THE HALCYON DISLOCATION Has Just Listed on Hoopla

Hoopla Listing at the Leeds and Thousand Island Public Library

If you’re interested in trying a new author, but don’t know if their writing is consistent with your taste, why not try a book from a library? The Halcyon Dislocation, the first book in The Halcyon Cycle, a Science Fiction story that reads like Fantasy, has just been listed by Hoopla, a major library lending service.

Here is the North America coverage map for Hoopla, https://www.zeemaps.com/view?group=661471 .

 

North American Library Coverage Map for Hoopla

So, if you have library privileges at the Seeley’s Bay Public Library, the Lyndhurst Public Library, or the Lansdowne Public Library, why not download The Halcyon Dislocation and give the book a try?

Library Branches and Contact Information

The Dystopian Political System in THE HALCYON DISLOCATION

When I was planning the plot for The Halcyon Dislocation, an essential element was the development of a dystopian political system for the isolated, dislocated University of Halcyon. In particular, the political system, to the outside observer, would look like a functioning democracy with regular, honest elections, opposition parties, and even new grassroots parties that objected to the status quo.

However, the system is rigged so that these fledgling opposition parties almost never rise to power since it takes a very long time to gain a following, and even if they do, they will find the new party membership and the incessant government propaganda has turned them into another version of the older parties that they were supposed to supplant. Hence nothing has changed except possibly the ruling party’s name.

The reader might ask, “Why do we need such a new, elaborate political system. Man’s history is replete with tyrannical regimes which used propaganda and force to beat down opposition, often for long periods of time?”

I would answer that those systems all have several fatal flaws which this modified dystopian quasi-democracy circumvents.

First of all, using power overtly to suppress dissent means the dissent goes underground and the government receives outward compliance until the opposition gains sufficient momentum that people begin to believe a regime change is possible. Then allegiances change very quickly.

Secondly, suppressed citizens are smart enough to see what is going on and they will not be fooled even if the penalties force them to comply outwardly. They are essentially slaves in their own country and will serve and work halfheartedly at best. It will lead to a general malaise.

The Aberhardt Principle

A key element of the Halcyon quasi-democracy is the Aberhardt Principle, named after the professor on staff who wrote about it. In this approach for making societal change, one sets up a system where everyone is encouraged to speak their mind so the sociologists can measure how effective the advertising, propaganda, education, and entertainment activities have been in changing people’s minds about key issues. The focus is on changing people’s minds against their will by repetition, multiple lines of influence, and long exposure to the multi-media message. The rate of time-dependent change of people’s minds determine how quickly the agenda-setters in the Halcyon quasi-democracy can implement their social changes.

So, even though grassroots opposition parties form, by the time they get to power (if they ever do), they will find not only has their new party changed their outlook, but sufficient time has elapsed that the electorate now fully endorses the new sociological innovations that the old grassroots membership opposed.

Concluding Comments

This is not a political blog and I draw no inferences to past, present, or future systems which might resemble this Halcyon University dystopia. I merely point out, through this imaginative exercise in plot development, that it is possible to develop a political system that has honest, regular elections, allows citizens to share their political views with some freedom, and yet is totally tyrannical and constrained even though the programmed social innovation happens on a multi-year timescale to allow for Aberhardt-style attitude adjustment.

If you have a CALGARY PUBLIC LIBRARY card, you can check out Peter’s books for free …

Time for a New Magnetic Sign for My Vehicles

Since I have just finished my fifth book, it seemed time to update my rather modest advertising. Having a sign on my van is one inexpensive way to draw attention to my writing. The last sign I had on my vehicle only featured my first three books. So this time I wanted to focus particularly on The Dragons of Sheol and Coventry 2091.

My books are listed on many of the major online bookstores: Word Alive Press-Anchor, Walmart, Indigo, Barns and Noble, and, of course, Amazon (it will hopefully appear on Apple soon, but they seem to take longer than anyone else to list). If you’d rather not search the site for my name, you will find links at … https://wolfsburgimprints.com/buy-books/

Coventry 2091 Trade Paperback Arrived: Updating My Author’s Bio

I’ve reached a milestone with the publication of my fifth book, Coventry 2091. It’s time for me to revise my author’s bio. Here is a preview of the changes.

