Coming soon to Kindle Unlimited, the two newest novels in The Library Saga: The Algorithmic Draft and The Unwritten Fallout. Both of these novels are available to pre-order now, or you can wait until Monday when they’ll be available. All four are exclusive to KU, and will be followed by at least six to eight more novels, depending on where the characters take me. They will be in paperback and audiobook too.
Every story has a beginning… but what if the beginning was the flaw?
When the Library fractures under the weight of algorithmic forces, the companions are thrust into a gauntlet of corrupted genres — sitcoms, fairy tales, mysteries, pulp war novels, and even the library’s own foundations. Each shard hunt becomes a parody of pop culture, but also a mirror of the heroes themselves: the Princess trapped in glass crowns, the Marine saluted by mannequins, the Detective’s notebook writing without her, the Sitcom Dad haunted by laugh tracks.
As the Arcane Archivist’s echo grows stronger, the group realizes the shards aren’t just fragments of story — they’re pieces of the library’s origin. The final keystone lies in the Founder’s Wing, where the library began on a faultline of narrative convergence. To save what remains, they must tear out the very heart of the library, knowing the victory may destroy it.
The Algorithmic Draft is twice as long as its predecessor, escalating from playful parody to existential stakes. It closes with a Pyrrhic triumph: the shards recovered, but the library collapsing, and the whisper of the Archivist promising, “This is only the first draft.”
The Unwritten Fallout is Book 4 of The Library Saga, a genre-bending ensemble novel that bridges the collapse of canon with the rise of chaos. It sets the stage for the character spotlight novellas to come — where myth, bureaucracy, and metafiction collide.
While the library’s stories are breaking loose, a genre corruption spills into the town, and reality begins to rewrite itself. Council hearings glitch into game shows. Newsrooms dissolve into narrative loops. And the Library’s surviving staff — Alexandria, Bonnie, Dewey, and a cast of reshelved fragments — must navigate a world where every headline is suspect and every character arc is up for grabs.
This will be the first blog post I’ve done in almost three years! Back in 2016 and 2017, I was burned out from writing eleven novels in four years, so I got stuck on two that I had planned on writing after I had finished with The End Times Saga and Perilous Times series. I promoted my novels a little after that, then it got to barely, and by the end of 2022, I was over the whole idea, or so I thought. I also kind of let my website go for a while, so I have a lot of adding to it to do and freshening it up wherever pictures and links are broken.
So, one the novels I had planned on in 2017, was a sequel (or full series) to The Long Journey, where the next novel has the main character and his family dealing with the Civil War and its fallout. So, I began doing research, but due to the MC being Cherokee, I discovered the Cherokee nation had its own mini-civil war during the main war, so I got discouraged and stopped because I wasn’t sure how to weave the story correctly. At the moment, that’s really far on the backburner and I will revisit it, eventually.
The other novel that I started writing after getting stuck with the other one, is a what-if story about a Gen X man (write what you know, right? lol), this time I have it briefly set during those fun days of 2020. He’s watching YouTube videos about Gen X nostalgia and wishing he could be thirteen again so he could change some things in his life that he had always regretted. I had about four chapters done when I pretty much lost the plot, not really knowing where to go with the plotline since I myself really couldn’t remember things from 87-92 due to my general apathy towards junior & senior high. The novel started meandering and then I just hit a brick wall creatively. So, I walked away from it and writing in general, thinking I was done with sixteen novels to my name.
Then, I lost my job this last July. I’ve been having difficulty even getting interviews/jobs thanks to companies relying solely on checking resumes with ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and using video interviews (one way Zoom/Teams interviews are so stupid when I live in the same city as the company and also kind of intimidating for an introvert like myself), so I began wondering what I should do to keep busy in the meantime. I decided to see if I could restart my freelance proofreading WFH business that I stopped in 2013 due to my dads’ health failing and mom needing a lot of help, which eventually required almost my full attention for a couple years, so I abandoned the idea. I realized as I was trying to figure out what to do that I’m so far behind on what freelancing has turned into thanks to AI and tech in general, that it’s pretty overwhelming.
