Here is the cover reveal for Astrid Maxxim book 3: Astrid Maxxim and the Antarctic Adventure. If all goes as planned, this will be the Astrid Maxxim book for 2013.
Like the first two Astrid Maxxim covers, this was created by Matthew Riggenbach of Shaed Studios. He does great work, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
The three mile-long interstellar spacecraft Constellation was designed to explore and colonized the Sirius Star System. The problem is, that it isn’t going to Sirius. The $14 Trillion spaceship has been hijacked by its commander and is flying toward the 82 Eridani star system, and none of the 7,000 crew and colonists know why. None of the crew members, including the commander, are ready for the shock of what they will find when they finally reach 82 Eridani. Journey is the first volume of a seven book series.
I started on this book over the summer and really shot through the first few chapters. I decided to set it aside as I finish up the other books on the Previews list. I plan to have it done in the first half of 2013. This is the first of a seven book series and I am really looking forward to it.
It is the year 2037, when men are men and robots are cute. Mike Smith and his robot wife Patience take a trip to the bottom of the world, and what they find there might just shake the foundations of their marriage and human/robot society.
As it says on the Previews page, this book is coming in 2013, but hopefully it will be early in 2013. I’m in the middle of chapter six of 16 chapters. If I can stick to my usual pace, I should have the draft done mid-March. Allow about a month for editing and that puts it sometime in April. I get almost daily requests for this book, so I hope it lives up to everyone’s expectations. Personally, I think it’s so far the best of the three.
Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed adventurer, story-teller, and liar is back. Eaglethorpe does what he does best: take an uninteresting story and exagerate it until it’s just as uninteresting but in a whole new way. The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton combines the two previous Eaglethorpe Buxton adventures with three all new tales.
The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton will likely be my next book published. It contains five parts.
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess– previously published.
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress– previously published.
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Queen of Aerithraine– finished and edited. I’m really, really pleased with this story. It features the Queen of Aerithraine, with whom Eaglethorpe once had the pleasure of spending a fortnight; the revelation of the mystery of Ellwood Cyrene, the revelation of what really happened to Eaglethorpe’s family, zombies and many, many pies.
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Amazons– I’m just finishing it up.
Eaglehtorpe Buxton and the Day of the Night of the Werewolf– plotted and ready to go.
As these books are short, they usually only take me about a month to write, so I am hopeful that this volume should ber ready by election day (which is November 6th for all of you outside the US). I’ve noted that the world falls into two camps– those who love Eaglethorpe and those who hate him. Neither camp, hopefully, will have long to wait.
Astrid Maxxim book 2 is about 60% done. Since these books are quite short, I’m still pretty confident that I will be able to finish this one before the end of the year.
I have a lot of plans for Astrid and her friends and I’d really like to be able to do one of these books a year for the next few years. We’ll see.
“Good day, Mother Linton. How lovely that you could join me this afternoon.” Iolanthe wore, for her, an unusual day dress. It was light blue satin with a dark velvet mock-coat. The front left far more cleavage than she was used to wearing, but some of that was covered by the bouquet of flowers gently tucked at the base and flaring outward. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman seated in Bonne Nourriture. She stood up to shake hands with the priest.
Mother Linton accepted her hand. She wore her traditional robe, black with one white stripe running down from each shoulder. Her hair had grown quite long and straight since coming to Birmisia and it had gone completely grey. Sitting down, she added the white linen napkin to her lap.
“Don’t you prefer Café Etta?” asked the priest.
“I thought this was more appropriate.”
A lizzie, wearing a white apron, handed each of the women a paper menu. “Ssessial is glazed iguanodon.”
Mother Linton curled her lip. “I’ll have the chicken salad.”
“The same for me,” said Iolanthe, and smiling, handed back the menu. She watched the reptilian waiter depart. “You do know there are no chickens in Birmisia, don’t you? Our salad will most likely be velociraptor.”
“Hmph. I don’t get the opportunity to eat out very often.”
“That’s a shame. I find it advantageous. It gives me a chance to take the pulse of the community.”
“I don’t need to know the pulse of the community. I am not a politician.”
“At least not a very accomplished one,” said Iolanthe.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, Mother Linton, that this business with the Zaeri has grown tiresome. Despite the fact that I have no strong religious feelings, I understand that you do. That, and the fact that I respect strength in a woman, is why I’ve not interfered with you leading your flock. But now you are becoming a danger to this colony. If you drive wedges between the Kafirites, the Zaeri, and the lizzies now, we may not be able to unite against Freedonia.”
“The lizardmen are nothing more than animals, and the Zaeri are infidels. They killed Kafira.”
“Well yes. Some of the Zaeri did kill her. Some of the Zaeri were her followers. Some of them were her apostles. And as you priests so often seem to forget, Kafira herself was a Zaeri.”
“Don’t presume to teach doctrine to me.”
“Fine. Politics then. If I have to, I will have you removed from Birmisia and sent back to Brech.”
“There is a word for defying the authority of the Church,” hissed Mother Linton. “It’s heresy.”
“Yes. I could be burnt at the stake,” said Iolanthe. “If it were three hundred years ago. There’s a word for defying my authority too. It’s called treason, and they hang people for it. Still.”