Long before I became a fiction author, I was an avid reader. Books in general and novels in particular influenced me greatly. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings , C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of the Narnia , and Stephen R. Lawhead’s trilogy, Song of Albion are among my favorite and best-loved novels.

I also very much enjoy classic science fiction classics such as Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky.

The stories I most enjoyed were not only entertaining, but they taught me something about all that is good and excellent in ourselves and the world around us. They inspired hope without glossing over the fact of evil

I began writing The Halcyon Dislocation in response to a challenge of sorts. I was meeting with friends in our small book club when I began musing about how much I would like to write a novel. One of my friends, an accomplished author in her own right, looked me in the eye and said, “Why don’t you do it then?” After many conferences and contacts with other authors, my first book was published.

I am now the author of five books. As a futuristic novelist, I started my writing journey by creating a complex, parallel world in The Halcyon Dislocation. And so I began my speculative fiction series, The Halcyon Cycle. My second novel, The Battle for Halcyon, describes the fate of the displaced University of Halcyon as it seeks to return to its own space-time. The third in this series, The Dragons of Sheol, published in 2019, takes the reader to Abaddon, a continent ringed by mountains with the main land mass six kilometres below sea level. 

In 2021 I have published the first book in a new series, The Coventry Chronicles, called Coventry 2091. These stories, naturally enough, make some assumptions about what life will be like seventy years from now. Although, I foresee some troubling and deeply unsettling changes ahead, I am at heart an optimist and believe that whatever evil we may face, it cannot forever triumph over good. As a reader you might be surprised at how that manifests itself in the story.

In writing these stories I have been able to pursue a life-long dream of writing fast-paced novels that explore the intersection between adventure, science, faith and philosophy.

My book, The Battle for Halcyon, won a 2016 Word Award in the Speculative Fiction category. Previously The Halcyon Dislocation was short-listed as a finalist in The Canadian Christian Writing Awards – Futuristic Fiction Category. I am grateful for the recognition I received as relatively new and unknown author.

I am currently working on the  first draft of Coventry Peril. This story follows the travails of the Coventry Penal Colony and their hope for freedom and a place of safety.

THE HALCYON DISLOCATION is now Available at the Toronto Public Library as an e-Book

Max Planck paved the way for the quantum understanding of small particle behavior. He also defined a concept later named after him: Planck Time. Planck Time is unit of time defined only in terms of universal constants. This is a SciFi story about what happens at intervals shorter than Planck Time.

The University of Halcyon Physics Department is researching force fields on behalf of the Defense Department. Unfortunately the first large scale test goes awry. The whole university is learning some surprising things about Planck Time.

Find the book in the Toronto Public Library catalog and check availability … link

THE HALCYON CYCLE is now Available as eBooks at the Calgary Public Library

Although I prefer holding a real book to reading a book on my smart phone, I have found e-books particularly useful for library borrowing. They allow waiting lists and automatic retrieval (no more pesky library fines).

I am gratified to point out to my friends in Calgary, that THE HALCYON CYCLE books are now available in e-book format at the Calgary Public Library … if you haven’t read, for example, THE DRAGONS OF SHEOL, why not check it out there for free?

For your convenience, here is a link to the Calgary Public library Halcyon Cycle e-books. Enjoy …. https://calgary.bibliocommons.com/v2/search?searchType=smart&query=Kazmaier

Christmas in Feiramar

As a novelist, Christmas sometimes draws my thoughts back to writing about Christmas in some of the stories I have created. For those who have read The Halcyon Dislocation, this discussion may remind you of the scene in Chapters 15 when Dave Schuster and Al Gleeson and their companions stumble on New Jerusalem after a disastrous and fatal encounter with pony-sized wolf-like creatures that can communicate with each other and plan attacks.