But, also thanks to AI and updated technology, I realized I could make every one of my novels into audiobooks, so that’s what I’ve done. For The End Times Saga, only the first four novels were audiobooks because it was easy and affordable to get voice actors before Amazon bought Audible and changed the rules, so that’s why there was only four audiobooks, instead of seven, for that series. Now, because those four are exclusive, I could only make the next three novels exclusive to Amazon/Audible, as it wouldn’t make sense to have the last three available everywhere, but not the first four. Anyway, using Amazon’s Virtual Voice, I now have the entire End Times Saga available as audiobooks in just a couple days as I listened to make sure the AI pronounced things carefully, although flatter than I would’ve liked (I’m not sure I could do any better). However, I plan on ending being exclusive to only Amazon/Audible so I can upload the entire series to sell on other platforms, including my own.
For other novels that I could add to my store on Gumroad: the three in the Perilous Times series The Long Journey, The Usurper, Don’t Mess With Earth, and The New Frontier Series, I used Amazon’s virtual voice for Audible, then used the virtual voices from Google Play books to create those so I could use Voices by In Audio for distribution to other platforms, but that takes time. With Google Play, I could have separate voices, which I only did for the female characters in the novels for the Perilous Times. Unfortunately, the female characters almost all sound the same to me, like Siri or Alexa, but with accents. Samples are available to listen to on Youtube or on the Gumroad product pages.
Now the what-if novel. I decided to restart it. I was still not sure what to do with where I was stuck in chapter 4 and my outline not being nearly as laid out as I thought. so I went to ChatGPT and gave it some prompts. It returned with clearer ideas than what I originally had, along with an outline that was laid out better than what I did. It also helped with giving me the slang of the period that I didn’t remember due to me being a nerd who spoke “proper” American English, and other sensory details and pop culture references that I didn’t remember or know either, like hanging out at the mall, since it was too far from my house.
So, now I have clearer vision of where I want my novel to go story wise, which is called, Second Chances. So, look out for that in the coming weeks or months, depending on how long I’m down the rabbit hole of Gen X pop culture videos.
Want to win copies of two of my science fiction/alternate history/time travel novels? I’m giving away 15 coupons for each novel to download them from Audible, and the giveaway will be open until May 2, 2014. All you have to do is click on the rafflecopter widget at the bottom of the post to enter.
In the 2150s, a scientist discovers time is actually fluid; past, present, and future all exist at the same time. What he doesn’t know, is if the current timeline can change when something is changed in the past. The U.S. government wants him to find out. The theme being to make right what once went wrong.
Narrated by actor Michael C. Gwynne, who had voiceovers in films such as Jaws…..
In this combination of the novels New Frontier and Final Frontier, this is the story of alternate timelines, partial political thriller, and time travel, in which a United States President is kept from being assassinated, but there are other unintended consequences as a result.
In 1976, Ronald Reagan becomes President of the United States, declares the U.S. will plant a base on the moon by 1980 and a base on Mars by 1989. The Iranian Hostage Crisis occurs, but Reagan issues a stronger response, but as a result, Osama bin Laden rises to power earlier than he normally would have in the prime timeline.
Meanwhile, The Soviet Union decides to build a starship that will travel to the stars because they want to one-up the United States, but as is usually the case, nothing seems to go right.
In the early 1990s the U.S. and the Russians join forces, which leads the joint venture to the other side of the galaxy by means of a wormhole. When they attempt to return to Earth, they find themselves in the past, where they try to fix certain events in the past while they wait for history in general to catch up to where they launched the joint mission to begin with. Things go wrong as events do not play out as planned and numerous cases of unintended consequences result from the multiple attempts at fixing the timeline.
