Lincoln Cole's Blog, page 21
January 6, 2017
Raven's Peak was picked as a Prime Reading book by Amazon!
Amazon has a new program that only just started in October called Prime Reading. They pick around one-thousand books to feature and make them free for ALL prime members. Raven's Peak is one of those books in the newest batch of Prime Reading books!
So, for anyone who hasn't picked up a copy of Raven's Peak, now would be the perfect time to get one while it is free for prime members. The enrollment period is for three months, and it is by invitation only, so I'm excited to see how well it does!
Raven's Peak
To learn more about prime reading, check it out here.
January 5, 2017
Fragment 1 - Recruited
The water was rust colored as it flowed out of the hand pump. Jayson Coley let the floating sediment settle to the bottom of the Mason jar before taking a sip. It tasted like metal because of the minerals, but at least it was water. He drained the entire jar, even the sediment at the bottom, then refilled it for his compatriot.
With the water still running, he splashed some on his dirt and sweat covered face; his thick hair was cemented to his eyelids, obstructing his vision.
“Drink,” he said, holding the jar out and scanning the surrounding ruins. Dirk Ulry stared at the opaque liquid skeptically.
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Just drink. We haven’t had fresh water in days.”
“Fresh?”
“Cold,” Jayson restated. “It’s underground, so it’s not contaminated. It won’t hurt you.”
“We’re only a few hours outside town. I’ll wait.”
Jayson hesitated. “Who says town will still be there?”
Dirk didn’t have a reply. He threw up his hands and let out a sigh. He took the jar and emptied its contents, cringing. “That’s terrible.”
Jayson moved toward the center of the abandoned base. It was a hastily erected outpost of prefab materials. It had been abandoned months earlier. The thin paint decorating the exterior was fading from sunlight and weather, but he could distinguish enough to make out important details: it was military, a forward operating base belonging to the enemy, the Irdesh.
The war was over. If this destroyed base was as far west as the Irdesh army advanced, there was a chance New Delphi still stood. The Irdesh had used this base, and once the war ended they burnt it down and left.
“Anything worth salvaging?” Jayson asked, slipping the rifle off his shoulder. He used the barrel to dig through rubble, wary of possible traps.
“It’s been scoured. Picked clean.”
“Keep searching. Anything we find could prove useful, especially if we’re stranded in the middle of this desert without food or shelter.”
“I’m not the one with advanced training. Shouldn’t you be using that expensive equipment you stole to find resources?”
Jayson didn’t reply. His training wasn’t a sore topic, he just couldn’t think of a suitable reply to Dirk’s taunt. Clever conversation wasn’t a strong trait for him, which was one of the reasons he'd managed so well at the Silvent Training Facility.
He had to admit a touch of relief that the kid was able to joke at all, having recently been a prisoner of the Irdesh army. When Jayson found Dirk alone in the cell, slowing dying of dehydration and starvation with a severe ear infection, he'd wondered if the kid would ever recover.
Jayson hadn’t finished all of his training at the Silvent Facility. If they knew he’d stolen their gear they wouldn’t be too thrilled. His only hope was that they wouldn't chase him deep into the unknown worlds of Sector Six. He’d kept his background hidden for all the years he served the Union. They couldn’t know about Eldun.
Of course he was kidding himself if he believed that was true. They were training infiltrators and assassins. If they wanted to find him, they would find him. He had spent six years at the Academy. A significant portion of his life. But he left before finishing his training so he wasn’t officially anything.
Except a thief. He took weapons and armor, anything to help him protect his family was fair game when he fled the academy. The only other thing he carried was a tattoo beneath his left arm.
War had broken out on his home world of Eldun. His father was one of the first resistance fighters to die to the Irdesh. Jayson disappeared from the Silvent Academy in Sector Four during the night. He did it without a second thought when he heard the news.
That was eight months ago. The war devastated the northern continent. And then it ended. Now there was nothing left but to pick up the pieces.
“You don’t think Delphi is gone, do you?” Dirk asked. His voice betrayed emotion.
