Another Nice Review of How Dark The World Becomes

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 







Here is a link to a nice review of How Dark the World Becomes from Astro Guyz, the science (with a heavy emphasis on astronomy) and science fiction blog by David Dickinson. This review hit last year but for some reason I missed it until just now. I like the fact that he picks up on the book's unique (or at least uncommon) treatment of humans in a multi-species confederation, i.e. we're on the bottom instead of the top.

A Nice Review of "How Dark The World Becomes"

I've been pleased with the reception of How Dark The World Becomes. It's gotten a solid 4.6 stars on Amazon, with only a single three-star review and all the rest fours and fives. It hasn't gotten a lot of published reviews, however, so I was glad to see the SFcrowsnest site in the UK post a nice review last month. Here's a link.

I'm pleased by the review not only because it's positive, but particularly because the reviewer, Kelly Jensen, finds the strengths of the story to lie above all in its characters and world building, which are two of the three parts of the novel I like most and worked hardest on.

For those curious, the third part (for me) was pacing.

On January 9th I also got a short but nice review in  the Philadelphia Weekly Press from Henry Lazarus. "Very exciting," the review claims (in part--it's not that short). I guess he noticed the attention to pacing.

Two New Interviews With Your Favorite Author

Okay, I suppose it's a bit presumptuous to think I am your favorite author, but hope springs eternal.

The interviews were occasioned by the publication of How Dark The World Becomes earlier this year. They were conducted by email a couple weeks ago by Keith Brooke, well-known British science fiction author, editor, and web publisher.  The first interview (link) is in SF Signal online, which I'm sure many of you know of. The second (link) is a follow-up interview which appears in Keith's own Infinity Plus e-zine. I like the result because Keith got me to talk about some things I've never said much about publically, including the "type" of books I like to write. Take a look.

How Dark The World Becomes -- now street-legal

Well, How Dark The World Becomes shipped in early February and is in Barnes & Nobles around the country as well as available through Amazon and directly from Baen Books, my publisher. I'm pretty excited. I already had a reading in Champaign, IL at the Iron Post (a great local jazz bar) and I have another one coming up on April 13 at the Jane Addams Book Store in Champaign, IL at 1:00 PM, as part of the Boneyard Arts Festival. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood. For than matter, I'm doing a book signing at the Champaign Barnes & Noble on Saturday, March 23rd at 1:00 PM as well. No reading, but stop by and say high if you happen to be in east-central Illinois around then. And as a writer friend of mine has said, "I wouldn't be offended if you bought a copy."

Here is the book back-copy:

An Addictive Taste of Freedom

Sasha Naradnyo is a gangster. He's a gangster with heart, sure, but Sasha sticks his neck out for no man. That's how you stay alive in Crack City, a colony stuffed deep into the crust of the otherwise unlivable planet Peezgtaan. Alive only -- because if you're human, you don't prosper, at least not for long. Sasha is a second generation City native. His parents came to this rock figuring to make it big, only to find that they'd been recruited as an indentured labor force for alien overlords known as the Varoki.

Now a pair of rich young Varoki under the care of a beautiful human nanny are fleeing Peezgtaan, and Sasha is recruited to help. He'd prefer to leave the little alien lordlings to their fate, but certain considerations -- such as Sasha's own imminent demise if he remains -- make it beneficial for him to take on the job.

Sasha discovers his simple choice has thrust him in the midst of a political battle that could remake the galactic balance of power and save humanity from slow death by servitude. Now all he has to do is survive and keep his charges alive on a hostile planet undergoing its own revolution.

But it's the galaxy that had better watch out. For now the toughest thug in Crack City has gotten his first taste of read freedom. He likes it, and he wants more.

***

If you've read it, please go on Amazon or Good Reads and review it. Good or bad, call it like you see it.

Here are some handy links.

Baen link to both the physical and e-book.

Amazon link to the physical book.

Amazon link to the Kindle e-book.

Ode To A Dead Hard Drive

Back in September I flew out to Celesticon in San Francisco – a wonderful game convention, by the way. I ran a fun Mars Needs Steam game and generally had a great time. Because I had a lot of work to do I took along my computer. This was very nearly my undoing. In the course of travel my computer got bumped and started acting strangely afterwards, becoming more and more “difficult” until at least it packed it in completely. The problem ended up being a bad hard drive, perhaps damaged by the bump suffered while travelling. Fortunately almost everything was on my most recent backup and in any case everything was recoverable from the disc itself. Nevertheless, I was out of action for the better part of two weeks and the following two months were a cascading story of backed-up projects and piled-up deadlines. I am at last seeing daylight – just in time for the holidays and more travel. We’ll see what that brings me, but for now I’m caught up on the fiction front. The game rules front is an entirely different story.