First off, Happy New Year 2013 to everyone and a big thank you to all those out there who bought/downloaded a copy of one of my novels. I thought I’d blog again this year about how many sales/free downloads my novels had this year. My marketing/promoting consisted mostly of using Twitter, Facebook groups/pages, joining up with a couple Christian author groups to Tweet, and going to message boards. I did some giveaways for ebooks, like on Librarything, and sent some personal acquaintances/relatives paperback copies of Times of Trouble (which actually did help some with visibility), along with a little more than a handful of review copies to a couple of book bloggers, two of which actually gave me a review. I also tried blog interviews early in the year, along with the occasional paid post about my books, but overall, I’d say 99% of my sales would probably be from word-of-mouth. My sales on Barnes and Noble increased by a lot this year, up to 40-50 ebooks sold a month compared to 2 or 3 a month in 2011. My number one seller is the United States, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, and then everyone else, mostly Western/Northern Europe, but I did manage to get an Amazon Kindle sale from Japan, which was a borrow for Beyond the New Frontier, and 2 sales on Diesel from South Africa. This is without the updated numbers from Smashwords concerning Apple, Sony, or Diesel from December.
Here’s the numbers for each book in order of publication:
Out of Time Kindle(ASIN B006GDO3BC): 1107 Barnes & Noble Nook: 37 Kobo, which includes WH Smith, Angus & Robertson, and Chapters Indigo: 42 Apple: 51 Sony: 4 Smashwords: 2 paid, 64 free
Paperback (ISBN:1453896961) : 8
Shattered Earth
Kindle(ASIN B006M2U3O8) – 8 sales, unpublished it, but will bring it back this year Nook: 48 Kobo: 20 Apple: 52 Smashwords: 1 sale, 61 free
Paperback (probably only available on Amazon, since I retired it on Createspace): 3
Dust Storm (western short story) – plagued by Smashwords’ meatgrinder, so it wasn’t published to Apple or Sony until later in the year. Sold on Kobo once I uploaded there myself. Kindle(ASIN B006KH7H4E): 9 Nook: 7 Kobo: 1 Apple: 1 Sony: 1 Smashwords: 2 paid, 12 free
Times of Trial Kindle(ASIN B00824G5UA): 99 Nook: 120 Kobo: 3 Apple: 0
Sony (for some reason, not available on Sony): 0 Smashwords: 31 free
Paperback(ISBN-10 147745327X): 5
Final Frontier – published in October Kindle(ASIN B009ORP5U0): 26 Nook: 22 Kobo: 0 Apple: 0 Sony: 0 Smashwords: 0
Paperback (ISBN-10: 1481192191): 0
Beyond the New Frontier – combo of New & Final Frontier, available on Amazon to borrow for free or buy for $3.99 Kindle paid(ASIN B009NVH76M): 28, KDP Select: 724, Borrows: 2
Paperback (ISBN-10: 1480185590): 1
The total equals 1694 free and 2858 paid sales. My goal for 2013 is to double the paid sales without having to rely on free giveaways as much. I’m also working on a prequel to Times of Trouble, most likely called “Times of Turmoil.” I also re-designed a whole new author website on weebly. I was using webs.com, but it was way too clunky, but Weebly seems to be pretty user-friendly. Please check it out http://cliffball-indieauthor.weebly.com when you have time (waiting for domain name transfer, so it night re-direct back to webs.com). Now, I just have to figure out how to transfer my domain name over to it.
For Sample Sunday, here is a part of Chapter 7 of Final Frontier.
A couple of hours went by before anything started happening. As McMurphy and Elders were hiding behind some boxes on the floor where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have shot Kennedy from, both men heard a door open, with two men walking through. The man who came in first was definitely Oswald, and the second man behind him was shoving a pistol in Oswald’s back, and was carrying something large that was shaped like a rifle of some sort.
Oswald was saying, “Why me?”
“As I keep saying, we need someone who we can blame the assassination easily on. You’ve got a record of siding with the Soviets, so why not you? The federal government will blindly swallow this story hook, line, and sinker, while the Mob will get off scot-free,”
“Ruby, you know you won’t get away with this, don’t you?” Oswald nervously responded.
