About the Book
“Last stands suck.”
That’s how my first novel, Armageddon Girl, begins. Not exactly “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or any great opening in the world of fiction, granted. But it’s a start.
Armageddon Girl is a science-fiction/alternate-history/superhero book. It fits the maxim that one should write what one knows, since I’ve spent the majority of my life steeping in those genres. The book is in many ways a salute to geek culture and the many fantastic worlds where I spent an inordinate amount of time to escape the oft unpleasant and almost invariably disappointing “real world.” And, hopefully, it will entertain its audience.
The titular character is nerdy college student Christine Dark, who is taken from our world to a parallel Earth where mystery men and superheroes have existed since the early decades of the 20th century. Once there, she meets a number of colorful characters while learning she has the potential to save the world or destroy it.
After finishing the novel, I jumped through the traditional hoops and submitted it for publication. The book didn’t make the grade. Whether it did not merit publication because it simply wasn’t good enough or because either its genre or style were not a good fit for mainstream publishers I do not know. I’m certainly far too invested in the novel to be an impartial judge. In any case, I am going to try to find an audience for it on my own.
The first step to find that audience will be to release the first 1/3 of the book (roughly 40,000 out of slightly under 120,000 words) as a free Kindle download and also available for perusing on my website (once said website is up). I hope the sample will be enough to help readers decide whether or not Armageddon Girl is something they’d be interested in finishing. I’m sure most of them will make their decision long before they get through all 40,000 words. If all goes according to plan – I’m having the book copy-edited by a few trusted friends, having discovered the hard way I cannot proofread my own stuff – the sample chapters will be out sometime during the second half of June, two weeks from now in other words.
Next time I’ll talk about other steps in this process.
That’s how my first novel, Armageddon Girl, begins. Not exactly “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or any great opening in the world of fiction, granted. But it’s a start.
Armageddon Girl is a science-fiction/alternate-history/superhero book. It fits the maxim that one should write what one knows, since I’ve spent the majority of my life steeping in those genres. The book is in many ways a salute to geek culture and the many fantastic worlds where I spent an inordinate amount of time to escape the oft unpleasant and almost invariably disappointing “real world.” And, hopefully, it will entertain its audience.
The titular character is nerdy college student Christine Dark, who is taken from our world to a parallel Earth where mystery men and superheroes have existed since the early decades of the 20th century. Once there, she meets a number of colorful characters while learning she has the potential to save the world or destroy it.
After finishing the novel, I jumped through the traditional hoops and submitted it for publication. The book didn’t make the grade. Whether it did not merit publication because it simply wasn’t good enough or because either its genre or style were not a good fit for mainstream publishers I do not know. I’m certainly far too invested in the novel to be an impartial judge. In any case, I am going to try to find an audience for it on my own.
The first step to find that audience will be to release the first 1/3 of the book (roughly 40,000 out of slightly under 120,000 words) as a free Kindle download and also available for perusing on my website (once said website is up). I hope the sample will be enough to help readers decide whether or not Armageddon Girl is something they’d be interested in finishing. I’m sure most of them will make their decision long before they get through all 40,000 words. If all goes according to plan – I’m having the book copy-edited by a few trusted friends, having discovered the hard way I cannot proofread my own stuff – the sample chapters will be out sometime during the second half of June, two weeks from now in other words.
Next time I’ll talk about other steps in this process.
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C.J. Carella's Casa Del Geek
Writer and game designer C.J. Carella (WitchCraft, The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, etc) muses on various subjects and shares news about ongoing and future projects.
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