Update: The Key to My Heart Granted Smashwords Premium Status

Well, good news! The Key to My Heart has been approved for Smashword’s Premium  Distribution, which means it will be soon available on such retail websites as Chapters Indigo,  Apples iTunes and Barnes and Noble.  Meanwhile, you can always buy it here.

Meanwhile, as I said, I’m reading the latest installment in Taylor  Anderson’s long-running Destroyermen series, The Iron Gray Sea. I’m about half-way through it, but by now, you should know that I’m a dedicated fan of the series who is eagerly wondering how the whole thing must end.

At one point soon, I’ll also be talking about my next favorite, Charles Stross’ spy/horror series, The Laundry Files, which I can only describe as Len Deighton meets H.P. Lovecraft.  Not that it has much to do with alternate universes –some—but it is a darn good read.

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing my other two books, Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

An Excerpt: The Key to My Heart

I knew she was trouble as soon as she stepped into my office. The type of trouble that only gets talked about by lonesome men in dusky bars over gin in dirty glasses. The type of trouble that leaves a smile on your face and you begging for more. The type that if it hasn’t killed you stone cold, it’s only because it’s driven you nuts first.

She wore a long black cape with her hood up and under it, a hint of long blonde hair. Her cold red lips parted in a ghost of a smile. “Mr. Gannon,” she said. “Chance Gannon.”

“That’s what it says on the door,” I said, sitting up behind my desk. Behind me, a tabletop fan battled the steamy August night air. I could tell by the sweat beading on my forehead it was losing. Somewhere, the latest Dorsey tune droned from a radio. A half-read pulp magazine – Amazing Stories- lay unfinished on my desk with a shining finned rocket ship sitting tail-first on a moonscape with jagged alpine peaks in the background and planet earth glowing in the sky above. It was a cinch I wasn’t going to finish that. “Have a seat. What can I do for you Mrs...?”

“Miss,” she smiled. “Miss Melody.” She lounged in my sofa, her long tanned legs peeking through her cape. “Mr. Gannon, six months ago, you were retained by an associate of mine, the late Walter Carswell.”

I said nothing. But I remembered Carswell.  He vanished just after I started to work for him. Never knew what happened to him; but she seemed to.  I slid my hand towards half-open desk drawer where my .45 lay.

“That’s all right; I know. Before Walter died, he placed something with you for safekeeping. It belongs to me.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ll need a bit more proof than that before I hand anything over.”

“Carswell said when the time was right, I should come to you and give you this.” She stood up and placed it on my desk. The golden heart basked in the weak light from my lamp’s 40-watt bulb.

I picked it up. “There’s a little tarnish on your heart.” 

She smiled. A gleaming 9 mm automatic appeared from the folds of her cape. “Give the item to me, Mr. Gannon. Now.”

I dove for my drawer and my .45, but she’d fired first. Two slugs bore into me, burning hot pokers of pain into my leg and my thigh, tearing into already scarred flesh. As I lay up against the wall in a pool of my own Type “O,” I looked up at her as smoke curled up from the barrel of her gun. We could both hear wail of sirens coming down the block. That’s what you get for having nosy neighbors. “Guess you lose, babe. You don’t get it.”

“Next time, Mr. Gannon,” she smiled, walking for the door. “Next time.”

She’d be back. And I don’t think it was because she loved me. As her heels clicked down the linoleum of the corridor and the sirens got closer, I slumped back against the wall. The pain shooting up through my body, it wasn’t nearly as bad as when I got shot up after jumping into France back in ‘44. But four years later, on damp mornings — which are most mornings in San Francisco — my knee still ached and I still walked with a cane. And I didn’t like the idea of carrying more lead in my body.

I looked up to the sound of flat feet charging up the hall. I knew the uniform that came through the door, gun drawn: Bertinelli. Holstering his revolver, he walked over and knelt beside me. “Jeez...Chance!”

“I’ll live,” I croaked. “Anyone see the woman who did this to me?”

“A skirt.” Bertinelli got to his feet, smiled as he picked up the phone to call for an ambulance. “Always figured it’d a be woman who’d do you in.”

Copyright 2013, Michael Cnudde

####

And the mystery, as they say, only deepeens.  Liking what you read?  You can buy The Key to My Heart here, for just $2.99. 