“Oh, stop with the bravado. We’ve got the Dallas PD in our back pocket and even some of the Secret Service, at least the ones who work for old Lyndon. This should be a piece ‘o cake. All I need from you are some fingerprints, you’ll go to a movie theater, and that’s where the police officers in our employ will pick you up. You take the fall, the Mob gets an enemy out of the way, and everyone’s happy,”
“That’s a bunch of bull. What makes you think I won’t rat you out?”
“You do and you’ll meet your maker with a couple of .38 slugs. Got it?” Ruby waved the handgun in Oswald’s face, who was clearly frightened.
“Yeah, sure. How long do we gotta wait?”
Ruby looked at his watch, and said, “Not very long. Old Lyndon had the motorcade diverted here, so it should be passing through Dealey Plaza momentarily. Once I begin shooting, you slip out of here, and go to that movie theater. No need to make it more complicated than that. Alright?” Oswald indicated he understood.
McMurphy whispered to Elders, “That’s Jack Ruby,”
“Who?”
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know about what happened in the original timeline. Mr. Ruby there attacked Oswald at the police station after the assassination with that handgun he’s carrying. Oswald died and so did Ruby after the police took care of him. Ruby is a member of the Mob that the Kennedy’s were at odds with. Nobody really knew the whole story behind the assassination. Rumors indicated that Vice President Johnson had the Mob take Kennedy out, which is why the motorcade was diverted here and why Johnson managed to convince Kennedy to make a campaign stop in Dallas to begin with. It was supposed to be neatly wrapped up so Johnson could gain power without having to run for election. Everyone would feel sorry about Kennedy not getting a second term, so Johnson would ride the wave of sympathy to get his first full term without really trying,”
“That must’ve required a massive amount of planning. It’s a wonder that it was pulled off without anyone blowing the whistle,”
“Potential whistleblowers were taken care of, either through being paid off or through death. That was old school south Texas politics for Johnson. Now that won’t happen since we’re here. Now we wait.”
The crowd gathered around the route that President Kennedy’s motorcade was taking. Ruby set-up the sniper rifle and then told Oswald to leave, but before anything happened, McMurphy and Elders stepped out of the shadows, and McMurphy said, “Hold it right there, neither of you move,”
“What? Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here!” exclaimed a surprised Ruby.
“I give up,” Oswald responded with both hands in the air.
“Step away from the rifle, Mr. Ruby. We don’t want anyone to get hurt,”
Ruby responded by turning around, facing the window, and then ran towards it. He crashed through it, fell, and died instantly when he hit the ground. The men could hear members of the crowd reacting to seeing a man falling out of the building. Then the three heard the roar of the engines from the cars in the motorcade, which indicated they were getting the President out of there as fast as they could. McMurphy let loose a string of cuss words before saying, “Great, just great. Now we’ll have cops and Secret Service swarming this place.”
Or… Beyond the New Frontier, which is currently exclusive to Amazon is either free to borrow now for Prime Members or buy for $4.99. Also available in paperback currently on Amazon.
For the rest of November, five of my ebooks will be $.99 on Amazon, B&N, and Kobo (which includes WH Smith and Angus & Robertson). Amazon updates either instantly or takes all day, UK Nook will update later, and Kobo’s new prices will be reflected tomorrow. All but Final Frontier is available in paperback.
Here’s the ones on sale:
Out of Time, my time travel novel, is currently $.99 anyway, but I’m thinking of raising the price to $2.99 at the end of the year, which includes Apple & Sony.
Currently is rated 4 stars with 8 reviews on Amazon.
In the 2150’s, a scientist discovers time is actually fluid; past, present, and future all exist at the same time. What he doesn’t know, is if the current timeline can change when something is changed in the past. The US government wants him to find out. The theme being to make right what once went wrong.
New Frontier, Book 1 in my New Frontier Series. Normally $3.99
In this alternate history novel, what-if Ronald Reagan became President in 1976 instead and the Space Race turned out differently? He pledges to support NASA with the moon landings, and declares that a moon base would be established by 1979, followed by a Mars Base by 1989. The Soviets decide to up the ante by building something bigger.
