Tag: author

The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd

One thing you can always count on seeing in a Sci-Fi action show is flying objects. Architecture is no exception, and why would it be? The day after anti-gravity is developed, somebody will start building a flying house.

I built my first one in The Illusion of Gravity. According to the story’s hero Rivan Saraf, “The only large shapes Iron Arrow could form in those days were cylinders and spheres. So that’s what you got when you ordered a flying house — a flattened tube fused to a flattened sphere.”

Continue reading “The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd” →
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Hacked!

On October 16, an unknown person registered an Internet domain associated with a business I once owned, activated an obsolete email address, and used the credential to destroy my Facebook accounts.

What a shock that was and, as you can imagine, Facebook doesn’t seem to care.

So, I’m off Facebook, perhaps permanently.

Just for fun, imagining a world in which you cared about what I’m up to on a daily basis, where would you like to find a record of that? Instagram? TikTok? YouTube? Elsewhere?

In the meantime, find me on X at @johndyerwrites

Image by MV Studio MV from Pixabay

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Blurbled!

A first draft book description for Maroli Tango. Comments welcome.

Sometimes, no matter what’s going on, you have to make it about you.

Earth, 2026 — an alien civilization’s backwater territory; an epicenter of impending catastrophe.  In fifteen years, a solar event will scorch the planet. Coming up after that, an ice age looms. Two million light years away, the Unseen have demonstrated the means to settle a grudge.

United States President Carmen Benequista is tired of dealing with it. Embattled, worn out, she is visited in a dream. Her deceased husband says, “Find someone to share your life while it can still make a difference.”

It’s not a rocket science proposition. Her steady companion, Space Mafia kingpin Brandon Lopez, 15 years her junior, is waiting for a signal.

Meanwhile, first-contact survivor Mason Fowlkes, soon to be 16, is growing up fast as an apprentice Ship’s Mechanic aboard the Anye migration vessel Anuraga. The work life is great; the home life not so much.

French Air Force lieutenant Marie Jourdaine is on the rebound after a brief stint as the world’s youngest female fighter pilot. Things are kind of working out, and kind of not.

Right there in the middle is a legion of consciousness-elevated maroli labor appliances, a product of ancient Anye technology, monstrous in appearance, sweet of disposition, intent on discovering their place in the universe.

It’s been a bumpy ride, fraught with challenges. Maybe it’s time for our heroes to take care of themselves.

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Read This First

Here’s the deal — you might want to read The Illusion of Gravity first because it’s the first volume of a series.

Alternatively, you can start with one of the other books and backtrack later to find out what you missed. There’s no penalty.

Literary Science Fiction, focused on story, not just space ships and ray guns. Entertaining. Immersive. Ambitious. Value-positive. Fun. Written for grown-ups. Suitable for young adults. The opposite of dark, smutty, ugly, pessimistic.

Amazon makes it easy to find out if a book is something you want to read. Go to the Kindle listing. Click below the cover art on the ‘Read Sample’ button. Give it a few pages. You’ll know soon enough.

The Illusion of Gravity can be found here. Discover my catalog here. Check out my blog for other essays. Thanks for reading. We need you.

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Evocative

Or at least, that's what I intend. An inflection point in the current WIP, Maroli Tango, hot off the author's desktop.

Blustery weather conditions over the South Atlantic had moved across Ruksa Zila’s course an hour after sunrise. By midmorning, gusts were strong enough to bend trees.

At the owner’s residence, top of the hill above RZ’s hospitality village, cloudy skies loomed, great room patio doors shook. Five hundred meters below, turbulent seas churned.

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Podcast!

Another teaser from Maroli Tango. Third editing pass. A lot of revision and shuffling around of narrative threads. The writing's getting better, I hope.

Nashville, Tennessee

Conservative pro-wholesome-values commentator Mark Washburn sat at a dining table in what might have been his home.

He said, “There’s a new sheriff in town; a Zirna Zapha NGO that goes by the name of Osadhi, in recent weeks beating up on organized crime in an effort, they say, to choke off the money and muscle that keeps Earth’s most toxic powerbrokers in business.

Our guest pilots the spaceboat Sthiti Osadhi on raids. He describes himself as a bus driver, roadside mechanic, locker room attendant and more recently, publicist. This week, Mason Fowlkes launched a new streaming service, Classic Cosmic TV, delivering vintage content from the planets Vidura and Jivada.”

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Therapied!

So, at around 119,000 words, I realized Mason Fowlkes was a pivotal cast member with a relatable story. Oops. Time to shuffle chapters and fill in backstory. It's therapy, for both of us. Maroli Tango, in progress.

Community Resources was headquartered on Residential Deck 5 (RD-5). Day care. Classrooms. Crafts center. Fitness center. Jump Ball court. Thrift Exchange. Library. Meeting rooms. Etcetera.

There resided the Family Services department, under the direction of the distinguished Anye Samudri elder Brian Lama, no relation to Dalai Lama, although possessing similar bearing and rectitude.

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Call of the Muse

I’m recently enticed by a call for submissions issued by The Dark London and Transmission Roundhouse entitled “A curation of audio works from new producers”, serendipitously appearing the day I joined a podcasters support group.

It’s fate, right? I’m thinking about podcasting a novel, and some outfit throws out an opportunity to practice. May 17 deadline. Not impossible.

Now to make a decision — straight-up reading, dramatic reading, or full-on radio play?

Maybe you can help with that. Short story draft appended. Comments invited.
Continue reading “Call of the Muse” →
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Expositated!

I'm not much of a wordsmith when it comes to exposition. I rely on that fly-on-the-wall third-person-limited view, where the story is told by action and dialogue, without a narrator whispering in the reader's ear.
But sometimes you just gotta prep the scene, especially in first chapters where motivation might be a little fuzzy. Damn. I'm pretty sure it's something I'm not very good at. Regardless, here goes.

A back-handed compliment often given to Carmen Benequista by her enemies was that she won the senior-citizen vote on a resemblance to Sophia Loren, if only the actress had been two f-stops more photogenic.

Sour grapes, repeated by the entitled super-rich, their minions and thought-slaves, unions, associations, financial institutions, industrial conglomerates, the Mafia, the cartels and so forth, ad infinitum.

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