Starting a blog.
Hi, I'm Laurence (goes by Laury) Dahners and I write science fiction. I've mostly published on Amazon since I love the Kindle. A lot of readers communicated with me and other readers on the Amazon Author's Forums, but those don't seem to be getting much support any more and there have been a lot of complaints.
So I thought I'd start a blog here on GoodReads as well as responding to "Ask the Author" questions that are posted on this site.
I'm not sure how well this will work for those of you who like to have discussions that don't necessarily involve me? Let me know if you're aware of a way for me to facilitate such discussion that I may not be aware of.
Hope this works for at least some of you who like to express your opinions!
Laury Dahners
So I thought I'd start a blog here on GoodReads as well as responding to "Ask the Author" questions that are posted on this site.
I'm not sure how well this will work for those of you who like to have discussions that don't necessarily involve me? Let me know if you're aware of a way for me to facilitate such discussion that I may not be aware of.
Hope this works for at least some of you who like to express your opinions!
Laury Dahners
Billvon wrote: "Something happened the other day that reminded me of the Donsaii series, specifically Zage always watching nature programs and how every time his parents turned around he was (somehow) watching ano..."Hah! It's great when your kids teach themselves by accident!
Laury
A new book in a new series!I can't post a link on Goodreads but an Amazon search for "Dahners Ryn" will find it.
You can preorder now or wait until it comes out on Jan 26
Here's the blurb
When a guy tries to roofie her, young surgeon Ryn Wilkie is catapulted onto a parallel Earth that’s at the technological level of the late 1800s.
Confronted with a society where women's voices are stifled and medical advancements are non-existent, Ryn's despair turns to determination when she discovers her ability to flip between worlds.
Can she leverage her abilities to advance their technology and challenge those deep-seated gender biases, or will the weight of their traditions prove insurmountable?
And, can she stop the guy who attacked her before he hurts other women?
Laury Dahners
Sounds intriguing! Been waiting on my Dahners fix.At least it's not drugs...
I saw the cover of that on Amazon! Quite a departure from your usual covers. Did you get an artist to do that, or is it (gasp!) AI?
Yeah, I tried a graphic designer. I think he might've used AI but I'm sure he assembled it in photoshop from stock images (some of which might've originally been created with AI).
Do you like it?
It seems a little busy to me, but when it's blown up big it has a lot of interesting stuff to look at.
Laury
I'm looking forward to this new series! I noticed a little while ago That Quicker got a new cover which I liked. Today I did a Kindle search on "Dahners Donsaii" and all of them now have new covers. Just a quick FYI, both Rocket and Comet have the same Rocket cover. While everything else is for Comet, the cover is not.Thank you for the many hours of reading (and re-reading!) pleasure you have provided to me and your other readers!
Laurence wrote: "Do you like it?..."
Not sure yet! I agree it seems really busy.
I liked the simplicity of the old Hyllis series covers - a silhouette with some somewhat-related art outside. The "new" covers are also pretty good, although I found myself trying to reconcile the images with scenes in the book (and there's probably not much correlation since they came after the series started.)
I sort of liked the Donsaii series covers. I liked the simple silhouette with relevant artwork inside the outline, although I was disappointed by the gun as the central focus of the silhouette. It seems like giving a gun to a character is often a crutch to imply power or authority, and the entire series seemed to be about what you could accomplish with your mind/speed/perceptions as opposed to your firepower. And after the first book, firearms made very rare appearances.
The Bonesetter series was a little _too_ simple I thought.
CarolATX wrote: "I'm looking forward to this new series! I noticed a little while ago That Quicker got a new cover which I liked. Today I did a Kindle search on "Dahners Donsaii" and all of them now have new covers..."Carol ATX
Oh, that was an ugly screwup!
Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou, for pointing it out!
Laury Dahners
Billvon wrote: "Laurence wrote: "Do you like it?..."
Not sure yet! I agree it seems really busy.
I liked the simplicity of the old Hyllis series covers - a silhouette with some somewhat-related art outside. The ..."