The rest of Earth follows the original timeline, so terrorism rears its ugly head, which will forever change American politics. Iran and its attempt at taking hostages is taken care of in 1979, but a new threat emerges because of it. The new President of the United States has to pursue these enemies of the U.S. to secure America’s future. We follow America’s progress from Moon to Mars, along with the Teacher in Space Program, to an eventual starship mission out of the solar system, which will continue in book two.
Final Frontier is book 2 in my New Frontier series, and a new release. Normally $2.99
In this sequel to New Frontier, the USS Lewis & Clark begin their search for the Soviet starship Yuri Gagarin. They find the wormhole that the Gagarin went through twelve years earlier and decide to go through it. On the other side, the crew of the Lewis & Clark find a solar system that used to be populated by aliens known as Pictorians, but they’re no longer there. Neither is the crew of the Gagarin. So, the Lewis & Clark is flown back through the wormhole to report back to Earth.
Unfortunately, something is wrong, they find themselves 30 years in the past. As they struggle to wait for their future to catch up, the crew of the Lewis & Clark make changes to certain events, but they cause unintended consequences; including making another alien species mad enough to forbid humans from traveling beyond the Sol System. Find out what happens in this conclusion of the New Frontier series.
Beyond the New Frontier, which is currently exclusive to Amazon, will be FREE the day after Thanksgiving, but is either free to borrow now for Prime Members or buy for $4.99. Also available in paperback currently on Amazon.
Times of Trouble, the 1st novel in my End Times Saga. Normally $3.99, 6 reviews 4 stars.
Thirty years in the future, the U.S. government has turned into a tyranny as the EPA and TSA grow with ever more power.
Brian, the main character, tells his story from first person point of view. His work with the FBI involves mostly cyber terrorism and actual cases of potential real world terrorism. Eventually, his wife gives birth to their third child, who has Down’s Syndrome, which does not please the U.S. Health Administration because there are rules and regulations set-up in cases like these to prevent “genetic freaks” as they like to call them, from sucking up a lot of Health Admin money. Because the Atwoods are born again Christians, they never considered aborting the baby, so now the Health people have to take him away to deal with the problem later.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service decides to recruit Brian to be the personal agent of the President of the United States, David Collins, due to his great work stopping a terrorist plot that would’ve involved Offutt Air Force Base. Brian’s faith is tested every day as he deals with a man that has no morals from what Brian can see, and is tested even more when his wife finds out that she’s dying from a fast growing form of breast cancer. Trouble in the rest of the world pits the U.S. against Israel as that country attempts to defend itself from attack.
When the re-election of Collins doesn’t turn out the way he wanted it, he and his people declare the election nullified because of supposed “irregularities” with the ballots. Collins claims that the new President-elect may take the seat sometime in the middle of next year, if everything looks to be sorted out. Collins purges his staff of what he considers unloyal people, including Brian. At the same time, Brian loses his wife, but regains the son he thought he had lost.
Brian moves back to his family home in Nebraska, where we follow what happens as the country slowly falls apart. Events play out as Brian and his family sees the End Times approach.
Times of Trial, the second novel in my End Times Saga. Normally $3.99
The Tyler’s have a church that is dying in Tucson, Arizona. Even though the church is dying, they take care of the remaining senior members, including the ones in nursing homes and in hospice. The other family in the church, the White’s, head to Wyoming to live in a community that was originally started by Doomsday Preppers back in the early 2000′s so they can attempt to escape the increasing persecution of Christians and are helped by a Navajo Nation Sheriff who became a Christian as a young man.
Greg Tyler, who is the oldest son, dreams about a girl, but has no idea who she is. During this time, he’s kicked out of high school after getting into a fight with the bully who has constantly tortured him throughout their school years. Laura Hall lives in Phoenix and is her high school’s Senior Class Treasurer. She dreams about a boy, but hasn’t the slightest idea who he is, and neither one can see the faces of the one they’re dreaming about. Eventually, the two come across each other in the Camp that President Collins orders Christians into, but only after Greg rescues Laura from some bullies who collaborate with the Camp Commander. They attempt to get to know each other before the Rapture.
