Richard Phillips's Blog, page 9

Free Review Copy of The Kasari Nexus Available

I’m excited to share that The Kasari Nexus is available for people to download advance copies from NetGalley through 4/5. Below is a link and the NetGalley widget that will automatically approve you to get a review copy of your own, once you’ve signed up for NetGalley.

Kasari Nexus, The

https://www.netgalley.com/widget/open?widget_id=83457_81285_145505858756ba6e9b84fff_9781503933538_US

NetGalley is a secure digital platform that allows us to share digital review copies with NetGalley’s community of over 175,000 professional readers — reviewers, bloggers, media professionals, booksellers, librarians, and educators. It has grown steadily in size and influence, as many reviewers have migrated from paperback to digital ARCs. NetGalley is one tool we use to increase our digital outreach to important reviewers and tastemakers and drive customers to leave reviews for a book on your Amazon detail page on its on-sale date.

Please leave a review on Amazon.com and Goodreads once you’ve finished reading, but please make sure to include the disclaimer “I received a free, advance copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review” to the end of your text.

PDF copies reviewers download will expire for reviewers 55 days after a user downloads it. Kindle review copies that are downloaded by reviewers do not expire, but can’t be downloaded for free after the publication date.

How you use NetGalley

NetGalley accounts are free for anyone to create. The reviewer must have and be logged in to a NetGalley account to request and download titles from the site. If are new to NetGalley, you can visit NetGalley Reading How-To page for more information.

The Kasari Nexus Full Cover

The full book cover of my latest novel has now been finalized.

The Kasari Nexus Cover

Here is the final cover for my latest Rho Agenda Novel.

The Kasari Nexus

Chapter One of The Altreian Enigma: Book Two of The Rho Agenda Assimilation

Here is the draft of the first chapter of Book Two of The Rho Agenda Assimilation.

The Altreian Enigma

Book Two of The Rho Agenda Assimilation

(ROUGH DRAFT)

By

Richard Phillips

Copyright © 2015 by Richard Phillips

Chapter 1

As the bitter winter wind howls through the night, attempting to prevent me from entering the cavern housing the Altar of the Gods, its chill pulls my breath forth in smoky puffs that I barely notice.  I crawl through the opening, light a torch that I take from its wall sconce, and allow my feet to carry me through the passage that leads to the Altar.  There my footsteps halt. 

The beautiful golden orb that graces the end of the Incan Sun Staff captures my gaze. Its intricately carved rings and complex arrangement of gears and shafts that form its inner workings hold me in a spell that I am unable to break. With my gaze locked to the symbols that cry out to be rearranged, a slow boiling fear floods my soul.  Even as I stand alone, frozen in terror, in thrall to this wonder of wonders that rests atop the altar, I feel my hands move toward the orb of their own volition.

If the touch of the staff sends a mystic current through my body, the feel of the golden metal beneath my fingertips shifts my perspective and causes the cavern to shrink around me until I can see myself.  It is as if I have become the cavern and everything within it. The thing in my head screams in a way that I have only heard in my dreams and my body shakes like the boughs of the trees out in that howling wind. Yet my hands continue to stroke the orb.

Now they twist it, first the bottom ring, aligning the symbols with new counterparts on the silver staff, before skipping up several rings to repeat the process. And as my hands turn ring after ring in a seemingly random order, the intricate engravings grab the torchlight so that its flames crawl across the golden surface and into the orb’s interior.

Shaking uncontrollably, my hands nevertheless turn the next to last ring until all the symbols feel wrongfully right, so much of the torchlight now absorbed by the orb that the cavern grows dark around me. 

My right hand now wraps the last of the circular rings in a death grip, as my left hand clutches the silver staff; the muscles in my hands and arms bulge and slither beneath my skin as they war with each other for control.  Cold, more deadly than ice, slides through my veins and into my chest, cramping my lungs on its way to my heart.  Then with a final convulsion, my fingers twitch, imparting to the topmost ring one final shift and, as the golden orb pulses with power, a doorway slides open at my feet.

It summons me forward, down the steps that lead into a smaller chamber illuminated with a soft, magenta glow. As I step into the room, the knowledge that this place was not built by the hands of men is absolute. And at its center, a translucent pedestal rises from the floor as if extracted from the floor at the end of a glassblower’s pipe, molded into the form of a lone chair.

The recognition of this place floods into me from the being who shares my mind. I stand inside a small alien craft, sent here millennia ago with but a single purpose…to monitor humanity’s advancement and, should humans ever come to pose a threat to its makers, to cleanse the Earth of all life.

Jack Gregory opened his eyes. He didn’t dream anymore. Not like normal people. Instead he wandered through these strange lucid dreams that now dominated his sleep.

