Updates

My life has been grueling the past few months. I have written almost nothing because I had no spare time at all.

Three things:

1. I am probably going to do some consolidating by taking down the four smaller Ecto ebooks from internet publishers in favor of just promoting the big omnibus The Ecto Chronicles.

2. I'm finally going to give this site it's long needed face lift. In fact I've already started.

3. I'm currently about 15% into writing a new science fiction novel set in present day earth. More details to come. 

Book Updates

All of my ebooks on both Amazon and Barnes & Nobel have now been updated with nice across-the-board formatting and functioning front matter (table of contents links.) They are now $1.99 each. Also, Soulbond has been taken down from Goodreads as a free to read ebook. 

New Hard Reset Cover

 

I liked the design of this cover already. It's my favorite one in the series. It's very Russian Constructivist. I didn't change a whole lot about it. All of the previous covers were made in Photoshop. I'm redoing them in Illustrator with nice clean vectors. The main changes in this cover are the city background. I redesigned a lot of the buildings. The other difference is the title font type. I liked the font that I used before. I used it on the first two original book covers and was planning on using it through the whole series but then I somehow lost it between book two and three. Since I couldn't use it anymore, I started using different font types for each book to go with the story or theme, arguing that I didn't need a single font to maintain a cohesive look to the series because the color scheme is powerful enough to do that on it's own. Why not just go overboard on expressing the personality of the individual books? So when I remade the first two covers, I switched their fonts because that uniformity idea had already been scrapped a long time ago and I might as well make them all similar in being dissimilar. 

Subtle things that no one will notice are the red hue. On the original, the color was pure red but this one is a little darker. After accidentally making the Helloween Thirteen cover in the wrong hue, I decided I liked it. Now as I redo the other covers, I'm also recoloring them with the new red.

I made Trish's jacket a little bigger and bulkier because I thought that it appeared to fit her too well. In the book, she is thirteen and wearing her dad's army jacket which has sleeves that obscure her hands when not rolled up. I spent time altering a detail on a picture that will be viewed for two seconds that isn't even different enough or large enough that it's noticeable without having it pointed out to you. And then you don't care anyway. Yes, I am THAT anal retentive about details in and on my books.

Writing Hard Reset (Pt. 2)

The first book of the series was almost named Soul Machine in reference to the Lamassu computer. The name is referenced by Andy's emulation in the second book.

This is my favorite of the four books. It has my favorite cover. It has my favorite antagonist setup. I love the idea of a computer so powerful that it can actually affect the minds of people around it and even their physical surroundings in a merging of reality and the virtual realm, where almost anything is possible. It has my favorite chapter, 'Dreaming in Digital.' It's like a lucid dream where the dreamer has total control. It almost felt like an experimental writing assignment and it ended up being something truly intimate, surreal and disturbing. It showcases the tragedy of the tragic villain which I always prefer over the random bastard villain.

The whole story is told in three main perspectives, all three experiencing their own trials in a robot apocalypse scenario. We have the impromptu command center where high ranking Apex officials are pulling strings to minimize damage done by the villain and ultimately formulating a game plan to stop her. There's the villain who basically gets to sit back and fool around, watching everyone scramble. Then there are the people in between. The three transients who are just trying to figure out how to survive on the streets in the chaos.

This was a good chance to show off Travis' military training and leadership. I don't know about others but I think it's really cool to see ANYONE applying their professional knowledge no matter the situation or the profession but especially military training in a crisis. Trish knows where to get weapons. Solomon is an expert on vehicles and has a trump card power. All three characters have their own personal back story chapter mostly highlighting the issues they're dealing with.

Solomon's story is interesting because it shows the corner of the ecto lore that I hadn't really gone over, what it's like to actually become an ecto. How exactly does it all work?  