“You care nothing for Kafira or the Church.”
“You are absolutely correct, Mother Linton. I care only for Birmisia Colony.”
“You care only for your family name.”
“One is the same as the other,” said Iolanthe, her voice cold steel.
“I’ll have you excommunicated. How will your family name look then?”
“I doubt the Church hierarchy will be so inclined when I show them the evidence that you had Yuan Weiss try to assassinate me.”
“I…” Mother Linton gulped for air. “I never did any such thing.”
“Oh, I admit that some of the evidence had to be manufactured, but it is very convincing. Here comes our ‘chicken salad’.”
The lizzie waiter returned and placed a large plate in front of each woman. Iolanthe picked up her fork and took a bite.
“No,” she said. “This is nowhere near as fine as Café Etta. Aalwijn Finkler knows how to run a top-notch establishment. You know, I believe he is a Zaeri. And if I’m not mistaken, he married a nice Kafirite girl. I wonder. Do they attend your church or do they go to shrine?”
Mother Linton glared back. She had not touched her food. Iolanthe took another bite.
“Do you know what they have done to the Zaeri in Freedonia?” she asked. “They chased most of them out. Those who couldn’t get out, they herded into work camps. They murdered tens of thousands of them.”
“That’s just propaganda.”
“No it isn’t. It’s the truth. And after the war is over and the extent of the Freedonian atrocities is revealed, good compassionate Kafirites everywhere are going to be shocked and angered at what was done in their name. Freedonia will become synonymous with prejudice, hatred, and evil. And the world will look at Birmisia, and what will they see?”
Mother Linton said nothing.
“They will see harmony. They will see Kafirites and Zaeri working together for the greater good of Brechalon. And they will see my family as the architects of this veritable utopia. But there will be plenty of rewards to go around. I offer you a part of this. You don’t have to let go of your prejudice and hatred. You just have to swallow it way down inside, and not let it back out.”
“For all your arrogance, you cannot see the future,” said Mother Linton. “The Freedonians may march right over this city tomorrow.”
“I do not think so.”
“Are you counting on your Zaeri witch to save you?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. What are you counting on?”
“What would you have me do?” asked Mother Linton sullenly.
“Do what you should be doing. I don’t care whether you let lizzies in the church or not—I gather there aren’t that many interested anyway. Just let those mixed families like the Finklers and the Korlanns attend church together. You might even find a new convert. You will need someone to replace Yuan Weiss after all.”
I am reducing my Facebook footprint a bit. This is the result of several things, one of which is an upcoming law in Nevada regarding teachers and social networking. I am limiting my personal facebook friends to close relatives and friends. If you would like to keep track of me on Facebook, please do so by “liking” my Author Wesley Allison page. You can find it by typing “Author Wesley Allison” into the search window at the top of any Facebook page. Thanks.
New edits of Princess of Amathar are now available at Amazon and Smashwords and should be available everywhere else within a few days.
There are not too many changes, so unless you are a real completist, you might not want to bother. About 5 words were changed or corrected in the book. The biggest change was with comma usage.
On the other hand, if you have not read my first book before, I invite you to check it out. I have to say that I really enjoyed it as I was reading it through again. I write books that I like to read, and this is especially true of this book– regardless of how that makes me sound.
The other day, somebody asked me, “Wes, you are exactly like Mike in your robot books. Is your wife anything like Patience?” My answer was “My wife is pretty damned patient, but she’s no Daffodil.”
Mike is a lot like me, but I would say not 100%– 75 to 80% tops. Still, many of the little stories and events in the books are taken from life. In His Robot Wife, Harriet (Mike’s daughter) mentions the time that her father scared the crap out of a kid trying to bully her at the risk of getting fired. Yup, that’s right from my life.
There’s a tidbit in the book where Jack (Harriet’s husband) is cleaning the puke out of his car because a neighbor he was trying to help vomited and caused a chain reaction. This story comes from real life– thankfully not mine. My brother-in-law experienced this. His wife, like mine (they’re sisters) is always getting him to do something for people he hardly knows, and unlike me, he’s too nice to say no. He ended up having to clean vomit from three or four other people out of his car.
In the new book, so far, there are fewer little tidbits from my own life, although I am channeling a few cruise vacations as Mike and Patience go on theirs.
One of my favorite characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon is the reptilian maid Cissy. In my original trilogy, which became books 1, 3, & 5, she has an important role to play, but we don’t really get to know her. Her part in those books didn’t change really when I expanded the series. I just wrote more about her, particularly in The Dark and Forbidding Land, where we get to see a good portion of the story from her eyes. We see her make a brief appearance in book 0 as well. In book 4, she shares her part of the story with Yuah. I couldn’t decide which of them would be the primary story-teller here. I wanted to write more from Cissy’s eyes, but there were parts of the story that only Yuah could tell. Hence, splitting the part up for the both of them.
Incidently, we have a large and beautiful iguana that we adopted about 4 years ago who was named for the character Cissy. Sometimes I even call her Ssissiatok. She, like the Cissy in the book, is a friendly reptile.
City of Amathar 