Yeah, art is in the eye of the beholder. I like simple. Perhaps much simpler than most.
I hope a bunch of people like this new one.
Laury
Hi Doc,Just wanted to post saying I really enjoyed the new book! It looks like you left a lot of options open for the series to continue, so looking forward to seeing what happens to Ryn and Keilly in future installments.
This was reminiscent of Billy Benoit, but much more hopeful and upbeat! (I appreciated what you did with Billy Benoit also. Although that was time travel vs parallel universes, I found it had a similar feel. IMHO).
Thanks for sharing another good story. I look forward to the next!
Best regards,
Brent
Brent wrote: "Hi Doc,Just wanted to post saying I really enjoyed the new book! It looks like you left a lot of options open for the series to continue, so looking forward to seeing what happens to Ryn and Keill..."
Thanks!
So glad you liked it!
LD
Thanks for the new book. It was a fun read. The "life in the day of an ortho resident" segments really brought me back to the days my wife was doing her ortho residency in Massachusetts; I'd hear about it (and occasionally see it) while she was in their program.Although the top part of the cover definitely did NOT look like the Worcester U Mass hospital!
Billvon wrote: "Thanks for the new book. It was a fun read. The "life in the day of an ortho resident" segments really brought me back to the days my wife was doing her ortho residency in Massachusetts; I'd hear a..."Yeah, the cover hospital was too futuristic to fit the story, but requests to the artist failed to convince him to change it. I suspect a lack of stock images.
Laury
Hi, As always I have enjoyed your new book. I have one question. I hope that's ok. The time difference when Ryn is in the other universe; How do you reconcile that the date and time is the same when she crosses over, yet while she is in the other universe very little time passes?
Thanks for all the books and taking the time to respond
Joshua
Joshua wrote: "Hi, As always I have enjoyed your new book. I have one question. I hope that's ok. The time difference when Ryn is in the other universe; How do you reconcile that the date and time is the same wh..."
Joshua,
You can think of it as author's handwavium if you like, OR, as I think of it, when she wefts to Cearth she (by intent) wefts to the same time there as it is back home on Earth. But, when she wefts home, she (by intent even if she doesn't realize it) wefts back to where and WHEN she came from. (using caps for emphasis because I can't use italics or bold or underlines here on Goodreads.)
Laury Dahners
PS But, after all, every fiction book is made completely of author's handwavium, so that might be simplest to understand.
Hi Doc,As an fyi, you can use italics , bold, and underline by including some of the basic html code. I’m not up enough on blog delimiters to list the codes required as they would just translate to the actual effects. A Google search will reveal some of the simpler codes.
I noticed the top of the comment box says “(some html is ok)”, and that the quoted sections wen replying to a comment includes the html code to turn it into italics.
Hope this helps in your creative commenting!
Brent
Brent wrote: "Hi Doc,As an fyi, you can use italics , bold, and underlined by including some of the basic html code. I’m not up enough on blog delimiters to list the codes required as they would just translate ..."
Hah! Well, that's a lot more work than I want to put in to fancy things up.
Laury
I really enjoyed the new book and I hope you are already well into the next...Looking forward to reading whatever you write!
Dana wrote: "I really enjoyed the new book and I hope you are already well into the next...Looking forward to reading whatever you write!"
Thanks Dana!
Working on it alrighty.
Laury
Hi, readers,Amazon/Audible has asked me to beta test a new "Virtual voice" narrator for audiobooks (think, an AI that reads a book to you instead of a human voice actor).
Since I don't listen to audiobooks myself, I'm not a very good judge of how satisfactory a human book narrator is, much less an AI, but I thought I'd let you guys give it a try if you wanted.
So, I set up "The Transmuter's Daughter" to be Virtual Voice narrated and it's now available on Amazon. It's supposed to be on Audible too, but I can't find it there yet.
I suspect you won't like it as much as a human narrator, but it is cheaper ($5.99). You can listen to a free five minute sample right on the Amazon page if you just want to see what AI narration is like.
