Tag Archives: Science Fiction

New release from Saxon Andrew

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The Unknown Enemy Will Kill You (The Death Prophecies Book 3) Kindle Edition

by Saxon Andrew (Author)

From the bestselling Science Fiction Author, Saxon Andrew, comes the third book in the Death Prophecies Series, The Unknown Enemy Will Kill You. The Bosrean and Earth Alliance has finally gained control over the threats in the Milky Way and they are now turning their attention to the aggressive civilizations on the other side of the black hole in the center of the galaxy. Poul has warned them that the civilization that originally built the Prophet’s Eyes was under attack from an advanced aggressive species.
Earth is not going to wait to see if that species will send warships though the black hole to attack the Alliance. A pilot has been chosen and he will be the first to attempt to pass through the singularity. If he fails, then more will be selected to follow him. Fleet Leader Steve Connor expects the worst but hopes for the best. He is also frightened by the defenses the Darkness Civilization has built around the black hole in the Andromeda Galaxy. The evidence is clear that something came through their black hole and attacked the dangerous civilization that rules Andromeda. Whatever it was, it clearly frightened them to build the massive defenses around the event horizon.
The Darkness must be scouted and that task falls to the Prophet’s Eyes and his sister, Stella. What they find will turn Earth’s attention away from its black hole to the threat in Andromeda. This new enemy to mankind is beyond anything they imagined.
The Traugh are gone but a new more powerful civilization is coming and there’s not much time to stop them. Buckle in and enjoy the ride. This one will keep you turning pages well into the night.
Excerpt: The Unknown Enemy Will Kill You.
“How many ships do you wish to send through the black hole?”
“As many as you will allow. You should know that the ships we would send through would not be capable of defeating your warships. They will pose no threat to you.”
“Will you give us the technology you use to penetrate the black hole?”
“If you will give me your promise that you will accept us as an ally and not attack us in the future, I will.”
“That cannot be decided quickly. However, we can approve your proposal to scout what’s happening on the other side.”
“I have a question.”
“What is that?”
“Why have you forced all intelligent civilizations to leave this galaxy?”
There was a long pause and then the voice said, “You were right about a ship coming through the black hole long ago. We lost more than three hundred thousand warships before we defeated it and we determined that if we’re forced to use our towers to defend us against a future incursion, then no planet would be safe in the interior of this galaxy if the conflict expanded away from the black hole. Our towers would destroy many of the stars they orbit. It was in the best interests of those civilizations to move outside the galaxy and out of range of our weapons. We then made sure that none of them would violate our space.”
“I wondered why you allowed them to live in the Halo.”
“That tells me you’re not from the Halo.”
“That’s an issue that isn’t important at the moment. What lies on the other side of the black hole is what we should concern ourselves with now.”
“You are right. We will allow a thousand of your ships access to the black hole.”
“When?”
“Seven days from now.”

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This Weeks Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book of the Week – Prison of Souls: a sci-fi thriller by Xander Gray

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Prison of Souls: a sci-fi thriller Kindle Edition

by Xander Gray (Author), Adam J. Nicolai (Editor)
Joshua Briar is in prison for a murder he did not commit.
When the prisoners in his cell block begin to vanish, he remembers frightening medical experiments performed on him long ago.
And he discovers he must face a timeless evil…
To save the woman he loves.
To prove his innocence.
To save his species.
Can he solve the mystery before it’s too late?
To find out, read Xander Gray’s mind-bending sci-fi thriller: PRISON OF SOULS
FROM THE EDITOR: 
Fans of Wayward Pines take note: you’ll want to check this one out.
Haunting and surreal on one page, achingly wistful on the next, Prison of Souls is a powerful debut by Xander Gray. As Joshua Briar’s trip down the rabbit hole stretches deeper, he reaches the places where science and spirit intersect. The narrative’s questions are suspenseful and introspective by turns, including everything from “What is going on?” to “What does it mean to be human?” Fascinating, harrowing, and thought-provoking, Prison of Souls is the sci-fi thriller you’ve been looking for.
– Adam J. Nicolai, Editor