President Collins orders the activation of Camps across the country that will house believers who he thinks are a threat to his rule. His patron, Michael Collins, manipulates events in the Middle East to stir up trouble between Iran and Israel. The Tyler’s end up with others in a camp in Arizona, while the White’s and the community they live in gets attacked by government troops. Evans continues to manipulate events as the Rapture takes the Christians, and he gains ultimate power.
When I started writing and publishing my works, I never thought I would publish more than maybe two novels. Well, now I’m up to eight novels, and setting to write my ninth. My goal this year was to write and publish at least two novels, and I did that, with three. I also thought I’d never write sequels or a series of novels in the same universe, but I have. I’m sure some wonder if I’m going to have any sequels to some of my older novels, and I’ve been asked, but right now, I don’t know. Here’s an update on my current novels and future works.
Out of Time It took me a long time to get this novel right, but I finally did. Anyway, I thought about writing a sequel, but at the moment, I have no idea where I’d want my time travelers to go. I did start to write something about Janet Erickson, the captain of the Einstein, but I got stuck after a page or two of writing. I have an idea of what I might want, but I’m not sure if it’s a novel length story, a novella, or a short story. If I get around to writing it out, I’ll see.
Don’t Mess With Earth – I actually sent a short story version of this in the mid-1990’s to the Writer’s of the Future contest, but got nowhere with it. I wrote a full length novel, but this is one of my stories that people either like or dislike, and I re-wrote it into a version of Shattered Earth, changing the beginning, and making the novel longer by over 25k words. I have been asked by 1 or 2 readers if I’m going to tell the story of the Ragnor after Earth destroys them for the most part, but I really don’t know. I wrote a page a year or so ago, but haven’t returned to it. We’ll see.
The Usurper – No sequel. I wrote this mostly to push buttons, and if you’ve seen some of the reviews I’ve received on Amazon, you’ll know that I did just that.
New Frontier & Final Frontier – Final Frontier is the sequel to New Frontier, so I’m not sure about another sequel. I might one day go back to Final Frontier to include a chapter or two near the end, because I glossed over what happened to the Soviet Starship Gagarin in one of the alternate timelines, but if I say more than that, it would be spoiling the story for those that haven’t read it.
My End Times Series of novels – The next novel I’m going to write is about the story of Michael Evans, starting with his grandfather, who I’ll have palling around with Hitler in WW2. The Evans’ will try to manipulate events from behind the scenes, get England to balk at giving Israel as much land as they were going to give them after the war, finance the enemies of Israel, start to interfere in American society, and have appearances by the grandparents of the main characters from Times of Trouble. How Evans finds David Collins and the Iranian, and how they manipulate events before the Tribulation. I think I’ll begin writing it in November, taking time to do a lot of research while I’m doing it, and possibly getting it finished in early 2013. I was also thinking of at least one young adult novel in the series, even though Times of Trial is kind of leaning towards that, since Greg and Laura are two of the main characters, and they’re teens, but I’ll just have to see how that works out.
As for short stories, I’ve come up with a few of those, but a lot of them are so different in genre, I don’t know if I should put those in a short story collection, but I will think about it. Next year, I want to publish at least three more novels, if possible.
Final Frontier is the sequel to the novel I published last year, New Frontier. Currently available for $2.99 on Kindle(ASIN: B009ORP5U0), Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo. Also, Times of Trouble is currently going for $.99 on Kindle (ASIN:B0075CNFFI) (but is available in paperback and on other e-book platforms), and Out of Time, my time travel novel is always $.99 (on all ebook platforms). Update: all of my ebooks, but Beyond the New Frontier, are $.99 for the month on Kindle.
What it’s about:
In this sequel to New Frontier, the USS Lewis & Clark begin their search for the Soviet starship Yuri Gagarin. They find the wormhole that the Gagarin went through twelve years earlier and decide to go through it. On the other side, the crew of the Lewis & Clark find a solar system that used to be populated by aliens known as Pictorians, but they’re no longer there. Neither is the crew of the Gagarin. So, the Lewis & Clark is flown back through the wormhole to report back to Earth.
