I’ve known about Justin Macumber for a couple of years, having been a fan of the Dead Robots Society podcast that he co-hosts. Until this year though, I hadn’t read any of his fiction. When I found out that he had a book called Haywire coming out I was naturally interested in what it was like. He had spent two years or thereabouts talking about writing, his progress and process, and interviewing some truly excellent people in the business. I wanted to know if any of that wisdom had rubbed off on him. I’m happy to say that it looks like it did.

Before I get into the why and wherefores, let me tell you a little about the book. Humanity was on the brink of destruction thanks to a race known as the Hezrin. Thanks to one man’s brilliance and the bravery of a host of men and women they were able to push them back. The invention of nanites turned these soldiers into practically unstoppable forces known as the Titans. A century passes and the Titans have passed into memory. A band of space pirates, wannabe young rocker Shawn Campbell, and his Titan obsessed mother Dr. Alicia Campbell discover that forgotten does not mean gone. One of the Titans returns with a horror story. The Hezrin were defeated, but left behind a virus that has turned the quasi-deities into bloodthirsty monsters and now they’re on their way home with destruction on their minds.

From there, chaos, explosions, chases, and general mayhem ensue. If this were a movie it would be a balls to the wall action set piece, but that’s not all. There’s a heart under all of the spectacle. The relationship between Shawn and his mother is anything but healthy. It’s complicated by divorce and a new boyfriend in her life (and by all the impending doom). Watching them rebuild it is believable and touching. Shawn is also called upon by the emergency to sacrifice a great deal with the potential of losing everything and everyone he cares about. His struggle is mammoth.

There are little moments in this story that are great too. A couple of interactions between the space pirates (I can’t type the phrase “space pirates” enough) are great. I’d actually like to see a book about them. There’s also a scene between Dr. Campbell’s assistant and her boyfriend that sticks with me. So in addition to writing some excellent action, Justin is also good at developing characters that you care about.

Is there anything I didn’t like about the book? There are a few nitpicky things. The discovery of the secret labs seemed a little too easy. Either they should have been harder to discover, or they should have been discovered previously and their contents misunderstood. Probably the former since the Doctor was so far ahead of his time. The key to conquering the Titans also struck me as easily mass produced. That did get balanced out by the difficulty and cost of actually deploying it, though. The last thing, conveniently, is the last thing.

The ending bugs me a little. The end of the last chapter would have been a suitable ending, if a bit dark. After that, Justin gives us an epilogue that’s much more upbeat. It feels a little tacked on, though I will say that it’s the ending I expected given the set up. I’m fairly certain it’s the ending we’re meant to be given, but it’s less than satisfying somehow. I suppose it’s because in a story full of messy, real seeming characters and situations, it’s a little too neat.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story and would encourage you to run out and buy a copy. Justin has a bright future as a writer and I look forward to this being the first of many stories he will bring to his audience. I give it a solid four out of five stars.

Audio for Galley Table 66

This episode Tee Morris joins as we talk about what makes a Genre Mashup. Can it help you? Will it hurt you? Or is all just about the story?

The Cast for this episode was:

Tee Morris
Doc Coleman
Laura Nicole
JP Losier
Zach Ricks
Scott Roche
Jeff A. Hite

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In the Mormon culture there is a strong, I don’t know, vein, maybe, regarding music that goes far deeper than the Mo Tabs, Donny Osmond and David Archuleta. There’s a reason why the greatest number of pianos sold each year is in Utah. There are many great musicians that create and perform their music for the Mormon culture and many that cross over into public awareness in Christian popular music and ‘New Age Classical’. Many such as Jenny Frogley, Mercy River, Paul Cardall and The Piano Guys on Youtube, have broad appeal. (In fact, if you haven’t seen Cello Wars on youtube you’re missing one of the great videos it has to offer. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgAlQuqzl8o .)

There’s a podcast call “The Cricket and Seagull Fireside Chat” http://skperry.libsyn.com/ Where Steven Kapp Perry interviews different artists. I usually imagine myself sitting there with them as he interviews Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, Michael Wilcox, Sherry Dew, etc and I’m somewhat envious of him. These people are so human, interesting, brilliant and fun. (Watch Jon Schmidt play ‘All Of Me’ and you’ll see what I mean by fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fAZIQ-vpdw&feature=relmfu) I want to be in their company sharing what I have with them, and learning and growing from what they have to offer.

