Science Fiction Thriller

 

I was studying Data guy’s new report on author’s earnings to understand the influences on total book sales, both paperback and ebook.

http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2016/

The data suggests that ebook sales have declined recently. However, keep in mind that more and more Indie and self published authors are using ASIN numbers rather than the more reportable ISBN number.

Also, the report mentions the influences that heavyweight Bookbub has on sales. Traditional publishing houses are paying the large fee to drive up their ebook sales and squeezing out the smaller fry. While Bookbub protests that it is fair, it really isn’t. You need a lot of reviews to get accepted and the cost is high. It’s also a matter of the higher number of sales and reviews you get, the more likely you will get more in the future. As an independent publisher, I struggle to get reviews. Sales are good, but reviews are few.

Price as an issue is also discussed. The traditional and mid-sized houses are putting high price tags on ebooks and that drives down sales. Discounting paperbacks results in selling less ebooks and more paperbacks. The popularity of coloring books that are counted as paperbacks was also a factor in the paperback sales bump.

Also, I’m concerned about the increasing availability of free books. Bundling is also a new marketing ploy that enables a reader to get a number of books for a lowered price. However, as an author, when I offer my first in a series, I get a lot of follow-on sales, so offering one free is well worth it for me and part of my marketing strategy.

There is also mention of Amazon’s recent changing of algorithms. Scam artists have infiltrated Amazon to manipulate the page reads in the Kindle Unlimited program. A number of innocent authors have been hurt in the crossfire. Since Amazon doesn’t disclose how they count these pages, authors rely on Amazon numbers for how many pages are read…and these numbers have changed dramatically recently.

There’s a lot of data and graphs to look at and some interesting comments on the current state of the business. So, take a look and draw your own conclusions.

This week I’m talking about The Human Blend by Alan Dean Foster. This is part of a completed Trilogy (The Tipping Point Trilogy)  that deals with extreme genetic manipulation of humans. I picked this because it is near future science fiction that is different than my usual fare. Also, the book is by a well known author that I haven’t discussed before.

Whisper is a thug who has chosen to alter his body to extreme thinness. His partner in crime is Jiminey Cricket who has long legs and can jump far. They attack a supposed tourist in an alley to harvest his hand to sell. Whisper is attracted to a hidden shimmering silver thread that he pockets. Not long after, shadowy figures start hunting them.

The book is a chase through strange environments and even stranger people. At first, the two run, thinking it is the hand that their pursuers want. Then, after they split up to throw off their trackers, Jiminey disappears. Whisper calls forth everything and everyone he knows to evade whoever is after him. And some of the characters are pretty strange…such as alligator man.

After he is shot with tracker bullets, Whisper ends up at Dr. Ingrid Seastrom’s clinic, desperate to get the bullets removed where he shows her the thread. He hopes her advanced equipment will reveal what he carries so he will know its worth. Unlike Whisper, Ingrid is an attractive Harvard educated natural. Investigating the thread leads to a startling discovery, and it appears to be connected to a quantum entangled nanoscale implant she took out of a young girl’s brain recently. The silver thread is a data storage device made from an impossible bit of material not from Earth. Her scientific curiosity wants to know more about the strange material, so together they form a partnership.

But their pursuers appear to have a lot of clout and skilled assassins to call upon in order to retrieve the stolen thread. The result is a wild chase through a disturbing world where what it means to be human is a very blurry line indeed.

Man and Beast

Recently two books came to my attention that deal with the mingling of humans and beasts. With the coming of Halloween where people adorn themselves in bizarre outfits and prowl the streets like animals, I thought these two unique and edgy new novels would be perfect for my blog.

The first is The Melding of Aeris by an astounding new author, D. Wallace Peach. It tells of a blasted world slowly recovering from science gone wrong. Scientists tinker with drugs to cure diseases and discover Pathway, a distillation that enables the grafting of skin across species.

Soon rich women are smoothing down soft animal fur on their shoulders like epaulets or admiring serpent skin as elegant as black lace over their arms and chest. Men embed the razor teeth of sea-beasts into the bones of their forearms and cover their backs with wolf pelt to enhance their appearance.

Then they bear children, and the next generation arrives as monsters; creatures created from the vanity of their parents.

Aeris, child of such altered parents, hides in shame in his father’s castle covered by serpent skin and hideous to gaze upon. He longs to look human.

However, his father is rich and uses his influence to get him human skin. Happy at first, Aeris soon learns the dirty secret of the murdered flesh he wears. The Bestiary where the animals are cultivated to supply the parts, the Alchemary where the various vials of distillations are kept, all are part of a secret underground operation run by certain powerful people.

Horrified as he discovers the existence of the black market of flesh and animal parts, Aeris joins a ragged rebellion of misfits to destroy the Pathway drug and bring down the Alchemery at all costs.

And the cost is great. Personally.

Well written, with a nice romance, a unique story and lots of action, I enjoyed The Melding of Aeris a lot.

The second book is reminiscent of the Island of Dr. Moreau. In Halfkinds by Andrew Vu, science has also advanced to the extent that the intelligence of certain animals has been elevated so they can use language and live in human society. But all humans are not happy with this arrangement.  The story opens with a prostitute that has raised a family of halfkinds in secret…and then is discovered and murdered. Her “children” flee in fear.

Told from the first person point of view, various viewpoints of the halfkind family are unique and different as each member of this strange inter species family struggles to survive and tell his perspective. They are hunted by an inter species team led by Simon Trevor and although various members of the family group care about others, there is still dissension and betrayal from within the family itself as they run and hide from outside killers.

I found it strange to be in the first person viewpoint of a half frog, half human.

Not to mention the lion and others.

Normally, this would not be a book I would read. It did contain the thoughtful concept of: if you don’t have a chance for a fair life, should you be brought into the world in the first place? It also portrayed a far future where intelligence across species has been enhanced significantly.

This is the first book of a series. I looked at several reviews as I wasn’t a fan, but a number of people really enjoyed the twists and turns in the plot while others didn’t like it at all. So, I finally decided at least to mention this very different story.

So, you’ll either love it or hate it.

But Halloween is approaching, where bizarre beings haunt our streets and sidewalks during the dark of night and beg on strangers’ doorsteps to feed a candy addiction.

Trick or Treat.