Unfortunately, something is wrong, they find themselves 30 years in the past. As they struggle to wait for their future to catch up, the crew of the Lewis & Clark make changes to certain events, but they cause unintended consequences; including making another alien species mad enough to forbid humans from traveling beyond the Sol System. Find out what happens in this conclusion of the New Frontier series.
Also available is the combined versions of both novels, which is available to borrow for free for Amazon Prime Memebers, called Beyond the New Frontier (ASIN: B009NVH76M) and is currently free until the end of Thursday, the 11th of October. Tops out at 84,779 words.
Now that it’s June, here are my sales numbers for the year so far, from regular sales to when one of my novels was in KDP Select to free giveaways. These are all from mostly just promoting online on Twitter, Facebook, and a bunch of message boards. The novels are listed in order of publication, from 2008 to 2012.
I’m posting this because some writers get discouraged, but you just have to keep at it. While I don’t have the money or much in the way of resources to push my novels to greater visibility, I think I’m doing pretty well. I took The Usurper out of KDP Select because my sales were actually worse overall, and I had a grand total of 3 borrows, so I didn’t think that program was worth it. Stay tuned for the sequel to New Frontier, plus a short story anthology based on minor characters in the two End Times novels, and a novel about Michael Evans, the man-behind-the-scenes in both End Times novels.
I’m currently working on the last couple of chapters of my new speculative fiction novel, which I call New Frontier. I’m expecting to be done sometime between the end of December to the end of January, barring unforseen circumstances of course.
The story originally started off with a prologue with the whole speech given by President Kennedy at Rice University in 1962 about all of our technological advances and how we’ve managed to come so far in such a short amount of time. I decided to cut that down, to the one paragraph everyone remembers him saying, which is:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency…”
I’m not going to reveal any spoilers from this particular sub-plot, because I plan on having a 2nd book in this to make a series to explain why what happens in the prologue happens the way it does.
After this, I begin with a what-if Ronald Reagan became President in 1976 instead of 1980? Well, he has the US continue with the Moon landings and eventually building a Base on the moon, and even declaring that we’ll have people on Mars before 1989.
The Soviets decide to one-up the Americans, and decide to build a starship that would leave the solar system. Their attitude is basically, why do we need to piddle around the Sol System when there’s other solar systems out there to be conquered. The 2nd book will explore what happens to the Soviet ship, which, of course, will be after the Americans eventually send their own ship in the 2nd novel.
There is a storyline that follows the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis, but this time it ends in a completely different fashion. I have Osama bin Laden as a young apprentice to Khomeini, and he goes off on his own to form Al Qaeda (this is alternate history after all). In his first foray into terrorism, he makes a big statement that affects American politics in a big way. The US hunts him down and captures him (I was actually writing that when Osama was killed by the Seals, which de-railed my writing of this novel for a couple of weeks). He is taken care of in a way most ancient by people he hates.
In the meantime, we now have a base on the moon, a space station in orbit, and I re-write what happens with the Teacher in Space program by having Christa McAuliffe travel to the Moon to teach from there for a week. This time, the Challenger doesn’t blow up due to engineers discovering a problem, even though she’s not on that shuttle, and she gets to the Moon.
The US announces the team that will travel to Mars to establish a base there, and the Soviets use this opportunity to ask that two of their cosmonauts could go. The new POTUS tells the Soviet Premier no, as long as Eastern Europe was under the boot of communism. Weeks later, the Berlin Wall falls as does the Iron Curtain, and the US and USSR agree to let two cosmonauts go to Mars.
Terrorism raises its ugly head once again when the space station is attacked by remnants of Al Qaeda, and it also occurs to the Mars mission….
Near the end of the novel, colonists land on Mars, including Christa McAuliffe and her family. It’s the beginning of human colonization of the rest of the solar system.
At the end, the US and Russia announce a joint mission to explore the rest of the galaxy, and part of the mission is to find the missing Soviet starship, which will lead us back to what’s happening in the prologue when part of their mission goes awry.
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