The thing that bugs me most is that it has annoyingly long pauses after announcing chapters.
Anyway, if you like audiobooks and are interested enough in this new technology to give it a try, I'm hoping you'll send me your thoughts (even if they're brutal). There's not a lot I can do to fix narration errors, but if you send me some I can try.
Laury Dahners
Just from listening to the five minute sample, it seems comparable to human read audiobooks I’ve listened to in the past. I agree that the long pauses are a bit annoying, and I’m not sure how much the single voice would bother people. I tend to listen to audiobooks when I’m driving on long trips by myself - so the single voice doesn’t bother me. I’m usually not after the immersive movie-like experience as much as I’m interested in following the story. Overall I’d say it’s a positive experience, just to offer my two cents.
Brent
Brent wrote: "Just from listening to the five minute sample, it seems comparable to human read audiobooks I’ve listened to in the past. I agree that the long pauses are a bit annoying, and I’m not sure how much ..."Thanks for your thoughts!
Laury Dahners
For those who like Audiobooks:Invasion (an Ell Donsaii story #18) is now out as an audiobook on Amazon and Audible
I hope you like it!
Sorry, they won't let me leave a link, but a search of either of those sites for "Dahners Invasion" will find it
Laury
For those of you who like the low price of Virtual Voice audiobooks The Warp and the Weft (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #1) is available that way on Audible and on Amazon.
I can't put links on Goodreads but a search on Amazon for "Dahners Ryn" will find it.
For those of you who prefer human narration, don't worry, I'm currently auditioning narrators. Unfortunately, it'll be a few months before it comes out that way.
For those of you who like human narrated audio books - Joy and Justice (the time flow stories, book 3) is available as an audiobook on Amazon and Audible. Hope you enjoy it.
Laury Dahners
Is it too soon to ask how the next book is going?
Going well.Have finished and I'm in the throes of editing.
Laury
We the fans and I personally are tickled pink that your creative genius produces our favorite books!
Dana wrote: "Looking forward to it!"Dana, Patrick,
Thanks! Hope it lives up to your expectations!
Laury Dahners
Hi Doc,Thought I would share for everyone anxiously looking forward to the new book. Germ Theory (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #2) is available for preorder on Amazon. To be released on May 28.
Brent
Brent wrote: "Hi Doc,Thought I would share for everyone anxiously looking forward to the new book. Germ Theory (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #2) is available for preorder on Amazon. To be released on May 28.
Brent"
Dang! I thought I posted it to all these Goodreads groups. Thanks, Brent, for noticing and posting it here.
Laury Dahners
Thanks for another good story from The Worlds of Ryan Wilkie! I thought I’d let somebody else comment first, but since no one seems to be jumping in…Spoilers!
An orthopedic surgeon friend of mine from Boulder once told me that orthopedic surgery required a good understanding of mechanical engineering and woodworking. What I read from your stories seem to re-enforce that. Interesting to see what Ryn does with her new abilities.
I had thought from the first book that Ryan’s abilities seem very similar to Daussie’s (Hyliss Series), and wondered if we were going to see her doing similar medical things. Good to see that she is!
Thanks again for another great story! Looking forward to what you do next.
Brent
Brent wrote: "Thanks for another good story from The Worlds of Ryan Wilkie! I thought I’d let somebody else comment first, but since no one seems to be jumping in…Spoilers!
An orthopedic surgeon friend of mine ..."
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Laury
Had a request from a reader for bundles of Ell Donsaii books. I've seen other writers do this but not looked into why readers would want them. She said she likes to be able to search several books at once for something:Personally I sometimes like to skip to different parts and if it’s multiple in one you can search the multiple at once.
For example, say I was re-reading a later Ell book and there was her and Phil joking about the purse story but I didn’t remember it… I could search for purse and jump straight there.
Like I love the scene where their son gets a puppy… or Ell does the demonstration at the gymnastics school. Those have unique words I can search for.