New Release From Saxon Andrew

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Defending Earth-Discovery Means Death Kindle Edition

by Saxon Andrew (Author)
From bestselling author, Saxon Andrew, comes the final book in the Escape to Earth and Defending Earth saga. The Alliance has mapped the full extent of Death Feeder territory and the numbers they’ll have to face is unimaginable. The Feeders were decoyed to a distant starcluster a hundred and fifty years earlier but now they are returning to search for their new enemy on a different course. If their fleets can’t be delayed, the Alliance will be found and Discovery Means Death. The Alliance is woefully unprepared to meet the coming tsunami of warships. However, sometimes fate has a way of throwing a curve and discovery isn’t what it appears.
The action never lets up as the Alliance is forced to meet an enemy that has never been defeated. Discovery Means Death is a fitting conclusion to the story began in Escape to Earth and will keep you turning pages into the night.
Excerpt from Discovery Means Death:
Jill went to the last ship on the list that had moved outside of the zone they were in and saw a new list appear on her visor. She destroyed the huge red warship and skipped across the fleet to the outer edge. She killed twenty warships before the rest of the Feeder Fleet arrived and began chasing the source of the brilliant white beams. The twenty first ship fired a huge beam as she arrived and the light ship was rocked. She fired at the ship and saw that every Feeder Warship was now continuously firing their main beams.
Jill gritted her teeth and began skipping in on her targets in the gaps between their beams. The light ship was invisible until it fired and most of the time, the targeted ship couldn’t move a disruptor toward her ship. The ship was rocked again and she wondered how many of those hits the ship could take. She could feel the missiles leaving the hull at an incredible rate and suddenly, she only saw the blackness of the void in her visor. A few moments later, it disappeared and she saw the missile transport below the ship.
Jill collapsed back in her chair and started shaking. She looked at her panel and saw on her panel that the huge magazine in the ship’s armory was empty. She looked at Rocky and managed to say in a shaky voice, “You, you cut that close.”

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Interview with Jex Collyer

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Interview with Jex Collyer

  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a SciFi writer from Lancaster, UK. I’m a lifetime fan of Star Wars and have always been drawn to narratives that are larger than life. I studied creative writing to MA level and then last year released my first book, Zero, with Dagda Publishing. Zero is book one in the Orbit Series and is character-driven Scifi, described as ‘James Bond meets Firefly’. It made it into Northern Soul Magazine’s ‘Best Reads of 2014’ and the sequel, Haven, is due out on the 24th Oct, which I can’t wait for.

  1. Who are your favorite authors?

That is mighty hard to choose! But I think my absolute favourite authors aren’t actually SciFi. They were formative in developing my taste in fiction as well as my own style of writing and they are Robin Hobb of the Fantasy Farseer Series and Anne Rice of the Vampire Chronicles. They helped me realise that I like my fiction, whether I’m reading or writing it, character-driven, human, gritty with a healthy amount of darkness thrown in.

  1. Tell us a bit about your books.

I’ve had enormous amounts of fun writing the Orbit Series. As I mentioned earlier book one, Zero, came out last year and book two, Haven, is out on Oct 24th. Zero can be found on Amazon and Haven will be up there too as soon as it’s launched.

The series follows the story of Kaleb Hugo, a soldier in a military establishment called the Service that governs the Earth and her orbiting colonies in the not-too-distant future. Hugo holds a prestigious position and has a glittering career ahead of him, until he makes a controversial decision in battle and is publically discharged but secretly re-assigned to captain the undercover black ops vessel the Zero. The Zero is manned by an unruly crew of orphans and misfits who look to their wry and unconventional commander Ezekiel Webb for leadership. During the course of their dangerous underground missions, Hugo comes to experience a whole new way of looking at the world, the Service and himself.

During the course of the series, fate conspires to lead Hugo and Webb down ever darker and more dangerous roads. Both men have to constantly re-learn what it is to depend and trust one another as well as watch their step in the myriad and convoluted politics of the world they live in, where revolution is always just round the corner.

