering the characters as well as the plot. But I do hope the author is going to bring us another one. I would like to follow along as Kathleen follows her dreams!

More please!

   Beginning authors often have an unreasonable expectation that they will receive lots of positive feedback from admiring readers. While this may happen, it’s more usual for readers who enjoy the story to simply look for another from the same author. Giving feedback, despite being as easy as Amazon can make it, is still a task that few people have the time or inclination to tackle.

   The number of feedback responses to a book has an impact on its success. Most people will base their decision to purchase or not at least partially on the feedback count and the average number of rating stars. Popular books often get thousands of ratings. Of course, books become popular through marketing. It’s only after the prospective reader searches out the book on the internet that feedback becomes a part of the equation.

   Amazon’s sales rankings are one of the most important contributors to popularity. Once a book has moved into the top tier on Amazon, their algorithms ensure that it pops up on the computer screens of people who have shown interest in similar stories. This helps get eyes on the book, then the book’s description and the ratings take over.

   I’m not able to speak with authority for anyone else, but my purchasing decision tree goes through these steps:

Become aware of the title by browsing Amazon’s categories, seeing it in a list of recommended books on Kindle, or through some internet marketing on other sites such as Twitter or Facebook.
Search for the book’s page on Amazon.
Read the author’s description of the story.
Check the average number of stars given by readers
Read some of the text reviews – both positive and negative
Download a free sample to read.
If the author hasn’t captured me by the time I finish the free sample it’s Sayonara.
If I can’t wait to find out what happens next, it’s purchase time.
Read the story.
Assign a ranking, and if it’s a book I really enjoyed, write a brief review.

   So, that’s how I choose books. In my imagination, at least, that’s probably how many other readers act, too.

   The importance of sales and making money is one thing for an author, but there is a certain intense satisfaction from learning that a reader really liked the story and characters that is perhaps more important. I’ve had readers tell me they stayed home from work to finish Heart of Fire Time of Ice. I find that incredibly flattering. I only hope their boss was understanding.

   To my disappointment, the above review doesn’t show in the US Kindle site. Amazon shows US reviews on all of the other country sites, but not the reverse. Why, I don’t know.

   I’ve had some readers ask what happens next for Kathleen and Cadeyrin and have put some thought into their story after the events in Heart. I checked the UK page for the book just by chance and discovered the above review. That final sentence, “More please,” convinced me. There will be a follow-up story.

   I’ve already come up with part of the plot and the rest is bubbling around out there in the quantum plenum, just waiting for the two characters to lead me on the journey of writing their next story. My main problem is that I’m in the middle of another book with different characters. It makes it difficult to write when I’d like to be working on another project. As an aside, I like to finish one writing project before I start on the next. Now I’ve got to make a decision as to which way to go.

   Here’s the take-away: If you like a book and want more, you’d be well advised to leave feedback and ask for a sequel. The author will almost certainly see your request.

Namaste!

Eric

Status update

I’ve been working on the release of “Heart of Fire Time of Ice” for the past couple of weeks. Writing stories is what I’d rather do, but there’s not much reward in writing books that no one reads. Getting a new book pushed up in the Amazon ratings is difficult. There’s so much competition, and Amazon’s rating system seems deliberately designed to confuse everyone (me, at least).

Reviews seem to help within certain limits, but they’re hard to get. Most readers don’t seem to want to take the time, even to say a few words.

I’m planning on giving away a few paperback copies once I get at least 10 reviews. I have two replica clovis projectile points that I will include with two of the paperbacks for a little bonus. Watch for information on the drawing on this page and on my blog.

Meanwhile, I’m about a fifth of the way through a second time-travel adventure with “Paradox” as the working title. It’s been a slow go so far. My MC is young and sort of a slacker. He’s just managed to get himself moved in time and is now trying to get oriented. I think the fun part of the writing job is about to get started. That’s when the character comes more to life in my own mind and starts dictating his own actions to a certain extent. I know I’ve got a number of dangerous situations set up for him to encounter. We’ll see how well he does.

Namaste,

Eric

Warning: You might need an excuse for your boss.