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing my other two books, Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

The Key to My Heart Launches on Smashwords!

I must apologize.  I’ve missed a whole month on this blog; but rest assured it’s not been in vain.

I can now announce that my latest novel, The Key to My Heart is now on sale as an e-book via Smashwords.

Chance Gannon is washed-up P.I. who survives in post-war San Francisco by taking divorce cases and drinking himself to sleep at night. When he’s gunned down in his own office by a mysterious and beautiful femme fatale, it launches him on one last case that not only threatens his life, but the entire world!

The Key to My Heart is my homage to hardboiled detective fiction, complete with the femme fatale, the loyal girlfriend, and the hard-nosed cop who’d just as soon see Gannon behind bars.

But… if you know me, I’ve also thrown in a dash of SF – something about aliens and time-travelers, if you can believe that, plus a few other things.  But I'll say  no more, because I’d be spoiling it. 

As The Key to My Heart is not yet available through Smashword’s Premium distribution system, you can buy it here, for just $2.99. Watch this space for further announcements regarding this.

As an update, I'm also reading the latest installment in Taylor Anderson's long-running  Destroyermen series, The Iron Gray Sea.  I'll talk about it in a future posting.

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing my other two books, Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter: A Review

This is one of my favourite new books.  

While The Long Earth is indeed about parallel earths, but as the authors very quickly point out, it is one on a grand scale.  “All those parallel earths are identical…on all but the detailed level,” one character points out early on, “Oh save that they are empty… this is tough luck on Adolf Hitler, who hasn’t been allowed to win his war anywhere!”

Imagine millions of earths coexisting with our earth on a slightly dimensional plane on ether side of this earth, and you get the picture.  Travel between the earths is possible by “stepping.”  Some use a device called a stepper (which when described, you can sense the whimsical hand of Pratchett behind it) while others seem to have a natural talent. Others can’t step at all.

Authors Pratchett (famous for his Discworld series) and Baxter (his Odyssey was reviewed in an earlier posting on this blog), with a mixture of humour, gentle satire and awe, paint a wide canvas of a world whose population one day awakens to realize that the old saying “there’s only one earth” no longer applies, but there are literally millions of new worlds the taking, and how the peoples of the earth wrestle with the vast implications of what now faces them.

The book has a number of characters and plots, but the main plot follows the path of an unlikely pair of a natural stepper, Joshua Valiente and an intelligent computer program who may have once been human, Lobsang, as they explore deep into the Long Earth to find the source of an impending disaster, sweeping in like a tidal wave of doom across the alternate universes, that will eventually overwhelm and destroy the home (or datum) earth, along with the entire Long Earth, if not stopped.

But that’s all I’m going to say here.  

My recommendation: if you’re looking for a great summer read that will keep you turning pages, buy this book. And then, of course, you’ll have to wait for the next book in the series, The Long War, coming soon.

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

Amelia Earhart’s Plane Found on Sonar?

Regular readers of this blog will know that we’ve closely followed the search for Amelia Earhart’s aircraft by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). 

Now, perhaps, most intriguingly, their search may have paid off. TIGHAR'S long-standing mission has been to find the twin-engined Lockheed Electra that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan flew in while making the fateful Pacific leg of their round-the-world flight attempt, before vanishing in July 1937.

A sonar scan shows an “anomaly” resting in about 600 feet of water, off of Nikumaroro Island, which is some 350 miles from their planned destination, Howland Island.

Is this Earhart's Plane? - TIGHAR

This, along with a recently unearthed picture taken in October 1937, showing some debris closely resembling the landing gear of Earhart’s aircraft sticking out of the water off of Nikumaroro Island, is the strongest evidence unearthed thus far to suggest what happened to the plane.

But what happened to Earhart and Noonan?  Were they trapped in their plane when it crashed, perhaps rendered unconscious by the impact and couldn’t escape?  Did they make to the nearby island, where they managed to eke out an existence for a while? If so, what happened after that?

It’s likely these questions will never be fully answered and the mystery that had intrigued so many – including myself – for well over 75 years, will endure.  Amelia, of course, is a prominent character in my alternate history novel War Plan Crimson and has a short story all to herself in my alt-history collection, Elvis Saves JFK!