  1. If you could travel back in time to any place and period in the past where and when would you go?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

  1. What attracts you to writing in your genre?

I like really down-to-earth, realistic, human narratives but I LOVE them set against a larger-than-life backdrop. I find genre fiction so much more interesting and it lets me have much more fun with my characters. Besides, I’ve always had an overly-fertile imagination and so general or literary fiction tends to leave me a little unstimulated.

I write my novels in science fiction in particular just because it’s a life-long love of mine, ever since watching the Star Wars films as a child. I find spaceships, lasers, other planets and the infinite amount of possibilities they offer too tantilising to pass up.

  1. Tell us a little about your books. I see you like to delve into many different genres.

As well as the Orbit Series I have had my short fiction (sometimes this is fantasy, horror, speculative or dystopian as well as Scifi) featured in a number of other publications. I enjoy all sorts of genre fiction and use short stories as a chance to stretch my story-writing muscles and try something different. I particularly like to dabble in horror around Halloween time, so watch out on my wordpress (http://jcollyer.wordpress.com) as I often like to post a free ghost story for the occasion.

I find contributing to anthologies and publishing free shorts in different genres helps me to keep my hand in with all the genres I love, and there are a lot of them, as well as a useful way to keep those story telling techniques keen.

  1. Are you planning to participate in any more anthologies? Any hints about your story?

The dystopian SciFi ‘No Way Home’ anthology  that featured one of my stories and came out in March this year did so well that the collective is discussing releasing a follow up anthology called ‘Crime and Punishment’. I have already drafted and submitted my story.  It is set in future of our own planet and is about a newly retired military counsellor, Felix Dalton, who has been roped in to persuade a young man accused of murder to explain to his accusers just how he managed to kill seventeen people without touching them. He claims powers of the occult, but Felix suspects there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

  1. What do you like to do to relax?

Relaxation, ha! I think I remember that. Writing novels takes up most of my spare time. When I do get ahead and find some time for myself I like to walk in the countryside and read.

  1. What are you currently working on?

I’m currently drafting book 3 in the Orbit Series. I’m having tremendous fun and suspect this will be my favourite book so far. It is due out summer 2016.

  1. How can readers connect with you?

I love speaking to readers and writers as well as fans of SciFi, Fantasy or genre fiction in general. Hit me up in any of the following places:

http://www.facebook.com/jscollyer

http://www.twitter.com/jexshinigami

http://jcollyer.wordpress.com

An Interview With Mark

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Interview with Mark Chapman

  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been married for almost 28 years to my amazing wife Barbara. (We’ve been together for 31 years.) We have two wonderful twenty-something daughters, Catherine and Jennifer. I’m a technical writer by day and a novelist by night. I’m a former MENSA member (former, not because I got stupid but because I stopped paying my dues). And I’ve written five novels (and started two others), plus authored or co-authored four nonfiction books (three of them about computer technology and the other about writing).

  1. Who are your favorite authors?

Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Fred Saberhagen, Anne McCaffrey, Keith Laumer, David Weber, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, John Grisham, and so many more.

  1. Tell us a bit about your books.

I like to try different things, so I’ve written hard sci-fi (The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative), soft/paranormal sci-fi (Sunrise Destiny), military sci-fi/space opera (My Other Car is a Spaceship) and a sci-fi/zombie hybrid (Aliens Versus Zombies). I also like to throw a “left turn” in what otherwise might be a straight-forward story.

For example, Sunrise Destiny starts out as a near-future private detective story. The protagonist, Donatello Sunrise, is hot on the case of some missing girls. In the midst of the investigation he’s abducted by telepathic aliens and ends up having to save both the aliens and humanity. In Aliens Versus Zombies, the remaining few million humans struggle to survive against fast, cunning, living zombies, Then, in the middle of the zompocalypse, aliens invade with 20,000+ ships and two million troops. It should have been an easy victory for the aliens. Little did they know.

I haven’t written any fantasy novels, but I have written a short story that crossed over from fantasy into sci-fi (Selamere’s Quest). Probably not one of my best stories, though. J

If I may brag a bit, My Other Car is a Spaceship rocketed (pardon the pun) to #1 in the Amazon military sci-fi category in September 2014. Sunrise Destiny was a finalist for the 2010 EPIC Award (sci-fi category). The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative have 4.3 and 4.6-star ratings, respectively, on Amazon. And my latest, Aliens Versus Zombies, currently has a 4.4 rating after six weeks of sales. (all 5-star reviews but two).