Here are the major writing projects I’ve packed away in that time – just so you know there’s no moss growing on me. I did a science edit of the next Space 1889 and Beyond novel, originally titled To Ceres By Steam but now renamed Mundus Cerialis and now co-authored by Sharon Bidwell and Andy Frankham-Allen. More on that later. I finished the big rewrite on The Forever Engine for Baen Books and sent that off end of October. In November I got the typesetting markups of How Dark The World Becomes from Baen and turned those around, then got the final typeset manuscript last weekend and sent my corrections back for that this morning. How Dark The World Becomes is now out of my hands and cruising toward its February release.  I know it’s not Space: 1889, but it’s a Pretty Big Deal for me, so please bear with me.

Here’s where things stand right now on How Dark The World Becomes. The novel will appear in trade paperback format in February of 2013, just a couple months from now. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com and they have it at a reduced price, under $10.00. (Its cover price is $14.00.) Here’s the link for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-World-Becomes-Frank-Chadwick/dp/1451638701/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353427642&sr=1-1&keywords=how+dark+the+world+becomes

If you absolutely cannot wait that long (and how could you?) it’s now available as an electronic advanced reading copy (eARC) directly from Baen Books. Here’s the link to their main site and you’ll see How Dark features as one of the new e-releases this month.

http://www.baen.com/

You should check out the Baen site even if you don’t intend to buy the eARC, as  the site has the first seven chapters up as a free reading sample. That should help you decide whether the book is to your taste (although really, how could it not be?)

Space: 1889 And Beyond News

Just recovering from Winter War down in Champaign, IL (almost next door) which was this past weekend. Tom Harris and I ran a very big Mars Needs Steam game -- a little too big, actually. It was exhausting to run, but looked very cool. Tom's camera broke over the weekend but a couple attendees took some pictures and I'll post them along with a report, as soon as I get them.

In the mean time, here are three news items on Space: 1889 and Beyond.

Item One: Big Sale at BooksOnBoard
All of the Untreed Reads titles -- including Space: 1889 & Beyond --are currently on sale at the BooksOnBoard site. Prices are 1/3 off list if you enter the coupon code EZMATH at checkout. The good thing about this sale is the authors still get full royalties, so it's a good way to support their work. If you haven't picked up the line yet, or you've got a friend considering it, here's a good opportunity. This link will take you directly to the Untreed Reads section.

Item Two: A Prince of Mars Coming Soon
A Prince of Mars, the fifth installment in Series One of Space: 1889 & Beyond and the first book in the series authored by Yours Truley, is in final proofreading, so should release soon -- sometime in February. I am very excited.

Item Three: Co-Authorship of The Dark Side of Luna
As you may remember, I'm co-authoring the first book in Series Two of Space: 1889 & Beyond, Conspiracy of Silence. I did some rewriting on J. T. Wilson's draft of Dark Side of Luna, the sixth and final book in Series One.  The rewrite ended up so extensive J.T. suggested I should be brought on board as a co-author, and so that's where we are. Why the extensive rewrite? Two reasons. First, Since I wrote book five and will write book one of Series Two, I probably have the best handle on where the characters are coming from and going to in this volume. Second, there is a lot of military action in this book and I have, it seems, a knack for writing about the military. Who knew?

So if you are anxious to see my fiction (and why wouldn't you be?) you now have three books coming in a row with my hand heavy on the oars.

Item Four: Baen Update
I know I said three items, but this one does not relate to the Untreed Reads series. Baen Books has accepted all my rewrites on How Dark The World Becomes and we're now forging forward at the somewhat more deliberate pace characterized by the traditional publishing world. Probably release date will be spring of 2013. It seems very odd that Conspiracy of Silence, which I haven't yet finished my half of, will be out before How Dark The World Becomes. Odd but understandable. I used to be in the publishing business and I know from first-hand experience how substantial an investment there is behind a new print product launch. If you just crank it out and throw it out the door, you don't stay around very long. Baen actually sent me a nice Powerpoint presentation tracking everything that will go on over the next twelve months with the book. It's different than the game industry, but only in detail, not essence.