The Saddest Thing I Ever Read …

I belong to an Indie Publishing Group on Goodreads. One topic of discussion focuses on writers that are ready to quit. Of course some comments on this thread are encouragements to go on. Others reinforce the idea of “hanging up your quill.” I like to interact with some of the comments. I’m going to respectfully disagree with some of the points made by the author of the quote below, but I want to disagree with the ideas and assertions but not in any way pillory the person, so I propose to call her Cacia. Here is the quote:

Unless you have an independent income and treat writing as an amusement (you can afford) the outlook is very grim. And generally without appeal.

The average earnings for ‘published’ writers with book deals, but no big publicity behind their print books is $12,000 pa

Want to feel really depressed? Go to ebook tracker on kindle nation daily and set up to track so-called all time ‘best sellers’. It will take you months to build up the stats but you will be sickened by how FEW sales are made on Amazon of print and/or ebooks

In the last 10 years the world is awash with so much ebook trash the authors can’t even give away.

As for freebies – people who buy free books ONLY buy free books. With the amount available on any given day you’d need ten lifetimes to read them all

Shysters will tell you building a following on social media will sell books. Total BS. All you do is cater to time wasters INSTEAD of writing

You need a reputable agent with years of industry contacts to get to publishers. With a ‘product’ those publishers will make the real money on – selling the ‘rights’ to Hollywood.

Your agent and publisher need to be convinced you have a few more books where the first came from. And you are ‘presentable’ to the media and public for publicity stunts and promotion.
And won’t become suicidal with ‘writer’s block’.

Stick with your day job.

The saddest thing I ever read was some hopeful saying she had 400 copies of her book sitting in her garage.

Don’t let that be you

Cacia begins with the statement:

Unless you have an independent income and treat writing as an amusement (you can afford) the outlook is very grim. And generally without appeal.

I don’t think the situation is nearly so binary. It’s true that starting out is difficult. Indeed, building any independent small business is tough and success is not guaranteed. Certainly making a fortune in writing is not guaranteed and not even probable, but that is not the point. As a writer one has to have a story or message to get out. Like all small businesses, one has to build the business, and for a time, one has to augment one’s income with other activities as one publishes books. Perhaps the books will never sell in sufficient quantities, but you are following a dream and, perhaps like me, you are writing books you had wished to read, but no one had bothered to write them yet.

To me the key question I ask is not “Am I making lots of money?” but rather: whatever method I am using to publish my books, I ask: “Is my publishing method scale-able?” In other words, if I wrote a book so exciting, so deeply moving, so beautiful that readers just had to share it with their friends (it hasn’t happened to me yet), could the publisher supply 100,000 books if the demand were there? If the answer is ‘no,’ and I only have the hard copy books that I have purchased and can sell personally, then I humbly suggest you, as a writer, have some work to do, since I think you can do better.

Cacia then goes on to say:

In the last 10 years the world is awash with so much ebook trash the authors can’t even give away.

This I think is true, since e-books are easy to publish. However, trash has always been out there going back to the “penny dreadfuls” (not the television series but the small, serialized books that sold for one penny in the 1800’s). Readers have always had to discern where to spend there money. It may be worse now, but one can scan the titles so much more quickly too. Just make sure what you’re writing is well-edited and is of high quality.

Another quote from Cacia:

As for freebies – people who buy free books ONLY buy free books. With the amount available on any given day you’d need ten lifetimes to read them all

This is not true of me. I have downloaded freebies to check out an author I’m not sure about, but I then go on to buy their books if I like them.

My final quote from Cacia:

The saddest thing I ever read was some hopeful saying she had 400 copies of her book sitting in her garage.

There are many, many sad things in life. As far as writing goes, the saddest thing that I have encountered is an aspiring writer who has spent ten years perfecting a manuscript, spent another two years writing to publisher after publisher to get the manuscript accepted, only to face rejection after rejection. The aspiring author then gives up without ever getting the manuscript into the hands of the people who matter most – the reader. He will never count as a failed author. In the publishing world, he will not count at all because his book has never been published and never read. This, to me, is the fate that one ought to avoid. The woman with four hundred books is a published author.