  1. If you could travel back in time to any place and period in the past where and when would you go?

When I was young, I was fascinated by dinosaurs and considered becoming a paleontologist. That fascination continues today. I’d love to be able to go back and see the dinosaurs in person—from a safe vantage point, of course. (I’m not entirely crazy…) If that time machine allowed me to go forward, I’d love to see the future, a century or a millennium from now. Will we have survived that long? If so, what is society like? Did we eventually travel to the stars? If so, did we meet any other sentient beings? Was the meeting peaceful or warlike? And so on.

  1. What attracts you to writing in your genre?

It’s fun to invent alternative universes, future technology and societies, other sentient beings, and the interactions of people with those technologies and societies. With a typical Western story, cop drama, romance novel, or most other genres, the author is limited in what he or she can write about. Period cowboys can’t use death rays or machine guns, cops can’t use flying cars, and romances can’t involve spaceships or time travel—at least not without some sort of sci-fi or fantasy aspect to them. I love the freedom sci-fi affords me, the ability to write about anything under the sun (or inside the sun, or through the sun).

  1. Tell us a little about your books. I see you like to delve into many different genres.

(Essentially the same question as #3.)

  1. Are you planning to participate in any anthologies? Any hints about your story?

I have already, with a story called “Fallen Star, Rising Star”. It’s about two boys who find a “falling star”, which turns out to be an alien probe sent to investigate humanity. The boys have to find a way to save humanity.

The anthology is called The World Outside the Window. The concept of the book is that all of the authors are looking out the same window, where we see a number of people in a park across the street. They’re doing various things: two boys playing catch, a young couple sitting on a park bench, etc. The 19 authors had to pick some of the characters and write a story about them. The stories could be in any genre except erotica. We ended up with romances, paranormal chillers, sci-fi, and various others. Quite an assortment, and all of them good reads. (Mine ended up being the lead story.) Here’s the URL for it: http://www.amazon.com/World-Outside-Window-DON-HARPE/dp/0979170192/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8. It’s out of print now, but there are still new and used copies available. I’m considering publishing a collection of my short stories and funny rhyming sci-fi poems (such as Escape From Gilligan’s Island). Some are humorous, some deadly serious.

I have had a number of short stories, humorous essays, and rhyming sci-fi poetry published in various magazines. Some are available to read for free on my website.

  1. What do you like to do to relax?

A lot of things: I play games with my girls (when I can get them both together, which isn’t often), I golf (made a hole-in-one in May 2013!), I bowl (once bowled a 276 game and 655 set) and I swim. More passively, I watch TV with my family, I write, and I read (though not as much since I started writing). Leisure writing includes crossword puzzles. (I actually had a few published in a magazine when I was in high school. It was a hospital in-house publication, so it wasn’t seen by more than a few thousand people, but hey they were published.)

  1. What are you currently working on?+

I have two novels (Mooncrash: The Fall of Mankind and The Galactic Imperative: Book 3 of the Imperative Chronicles) that I started writinga few years ago and never finished. Mooncrash is about the final days of Earth before a rogue moon falls and ends life on Earth, and the struggle for a few hundred people to get to Luna and survive there. The Galactic Imperative is a sequel to both The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative (which are stand-alone books set in the same fictional universe), bringing characters from each book together for a new adventure).

Both books are more than half-done, but I got stuck on each of them and haven’t yet figured out how to finish them. L I’m currently trying to unstick them. If that doesn’t work, I have some ideas for sequels to Sunrise Destiny, My Other Car is a Spaceship, and Aliens Versus Zombies.

  1. How can readers connect with you?

Easy. Send me a PM on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/MTChapman.Author), or leave a comment on my website (http://MarkTerenceChapman-Author.com). (My website has a blog, and if I get enough people to enroll, I’ll start sending out newsletters as well). Readers can also reach me via Twitter at https://twitter.com/MarkTerenceChap @MarkTerenceChap or http://twitter.com/chapman208 @chapman208.