But of course I like Trish's story the most. From a writing standpoint, the thing that makes her appealing is the fact that she's a kid and easily the youngest character. Her perspective and experiences are by nature going to be radically different from most others in the story so it gives a much needed balance. When you force a kid into an adult dominated situation it has the potential to become like a comedic relief. Kids do stupid things and there doesn't need to be a reason for it. It gives me an excuse for silliness which I always want because it's no fun being serious all of the time, even when the world is ending.

I remember when I was younger and went to my friend's house. He lived next to a creepy abandoned house that still had all of the former owner's stuff. He'd tell me bogus ghost stories he made up about the place and then we'd go jump the backyard fence and screw around with whatever we found over there.

I had another friend who lived on a ranch near a creek and the woods. One time after the sun went down, we went outside, got on quadrunners and split up to go look for mountain lions. Why in the hell would anyone do this?

Yet another time I was at a friend's house with another friend. It was 2 AM and we were hungry so we rode bikes to the nearby McDonald's. It was a ruralish area. The restaurant wasn't open. Some cops pulled into the parking lot and told us we were out past curfew. Not one of us even knew a curfew existed. It's not like the idea of a curfew was unfounded since we had just come from TP-ing someone's front yard tree about 20 minutes prior. The cops escorted us home, idling slowly behind our bikes. Then they woke up my friend's parents. They were extatic. Never got in trouble for the toiletpaper though. Again, a completely senseless act. What was the point? These kinds of things are important to remember so that when you're children do the same, you don't try to remove them from the gene pool for the good of humanity. This was the kind of content that I tried to recall when writing Trish.  

Writing Hard Reset (Pt. 1)

There was never any preconceived idea of making a whole series of books about this. The thought of making a sequel occurred to me towards the end of writing the first book. All I really needed to go off of was the short part in the first book where Jill mentally assimilates with technology and the song Electric Eye by Judas Priest. Really, I could have titled the entire series with Judas Priest songs. Book one: Screaming for Vengeance, Book two: Electric Eye, Book three: Hell Patrol, Book four: The Ripper. See? Remember how I said that the only way to quell inspiration is to create? Well it goes both ways. Creation also yields inspiration in an annoying perpetual cycle.
 
The character Trish who was originally only mentioned in the first book ended up getting her own chapter in the first book. I liked her and wanted her to get more "screen time" so I made her a supporting character in Hard Reset.


Hard Reset resembles a loose cyberpunk adaptation of the Wizard of OZ with no Scarecrow. I didn't start it intending it to be this way but once I noticed the similarities which were uncanny, I couldn't help but steer it that direction. Trish, (our Dorothy) is living in a life where no one understands her. She wakes up after a huge disaster and finds that she's now in a strange land. On her new journey, she meets Travis, (the Tin Man) and Solomon (the Cowardly Lion.) Once I saw the parallels, I purposefully wrote Solomon as this character. It was nice because before that I wasn't sure where I was going with his development. He is unwittingly searching for courage. Travis' "heart" that he doesn't have is Dr. Mills. Trish is trying (or being forced) to go home to her parents. Her new found dog who's name tag says 'Otto' is an anagram for Toto, who is of course the dog from the wizard of OZ. Jill, (the wicked Witch of the West,) is constantly watching them on their journey and occasionally popping in to harass/try to kill them. It's not until the protagonists meet Skip, (OZ,) the hacker behind the curtain that they are helped/sent to the witch's castle in order to kill her. And in the end, everyone gets what they need.

Other sources of inspiration include a couple of episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. In one episode, the primary enemy turns out to be essentially a computer virus which is slowly infecting their computer systems. They can slow it but they can't stop it. Should the virus assume total control, it's the apocalypse. I like this episode for two reasons. One is that it is a sudden death crisis scenario. There is a finite amount of time on the clock and if you can't figure out how to beat the bad guy before that, it's over. It creates an immediate and constant sense of urgency. Characters have to think fast but can't make mistakes. The second reason is that it's an unconventional kind of battle. The soldiers that are always relied upon for offense are practically useless and the technicians and desk jockeys are suddenly thrust onto the front line in a role reversal.