A Semi-Not-Horribly-Regular Newsletter #7
In this issue: Sunshine and Shadow: Exodus, or the Second Transit, Updates on Out of Due Season, Something a Little Different, New Posts, An Indie Author Program Review Selection (a review).
Coming July 12, 2022: Sunshine and Shadow: Exodus, or the Second Transit
The Journey will continue in 106 days! After Elijah Jonas managed to get to a new world, things didn’t go as planned. Find out how Sunshine and Shadow: Exodus, or The Second Transit.
Book 2 in the Transit series – Preorder for $0.99 Now
On a cold and rainy September afternoon, Father Elijah Jonas convinced his followers to abandon the purgatory that was Earth and travel on faith to a new world. Now, forty years after the most important event in human history no one left on Earth witnessed, the descendants of those who followed Elijah have built a remarkable life. From farms to stables to the mundane of the day, life has been fruitful. But, like many things in life and society, what lies under the surface threatens the future.
As natural disasters and wild dangers claim the human residents on the planet Tishbe, relationships strain, families are torn apart and allegiances are tested. For Miriam Michaels, granddaughter of the eldest elder and man responsible for the societal mores and traditions the community follows, the future is found in the unknown. For young Micah, a scribe-in-training, the present is a confusing array of love and hate with few answers to the myriad of questions which emerge daily. And for Miriam’s cousin, Joel, an engineer determined to follow in the footsteps of his mentors, it is the past which holds answers.
For all of them, the journey from their normal life into the unknown will test the strength and resolve of the community and strain relationships, threatening to destroy the grand vision Father Elijah and his followers had for the future of mankind. In sunshine they were born and in shadow they will pass, but not until they can build the life each of them imagine on a planet far from paradise.
Updates on Out of Due Season: The First Transit
Out of Due Season: The First Transit has been out for a few weeks, and so far the response from reviewers has been positive. Reviews are … READ MORE
A Now for Something a Little Different
Beneath Gehenna
One world preys on trauma. Another creates it. Choose wisely.
When an alert goes out to the paying members of the disaster bunker known as New Eden, recently wealthy yet highly dysfunctional Geoffrey and Portia Thompson grab their survival bag, let the staff of their palatial Plymouth Commonwealth estate go, and make the short journey to the rest of their lives. Joining them are one thousand additional souls, destined to repopulate the Earth and rebuild their once great world. Shortly after arriving and securing the hatch for good, communications to the outside world are cut off.
Everyone is convinced this is the end, to include Portia who has vowed to divorce Geoffrey and destroy everything he holds dear. With rations implemented and nerves shot, Geoffrey and his new friends volunteer to travel to the surface to gather information and see if they can leave New Eden. When they exit the shelter, however, they find a vastly different world.
Gone is their reality, and in its place their worst nightmare. With no choice but to escape, they make a run back to New Eden where yet another nightmare awaits…beneath Gehenna.
Coming April 19, 2022
New Posts
- Give Your Character a Test
- There are a lot of ways to get inside your character’s head: give that character a test, perform some transactional writing with them, or even pull out the all the Gestalt stops and use an empty chair to have a conversation.
- On Clouds and Emotion
- Clouds and emotion go together when you think about it. We have been trained since birth to recognize signs in the sky, whether we did so deliberately or not.
- A Poem: Bully Trigger
- Bully Trigger was written in early 2021 as a way to deal with a specific problem that has been bothering me since I was in the 5th or 6th grade. I never liked bullies (who does), and for many of us, that reason is personal. We were bullied ourselves or we saw people get bullied sometimes far too often.
- The Only Books I’ve Read More than Twice
- That was “more than twice” because there are quite a few books I’ve read two times and for two reasons: 1) I couldn’t quite “get it” the first time or 2) I was deep in the jungles of Honduras and had nothing else to read.
An Indie Author Program Review Selection
Songbird Ascension
Technology moves at an unbelievable pace, and if the last twenty years had been written into a novel forty years ago, someone would claim they couldn’t suspend their disbelief long enough to get through it. A book like Songbird Ascension by Khira Allen is not one of those types of books. Its near future is written in a such a way that I could easily see it come to pass, and for that, I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity to both read this novel and reflect on the themes presented.
The concept behind the novel is collective intelligence, something we’ve seen before. However, in the way Allen lays it out here, it is something that may indeed come to pass (if it hasn’t already). Michael Carr, a student who suffers from a terminal illness, gets involved in a human-machine interface research project. The more he merges with streams of data, the more addicted he becomes to the experience.
As a character, Mikey grows exponentially throughout the many times he is connected in ways that are both innovative and philosophical. The novel explores concepts of humanity, the philosophies of Nietzsche, and the possibilities of a not-so-unimaginable future. That future glimpse then merges with our present reality, improving life for some, de-evolving society for others.
Written from two points of view–Mikey through the first half and his mother in the second–the novel takes us along swiftly in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. The quality of the writing was unexpected and made me feel as if I were inside the mind of the characters, not detached. In a way, Songbird Ascension was a demonstration of Mikey’s own experiences as he merges with the thoughts of others during his experience. We, too, merge with the characters, and if we allow ourselves to suspend that disbelief–an easy task given our present technological advancement and zest for neurological adaptation–we can feel what Mikey feels. We can also feel what Emma, his mother, feels as she experiences a life devoid of this consciousness.
I appreciated the writing, the philosophical tone, and the all-too-possible future weaved throughout the novel. It is at once a page-turner, an epic poem, a piece of art, and a warning infused with hope. This is one of those novels that doesn’t imagine a future that’s removed from reality, rather one that takes our present and with just the right touch shows us the future that may indeed come to pass. But don’t just read Songbird Ascension. Reflect on it and what it means to be human.
Read the Interview with Khira Allen!
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That does it for this issue of the newsletter. I’ll see you back here next time!
— Ben