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

Poetic Justice - Part II

It’s not always parallel universes and alt-history on this blog. Sometimes it’s other stuff. Like poetry. Yes, poetry. You’ll remember how in this space, a few months back, I wrote about the release of the poetry anthology Poems from Planet Earth, from the good folks at Leaf Press and edited Yvonne Blomer and Cynthia Woodman Kerkham.

Well, the good news is that it’s finally out and the poetically-minded of you can order it online here.  

The book has its genesis in the Planet Earth poetry and spoken word series held every Friday night at the Moka House in Victoria.  I was honored to be a regular reader at the series that featured many fine poets, including Patrick Lane, Pamela Porter (a Governor General’s award winner for poetry).  I remain indebted to Yvonne and the others at Planet Earth for their graciousness and kindness (Hi Sheila! Hi David!).

I am also highly honored that I also have a poem included in the anthology… it’s also quoted in  a  chapter introduction, which also freaks me out a little. If you like poetry, or just remotely curious, I encourage you to give this book a try.

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

An Alternate Space Age

Back in the early 1950s, a group of visionaries, led by rocket pioneers Werhner von Braun and Willy Ley, astronomer Fred Lawrence Wipple, among others, and ably abetted by famed illustrators Chesley Bonstell and Fred Freeman, published a series of articles starting in the March 22nd 1952, issue of Collier's Magazine, entitled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon.”

Can you imagine how this looked to someone for the first time?

Only it wasn’t so much as a series of articles, as it was a manifesto. Featuring beautifully rendered space shuttles with sweeping fins that looked like they could’ve come off a Cadillac, towering rockets the size of Saturn Vs that looked like the overgrown children of the V-2, wheel-shaped space stations that were spun for artificial gravity and plans to land on the moon, and after that, Mars, the series, published by Collier's between 1952 and 1954, was a call to action for nothing less than a step-by-step exploration and colonization of the solar system by man. “What are we waiting for?” asked one article. In 1955, the cause would be taken up by Walt Disney who produced the ground-breaking  “Man in Space” series for his Disneyland television series, hosted by von Braun that picked up from where Collier's had left off. 

The booster on its pad. Freaking huge.

The campaign succeeded in that it set the pattern in the popular consciousness and media for the next decade of what exactly manned spaceflight would look like. However, when we got there, things turned out a little differently. We got to the moon. We got  had our space shuttle and we got our space station. But that’s it. A permanent human presence on the moon, never mind a trip to Mars, seems as far off as it was back in 1952.  I don’t know about you, but when I look back at what could’ve been and what was being planned, I feel ripped off.

The fleet of moonships being assembled in earth orbit.
Note the space station and winged orbiters in the background.

Despite the disappointment, or perhaps because of it, this has proven fertile ground for the field of alternate history.  The first, was Allen Steele’s “Alternate Space” Series, composed of the short stories “Goddard’s People,” “John Harper Wilson” and the novel The Tranquility Alternative.  The two short pieces are stand-alones, while the novel is an interesting, if slightly cynical, look at this world of missed opportunity, combined with an actual-but-never fulfilled U.S. plan to base ICBMs on the moon as some kind of Cold War super-deterrent.  As I like Steele as an author already, this was a treat when he combined his brand of gritty realism and detail with that lost sense of wonder. My only complaint that hopefully may be addressed in a future reissue is that the complete series was never issued under a single cover.  However, if you wish, you can track down the two short stories in Steele’s Rude Astronauts anthology of short fiction. They're both well worth the trip to your local used book store.

The second person to approach the Collier's 1952 space program as alternate history is  documentary filmmaker David Sander, with his Man Conquers Space feature film project, that sets out to tell the story of the Collier's space program as if it actually happened. Unfortunately, Sander has been beset by a series of bad breaks, but has continued to search for funding. Despite it all and in the meantime, he has still managed to produce some superb trailers that fill you will both a sense of wonder and loss (I hope he'll forgive me for posting these here).

Ultimately, Man Conquers Space is a movie that should be made, and in a perfect world will be made. I still have hopes that someone will come forward and help Sander to finance this worthy project, which like the best of alternate history, potentially has the power to shed a light on how we got to our present situation in our own world. If a movie like Veronica Mars can be crowd-financed on Kickstarter.com by its fan base, then why not this one?

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.