Soft launch: Free on Kindle 2/19/16 – 2/20/16

One reader did. She ended up missing most of the day, curled up in an armchair with a cup of tea, while finishing this story. “I couldn’t put it down,” she admitted.

Be prepared for science, intrigue, adventure, action, and dawning love, set in both the present and the last ice-age.

Newly Released: 2/18/2016

Intent in her research, Kathleen Whitby fears social contact due to her difficult past and physical scars. Her discovery of time-travel leads to two deaths followed by a murderous attack that results in her temporal displacement to the Pleistocene.

Initially alone in a hostile and cold wilderness, she must confront her worst fear as she finds that trust in a handsome, primitive hunter is necessary to survive. Will she ignite a carefully suppressed internal fire, or will she be able to return to the safety of the present?

Offered for free for two days: Friday 2/19 and Saturday 2/20. Normally priced at $2.99.

Time Travel Romance: 15 top rated novels you’ll want for your virtual bookshelf

I’m preparing to release Heart of Fire – Time of Ice, my first novel in this specific genre. When I started the writing project, I’d never read anything similar. As usual, being the backward numbskull that I am, I decided to research after I was finished writing. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the genre is quite popular. As a service to you, I spent some time looking up the top fifteen currently highest rated books. Here they are (number of five star reviews included):

Written in My Own Heart’s Blood: A Novel (Outlander, Book 8) by Diana Gabldon – 9,674 reviews 82% *****
Outlander: A Novel (Outlander, Book 1) by Diana Gabldon – 15,701 reviews 78% *****
Waging War (The Immortal Descendants Book 4) by April White – 46 *****
Warriors (The Reverians Book 3) by Sarah Noffke – 27 *****
Fracture (The Flicker Effect Book 2) by Melanie Hooyenga – 25 *****
Cameron Manor: The Meeting and the Magic by Deborah Robillard – 24 *****
Redemption (The Warrior Series Book 4) by Rebecca Royce – 24 *****
Rewind by Liz Ann Hawkins – 22 *****
Justice (The Warrior Series Book 5) by Rebecca Royce – 22 *****
The Far Journey: A Timeslip Novel of Survival on the Oregon Trail by Tom Reppert – 20 *****
Virtual Evil (Time Rovers Book 2) by Jana Oliver – 20 *****
Beneath the Lake by Casi McLean – 19 *****
The Draig’s Woman by Lisa Dawn Wadler – 17 *****
A Moment in Connemara: an Irish Love Story by Annie Quinn – 17 *****
Island by Phyllis A. Stewart – 17 *****

Once I release my story (in a few days) I’d really like to see it in this list (one can dream). My pre-readers have been enthusiastic about the story. One lady even missed work in order to finish, so I’m fairly confident that the story is a good one. I’m looking forward to the launch. Watch this page or my FaceBook page for the exact release date.

Namaste!

Eric

A Good Editor Helps

I’m nearing the release date (February, 2016) for my next story, Heart of Fire – Time of Ice. It’s a sci-fi/time-travel/adventure/romance that has my pre-readers responding enthusiastically. This story is much better for having been through a thorough edit. I’m so grateful to 3P Editing for their good work that I want to give them credit.

I’ve been a writer for nearly my whole life. I hold a Ph.D. in Psychology, and was trained to write scientific reports. I’ve also worked for a major publishing house. Many years ago, I wrote a book that ended up sitting in a box in my closet. That was in the pre-indie publishing days and I couldn’t find anyone who was interested in the story. Once I understood the opportunity offered by indie-publishing, I self-published a non-fiction, humorous book based on my work experience. A couple of years ago, I finally decided to start writing fiction again. I thought I knew how to write well. After publishing three science fiction novels, I discovered 3P Editing. Previously, I had avoided hiring editors. My experiences with a publishing house had shown me that they can be good, bad, or indifferent. I was reluctant to hire someone who would charge me more than I might actually make from book sales and who might not deliver the quality result that I needed.