But I’ll never be there. These people way far beyond me. They’re out there in the star forming regions and even if I traveled at the speed of light, they’re in an expanding universe and moving away from me at an increasing rate. As this impossibility weighs me down, I have a redeeming realization: my co editors at Flying Island Press.

Zach, Scott, Jp, Jeff and Laura Nicole are the super massive black hole at the center of my creative galaxy. They are my “Fireside Chat” that I get to interact with once a week on our conference call and they motivate me to create and expand my ideas and my potential. Each is brilliant and creative and talented in their own ways. If you haven’t followed what they have done and are currently doing, I recommend you look them up.

In conclusion, though the ‘greats’ are far away in the star forming regions and galactic nebulae, and I am often inspired by their brilliance and beauty, I am most grateful to my friends who allow me to hover on the edge of their event horizon and catch what bits I can that they blast back out into the galaxy.

Philip ‘Norvaljoe’ Carroll is a staff editor at Flying Island Press and has currently chewed off more than he can bite, (having NOT learned from the past), with the second edition of ‘Pieces of Eight’, our benefit edition from Flying Island Press. This issue will be dedication to Teen Suicide Prevention.

Yes, I said “whichever story you read first”. See, you can read them in either order. In fact, and I know this from the author, they’re written in such a way that you wonder about the perspectives of the point of view characters and how that colors how the reader sees the world. So, on to the books. (Beware, thar be potential spoilers ahead. Yar.)

Emily is the book I read first and is, in part, a love story, a very dysfunctional one to be sure. The titular character is a fifteen year old human who becomes enamored of Nicholas, a revolutionary who preaches against the evils of their vampiric “overlords”. Vampires, you see, came out of hiding thanks to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Once humanity saw the benefits that these creatures had to offer, they began to work together. Eventually, according to Nicholas, the blood suckers insinuated themselves into human politics and society in a more public way and have enslaved them in a fashion too subtle for most people to notice. Humanity has traded its freedom for stability, health care, and leaders who have a longer view. Emily joins the revolution, in part because she begins to see things his way, but also in hopes that he will return her affections.

I really enjoyed this one. It’s intensely political at times, which isn’t always my cup of tea. It’s also very teen-angsty in spots, which is absolutely appropriate and something that usually makes me break out in hives. It hits some very right notes though. I love his fairly traditional treatment of vampires, and watching the rise and struggles of the underground movement is incredibly entertaining. The notion of vampires coming out as the saviors of humanity and our reaction to them also strikes me as spot on and something fresh in the genre.

There are some off notes for me. Nicholas is a bit two dimensional. We never get to see inside his head really. Most of what we know is filtered through Emily’s experience of him and how we as readers view the decisions he makes. I would have liked to see him fleshed out a bit more. There are also a few chapters where things happen in a way that is a little too “convenient”. Characters meet at just the right time, for example. This happens in fiction all the time and may just be a pet peeve of mine. This is also a dystopian tale. I don’t think that’s spoiling anything. If you’re expecting a happy ending here, there won’t be one. That’s also not a real spoiler since some early chapters clearly set the stage for ending. In a world where there are more than enough dark, angsty vampire books perhaps I’m just overcome by them.

Having said that I wouldn’t want to drive anyone away from reading this. As I said, I enjoyed it, and reading this made me appreciate the effort Teel made in this endeavor and made me enjoy the follow up read even more. It’s very thought provoking and I give it a solid four stars (as a stand alone book, more on that in a bit). It is available from Amazon, Smashwords, direct from the author, and other fine e-book retailers.

I read Sophia next. While certainly more of a Utopian look at the same society Emily lives in, this is not a book full of butterflies and happiness. It made me the most uncomfortable of the two books. For that reason and a few others I enjoyed it more than I did Emily.

Where Emily is human, Sophia is a vampire. In Teel’s world, people who have life threatening illness or injuries are given the option of becoming a vampire. When she was seven years old, Sophia came down with just such an illness and her parents made the difficult decision to have her turned. They raised her in a sheltered and very religious home, keeping her away from society for a variety of reasons. Her body stopped aging, but her mind continued and when she turned eighteen she was granted adulthood and given all of the advantages vampires in this society have.