This is not something I do but I thought I'd do one bundle to see if there's interest. You can find it with a search for
The Ell Donsaii Stories Books 1-3
If there's a lot of interest I can do some more.
Laury Dahners
For those of you who like Virtual Voice (AI narrated) audiobooks and their lower price points, Germ Theory (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #2) is now available.
For those who prefer human narration, I'm still planning to get that done. However, Jocelyn Duford isn't done with The Warp and the Weft (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #1) yet, so it'll be a while yet.
Laurence wrote: "If there's a lot of interest I can do some more."It would definitely be useful to me since I occasionally go back and look for something Zage said (for example.) But not worth a lot of effort IMO.
Billvon wrote: "Laurence wrote: "If there's a lot of interest I can do some more."It would definitely be useful to me since I occasionally go back and look for something Zage said (for example.) But not worth a l..."
Thanks for the feedback!
Laury
Laurence wrote: "Had a request from a reader for bundles of Ell Donsaii books. I've seen other writers do this but not looked into why readers would want them. She said she likes to be able to search several books..."Hi Dr. Dahners,
For an author like you, one that has me hooked like a drug addict, I'll preorder the book and pay for it. Since I already own all the Donsaii books, I won't purchase the compilation.
Authors get paid by pages read on Kindle Unlimited, right? I would bet that one of the driving factors for other authors that do compilations is that it is a way to get paid for multiple reads of the same content.
I'm one of those that will read a book over and over. I'll be sure to check the compilation out from KU instead of reading my copy, the next time I reread the entire series.
Some of my favorite scenes:
Bus chase with Olympic athletes
Takedown of terrorist with camera battery
Licensing the pgr chip presentation and bidding war
Getting the first portals to work and launching the rockets
Dancing dates
Building the space stations
Escaping custody
Rescuing the president
and so on
There are too many to list. Suffice it to say, I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the Donsaii saga. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the storylines that contained Zage and the twins. You've done a great job making me care as much about them as I do Ell.
Please don't retire from writing!
Dan, Thanks so much for the feedback. Very helpful to know which parts people enjoy!
Laury Dahners
For those who like audiobooksPortals and Plutonium
The Time Flow Stories, Book 4
is available on Amazon and Audible.
Hope you like it!
Laury Dahners
Warning longer post -I've been reading a bunch of apocalyptic fiction and been considering the various permutations that authors use to create their version of an apocalyptic future. Asimov defined science fiction as "a branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology" and apocalyptic science fiction uses this - a permutation in the world (usually science or technolgy based) that drives society through a state change, taking the characters from their normal life to a dystopian future quickly.
The "quickly" part is central to most apocalyptic fiction. The only apocalyptic fiction I can think of that talks about a slow apocalypse was the William Gibson series starting with "The Peripheral" where a long, drawn out event called the Jackpot significantly reduces world population and causes structural changes to society. But it's poorly defined, and not central to the story. Even Varley's "Slow Apocalypse" actually happens over the course of a few months, where the loss of oil due to a bacterial infection causes collapse of society, as well as earthquakes and fires.
It's been interesting to see the methods various authors use, and how that drives the book. Your use of a flu was interesting in that it removes most of the people, getting the population under some threshold where society can no longer operate an economy, and people regress to Dark Ages conditions. This allows a society to rebuild on top of technology that no longer works but is somewhat intact - allowing Tarc (for example) to find medical centers, get LEDs to work, see examples of mass production and experiment with "ancient technology" that has a chance of working. The Stand by Stephen King was similar, where a disease called "Captain Trips" kills about 90% of the people in the world. The first example I could find of this was "Earth Abides" written in 1949, a story about a man who is bitten by a rattlesnake, and the venom somehow gives him enough immunity to a smallpox-like disease that he survives. When he gets back to Berkeley, everyone else is dead.