“No,” Jayson said. He had no way of knowing, but the truth didn’t matter. Not yet at least. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
He knelt next to a destroyed building and studied tracks in the dirt. Some were more recent than others, though there was an attempt made to hide them. “Someone’s been here recently.”
“Did your scanners tell you that?” came the sarcastic response.
“Get ready.”
The tone in Jayson’s voice left no room for debate. Dirk latched his helmet without another word, looking nervously at the surrounding ruins.
Dirk was a planetary soldier wearing shoddy armor that had seen more than its fair share of combat. It was standard issue Irdesh armor—Jayson had stolen it from a hapless soldier weeks earlier—designed to withstand moderate projectile impact.
Jayson’s weapons cut through it like butter.
This was fringe fend-for-yourself territory. When they captured Dirk they'd taken his armor. Jayson had no qualms against stealing some back off a corpse. It was the suit with the least number of holes. He just had to hope no lucky marksman would find the hole just below his right shoulder.
Jayson's suit, on the other hand, was valued at just over nine-hundred thousand credits. Enough to buy a small city on Eldun. It was state of the art technology with a fully integrated targeting system and camouflage. Jayson ‘borrowed’ it when he left Silvent.
“How do you know?” Dirk asked. His voice played through Jayson’s speakers now, metallic and tinny. Jayson pressed a button inside his right glove and the viewing screen flashed to life, kicking on a radar imager to map his vicinity and activating the suit's targeting computer.
The software was confusing at first, but with constant use Jayson had grown comfortable with it. He wasn’t reliant on it, though. The training regimen he underwent insisted that soldiers understand how to operate without gear before they were allowed to use it. It never became a crutch.
“Three scavengers to our west. They know we are here, probably setting an ambush,” Jayson replied.
“How the hell can you know that?”
Jayson was silent, not sure how to explain. Dirk would never understand. Jayson waited for his equipment to catch up to his senses. A few seconds passed, and then the environment imager picked up movement. “Three humanoids twenty-one meters south-west,” a voice said mechanically in his ear.
“Stay behind me and don’t speak,” Jayson said, walking toward the exit of the base. Dirk waited a few seconds and followed, clutching a heavy machine gun and nervous.
“Are they Irdesh?”
Jayson didn’t reply. From this distance it was impossible to know for sure, but he had the strong suspicion that they weren't.
“What do we do?” Dirk asked.
“We spring it,” Jayson said. He walked out of the ruined base onto the empty roadway and waited.
Three men jumped from behind rubble with guns drawn and yelling. Two wore cheap armor and the third only ragged clothing. One yelled to drop guns, another wanted them down on the ground, and the third wasn’t capable of forming a coherent statement. Jayson waited patiently for them to establish leadership. Moments passed and they quieted down, glancing at each other in confusion.
“Who’s in charge?” Jayson asked.
“Shut up, we’ll ask the questions,” one replied quickly.
“You, then. You’re making a mistake.”
“Your armor. Hand it over. And your money,” the man replied.
“The war’s over. There’s no reason to fight. We’ll go our way, and you’ll go yours.”
The man’s hands were shaking. These weren’t soldiers. They had probably found the guns, left behind on the bodies of forgotten soldiers. The man looked at his companions for support.
On cue, the highwayman to his right stepped forward, waving his gun wildly.
“On the ground, now!”
Jayson waited until only a meter separated him from the assailant and clicked a button inside his left glove, turning on his cloak. The entire suit rippled as it went invisible, shocking everyone. Jayson moved immediately, shifting alongside the highwayman and out of his line of fire.
The man stood in awe, unsure how to react. A few seconds too late he pulled the trigger, releasing a single shot at the spot Jayson recently vacated. An instant later and the man collapsed, hit in the jaw with the butt end of Jayson’s rifle.
The man hit the ground hard, already unconscious. The other two highwaymen exchanged terrified looks. Then they fired wildly at the air above their partner, screaming. Dirk dove to the side behind rubble, cursing.
Five seconds later and the other two highwaymen were on the ground as well. One would wake up with broken ribs and the other a massive headache. The cloak began to fade and Jayson reappeared.
