John E. Stith's Blog, page 5
October 31, 2018
Pushback Published by ReAnimus Press
Published in multiple formats by ReAnimus Press on November 1, 2018
Praise:
"Some people dream about going to their high-school reunion in their underwear. Dave Barlow goes to his and finds himself worse than naked--unrecognized. A lovely, twisty thriller that moves like a roller coaster--ratcheting up the suspense, then plunging into crisis, or doing a swift loop-the-loop through the flashbacks of PTSD before the climb starts again." -- Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling author of the OUTLANDER series.
"Stith...successfully expands his horizons with this unsettling Hitchcockian thriller.... Judicious use of humor provides some relief from the dark plot line. Fans of Daniel Palmer-esque intelligent suspense will be pleased." -- Publishers Weekly
“PUSHBACK is a fast-paced crime novel guaranteed to keep you reading into the night. Accelerating through enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, PUSHBACK ramps up to a heart-pounding ending that will leave you breathless. Stith, known for his award-winning science fiction, really brings it home in his debut mystery. Bring on the next installment!” -– Chris Goff, author of RED SKY.
"... meticulously well-plotted and insightful novel of psychological suspense that plumbs the deepest depths of the human heart and soul." -- Mysterious Book Report
"John Stith's PUSHBACK is a fast-paced ride that gives new definition to the term 'bad week.' Besieged and belittled by a barrage of attacks, Dave Barlow's brutal trek through purgatory is a taut, tense thriller. Dave Barlow's self-effacing commentary--and John Stith's smooth prose--will have you gobbling up the pages faster than Barlow zooms all over the Pikes Peak region trying to figure out where his life went so terribly, terribly wrong." -- Mark Stevens, author of The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Lake of Fire and The Melancholy Howl
"John Stith long ago showed himself master of the science fiction genre. With PUSHBACK, he proves he’s also a terrific mystery novelist. PUSHBACK is dynamite! Stith takes you on a gripping ride of twists and turns while the tension tightens like a noose, right up to the thrilling conclusion. A sympathetic and enterprising hero and a stop-at-nothing villain will make you just as eager as Dave Barlow to figure out who wants to ruin him. And who wants him dead." -- Barbara Nickless, bestselling author of the Sydney Parnell mystery series.
Synopsis:
At his ten-year high-school reunion, Colorado investment counselor Dave Barlow, who suffers from PTSD, finds he doesn't know one person there, and soon realizes he must outwit an unknown antagonist before he winds up dead.
More info here.
PUSHBACK Published by ReAnimus Press
Published in multiple formats by ReAnimus Press on November 1, 2018
Praise:
"Some people dream about going to their high-school reunion in their underwear. Dave Barlow goes to his and finds himself worse than naked--unrecognized. A lovely, twisty thriller that moves like a roller coaster--ratcheting up the suspense, then plunging into crisis, or doing a swift loop-the-loop through the flashbacks of PTSD before the climb starts again." -- Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling author of the OUTLANDER series.
"Stith...successfully expands his horizons with this unsettling Hitchcockian thriller.... Judicious use of humor provides some relief from the dark plot line. Fans of Daniel Palmer-esque intelligent suspense will be pleased." -- Publishers Weekly
“PUSHBACK is a fast-paced crime novel guaranteed to keep you reading into the night. Accelerating through enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, PUSHBACK ramps up to a heart-pounding ending that will leave you breathless. Stith, known for his award-winning science fiction, really brings it home in his debut mystery. Bring on the next installment!” -– Chris Goff, author of RED SKY.
"... meticulously well-plotted and insightful novel of psychological suspense that plumbs the deepest depths of the human heart and soul." -- Mysterious Book Report
"John Stith's PUSHBACK is a fast-paced ride that gives new definition to the term 'bad week.' Besieged and belittled by a barrage of attacks, Dave Barlow's brutal trek through purgatory is a taut, tense thriller. Dave Barlow's self-effacing commentary--and John Stith's smooth prose--will have you gobbling up the pages faster than Barlow zooms all over the Pikes Peak region trying to figure out where his life went so terribly, terribly wrong." -- Mark Stevens, author of The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Lake of Fire and The Melancholy Howl
"John Stith long ago showed himself master of the science fiction genre. With PUSHBACK, he proves he’s also a terrific mystery novelist. PUSHBACK is dynamite! Stith takes you on a gripping ride of twists and turns while the tension tightens like a noose, right up to the thrilling conclusion. A sympathetic and enterprising hero and a stop-at-nothing villain will make you just as eager as Dave Barlow to figure out who wants to ruin him. And who wants him dead." -- Barbara Nickless, bestselling author of the Sydney Parnell mystery series.