A Personal Note

I’m grateful to Cacia for sharing her own experience. We are both authors and her comment has made me rethink the question that frequently pops up: Why do I keep writing? Why not stop?

I have written four fictional works. Three of the novels, the books in The Halcyon Cycle, are Science Fiction that reads like Fantasy. Why do I write? I don’t write for amusement. Nor do I expect to become rich because of my writing. I believe I write for two main reasons:

1. I have been so blessed by reading the fictional works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, and Lucy Maud Montgomery (among many, many others). In writing their stories, they not only enthralled me, strengthened my faith, and imbued me with hope and a sense of beauty and wonder, but they left a great deal of themselves in their books. So much so, that I think I know them as friends even though I never met them in person. I want to give a bit of that back. I don’t write as well as they did, but I want to give something back.
2. The second reason is more personal. No one in my family tree has ever written a book before (as far as I can tell). If some Kazmaier had written a book in ages past, I would get to know them in a personal way that goes far beyond even letters and correspondence that might be extant. I want my grandchildren to have that kind of a chance to know me through my books.

Disclaimer

I do not offer publishing, small business, or other financial advice. I offer my own history, observations, and comments up in the hope they will stimulate thinking and discussion.

Link to the comment thread on Goodreads.

If you’re thinking of giving one of my novels a try … follow this link.

Launch Special: 99-Cent Sale (USD) on THE HALCYON CYCLE Books 1 and 2

Wolfsburg Imprints has never run a sale on The Battle for Halcyon, but they are running a 99-cent sale now on this e-book for a limited time as launch-bonus for book 3, The Dragons of Sheol. If you haven’t yet tried books 1 and 2 in The Halcyon Cycle or, if you’re like me, and wish to have an e-book copy for reading after “lights out,” now is the time to take advantage of this special value. You’ll need a free Kindle® app on your smart phone or tablet to read these e-books.

Download the e-books from my Amazon® author page.

For my Canadian readers, even though my publisher (Word Alive Press) is based in Winnipeg, the Amazon sale listing in is USD. That currently translates approximately to $1.32 CAD.

Do I Write Science Fiction or Fantasy?

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I once asked a friend of mine who reads a great deal of Science Fiction and Fantasy what he saw as the essential difference between the two genres. He thought for a moment and said that Science Fiction “could happen” while Fantasy “could not.”

I think I know what he meant. In Science Fiction, the writer is cognizant of the physical laws operative within the story. If an SF writer were to describe space travel, Newton’s Laws of motion and gravity would be obeyed. Even here one enters a grey area: some writers would insist on using the speed of light as a fixed limitation while others would imagine a way around it.

In my high school years, I grew up on this genre and my love of science, in large measure, grew out of that reading. Several friends had urged me to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but I resisted for a long time. When I did read it, it was as if a new world had opened up for me. It recaptured for me what I had experienced as a child on first reading The Chronicles of Narnia. There was a sense of nobility, beauty, and “rightness” about those imagined worlds that I had missed in my Science Fiction reading, which instead, seemed sterile in comparison.

The longer I thought about it, it came to me that I was encountering an unspoken presupposition that was embedded in most SF literature, that of a materialistic universe where all that mattered was atoms and molecules; chemistry and physics. In addition, I found that the more modern SF also grew more cynical, growing increasingly hostile to the very things that I loved in Fantasy. As a consequence, I read very few modern SF stories (although I do try them once in a while) and spend much more time reading Fantasy.

So how has this impacted my writing? I think, in The Halcyon Cycle, I write Science Fiction that reads like Fantasy. I spend a good deal of time thinking about the physics and chemistry behind my imagined world (I think some of my readers would argue too much, in fact), but I also have many of the elements of a Fantasy story (swords, nobility, right and wrong which transcends worlds and physical laws for example).

Check out The Halcyon Cycle Books … http://bit.ly/2qzzi4P-Author