An accidental meeting with one of 3P’s other authors who was very happy with their work convinced me to hire them for my fourth book. Their price was very reasonable and the results were outstanding. In a series of three passes, 3P found grammatical errors, corrected punctuation (commas are somewhat mysterious to me), and made gentle, but important suggestions on wording, scenes, characterization, and plot sequences. I adopted nearly all of their suggestions, and my story is now far more readable and enjoyable as a result. My pre-readers have been pleased. I knew the story was good when one person missed work in order to finish the book.

My conclusion? It’s simple. I will continue to use 3P and am in the process of having them edit my previous books. I highly suggest that if you’re an author you should consider their services.

Namaste.

Eric

Oh, BTW You can contact them here: mailto:3pediting@gmail.com

2015 in review

This is the first year for this blog. WordPress kindly prepared the following report and even though the numbers aren’t earth-shattering , I decided to post the report.

During 2015, I published two books and wrote a third. The third book, Heart of Fire Time of Ice, is currently in proofing/pre-reading and should be available on Kindle within a couple of weeks. I’ve already started writing on my next story, so I want Heart out there as quickly as I can get it into final form.

Namaste.

Eric

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

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Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 340 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

On Developing a Believable Language for the Pleistocene

How does one come up with believable words from a 13,000 year old language? That issue posed a serious problem for me in my current work in progress.

The story involves a modern physics student who discovers a formula that describes what Fred Alan Wolf (aka Dr. Quantum) calls extraordinary time-travel. As her understanding of the formula becomes more intuitive, she experiences a series of deja vu events that foreshadow her developing abiity to shift times.

Trying to escape an attack, she accidentally makes a jump into the late Pleistocene, in the time of the Younger Dryas. The glaciers are advancing again and the climate is very dry. This is the period that led to the extinction of the Pleistocene mega-fauna: saber-tooths, mammoths, dire wolves, etc.

The land is dangerous and offers lots of opportunities for adventure. A modern woman (or man), unprepared, would probably not last very long in such an environment. She encounters a single hunter and their struggles to survive make for an exciting story.

One of the primary problems in the scenerio is that the two must communicate. He has his own language and she speaks English. He turns out to be somewhat of a linguist and learns English quickly. Some readers may feel that his ability to quickly learn English, is a stretch. If pressed, I’ll admit that there is some validity in that criticism.

For the sake of the story (and because I’m the author and can make such a decision), I decided that he was intelligent, his memory was excellent (this is usual in cultures with strong oral traditions), and he wasn’t stressed with all of the minutiae that we have to remember on a daily basis.

It might also be that his brain structure was slightly different from ours, perhaps in the rate of maturation. Children have no difficulty learning new languages until they reach a certain level of brain maturation. This has to do with the pruning of neuronal branches during the learning process. If that was delayed a few years, then his rapid learning could be explained.

Anyway, I couldn’t see writing an entire book with dialog on the level of “Me Cadeyrin; you Kathleen. Ugh.” It would quickly become tiresome. Since my goal is to entertain my readers, ‘tiresome’ is definitely something I strive to avoid.

Even though he learns English quickly, I thought the story would be more enjoyable if he used some of his own words at times. I personally find that books that have a large number of made-up words are difficult to read, so I limited his words to only a few animal names. The problem was how does one come up with words that are over 13,000 years old and that refer to animals that have been extinct throughout recorded history?

I’m no linguist and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on that issue, rather than actually developing the story. I eventually solved the problem by looking up names for animals in the oldest languages I could find. I was limited geographically also, since the story assumes that the Solutrean theory is accurate, ie. that the Clovis culture originated in Europe. That meant I couldn’t use Asian or Siberian or American Indian words.

I found words in old Norse, Basque, Celtic (both Irish and Scottish), German, Finnish, and Phrygian. Then I made what I considered reasonable modifications to the words.

Cadeyrin’s name can be used as an example of my process. I found the Welsh name ‘Cadeyrn’. I added the ‘i’, since English speakers usually don’t encounter words that contain ‘yrn’. ‘Cadeyrn’ means ‘King of Battle’. That could be reasonably be viewed as an enlargement of ‘Great Warrior’ or even ‘Good Fighter’. This process allowed me to come up with a name that I found believable.