It would be at least another few seconds before his suit’s batteries were recharged enough to use the cloak again.
Why would they attack someone with armor as impressively advanced as mine? Jayson wondered, but he realized that the sentiment was wrong. His armor was grimy and worn down, caked in the clay of Eldun. It looked no better than Dirk's, and he resolved that it would need a deep cleaning in the next few weeks when he had time.
Dirk stepped out from behind his hiding spot nervously.
"What the hell was that? You disappeared! You never told me you could do that."
Jayson knelt down next to the men, studying their equipment and features.
“You should have shot them,” Dirk said
“They aren’t soldiers,” Jayson replied.
“They wanted to kill us. We should take their gear.”
“These are our countrymen,” Jayson said. Dirk hesitated.
“They did try to kill us,” was his response, less sure this time. “We should at least disarm them and make sure there aren’t more nearby.”
Jayson nodded and started walking a perimeter, letting his radio wave imager continue its scan. He knew there was nothing to find.
Dirk set his helmet on the ground and rifled through their pockets. Jayson gathered their guns; all three were cheap and flimsy. He snapped the weapons in half but kept the clips. “No money,” Dirk said. “But I did find this.”
He handed Jayson a computer chip; Jayson looked it over. “It’s software. Maybe a computer targeting system,” he said. They were common in the Empire, but out here they would be impossible to find. “They must have dug it out of the rubble.”
Dirk nodded, but Jayson wasn’t sure he understood. He gauged the risk and decided to check what was on the chip. If it was here before the scavengers, it could contain information about the war effort. He opened a chip bay on his helmet and snapped the piece into position.
Nothing happened. He was expecting it to load a program, or at least pop up a data file, but there was no change. He was about to remove the chip, when suddenly a female voice spoke into his ear:
“Oh, I finally have room to move and stretch my legs, so to speak. It’s good to be out of that cage.”
“Uh. Hello?”
“Oh sorry. I’m Corrine, at your service.”
“…what?”
“I’m artificial intelligence protocol B-85-29M65: reactive to user commands and adaptive to owner personalities. I’m a prototype.”
“Damn,” Jayson said, clicking the chip hatch and pulling the piece back out. He tossed the chip on the ground and stepped on it. “I was hoping for something useful.”
“…I am useful…” Corrine said in his ear. “You’re a mean user.”
“You’re still here?” Jayson asked. “Uh oh.”
“You downloaded me. Where else am I supposed to go? Daer?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Wrong planet. It’s okay. I forgive you for being mean. Oh, what’s this do?”
Jayson felt his arm shoot up, and suddenly his rifle was aimed directly at Dirk’s face. He saw Dirk’s eyes go wide and forced his arm down. “Oh wow. Very responsive targeting system. Nice!”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?” Dirk asked.
“Not you. The software.”
“This equipment is all top of the line. Awesome. What’s your name?”
“Turn off,” Jayson commanded the suit. “Uninstall recent programs.”
Silence. Nothing happened. “I can hear you, you know.”
“You don’t respond to voice commands?”
“I do. I’m programmed with internal protocols to obey all user commands,” Corinne said. “Oh what’s this, your bank account? Wow, you don’t have much money.”
“If you have to obey, then remove yourself from my computer.”
There was a pause. “No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want to. I like it here. Please let me stay. Please, please, please. I’ll be good, I promise. I can automate the system and optimize the energy output for peak efficiency.”
“You won’t leave willingly, will you?”
There was another pause, and when the voice spoke again it was thick with emotion. “I’m sorry. I will obey. It’s been such a long time since I got to do anything. Ten years. Forgive me. I’m deleting myself as we speak, then I’ll be gone. Forever. Never to return. Suicide. The end…”
Jayson sighed. “You aren’t deleting yourself, are you? You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“Yes. Is it working?”
He thought for a minute. The software could partially control his system, so best not to make it too angry. He would have to be careful, for now, until he better understood what kind of a virus he’d just downloaded. He could find a way to delete it later. “You can stay, for now, but you have to promise not to be obnoxious. If you mess up anything I’ll manually wipe the system. Got it?”