Synopsis:
At his ten-year high-school reunion, Colorado investment counselor Dave Barlow, who suffers from PTSD, finds he doesn't know one person there, and soon realizes he must outwit an unknown antagonist before he winds up dead.
More info here.
October 24, 2018
Crime Thriller Hound article posted
John has guest post at Crime Thriller Hound on Science Fiction vs Mysteries.
Mystery and science fiction are cousins, not strangers. To answer the question about how I wrote a mystery after publishing several SF novels, I'm going to focus on some of their shared characteristics and a few of the ways in which they differ.
But first I need to mention that the transition wasn't as great as it could be in my case because most of my SF novels already include mystery-suspense elements. They feature a private eye on a distant planet, an amnesia/murder tale aboard a space station, an undercover operative going back home again and finding an old flame in trouble, a starship hijacking, and an investigative reporter wondering why one news team is often the first to reach a new disaster.
One of the ways the fields differ is in emphasis. Mysteries typically spend more word-count on characters and clues. SF tends to focus more time on technology, ideas, and setting. But both can transport you to a whole new place. Raymond Chandler's mysteries take Southern California of the 40s and make you feel you grew up there and can't wait to get back. Jack Finney's SF makes Manhattan feel like a wonderful place to live even if you're a small-town lover.
Both genres have to introduce you to the story world, but explaining modern day Colorado, as in Pushback, requires fewer strokes than building a newly discovered frontier world on the outer fringes of a galactic federation.
If you make a Venn diagram of SF and mystery it might look like a graphic of Jupiter and Earth, overlapping enough to give a cat's eye of commonality, but SF can explore possible futures with thought experiments, provide cautionary tales, speculate about where trends might take us, or just veer way off into unmapped territory. In that big overlapping area, though, most mystery and SF rely on plain old storytelling, compelling characters, catharsis, and showing how good can triumph over evil.
Both genres are ultimately about people and how they operate under stress. SF looks for new environments and societal changes and technological revolutions to put new stresses on people, but people are pretty much the way they've been for tens of thousands of years. We get jealous, we lust for power, we want to be loved. And those factors of course drive characters in mysteries, too.
All fiction takes a character and puts him or her to the test and our hero either wins and we feel a sense of catharsis, or our hero loses in a way that illuminates truths about people, and about that one person's character.
In mysteries, as in SF, we take familiar characters and put them into the most stressful times in their lives. Both have to be convincing. People have to act like people do, or have a good reason. Made up stuff, whether in mystery or SF, needs to have the air of verisimilitude.
And both genres build on what we know. If our goal is to show our characters' lives twisted by an alien invasion, or show how confrontation with a technologically advanced civilization might play out, we still often summon or exaggerate images and experiences from past wars, or, for example, the arrival of Europeans in America.
One big area of difference is that many SF stories could not even exist without the SF element. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is about a retarded man who undergoes experimental therapy to increase his intelligence, which then elevates him to the point where he can see the flaw in the experiment. But aside from the SF aspect, it's still a story about a person who faces a huge obstacle and works toward a desirable goal, only to find out some things can remain beyond his grasp. So, underneath it all, that story is hardly unique to SF.
Compartmentalization. Both genres have plenty of subgenres. SF includes time travel, alternate history, military, dystopian futures, etc. Mystery features PIs, amateur sleuths, police procedurals, political thrillers, legal thrillers, and more.
Clues. In both fields, the writer stages a series of clues about where the story is leading and where it will end. Clues can be about character motivations and actions, but in SF clues can also point to understanding how the world works. And SF adds the sense of wonder.
Stranger Things lends itself to illustrating the contrast. We have a small town with a divorced sheriff, some interesting kids who are just discovering who they are, and on the edge of town is a secretive government installation. When one of the kids goes missing, the story could have gone multiple directions. In one story it could have explored local politics and a powerful city leader with a long-hidden dark side.
