My interview on the Read\Write Show is up. Apparently, I said something about Leprechauns. Hopefully, my Leprechaun overlords won’t be too mad. 🙂 Anyway you can listen to the Podcast here.
In other business, I am holding a 99 cent sale of A Bright Power Rising until 1st February. Buy it now before the internet runs out of electrons and the ebooks are all gone. 🙂 If you check your store and it is still displaying the old price email me.
I will be interviewed on the first episode of Ronel van Tonder’s Read\Write podcast on 30th January. I can’t remember what I said, but, hopefully, it was entertaining. As part of the show, I had to record a reading of the first chapter. The experience has given me a healthy respect for voice artists. Though I have been complimented on my effort, I think I’ll stick to writing! I had to give the characters different voices to differentiate their dialogue. They didn’t sound quite like they do in my head. Hackit for example talks with a slur, but I thought it might make him incomprehensible on the recording so I used a gravely voice for him instead.
Anyway, if you are interested in listening to the show, subscribing, or if you want to participate (Ronel is looking for readers as well as writers), then click here. Alternatively, the show’s twitter account is https://twitter.com/readwrite_show.
It is my pleasure to reveal the awesome cover of Ronel van Tonder’s new book.
SYNOPSIS:
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In a world where arrogant leaders force-feed their supplicants with lies and abuse, freedom is an illusion. This terrifying future, that harbours such insidious undertones, turns hope into a darker shade of despair.
But there will be a reckoning.
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16 March 2036: Black Sunday. For 24 hours, solar storms ravage the world. Earth is plunged into darkness. Our way of life is destroyed. But mankind conquers this apocalypse.
Domes are erected to shield a percentage of earth’s population from the devastating radiation. Nothing gets in. And no one gets out. But, in a world where money no longer exists and denizens have everything they need, freedom can become… subjective.
Black Sunday refugees, those that didn’t make it into the domes, survive by digging extensive underground housing networks. These diggers remain paralysed by need, scratching an existence from the sun-scorched savannas above their colonies.
Now, three hundred years later, only a handful of unscrupulous individuals from each half of this discordant world still have knowledge of their opposing sides.
A Utopian Prison
Peppermint lives a shameless life filled to the brim with hedonistic pleasures. And is completely unaware of the bloodbath planned for mankind. When she discovers she’s a psi, with the ability to see into the future or the past, her world collapses. Can Peppermint ever hope to control her powers and regain her freedom? Or is she destined to spend her life as a slave of the elite?
A Ruthless Military Dictatorship
Jinx, a brazen and volatile soldier, is on the hunt for revenge. The search for her mother’s killer lands her in the center of a rival digger colony. But can she withstand the shocking revelation her hunt reveals? Or have her mistakes plunged her into a depraved nightmare she doesn’t have the courage to escape?
And while both women struggle with their new realities, a conspiracy centuries in the making is nearing its climax. Can Peppermint and Jinx remain true to themselves while taking a stand for our most valued human right?
Or is freedom as unattainable as truth?
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COMPILE:QUEST is a feast of intrigue, conspiracies, and suspense – guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat from the first chapter to the last. This dystopian sci-fi novel is neither lacking in imagination nor scope.
Do you have the nerves to follow this terrifying tale to its epic finale?
BUY LINKS:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1vKiQJU
Website LInk: http://bit.ly/13t1fNG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ronel is a brand-spanking new indie author. She loves creating fantastical worlds set in the future, the mythical, and the horrific. Translate: She writes science-fiction, fantasy and horror novels.
Her life story is not particularly fascinating, but her love of technology, PC games and writing is. Beside writing, she spends her time slaying rendered baddies in the form of robots, gangsters and aliens – with any weapon that happens to be at hand.
Ronel has published her first science-fiction book, Compile:Quest. She’s currently hard at work creating the second book in the Corrupted SUN Script trilogy. When she’s not writing, she’s gaming, and when she’s not gaming she’s either sleeping or eating, as these are prerequisites for a continued life on planet Earth.
truth = (trust/ignorance) * propaganda
Website Link:
http://ronelvantonder.co.za
Social Media Links:
http://www.twitter.com/RonelVanTonder
http://www.facebook.com/Ronel.Van.Tonder.Author
http://za.linkedin.com/in/ronelvantonder/
http://www.wattpad.com/user/ronelvantonderza
https://www.google.com/+RonelvantonderCoZa
https://www.goodreads.com/ronelvantonder
1. Don’t be a farmer. Particularly if you are in no way jolly, lovable or quaint. You are likely to die.
2. Be ready to run if monsters attack or heroes start talking about the necessity of bravery.
3. Chosen ones are dangerous to adopt. If a mysterious baby is left on your doorstep, drop it over to your neighbour’s house, knock on the door, and run.
4. Make sure that you use the most advanced farm technology that the anachronisms in your secondary world allow.
5. Don’t waste your money on unicorns. They are lovely to look at but aren’t much good at pulling a plough.
6. Have a good pest management plan in place for rodents, foxes, wolves, and orcs.
7. Your choice of crop should be maize. If your winter store is hit by dragon fire, you can still eat the resulting popcorn.
In The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, two scientists (Redwood & Bensington) discover a ‘food’ which causes any creature that eats it to expand to gigantic proportions. Things go wrong at their experimental farm due to the incompetence of the couple charged with managing it. Exposed to the food, nature runs amok. However, one of the scientists commits a worse sin. Children are exposed to the Boomfood,either through error or deliberate experimentation creating a race of giants that ultimately comes in contact with disastrous results.
This book is at times satirical, whimsical, thrilling and tragic, but the transitions between these moods are sometimes jarring, and the jocularity sometimes undercuts the drama. It can be a little repetitive and drawn out, and the ending may not be to everyone’s tastes. From a modern perspective, it is hard to believe that Redwood would deliberately feed his son the Boomfood but it might have been believable to contemporary audiences given safety standards were less stringent back then.
I didn’t particularly enjoy Mr. Skinner’s lispy accent. It wath a bit thuffbcating at timeth to thtruggle through long paragraphth of ‘im thpeakin’. Fortunately, his dialogue is confined to the early part of the novel.
I was intrigued by the association of enormity with advancement. The idea had a certain quaintness about it. (It was written over a hundred years ago.) It certainly takes bigger and better to an (illogical) extreme. It puts me in mind of dinosaurs for some reason.
If you approach this book without too high expectations, you will find a lot to enjoy here despite its flaws.
Mike Robbins is a journalist turned development worker. This book consists of nine essays covering his experiences in diverse places he has lived in or visited over nearly thirty years–Sudan, Ecuador, Bhutan, Syria, Turkestan, Kyrgystan, and New York. Although there are nine chapters, there aren’t nine countries. Some countries get more than one chapter. I doubt that the book is intended to be a definitive description of the place and time (is such a thing possible?). It is simply his personal experiences, but there lies the strength of the book. As a writer, he has a keen eye for detail. The places he has visited are by now almost certainly changed beyond recognition, and I am thankful for the opportunity to see these places through his eyes.
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