Emily deals with politics and what a world with vampires would look like in that arena. Sophia is a look at religion and how that would be affected by creatures with “eternal” life. Those of you that know me, would know that this is precisely my bailiwick. Sophia is a devout Christian and believes that her vampiric state is blessed by God and she’s to use it in the same way humans would use theirs. Vampires can regenerate organs, so she enters the donor program, giving large parts of her body to human children who are in need of transplants. She also donates her blood so that its healing properties can be used in medicines. In addition to serving humanity, Sophia also wants to go to college and finally get a chance to grow up.

Sadly for her, happily for us, things rapidly get complicated. She discovers that while she has access to a vast wealth that has been building throughout her life, she also discovers that being an adult trapped in a child’s body increases the number of complications she faces a hundred fold. One of the primary ways that surfaces is in her relationships. Sophia’s sex drive blossoms (though I find myself asking why that didn’t come up earlier, perhaps due to her sheltered life) and this results in two scenes that made my skin crawl. I won’t go into detail but one is physically painful for the protagonist and is somewhat explicit, and the other explains the pedophilia tag on Smashwords (though nothing graphic is portrayed/described). Yup, when you’re a vampire in a kid’s body you get to looking for love in some VERY wrong places.

Watching Sophia grow as a character and come to terms with her various natures was fascinating. Along the way, she meets one of her Kindred that physically walked with Christ, makes some reals friends, and in the biggest crossover between the two books, meets Nicholas. We see a different side of the anti-vampire zealot and that’s interesting too. To me, this is a far more interesting book that Emily was and kept me hooked in the entire time. For that, I’m awarding it five stars. It is available from Amazon, Smashwords, direct from the author, and other fine e-book retailers.

I can’t leave it at that though. Teel wanted to do something really interesting with these two stories and he succeeded. Part of me wishes that I could erase my experience, go back, and read these in the opposite order to see what difference that makes. WIth time, I will go back and do just that. I take these two works as a whole. This is one instance where the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. So, in spite of Emily’s shortcomings (few though they were) I give the whole five stars as well. I urge you to pick both of these books up and read them in the order of your choosing. Either way I think you’re in for a great read.

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PSYT: Disconnection, by Laura Nicole

Remember that one time in Star Trek, when that character was just getting ready to unwind and rest and then all of a sudden the comm goes off? It’s happened in so many different shows and in all of the series’ so you have to have seen one episode like that. With all the technology in our daily lives bringing the world closer together, our society has many similarities to that scenario.

Yes, it is nice that our friends from all across the globe can contact us on time that is convenient to them, but at the same time we are so addicted to that connection that disturbs us of the need for things like sleep or social interaction. I am guilty of having the phone by my bed. I check my emails before even getting out of bed, post a comment to the almighty Tome of the Visage (Facebook) and then go into my morning routine. But on the weekends, you usually don’t see very much of me. That’s because I take the time to disconnect.

Our society seems to be forgetting the finer things about life other than playing around online. This is also called networking, but that’s another rant for another time. But think about it. If/when you get out and be with people, you generally don’t check your phone because you are practicing the art of conversation. This can be very beneficial, but I am not a mad scientist so I have only my personal experience to back me up. I feel less stressed because most of the people I would want to be around are already there and I can just tap them on the shoulder if I want to talk to them.

Back to the topic of disconnecting. If you post your entire life on Facebook and don’t actually get out and be with your species, you won’t have anything interesting to post about. Secondly, it is a good idea to make your stalkers work to find you. Posting where you are every moment of the day is just asking for trouble. If you make a scavenger hunt of it, that could be fun and challenging. Hmm, maybe I will do that for Balticon.

For all you creative types, human interaction is essential to your craft. I don’t care if it is design, writing, acting or what have you. Being able to have the human experience gives you more to draw from when you are attempting to evoke it in your craft.

Just think, many captains and beloved characters from the Star Trek franchise took off to Risa to disconnect. Maybe they were on to something…

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Semi-regular audio, from semi-crazy participants

The Dice are going to Kill us

Download The Audio Here

• This episode we talk about RPG gaming, and how we, as authors, can get better at building characters and worlds by gaming.
• We also talk a little bit about Balticon for those of us who are going.
• And ask always things get a little weird.