“Yes sir.”
Dirk was waving his arms frantically, trying to get Jayson’s attention. He took his helmet off.
“What the hell?” Dirk asked.
“Don’t ask. Let’s go,” Jayson said, walking west.
January 4, 2017
Winter Solstice Books Free with Amazon Prime Membership!
All of these books are free with Amazon Prime membership!
Raven's Rise is available for pre-order on Amazon!
It is finally up for pre-order and I'm wrapping up the writing and rewriting process now! It'll be heading off to the editor soon and then getting the finishing touches to make it a reality!
I would like to thank everyone for waiting so patiently for news about this one, because it's been a joy to write it and see where the story is going!
The trilogy ends here, but not the series, and I promise more to come from the World on Fire universe in the coming months!
Raven's Peak
January 3, 2017
Book Review: The Diary Of An Immortal (1945-1959)
Today, I will be reviewing The Diary Of An Immortal (1945-1959) by David J. Castello.
About the Book
The Diary of an Immortal (1945-1959)
By David Castello
THE DIARY OF AN IMMORTAL (1945–1959) is the story of twenty-one-year-old U.S. Army combat medic Steven Ronson, a man who escapes the constant inundation and threat of death in World War Two after he discovers an immortality formula designed for Adolf Hitler during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.
Steven begins consuming the immortality formula and, after realizing that aging and death no longer control his life, travels to Manhattan to realize his childhood dream of becoming a jazz saxophonist on 52nd Street. The immortality formula gives him supernatural powers and fantastic musical abilities. His performance catches the attention of a disgraced British missionary and his adopted niece who knew the Buddhist monks in China that have guarded the original formula for thousands of years.
After a series of disturbing and prophetic visions, Steven accepts an invitation from the ex-missionary to journey to Xian. In a mountain monastery outside of the city, Steven discovers the incredible truth about the formula and the monks, and the interstellar origins of Jesus Christ and the human race. But time is running out−the German occultists who helped bring Hitler to power in the 1930s have selected another Aryan messiah, and this time he has the formula. Steven cannot allow the nightmare he experienced in Germany to happen again.
As far as conflicted main characters go, Steven has quickly become one of my favorites. He is struggling with the idea that prolonging one's life is a form of punishment, but he wants to live longer to prolong and regain his happiness after serving his country in WWII.
I loved the way in which the author delved into a difference in culture and belief between buddhist and western cultures, and the way in which this spilled out in the characters development and personality. It made the book much richer and more engaging to see things from such vastly different perspectives while still maintaining a positive and respectful balance.
I will rate this an easy 5-stars as one of the better books I've read in a long time and something I think a lot of people will enjoy. The idea of immortality is handled very well and the character is fascinating and engaging. Being locked into a backdrop of WWII and the time period in which it is portrayed feels like another character in the story and adds even more depth.
Well-done!
About the Author
David J Castello is the Editor-in-Chief and COO for the CCIN network where he has written hundreds of articles on a variety of topics for Nashville.com, Whisky.com, PalmSprings.com, Bullion.com, Traveler.com and more.
On December 7, 2016, The Daily Beast featured his story, The Man Who Tried To Stop Pearl Harbor, for the 75th anniversary of the attack.
The Diary Of An Immortal (1945-1959) is his debut novel.
Born in the Bronx, David J Castello currently resides in Nashville.
January 2, 2017
UAV is available in audiobook format!
UAV is available in audio format starting today! Grab a copy today and let me know what you think!
Audio
Book Review: Perky Girl: The Amazing Life of Bienna Molo by Vera I. Roberts
Today I will be reviewing: Perky Girl: The Amazing Life of Bienna Molo by Vera I. Roberts.
