Spurious self-promotion: The Fool's Tale

[Lucifer]

Ok, so, I have now published my first book. It's currently only available in eBook format, through the Kindle dealie-ma-bobber that amazon offers (you can read it on any device that can run the Kindle app).

Here it is:

The excerpt (which includes purchase links):
http://www.davefancella.com/blog/space_ ... _tale.html

It's a fun book, and everyone who's read it has told me they enjoyed reading it. This includes visible members of this community who won't be named, as well as family and friends who have also read it.

But now we're on the free market, where I expect to be excoriated.

Anyway, check it out. If it looks interesting, buy it. If it doesn't, then don't buy it.

The cover art that you can see when you click that link was provided by sinewav, and he hasn't read the book, so he's not endorsing the contents, only the cover art.

But it's a fun read. I know, because I've read it like 200 times, while editing.

Edit: If you wait for the paperback, you can buy that and get the eBook for free. The paperback is priced at $13 USD, but available in any market that Amazon offers such things. The paperback could be live as soon as Friday, I'm waiting for the proof copy to come to me, and then I have to go through it. It may not be quite right and may require some work.

Edit 2: For the prereaders that came from here, there is some added content. In addition to the edits suggested by our correspondence, there has been some added stuff. You've got the story and know it, but there's some extra stuff added which didn't get the same sort of editorial attention, so it could be crap. But it's there, and I think it's worth reading, and, yeah, so there's that.

[sinewav]

I'll check it out. I have an old, old 2nd Gen Kindle a girlfriend gave me and I don't use it hardly enough.

[Lucifer]

You can use it on a more modern device, you just have to install the app.

Z-Man said in irc that he'd rather wait for the dead-tree version (I think that's what he said). So, you can do that, but that's Friday at the earliest, assuming no problems, still waiting for the proof.

It's up to you, the main point here is that you don't need to boot up an old device, you probably have a newer one that can run the app and you can use that.

[Z-Man]

It's a fun book, and everyone who's read it has told me they enjoyed reading it.

I can confirm that much. Mind that my reading experience included the ability to send nitpicks and complaints to the author with a small chance of them actually getting heard.

[Word]

Congratulations, Lucifer! Glad you published it - sinewav's cover is an eye catcher.

[Lucifer]

Ok, I edited the frist post to include the link to the paperback edition, which I just proofed and put up for sale.

I don't know when the "Buy the paperback, get the eBook for free" deal kicks in, though. Probably when it reaches Amazon, which is 3-5 business days.

[sinewav]

I finally had a chance to read your book. Good job! I generally don't read fiction and most of the fiction I do read is biographical fiction. This might be why I enjoyed your book. I know just enough about you that it's fairly easy to believe that all the events in "Fools Tale" actually happened to you in real life to some degree, including crossing paths with organized crime (regardless your innocent claims in the Author's Notes). Makes me wonder what other hi-jinx you've been up to in "Old Austin".

Nice work keeping the plot out of reach until I was invested enough in the characters that I couldn't stop reading. I will say I though there was going to be a double-cross. When Julian spoke disparagingly about Vali I thought "Hmmm, is this foreshadowing? Will Vali be a weak link in the chain?" Having the characters break the fourth wall in the final act was a good way to remind me how silly some of this stuff was. Nice touch. The space battle was excellent. I haven't read anything like it. The closest was in the manga "Battle Angel Alita" (Last Order Vol 3, 127) where characters go on about martial arts and weapon usage in zero gravity. Also, the ship-boarding process reminded me of opening scene of Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie), so that was cool. There were a few other things I liked and a few I didn't, but I don't want to give away any spoilers. I would probably read a sequel.

Your book inspired me to do more artwork and I re-drew the ship from the cover as a 3D model (because I need a lot of practice).

[aP|Nelg]

You mean to say you finally updated your website?

[sinewav]

You mean to say you finally updated your website?

Whose site?

[Lucifer]

Mine, he's poking fun at me because I hardly ever update it, even though it says "Updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" on it. I might have changed that, though.

Honestly, the instances in the book that are directly based on real events are few and far between. The dream sequence, the conversation with the kid, a few other things (the reason Vali could not betray Cecil is because of their special relationship, that one was real, once upon a time). Some of the flirting between Cecil and Mary is quote-for-quote flirting between me and my wife. You know, little things. It's a lot easier to put together a conversation when you start from a real conversation, especially if you don't remember it word for word.

I have a sequel planned, but it's fourth on my list of books to write. I'm working on Fastburger!, which will start what will, in all likelihood, be a trilogy. If it goes farther, it'll be a generation jump, the way the Shannara books do it. Then there's the Trump book, and the Tarzan satire. Then the second Space Pirate Chronicle.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Like I tell people, it's not a great work of literature or anything, and it's obviously a first book for a new author, but everyone that's read it has enjoyed it, so that makes it worth reading. But I promise that Fastburger! will be leaps and bounds better than that one.

[Word]

the Trump book

I could supply you with a few ideas for that.

[Lucifer]

the Trump book

I could supply you with a few ideas for that.

Heh. The concept, as written (I've already started the rough draft), is that Trump wakes up one morning and has turned into a fat mexican woman. You know, everything he hates the most, and now he is that.

It's already placed on Mars.

[Word]

OK, seeing that you already thought of everything important, I'd only suggest you play around with the idea that gerrymandering has become much more extreme and how time travel is treated in the laws concerning the voting process, and whether people adhere to these laws. I recently heard a lecture about neighbourhoods in Roman times and later read somewhere on the internet that before Caesar, the senate members responsible for the elections didn't just use "spatial" gerrymandering like we know from today (for more on that, read this wikipedia article), but also temporal gerrymandering by only allowing votes on certain days when their opposing "party" (not a party in today's sense of the word, but a rather loose association of people favoring either the rich or the poor) wasn't prepared. Of course, there are a lot of differences between the US political system and the Roman republic's, but typically it were the Optimates who abused this power the most (the ones favoring the rich), not so much the Populares. Caesar was mostly supported by the followers of the Populares, but also managed to convince some of the Optimates. Once he became dictator, he introduced his calendar (the Gregorian calendar we use today is just an improvement of the Julian calendar Caesar wrote) and thereby abolished temporal gerrymandering (he also re-ordered some districts, as did later emperors, but gerrymandering became a problem again in late roman times, until Diocletian had some new laws passed to prohibit it). I haven't really read a single scientific article about how that phenomenon has so often shaped history, because historians at the time didn't seem to notice or really comprehend it, but it's perfect "background material" for any story involving politics. Anyway, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but this realization has kept me up some nights...

[Lucifer]

We have temporal gerrymandering in the US. Election day is usually on Tuesdays, which is a work day, making it difficult for working class Americans to vote, especially people in poverty who can't afford to take time off to go vote, but also can't afford someone conservative being in office. I understand that in Australia, Election Day is a national holiday, and you're required to show up at the polls at some point in the day, or else you get a ticket. You're not required to vote, and because of these two requirements, they start whining about the electorate not participating when the participation rate drops below like 90%. We'd have a political revolution if 90% of our electorate participated.

Anyway, since the story is set in the context of an election of some sort, I'm going to discuss different parts of the political process, including how both racism and sexism affect how people vote. There will be more explicit transgender themes, as well, but not actual transgender issues, because what makes the Trump analog not transgender is that he wasn't born that way, it was forced onto him by an external party. (You'll find out early in the book that a bodyswapping entity created the situation, so it's not a spoiler for me to say that ) I've already written up to a point that's a little bit past the transfer of consciousness.