Monday, October 05, 2009

A novel approach

Just a reminder: all this sf/fantasy goodness is now available in electronic format at Amazon's Kindle store.

WARREN'S WORLD
It's 1983 in New Sparta, NY, and Warren Dawson is beloved by everyone... his friends, his family, even random strangers on the street. Everybody loves Warren and wants to make him happy. The TVs only show his favorite programs, the radios only play his favorite songs, the movie theaters always have his favorite movies. And, naturally, all the women are beautiful, and all of them love Warren unreservedly and uninhibitedly...

When Warren's best friend Jimmy starts to notice just how strange the reality he and all his friends inhabit truly is, he becomes a threat to the odd, timelost Utopia that Warren has so carefully constructed around them all.

Which sets the stage for a final, epic battle between Warren Dawson and his closest friends. Utilizing powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, Jimmy and his buddies must go to war with a man who would be God, to settle the final fate of the entire human race...
and every living inhabitant of WARREN'S WORLD.


THE FEAR MASTERS
In the late 21st Century, the Global Union has mostly united mankind and brought lasting peace to the surface of the Earth... until the dead start rising from their graves to attack the living. Across the globe, panic and terror cause chaos to erupt, civilization to crumble,
and humanity itself to totter on the very brink of extinction.

Only three members of the Global Union's top secret Science Sector have any inkling of what is actually going on. Now they must undertake a perilous journey into the airless depths of outer space and beyond the borders of death itself in a last ditch attempt to save humanity from the evil alien Fear Masters that seek our utter, final destruction.

Can two tough as nails secret agents and a beautiful, brilliant super-scientist 'git 'er done'? For the answer, check out THE FEAR MASTERS, by D.A. Madigan.

TIME WATCH
When Jim, a thirty something bachelor geek with no life outside the pages of his favorite SF books, comes across a wrist watch that allows him to travel in time, he immediately sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream by traveling through time to assemble the greatest collection of
mint condition Silver Age superhero comics in human history.

But in the future, the secret agency known as Time Watch isn't pleased that one of their devices has fallen into the hands of an outsider, and they are ready, willing, able, and eager to do whatever it takes, up to and including killing Jim, to get their watch back.

As Jim flees from his pursuers across time and space, he quickly realizes that he may well be the human race's only hope for avoiding extinction at the hands of the insidious alien intelligence that is pulling Time Watch's strings from behind the scenes. They want humanity, ALL of humanity, dead... and Jim is now the only living human being who knows the truth.

Armed only with his wits, his time watch, and the aid of a beautiful female personal computer from the 22nd Century, Jim must avoid his pursuers and somehow thwart the genocidal agenda of an ancient, immortal, unearthly collective mind that seeks to bring all human
history to a most final termination.

ZAP FORCE: ROYAL BLOOD
Welcome to Sparta City, circa 1995, where seven super-powered teenagers fight for their lives and their freedom against covert cabals of ancient, evil immortals who yearn to outfit them all with high tech alien mind control slave collars - or low tech earthly bodybags, whichever works.

Yes, here in Sparta City, it's the neurotically networked 90s as they never really were, a time and a place when centuries old evildoers scheme, conspire, machinate and manipulate, while teenage superheroes leap, flip in midair, hurl lightning bolts, cast illusions, punch, kick, fly at supersonic speeds, kick ass, take names, and generally blow stuff up real good.

Seven stalwart students at Sparta University, inadvertently given unique and insane ultrapowers by an exotic on-campus psychology experiment gone horribly awry, and now avidly sought after as super-powered slaves by every other secret super society on the planet -

GALLANT, team leader, who at the age of 19 is both selfless and cynical, and whose super-agility and inhumanly unerring aim make him an all but unbeatable hand to hand combatant and absolutely deadly with anything he can throw, especially the hard energy discs and explosive energy globes his alien tech gauntlets generate;

TESLA GIRL, an 18 year old French Canadian hottie who can turn heads with her high voltage beauty and whose electrically supercharged metabolism can generate lightning bolts powerful enough to melt a combat tank into molten slag;

STRAIGHTLACE, the 18 year old diminutive blonde babe with the attitude of a pit bull who can fly faster than a speeding Sidewinder and smash through solid concrete without taking a scratch;

RAMPART, 19 year old African-American star athlete and honor student who can leap tall buildings in a single bound while carrying a Cadillac Seville over his shoulder;