Carrington Event type books postulate that a solar flare takes out most satellites and terrestrial power. The event that causes all the trouble is the loss of the grid's transformers; they are hard to build and cannot be rebuilt before society collapses. JK Franks has a series like this, where there is a massive solar flare that takes out the grid. This sort of event allows the author to decide how much technology he leaves working. In Franks' book, for example, power becomes intermittent for about a week, allowing a slower descent into the apocalypse; the main character even gets one final Amazon delivery before everything falls apart. It also allows more focus on local characters since there's no overarching war or other conflict to deal with. Books of this sort often focus on what happens when you take 330 million people and take away the (electrically supported) economy.
I read a series called the Kessler Effect that postulated that Kessler syndrome (that "all the satellites collide and fill low Earth orbit with debris" thing) destroys the Earth's economy. This again allowed the author to keep whatever technology she liked intact while still causing societal collapse. I had a little trouble suspending disbelief with this one; the first thing that happens is that two trains crash, and it's hard to see how losing low Earth satellites would cause that. Then all the airplanes crash, and cars fail etc etc. and again there's not really any explanation as to how that happens.
World War III is a popular one of course but this has the issue that you really have to speak to the war itself, and that can take away from the local story. For military fiction of course it's super popular; I've read at least a dozen books that detail the military side of that story. Local effect can be tweaked by adding EMPs from nuclear bombs to the mix. One Second After by Matherson does a good job with a local view of this, and avoids higher level military issues by saying (at first) that no one knows what happened, and later that it was terrorists.
(BTW I am hoping Tarc comes back at least once more to do a little more experimentation with technology; considering how to convert POTS telephone wiring, or Ethernet cable, into a telegraph or even a teletype would be a fun exercise.)
Billvon wrote: "Warning longer post -I've been reading a bunch of apocalyptic fiction and been considering the various permutations that authors use to create their version of an apocalyptic future. Asimov defin..."
That's a nice summary, thanks.
Laury
Billvon wrote: "The first example I could find of this was "Earth Abides" written in 1949, a story about "I’m impressed with your Earth Abides reference. An older speculative fiction book with an interesting take on the collapse and restart of civilization. A newer book that had a similar feel to me was Lucifer’s Hammer, by Niven and Pournelle. This one proposes a comet strike (Lucifer’s Hammer) shuts down society and follows a group trying to preserve and rebuild as much tech as they can, while also trying to restart a semblance of civilization.
Both older references for younger readers. I think Laury has used influenza as a good story base twice now. With the world just coming out of the Covid pandemic, it is a very believable scenario. It was very telling how much society shut down with just supply chain interruptions!
Great thoughts!
Brent wrote: "A newer book that had a similar feel to me was Lucifer’s Hammer, by Niven and Pournelle."I enjoyed that book, too - although the ending was a lot more hopeful than most other books of that genre. By the end of the book they still have a working nuclear power plant, and the book ends with someone flying over their new town.
I didn't mention several other seminal books to keep the post length down, but it would be hard to make a list without mentioning:
I Am Legend by Matheson, which spun off several other books, three movies (Omega Man, I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth) inspired George Romero and his movies, and almost singlehandedly started the entire zombie invasion genre.
On the Beach by Shute, just about the first "survivors of a nuclear war await the end" trope. Great characterization if not the best science. Alas Babylon was somewhat similar but with a much more hopeful outcome - and with much more detail about how survivors cope and adapt to their new world.
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Miller, a parable about how the end of the world is both inevitable and cyclic.
More recently, The Postman by Brin started off amazingly well - a survivor of an apocalypse (EMP's, nuclear weapons AND a plague) finds a dead mailman and uses his uniform because his clothing has been destroyed. He makes up a badge that says "The Restored US Post Office" and uses that as a ploy to get protection, shelter and food. But soon his ploy creates a belief that there IS a restored US - and because people believe it, it starts to happen. He starts delivering mail for real, and it seemed possible that from this kernel of belief, society could start to regrow itself, based only on the belief that one man has planted. He also finds a group that seems to have kept one AI alive, which is giving advice and guidance to survivors as well - and is another factor which might be recreating society.