Another example is the old Norse word, ‘ulfr’ or ‘ulfur’ (Icelandic) meaning ‘wolf’. When I shortened it to ‘ulf’ it seemed to fit. The suffix ‘sa’ came from my need to have a diminutive for the word, hence ‘Ulfsa’ means ‘little wolf’. The suffix ‘a’ usually makes a word plural in the story.

Much the same process was used for the other words I semi-invented for the story. After a few hours work, I ended up with a list of names for some of the animals my characters would encounter. The exercise was somewhat entertaining and it gave me a bit of a break from the actual writing.

Look for “Heart of Fire, Time of Ice” on Kindle – to be released soon.

Namaste,
Eric

Nanowrimo — National Novel Writing Month — my new story

Brief Update:

I’ve been busy with Nanowrimo. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in November. I just hit 44,000 words on my next book. I’m happy with the way it’s going. After finishing ‘Confederation’, the 3rd installment of the Gaea Ascendant series, I was ready for a change. I’ll probably come back to that universe later. I’ve got at least one or two more stories that are set in it. But, I needed a break.

I’d been toying with either a time-travel story or a story set in pre-history, specifically in the Pleistocene. After corresponding with Dr. Quantum (Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.) about his ideas on extraordinary time-travel, I made the decision to blend the two stories into one. It’s working well so far. I’ve just reached the point where the story has found its own voice and the characters are now telling me what they are going to do. The plot has fallen into place also.

I’ve got to admit that I’m a seat-of-the-pants author. I write about five to ten pages, telling the story in rough terms in what I think is the right sequence, then I push those notes ahead of me as I flesh out each scene. However, they are only suggested notes. The characters and story are still free to develop as they decide for themselves and they usually change things completely much to my surprise, but to the advantage of the story.

For this latest story, tentatively titled “Heart of Fire, Time of Ice” I did extensive research on the Clovis culture, the Younger Dryas period where global temperatures dropped an average of ten degrees in a year, and Pleistocene mega-fauna. Those topics were fun and pretty easy to encompass. Time-travel, on the other hand was not.

I admit that I’ve read probably more popular treatments of quantum physics in my spiritual and scientific studies than most people, but time-travel? Come’on now! Well, it turns out that quantum physics practically mandates that it must exist in some form or other. Fred Wolf has a unique take on the idea. He says in “The Yoga of Time Travel” that extraordinary time-travel is probably the way to go. By ‘extraordinary’ he means time-travel without wormholes, machines, or FTL travel. He suspects that all that is necessary is to wake up from a lucid dream in another time. Yeah, I know. Shocking ain’t it?

This approach is too easy. After all, we’ve got a long, long history of crazed inventors with weird clockwork machines or portals that they use to jump in time. Despite movies such as “Somewhere in Time”, I had the feeling that readers would have a hard time buying into the premise. This was a frightening prospect. I didn’t want a machine for logistic reasons and I liked the out-of-body aspect, having some experience with that phenomenon. So, I agonized for days over how to deal with the time jump. Finally, it struck me. My main character, a timid and reclusive female physics student, would develop a theory based on her meta-analysis of date from CERN. As she began to fully comprehend her formulas, she would experience instances of deja vu – sort of a precursor of her learning to travel in time. Finally, under extreme stress, she would make the jump.

It’s yet to be seen if most readers will enjoy this, but my preliminary readers have accepted it without a hiccup. Of course, maybe this is because the jump takes second place to her problems with survival and a certain Clovis culture hunter.

I’d like to do a preliminary cover reveal at this point. For this project, I wanted a softer look than my post-apocalyptic stories used and I found an artist who has done the subject justice. The background in this jpeg is in progress.

As an aside, the MCs have developed an attraction for each other and, though I’ve yet to see how it works out, the book is shaping up as science fiction/pre-historical speculation/romance. I’m a little nervous over the genre crossing, but the story seems to be very compelling, so I’m letting it go where it will.

I hope to have it ready by Christmas, 2015. I’m feeling ambitious, since I just wrote almost 50k words in 15 days.

Namaste,

Eric