Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 42

Waiting in the Cold

Waiting in the cold,

shifting my priorities,

I missed the trolley.

Audio Junction!

Na zdrave again! We’re toasting with a Starosel Merlot the announcement that we’ve sold Junction‘s audiobook rights to Tantor Audio. I just listened to a Tantor book last week, and I can’t wait to hear a posh British accent reading my book out loud. (Note: other accents are also acceptable)

 

Pre-Order Junction?

Happy Black Friday, everyone!

Boy, it sure would be nice if you could pre-order some book about alien monsters eating people and have it arrive just 16 days late for Christmas. Wait, you mean there IS a way you can make your dreams come true?? Yes, you can preorder Junction right here and get your gift on the 10th of January.

hardcover
paperback
eBook (this one is a bit more complicated; you have to go through the publisher)


And if you’ve already read Junction, why not leave a review? That would be nice.

Birds Fly past Brown Leaves

Birds fly past brown leaves.

Until it snows, it will rain.

Cars growl through puddles.

Junction on Goodreads!

Junction is on Goodreads and Amazon! So if you have a review you’d like to write or a pre-order you’d like to make, go ahead. Follow your heart.

When Japanese nature show host Daisuke Matsumori finds himself on an alien world, he hopes to rekindle his passion for his work. Traveling through a newly-discovered wormhole in the Papuan highlands, he joins biologist Anne Houlihan on Junction, a patchwork planet of competing alien ecosystems. When their exploratory party crashes in the alien wilderness, Daisuke and Anne try to lead bickering soldiers and civilians back to civilization alive. As they trek across one unearthly biome after another and members of the party continue to die, however, Daisuke wonders whether human politics might be more deadly than alien biology. One of his companions might be a murderer. FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Flametree Publishing

Goodreads

Amazon 

Cheers!

Na zdrave! Uh, I mean, kampai! Cheers, toss, za zdorov’ye, and eng deb-lulum!

The ARC of Junction arrived and we’re toasting with Baileys!

Thanks, @flametreepress and @DonDAuria ! The dream is becoming real.

The Buses are Full

The buses are full.

Gray, cold water on my neck.

I put up my hood.

White Clouds against Blue

White clouds against blue

Behind brown leaves, behind glass

Green lilies in pots

The Pursuit

The Pursuit of Common Goals is the political union/philosophical school that represents a species of papionine, related to baboons and geladas (and more distantly to crested mangabeys). Pursuers (as members of the Pursuit are called) are convergently similar to humans, both descended from tree-dwellers that began to walk upright across the savannas of a drying Africa. Like humans, pursuers lost much of their body fur, and have short snouts, enlarged crania, bowl-shaped pelvises, and legs and spines adapted to long-distance running (although they are not identical – pursuer big toes have been reduced to nubs). They have, however, retained their tails, which jut out horizontally from the base of the spine, then dangle. Their skin is purplish-black with pink patches over and under the eyes, on the palms, and on the chest. Fur color is usually gray, and covers the skull, cheeks, neck, shoulders, tail tip, and genitals. Pursuers have flat, grinding teeth, reflecting their ancestral diet of grains and meat, with canines used only for display.

Pursuer males have enlarged canines, as well as ruffs of fur around their necks and wide “sideburn mustaches” that extend from the cheek, usually white or yellow to contrast with the normal gray fur that both sexes bear on the head, shoulders, and upper chest. Their males also bear large, fox-like brushes of fur, usually white with a black tip. This sexual feature is almost always covered by clothing – often a bustle of draped cloth hanging to the knees in the back and just below the crotch in the front. Sleeve-boots extend from the toes to the upper thigh and similar sleeve-gloves extend from the fingers to the upper arm. Shoulders and upper chest are kept bare. Females are smaller than males, with less fur, wider shoulders and hips, and warty folds around the patches of bare skin on their chests (which are usually covered by clothing).

The Pursuit is generally friendly to the United Nations, and swaps medical and agricultural technology for raw materials and exotic foods from Earth. There is also a growing mutual demand for films and other cultural products.

~

This species is from Fellow Tetrapod

The Persimmon Sun

The persimmon sun

on the chilly panel blocks

Fog pools around us