But then they meet a bunch of Mad Max type survivors, and their leader turns out to be a genetically engineered supervillian, and there are battles and it turns into . . , pretty much every Marvel movie ending out there. Disappointing.
And finally World War Z was great fun, written by a guy who was sick of all those zombie movies that don't make sense. Brooks' zombies make a lot more sense than Romero's do, and he fleshes out their origin, how they operate and examines what the more practical aspects of a zombie apocalypse would be.
Brent wrote: "With the world just coming out of the Covid pandemic, it is a very believable scenario. "Definitely.
To go back to the Periperal series by Gibson, one of the creepier sections is when two characters from the future discuss our time period (around 2016) and one asks "what was that time like?" The other answers "Well, the warming wasn't too bad yet and they still had oil. And it was right before the first big pandemics." And Gibson wrote it in 2019.
As promised, the human narrated version of The Warp and the Weft - The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie, Book 1
is out on Audible.
It might be a few days before it's available on Amazon.
I love the way Jocelyn does all the different voices and accents - I hope you do too.
Laury Dahners
I keep coming back to the idea of ports moving at high speeds.Let's say you send out a rocket with a port on it (with its pair back on Earth) and you have it fly around the Earth's orbit at about 100 miles per second (which is about the speed of the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, the Parker solar probe.)
At that speed there is a tiny relativistic offset - around 1.4 us per second. So there are two things that could happen.
First, there's a "physics discontinuity" when something passes through the port. On one side, the object is experiencing normal time - and on the other, the object is experiencing a different flow of time. At low differentials there would be no problem, but at high differentials (say 3:1) you might stick your arm through and have biological issues as the tissues on one side used oxygen, glucose etc at 3x the speed the tissues on the other side did. You'd get Doppler shifts as EM signals came through the portal. You explored this a bit with the Time Flow series.
Second option is that there's no discontinuity, but one end of the portal is now at a slightly different time than the other end. While it was in space you wouldn't be able to observe this very well but if you brought the port back and put it next to its pair, now you would have things come out either slightly before or after they went in.
What would this look like?
At smaller time differentials (milliseconds) you could do things like build better airbags and reactive armor; when you register an impact you send a signal back 50ms to fire airbags, or detonate the reactive armor, or take other actions. At that point you also might be able to start making money by things like high frequency trading. Trading has gotten so fast that even a few hundred ms might make it easier to beat the market.
Once you leave the port out there long enough to build up differentials in the seconds you get a lot more interesting options. The obvious test there is to send a signal through the port 3 seconds into the past, then refuse to send the signal if you see it originally. What would happen there? There are several theories around that. What else could you do with a (very limited) time machine like that?
Billvon wrote: "I keep coming back to the idea of ports moving at high speeds.Let's say you send out a rocket with a port on it (with its pair back on Earth) and you have it fly around the Earth's orbit at about..."
Hmmm,
Causality - it's a bitch.
Look out grandad!
Laury Dahners
We have two kids (age 9 and 12) and they, like many kids, love screen time more than anything on the planet. We're fairly strict with it (none on weekdays, a few hours on weekends) but there are times they need to use screens, for homework and for reading. They read enough that we'd need a bigger house if we bought them only paper books, so they get to do homework and read on their tablets.
They push this of course. Graphic novels are OK. Graphic novels with the sound turned on were OK when they were into that (the device will read to you.) Instructional videos on how to install something are generally OK although we monitor that when they're doing it. Sometimes these turn into random Youtube videos which are not OK.
Last week the 9 year old was playing an instructional video on installing a drone app on the tablet. After it was over he started another video. I listened in. It was a video on predator/prey relationships on small islands. Then he started a new video. This was on the pluses and minuses of ranked choice voting. The third video was on fluid dynamics, specifically boundary layer dynamics.
Every time he looked at me I'd be back to what I was doing. I think he thought he was getting away with something. But if those are the videos he's going to end up watching, I'm OK with the deception.