So lots of stuff happening. Stay tuned.

From Whence Inspiration?

I am asked sometimes where my ideas come from. I imagine at one time or another every author is asked that. I cannot answer for anyone else, but for me, ideas are like snowflakes in their uniqueness and delicacy. I am afraid sometimes if I try too hard to understand, and thus explain, where they come from, they will stop. Ideas seem to present themselves in massed ranks to some authors, to throw themselves in inexhaustible numbers at them like human wave attacks -- lucky bastards -- but for me ideas are more bashful and so their mating grounds are best left undisturbed, lest they stop coming around altogether.

But I will tell you where I got the idea for How Dark The World Becomes, my upcoming novel from Baen Books. I got it from a song.

I am a Tom Waits fan from way back. I followed his musical career from the mid-70s on. His early music has a strong jazz and blues influence and his lyrics are not simply incredible poetry and story-telling, his melodies can be hauntingly beautiful. Then along came Swordfish Trombones and he frankly lost me. His muse took him off in the direction of what, to me, sounded like discordant and atonal noise, not music. I never begrudged him that, by the way. Artists have to keep growing and changing, have to keep finding something new to say, or they end up just a Las Vegas stage routine, doing the same act over and over forever, because "that's what sells" -- until it doesn't any more. Even back then, I think I understood what I years later read Lois McMaster Bujold put so succinctly and so well: "The author reserves the right to have a better idea." Or in this case, the musician does. If I can't see his vision as clearly as he can, it's not his fault.

So for a number of years I did not follow Waits's newer music, although I remained a dedicated fan of his early work. Then a few years ago a friend and fellow-Waits fan, and one who had stuck with him, played a Waits album called Blood Money in his car CD player. I didn't care for it, for the same reasons I'd drifted away in the first place: harsh, jarring music and a bleak, angry world view. But over the next few days I couldn't get the first song on the album -- Misery Is The River of the World -- out of my head.

It's not that I liked it; it's that it just kept rattling around up there and would not go away. I ended up driving out and finding a copy of the CD, buying it just to listen to that song and so exorcise it. It was as bleak as I remembered, even more so once I listened carefully to it.

Misery's the river of the world.
Misery's the river of the world.
Misery's the river of the world; Everybody row!
Everybody row!

Waits's command of the language is still as powerful as ever, if harnessed to a black dystopian view of a corrupted world.  He may be, as another friend described him, America's greatest living poet. He's a guy who manages to sum up, and then dismiss, the entire ascent of man in two lines:

The higher up the monkey can climb,
The more he shows his tail.

So here's what I started thinking as I listened to this song again and again: if some guy from a hundred years from now heard this song and it resonated with him, with his life experiences, what sort of world would he come from?

The other thing I realized as I listened is that, no matter how bleak and hopeless Waits's music may sound, it is not without hope. If there is no hope, then there is no point to rage -- and there's plenty of rage here. Out of that first question came the idea for this novel, or rather for its protagonist, and out of that second understanding came the theme. Here's the brief setup:

About thirty years in our future, we are contacted by a star-faring civilization, a mostly-peaceful "Star Collective" encompassing all the settled worlds of five intelligent races -- all they have ever encountered. We are invited to join and we do so, becoming the sixth race of the Collective. Fast forward seventy more years and, due to the intellectual property laws of the Collective, we are locked into all the low-tech, low-wage, dead-end grunt jobs. There are a couple areas at which we excel. We have a creative streak unmatched by the other races, and so Human musicians, composers, visual artists, architects, even interior designers are in demand throughout the Collective. For those without a creative streak, or the ability to fake it, Human mercenaries are widely used as well. Finally, we are very, very good at crime.

The title comes from a quotation from Leo Tolstoy, as I believe I mentioned in a previous posting, but it is worth repeating as it captures the theme of the novel completely:

There is something in the human spirit which will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light in the heart of a man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

That is to say, the novel is hopeful in tone, a celebration of our better angels which remain with us-- if we let them -- regardless of how black things appear.


By the way, Blood Money is a remarkable album, one which gets in your head and grows on you over time. The music was written for the 2000 musical stage production of Woyzeck, co-produced by Waits and Robert Wilson and based on the famous incomplete stage play of the same name. written by George Buechner and published posthumously in 1879. Strange to contemplate the play's origin in the middle of the Victorian era, but there you are. The song God's Away on Business from the album appears in the 2005 film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I highly recommend the album -- but not for the faint of heart.