LOBE-O, wheelchair bound 16 year old supergenius with an advanced college placement whose telepathic powers can trace a fleeting thoughtwave through a million muddled mundane minds;

GLAMOUR, a husky Innuit plain Jane psych major whose psychically projected mental illusions seem real enough to leave lipstick marks on a frat boy's cheek, or boot shaped bruises on a bad guy's ass;

WARPER, the 19 year old star college quarterback who can open teleportals with his mind, when he's not charming phone numbers out of any nearby cuties with his All American good looks;

MAINFRAME, the ageless, bodiless former maintenance man who now only exists as a self aware electronic impulse haunting any machine or set of circuitry he cares to inhabit at any given time;

Together they are ZAP FORCE, reluctant heroes fighting to protect an innocent and ignorant global populace, or at least, their own damn selves, from enslavement or death at the hands of the ancient evil immortals who secretly run the world:

BARON SAMEDI, centuries old blustering boss-man of the voodoo-themed Clan Loa, whose sheer raw strength can crumble solid concrete and whose brutal will to dominate will not be denied by uppity interfering newcomers like those no good Zap Force punks;

THE BARONESS, Baron Samedi's crafty, malevolent and utterly ageless wife and co-Monarch, whose vast mental prowess can (and does) enslave entire populations, including, of course, her own entirely unsuspecting husband;

THE OLD ONE, an inhumanly brilliant schemer born before written history began, who remembers the angels, gods and devils of ancient Sumeria and Babylonia as his contemporaries, peers, and more often than not, siblings, and whose own Royal Clan, the Eldest, is the most respected, hated, and feared of any in existence on Earth today.

STEPHEN SANTERIOS of Clan Loa, psychic assassin and master of the incomprehensibly advanced technology left behind on Earth by the long gone alien H'nnr

Put it all together and what do you got? ZAP FORCE!!

Of all of those, THE FEAR MASTERS is so far my top seller... in the last three months, I've sold 7 copies of it to discerning and apparently satisfied customers (at least, they didn't ask Amazon for a refund). This is so far a break out month for me; from May 1 through today, I've sold 10 copies, total, of my work. In 60 days or so, I'll get $34.80 direct deposited to my bank account. I may buy my wife flowers. Or, you know, just my kids some groceries.

Anyway. To the above tally, I'm happy to say I've formatted and added the following:

ENDGAME : When Webster Madison awakens at the far end of the universe in the super powered fantasy body he'd always wished he had, he was thrilled... until he learned that the price for his power would be his participation in a deadly alien game that could cost him not only his new avatar-form, but also his sanity, or even his life.

Now Webster and thirty other transformed roleplaying gamers from Earth find themselves enmeshed as living chess pieces in a contest whose rules they cannot comprehend, and where every move can result in sudden, horrible, grisly death, while the alien overlords responsible for their transformations test their new champions, often to destruction.

Those transformed human champions who survive these trials will be sent on a mysterious mission even more hazardous than the game itself, with an enormous reward waiting at the end for those who finally win through. Or so they are all told... but Webster suspects that in a world where no one is what they appear to be, nothing they have been told is the truth, either... and if he cannot somehow determine actuality from illusion in this dangerous labyrinth of perilous power, neither Webster nor any of his fellow super powered pawns will make it through the ENDGAME...

EARTHQUEST : When Webster Madison, Hired Gun is dumped at the other end of the galaxy from Earth by treacherous aliens, he must fight his way back home across the hostile stars. Hijacking a ship full of slaves, he successfully leads the human cargo in rebellion against the crew and embarks on a career as an interstellar buccaneer and liberator of the oppressed.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Sam Curtis is using his newly found superpowers to reshape the world in his own twisted image. Should Webster somehow manage to set foot once more on his native planet, he will find himself walking into a deadly trap elaborately planned and set by his deadliest foe...


2 comments:

  1. Go, Kindle, go! Are you making any of these available for B&N's new e-book reader? (I'm trying to get the inside scoop on how.) Or Scribd? I've had zip luck with Scribd, but since your novels are shorter than mine, maybe you'll do better. Good luck!

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  2. Scribd has never worked for me. I have been trying to figure out how to get in with B&E but I'm not sure they're allowing amateurs access. They may only want to make 'published' authors available.

    Kindle has worked okay for me, but last month, I didn't sell a single copy, which is why I posted this entry, and another one on my Talking Points Memo blog. So far this month I've sold all of two copies of something.

    My novels are shorter than yours? Really? Wow.

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