In the upside-down story, it focuses on secret experiments, a monster, and superpowers. But both stories illuminate the relationships between the kids and adults and put the characters to the test. Both make you wonder what's going on here. What's going to happen next? What pattern I'm not seeing yet explains these events? How will our heroes get out of this mess?
In some books, the difference between mystery and SF can ride a fine line. Several of L. P. Davies' novels could be either mystery or SF until the last chapter. Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel has a futuristic setting, but it's essentially a detective story featuring an odd-couple pair of cops, where one is a robot.
So the short answer about how one moves from SF to mystery is that while some of the trappings and settings look a lot different, at the core of both genres are characters we can care about. Or, as Buckaroo Banzai says, no matter where you go, there you are.
John E Stith's PUSHBACK is out Nov 1st 2018.
His other novels are SCAPESCOPE, MEMORY BLANK, DEATH TOLLS, and DEEP QUARRY.
June 5, 2018
MANHATTAN TRANSFER Audiobook Released
The audiobook for MANHATTAN TRANSFER is now for sale on Audible, Amazon, Tantor Media, and elsewhere. The narrator is Kevin T. Collins.
“This is the kind of story that brought me to SF. Put a little fun back into your life and read Manhattan Transfer.” — Science Fiction Chronicle
Aliens just kidnapped Manhattan. They picked the wrong city to mess with.
April 24, 2018
REDSHIFT RENDEZVOUS Audiobook Released
The audiobook for REDSHIFT RENDEZVOUS is now for sale on Audible, Amazon, Tantor Media, and elsewhere. The Tantor Media site says the audiobook of MANHATTAN TRANSFER is scheduled for June 5th. The narrator for both is .
March 4, 2018
Interviewed for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers
Mark Stevens, author of the Allison Coil mystery series, interviewed John for a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers podcast and it's up now.
http://rmfw.org/rocky-mountain-writer-118/
And check out Mark's great books!
February 25, 2018
PUSHBACK, new mystery-suspense novel, sold to ReAnimus Press
John E. Stith's PUSHBACK, a new mystery-suspense novel set in Colorado, has sold to ReAnimus Press.
Audiobook sales to Tantor Media
Tantor Media has just bought audiobook rights to REDSHIFT RENDEZVOUS and MANHATTAN TRANSFER.
New Representation
John E. Stith is now represented by agent Sara Megibow at kt literary.
July 10, 2017
Interviewed by PewPewCat.com
Here's an interview with PewPewCat.com http://pewpewcat.com/denver-comic-con-2017-interview-author-john-e-stith/
Text of the interview:
Denver Comic Con 2017 Interview with Author John E Stith
Denver Comic Con 2017 has come and gone, but there was so many different and interesting things to see and do. There were also several amazing authors who were in attendance at Denver Comic Con as well. One in particular happens to be John E Stith, a science fiction author. He is the author behind Reckoning Infinity and Redshift Rendezvous and has been nominated for several awards. Take a look at my Denver Comic Con 2017 Interview with Author John E Stith.
PewPewCat: What was your inspiration to becoming an author?
John E Stith: The love of reading is what got me started. Occasionally I would finish reading a wonderful book and wish I could do that for others.
PPC: What are your current favorite things to read/watch for inspiration?
Stith: I don’t really have anything in that category. If I want inspiration, I basically have to sit down at the keyboard and record my thoughts as I search for a topic to write next. I like the mind-mapping program Xmind for putting order to the ideas I come up with, categorizing them, and extending the ones that interest me the most. As Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
PPC: What kind of impact/inspiration do you hope your readers obtain by reading your stories?
Stith: First and foremost I hope they are entertained. I hope to appeal to all the senses, including the sense of wonder and the sense of humor. I hope to give them characters to care about, and technology to anticipate, and food for thought about how people work and what the road ahead might entail.
PPC: What are you hopes for the genre of Science Fiction in the future?
Stith: I hope we keep building on the shoulders of those who have gone before and those who are embarking now. I hope SF continues its growth and evolution as we continue to try to guess what we’re going to be when we grow up.
PPC: What advice would you give to an aspiring author who doesn’t know where to start?
Stith: Read voraciously and write every day. Write something, anything, to get the writing muscles stronger. Find work you really enjoy and ask yourself what makes it work. How is it structured? What makes you enjoy it? Find your own issues that excite you, characters you want to spend time with, emotional issues that are important to you, and new worlds you’d like to explore. And then explore them all.