The Cast for this episode was:

Doc Coleman
Laura Nicole
JP Losier
Zach Ricks
Scott Roche
Jeff A. Hite

Tee Morris is an actor, author, and podcaster from the Virginia area. He’s written fiction and non-fiction and I’m absolutely a fan of his style. Pip Ballantine is also an author and a podcaster and has come from New Zealand to live in the states and write full time. I’ve enjoyed many of the things she’s written as well. Together they’ve begun a journey into the world of steampunk (more on what that is here). It started with Phoenix Rising and a series of podcast short stories written by authors from around the world. This book is the sequel to those efforts.

It concerns two agents, Wellington Books and Eliza Braun, who work in a rather passive way as archivists for Great Britain’s Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Think X-files filtered through the sepia lens of Victorian England and you’re on the right track. Notable suffragists have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances and the two agents take it upon themselves, due to some personal relationships, to investigate. Doing so requires secrecy, danger, and no small amount of political maneuvering. They dodge mysterious assassins and their own supervisor’s scrutiny to get to the bottom of the mystery.

So, how was it? I’m an author myself and I can tell you from experience that writing with a partner is hard. I’ve read and reviewed a number of collaborations over the years. Done well, it takes the talents of both authors and creates something greater than the sum of its parts. Done poorly it’s a complete and utter train wreck. This book fails squarely in the former category.

Tee’s ability to create cracking good dialog and action is one of the things I love about his work. Pip’s talent in writing romance and creating lush worlds full of detail is something I appreciate as well. Together they have created quite an enjoyable tale. The thing that impresses me most is, there are no seams that I can see. They have taken their different abilities and points of view and fused them. I’m sure that no small amount of credit for that goes to an editor or two somewhere along the line, but even the best editor can’t create gems from dross, and this is a gem.

If you like high adventure with a mix of humor, romance, and a dash of social commentary, then this is indeed a book for you. If you’re not a fan of steampunk or don’t even know what that is I’d still give this world a shot. Fair warning, it can lead to addiction.

I was surprised as I began to listen to this novel, of course, downloaded from Audible.com. I looked at the cover of the book and it was the 2008 recording of the 75th anniversary edition of the novel. I didn’t think they even had science fiction back then.

This is my second ‘distopian’ novel in a row, and though my word processor draws a squiggly red line below the word, I’ve seen it written enough recently to believe it really does mean the opposite of utopian, when describing a real or fiction society. I have started listening to my third distopian, ‘We’, by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. ‘We’ begins with background about the author and distopian novels. I was impressed to learn this novel appeared first in English, in 1923, more than 60 years before it would be published in its native language, in Russia.

There was much more science fiction in this book, than there was in ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’. The whole premise of this book is that much of the unsatisfactory has been removed from peoples lives so that they will always have the opportunity to be happy. To achieve that for everyone, all people are cloned and raised in ‘bottles’. Their embryos are treated with the appropriate chemicals and hormones at the appropriate time to create various levels of intelligence and drive. The children are raised together, giving appropriate educations, play, and unconscious mental programming.

Alphas are at the top with high intelligence and motivation, the gammas are way down low with barely the intelligence to do their menial jobs. But with no great motivation and plenty of the mind numbing recreational drug, ‘Soma’, everyone is happy to do just as they are predestined.

I think the author hit it right on. He wanted a society which would have no family relationships. The word ‘father’ was bad, but the word ‘mother’ was obscene. To create this absense of affection for a single spouse the children are encouraged to experiment with erotic play from a very early age. The natural bond which develops between married partners in a monogamous relationship from sexual interaction with the single partner is completely lost to dilution from the countless experiences in their childhood and adolescence. While some are attracted to others because of mild differences in personality or appearance, the idea to partner with a single person regularly is considered abnormal.

It is in this environment that two of our main characters take a trip to New Mexico, from England, to observe ‘The Savages’ on a reservation. They fly in a ‘Rocket Plane’; jets hadn’t been developed when the story was written. This couple finds a woman, who became lost on the reservation many years before, and the son she raised there. The woman and her son are brought back to London to create conflict and contrast for the novel’s theme.

That’s all the plot I’ll tell, other than, once the savage is introduced to the modern society, it sometimes had the feel of, “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

This is a classic and well worthy of being considered such. It’s well written, consistent, and absorbing. There is a part at the beginning where multiple activities are going on at the same time and you get two or three lines from each conversation or activity. It is probably easier to understand what is happening if you read this, instead of listen, as I did.
Philip ‘Norvaljoe’ Carroll is a staff editor at Flying Island Press. He usually tries to says something clever in his byline but was up all night with a sick child and is too tired to think of anything creative.

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