This one had recurred nightly since Jack, Janet, and their eight-year-old son Robby had accompanied Mark and Heather Smythe on their desperate flight from Peru to the secret Smythe facility in the remote mountains of New Zealand. Jack rolled onto his left side, placing his right arm over Janet’s naked body. She sighed softly and snuggled into him without waking. That was good. It was bad enough that his dreams were robbing him of sleep without inflicting that on his wife.

In this dream he had once again stood in the altar cavern beneath the Bolivian Kalasasaya Temple. And it had looked exactly as it had the last time Jack stood inside it, except for the fact that he stood alone in the torch-lit chamber instead of locked in a death match with the neo-Nazi albino, Dolf Gruenberg. Jack should have felt comforted by the memory of the explosion that had collapsed the cavern, burying the Incan Sun Staff and the altar atop which it had been mounted. But he knew that no amount of crashing rock could destroy the Altreian artifact or the craft that rested beneath it. And being buried beneath tons of rock wouldn’t prevent the thing from accomplishing its purpose should humanity’s actions trigger it.

Jack had no doubt about why Khal Teth, the banished Altreian mind that had attached itself to Jack’s, was amping up the threatening nature of these dreams. Humanity’s lifeline was growing short and there was only one way to prevent the coming catastrophe.

Unfortunately, that would require giving up everything he loved. As he pulled Janet’s body more tightly against his own, Jack gritted his teeth. Even though she and his friends would doubtless think he’d lost his mind, he could no longer delay the inevitable.

No matter how much he hated this, it was time to honor the bargain he’d made.

Signed Rho Agenda Series Books

For those of you who have requested signed books, I have a low cost solution. Instead of me buying the books, signing them and shrink wrapping them and then sending them to you (with more expensive shipping costs), I will send you a free set of signed bookplates (decorative stickers) that you can then stick inside the covers of the books you purchase directly from Amazon. I will be happy to make them out to whoever you like and mail them to you free of any charge (including internationally).  All I need is for you to send me an email at richard.phillips@secondship.net with your mailing address and the name of the person you would like them made out to.

This is my way of saying thank you to my fans who enable me to do what I now do for a living … write.

Best,

Richard

Free Signed Bookplates

If you are interested in getting a set of free signed book-plates (signed decorative stickers) for my novels, I will be glad to provide those for free. All you need to do is send a request with your mailing address to my email account ( richard.phillips@secondship.net ) and I will sign and mail them to you at no charge. If you would like it to be personalized to someone, just let me know to who.

It is my way of saying Thank You to all of you fans who make what I do possible.

Richard

I’m In Austin for Advanced Screening of Casual Encounters 9-12-15

Hi all. I’m in Austin (9-12-15) for the 7:15 pm showing tonight of the advanced screening of Casual Encounters, my son-in-law’s and daughter’s movie that will be released at the start of the year. Austin native Brooklyn Decker stars along with David Arquette and Taran Killam from Saturday Night Live.

This is a small venue at the iPic theater at The Domain but some seats are still available. If you would like to attend, I recommend you book online at iPic Theater.

I will be happy to sign any books for fans who attend the showing (although you’ll have to bring your copy).

Best,

Richard

The Kasari Nexus In Production

My publisher has now settled on the title for Book One of The Rho Agenda Assimilation series … THE KASARI NEXUS. Having just completed the developmental edit, the book now goes into the production process which has several steps:

Copy Edit
Cover Design
Audio Book Production ( This is a lengthy process and I hope to get MacLeod Andrews who’s done all my books ).
Proofread of hard copy format
Printing
Publication ( no date yet … hoping for January )

I’m taking a long weekend and then plan on starting to storyboard Book Two of The Rho Agenda Assimilation.

Banned in China, Part Deux

So my latest novel, DEAD SHIFT, continues to be banned in China … the only one of my books to have been banished there. Ah well … Jack Gregory has apparently ticked off Chinese sensibility, even in fiction. To be fair, Jack does have a way of doing that.

DEAD SHIFT

Signed Book Plates

Originally posted on Richard Phillips Rho Agenda Blog:

I have had many people ask about the availability of signed books. Other than at book signings, this presents a variety of problems. The first is the additional cost to fans … not only the cost of the books but the additional cost of my repackaging and shipping the books to readers. One of my UK fans came up with a great solution which involved me signing book plates (think small cards that say something like From The Library Of … followed by my signature), which are then placed or taped inside the cover of the book the reader has already purchased.

If you are interested in getting a set of signed book-plates for my novels, I will be glad to provide those for free. All you need to do is send a request to my email account ( richard.phillips@secondship.net ) and I will sign and mail them to you…

View original 43 more words