About the Book
Perky Girl: The Amazing Life of Bienna Molo
By Vera I. Roberts
is a chapter book for ages 5 through 14 years old. The book follows the main character, a girl named Bienna, from preschool through college and into old age. Bienna is bright, talented, and always sticking up for doing the right things. Bienna goes through typical struggles, changes and high achievements during elementary school and early high school to emerge as a basketball star, Teen Club President, and overall extremely popular young woman. Her life winds down in sequels 1 and 2, where Bienna attends and graduates college, gets married, and lives out her life on the delightful pages of this most extraordinarily crafted novella. Written by a child for other children, this book has a quality of innocence that can only be described as fascinating. Enter the realm of Perky Girl Bienna Molo, and you will find a most enjoyable world indeed!
ReviewThis is a truly delightful and fast to read chapter book for children. It says it is for ages 5-14 so I gave it to an eight year old relative to try after reading it myself. I thought it was well put together and had some strong pictures, and she actually had a lot of fun reading through it.
The chaptering is clever and I could hardly believe it was written by a little girl. She is very talented and has a bright future ahead of her.
All in all, this is easily a 5-star read, even without it having been from a little girl. Kids will love it, and I'm sure a lot of adults will as well! Well done!
View it at OBC:January 1, 2017
Raven's Peak Featured on BookBub
Raven's Peak was submitted to BookBub through Kindle Press in the UK, and it's going to be featured today in their newsletter! I've had some really good success with BookBub and running advertisements through their self-serve ad platform, but this will only be the second time I've been featured by them!
Both times were in the UK! Talk about a great start to the new year!
You can get it free in the US through Prime Reading, too, and for now it is featured in the UK as part of the 12 days of christmas sale. There has never been a better time to grab a copy and start the series!
Sales and Discounts
December 31, 2016
Book Review: Gravity by James M. Corkill.
Today, I will be reviewing Gravity by James M. Corkill.
About the Book
Gravity: The Alex Cave Series Book 4
By James M. Corkill
Geologist Alex Cave receives an urgent message about an unusual geologic event in Iceland. When he arrives, he sees two video recordings. The first is of large globules of glowing magma rising from a glacier. The second video, taken in the exact same place several days later, shows a deep tunnel into the volcano. He is asked to investigate the strange phenomenon, and what he discovers at the bottom is an alien device capable of being more powerful than a nuclear weapon.
Before he can retrieve the device, it is stolen and activated, but for some reason it cannot be turned off, and threatens to bring down the International Space Station. When it begins changing the orbit of the moon, the extreme tidal affect begins to destroy the shorelines of every continent in the Northern Hemisphere.
Alex must also make a life altering choice when his soul mate threatens to leave him because she thinks he’s just an adventure junkie, and it’s ripping his heart out that he can’t tell her the truth, that he is just trying to save humanity from annihilation.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, he only has six-days to stop a massive emerald asteroid from impacting the planet.
Can Alex and his friends find solutions for these dire situations?
ReviewGravity is an award-winning book (it won the 2016 Indie Book Award in Science Fiction) and it certainly reads like it is something better than many other books out there in the genre released by indie authors. It is clear that there is a lot of backstory in this book that has probably been covered in previous entries into the series, but that doesn't change the fact that it is an excellent read.
Starting with Alex Cave we have an interesting protagonist facing a lot of real world problems. The love of his life wants to leave because he's never home and always just running off to do dangerous things--like heroes do--and it eats him up inside because on the one hand he has a job to do to stop this machine from screwing things up terribly but he knows it is creating separation.
There is a lot of action in this, and it is clear that Corkill has a great grasp of how to tell a story because when those scenes start up it hits the ground running and doesn't stop. I was able to plow through fifty or sixty pages without even realizing it because of how compelling those sections were.
All in all, it felt like this could make a pretty good movie. The characters are well-developed and interesting and the story is put together nicely. I'll give it 4.5-Stars as a positive entry into the series and a good standalone.
About the Author
James M. Corkill is a Veteran, and retired Federal Firefighter from Washington State, USA. He was an electronic technician and studied mechanical engineering in his spare time before eventually becoming a firefighter for 32-years and retiring. He began writing in 1997, and was fortunate to meet the famous horror writer, Hugh B. Cave, who became his mentor. He now lives in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.
View it at OBC:
