And the beat goes on. By Michael E. Gonzales

In the last couple of years, I’ve not done much reading of other author’s work, though I have bought several books I do intend to read.

Recently, I read, and very much enjoyed, William Nash’s USA: Eliminated! (The Jupiter Factor Series) (Volume 1). Also, at my son’s insistence I read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.

What I find now is that I read other’s work with a different set of eyes, writer’s eyes, if you will.

I imagine many writers do the same (I’d hate to think I’m the odd man out). For me, I look for the beats. You know, from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat”?

I’ll identify the tone of the story being set, the introduction of the theme, the background story, and when the author changes the world and thereby sets the story into motion.

Not a bad thing, all in all, but lately I’m reading with a highlighter, I make notes in the margins, it’s like collage all over again (without the beer and cold pizza).

 

The way I see it, if your reading a book that made it onto the New York Times best sellers list, you should pay attention. What is the author doing that I’m not? What’s the author’s style of writing? How has the author organized the story, and so on?

As I sit here typing I note the books on the shelf to my left: The Writer's Guide to Creating a Fictional Universe, Shaping the Story, Breaking into Fiction, Your First Novel, Novelist’s Boot Camp, Save the Cat, Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many more. I have found all useful, but I’m now learning from the within the pages of successful author’s works.

I really don’t want to change my writing style, but improve on it. I want to establish good writing habits and develop my inner sight to better see where the story needs to go and remain focused.

I’ve rewritten the beats, for no other reason than to clarify them for myself. I offer them here for your consideration:

·         Intro of main characters

·         Intro of villains

·         Description of situation – creation of conflict

·         Situation is bad, heroes see a path to resolution.

·         Heroes are pushed into action.

·         Initial success, just enough to get the attention of the bad guys.

·         Situation worsens for heroes.

·         Hero questions his actions.

·         Events strengthen hero’s resolve.

·         Hero’s actions raise the stakes. Love/loved ones are threatened.

·         Hero forces final conflict.

·         Hero is victorious, just barely, villain gets just deserts.

·         Heroes live happily ever after.

(I also have a version should the hero not succeed in his quest, another if he’s an anti-hero).

Please follow me, like me, and all that computer stuff:

Website - http://www.mikegonzalesauthor.com/

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Fire Star Press Blogspot - http://firestarpress.blogspot.com/

Book 5 The last of the series. By Michael Gonzales

You read book four in The Unborn Galaxy Series, The Vampires of Antyllus, you traveled millions of miles to join Earth’s first interstellar colony on a completely alien world.

There, you learned of the great evil stalking the land. You journeyed through and faced the incredible dangers of the blue forest. You trod the ancient streets of deserted cities once peopled with the dwindling indigenous population. Your mission ― to alert the commander to the proof you gathered at great risk.

Ultimately you found yourself in a war, outnumbered and out of options.

How you lived through it you cannot imagine.

You thought, as you closed the book on the last page, that you were leaving Antyllus, and its duel population, happy, and at peace.

You could not have been more wrong!

Dr. Eltanie Austrini, known as Tanny to her friends, had been among the last to arrive on Antyllus from Earth. She, and all the civilian non combatants were only released from their many safe rooms in the colony structure as hostilities ceased.

She was seeing this new world for the first time and she was overcome with wonder and curiosity.

Peace and happiness are defined differently by different people.

Recovery after the battle would take a great deal of work, there were wounded to care for, the dead to burry, and the colony facility was badly damaged and demanded immediate attention if the humans were to survive.

 Those who arrived here for reasons other than settlement, and who are now trapped on this alien world with no hope of rescue, see this peace as a life sentence at hard labor. They see themselves as slaves. But―they have a plan.

The relationships that spring up between Tanny and a former enemy, between a soldier and an E'meset woman, could just be collateral damage in the inevitable conflict to come.

Book five of The Unborn Galaxy.

Please visit my Website: mikegonzalesauthor.com

And follow me on Face: GONZOfiction

Dark Moon Rising, Battle of Broken Moon, Across a Sea of Star, The Vampires of Antyllus, Action, Action Adventure, Alien worlds, Aliens, battle, Dark Moon Rising, FireStarPress, Michael E. Gonzales, mikegonzalesauthor.com, NewRelease, Romance,science fiction, syfy

The Unborn Galaxy series by Michael E. Gonzales

Another rousing BLOG post by Mike Gonzales, the American, Spanish, Englishman.   

I cannot start to tell you how fortunate I am to have been published buy Fire Star Press.

Who among us can’t wall paper their home

with rejection letters? I was once told, by a literary agent I was courting, that “a rejection is not a reflection on you, personally.”

Of course not. It’s just a rejection of the work I poured my heart and soul into. It’s a comment on the vast amount of emotion, consternation, and yes, at times even tears, that I have invested in the telling of that story. It's a comment on that part of me that I have transferred onto that page.

Not that I'm bitter, you understand!

Despite the pain associated with these rejections - I persevered. I still have pinned to my computer the quote by Richard Bach, “An author is a writer who didn't give up.”

The circumstances that brought me into contact with Prairie Rose Publications, as I look back on it, seem highly unlikely. Perhaps even guided by an unseen, all powerful hand. Anyway, that’s how I like to see it.

So here I am, four books on the open market and I still can’t believe it. So, thank you, everyone at Fire Star Press! (Really, can’t say that enough!)

My first published works are a five-book series called, “The Unborn Galaxy.” Each book is a standalone story but they all take place in the same fictional universe. Their commonalities are that they all origin on JILL, the Joint International Lunar Laboratory, and there are bleed over characters. For Example, in “Across a Sea of Stars” Kathy is a minor character popping in and out of the story but only briefly. However, in “The Vampires of Antyllus” she is the main character.

I hope you’ll follow me on this adventure through The Unborn Galaxy, to the Moon, and beneath is cratered surface.

To a battle ground inside the great Moon base.

Come, be whisked away from the desolation of the lunar surface to a world of beauty and danger.

And take your position aboard the Demeter for a many years long voyage to another world and a fresh start for humanity, that is, if the promise of this new world doesn’t bring about its destruction.

             Then in the fifth book…              

The Unborn Galaxy; Dark Moon Rising, The Battle of Broken Moon, Across a Sea of Stars, The Vampires of Antyllus - Available through Amazon.com, Kobo, iBooks, Books-a-Million, Walmart.com, and Barnes and Noble.com

Please visit my Web Site:  http://www.mikegonzalesauthor.com/home.html

And follow me on Face Book:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010275572869

Thank you!

Dark Moon Rising, Battle of Broken Moon, Across a Sea of Star, The Vampires of Antyllus, Action, Action Adventure, Alien worlds, Aliens, battle, Dark Moon Rising, FireStarPress, Michael E. Gonzales, mikegonzalesauthor.com, NewRelease, Romance,science fiction, syfy

   

New Release — USA: Eliminated! (The Jupiter Factor Series Book 1) by William D. Nash

Jack Slater has chased UFOs his entire life—and now, he’s found one! It’s real, it’s abandoned in an alien hangar—and it’s in perfect condition. As the director of a governmental agency that studies aerial phenomena (OSAP), he knows he’s just discovered the find of a lifetime…and he wastes no time learning to fly it.

But as Jack and his OSAP colleagues explore the saucer’s secrets, the world watches as a deadly meteor plummets to earth, leaving a devastating path of destruction in its wake—including two important space stations. Too late, it becomes apparent the meteor is a missile, apparently fired by the Russian Federation. Detonating, it releases a terrible bioweapon, seemingly beyond the capabilities of Russia’s current weapons technology

The alien technology Jack has discovered is the only hope of survival for the United States. But that technology has appeared at a suspiciously convenient time, in Jack’s opinion. What are they dealing with? Is humanity truly at war with itself, or is an alien external force playing a deadly game determined to see the USA: ELIMINATED!

EXCERPT

Space—2072

     “This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard the Spaceplane Aurora. We have just escaped Earth’s gravity, and are now cruising at an altitude of seventy-one miles. Thrusters will kick in in about five minutes. Our ETA to the Interplanetary Space Station is twenty-seven minutes. Please stay seated and keep your seatbelts on at all times.”
     Thirty-one people half-filled the passenger cabin. Scientists and engineers in various fields sat chatting. They would live and work aboard the station for the next several years.
     Among the passengers was a family of three with their six-year-old daughter, the mother an astrophysicist and the father an engineer. Little Julie would be the first child aboard the space station, and she was excited. She sat next to the window looking out. The stars, brighter and more numerous than she had ever seen at home.
     “Mommy, look. Fireflies!” She pressed her nose against the window.
     Her mother looked down at her, smiled. “Honey, there are no fireflies in space. There’s no air in…” She stopped short. “What the…fireflies?” A swarm of small lights danced outside the window. Before she said anything else, a bright sheet of light appeared in the forward section of the cabin. It proceeded to move toward the rear, passing through people.
     “I think we’re being scanned,” someone speculated. The light went through them with no effect. “It seems harmless.”
     “Where’s it coming from?” someone asked.
     “I think from that.” One of the men pointed out his window. A glowing sphere-shaped object paced the spaceplane.
     “Is that what I think it is?” another questioned in disbelief.
     “Well, it’s definitely a UFO.”
     Several seconds later, it circled the plane several times. It approached the plane, then backed away. It performed the maneuver several times. Then it glowed brighter. It turned and charged the spaceplane. It ripped through the cabin like it was paper as people screamed. The vacuum of space gripped them, pulled them to their deaths.
     The cabin cameras caught everything and uploaded the video to the space station. Right before the video ended, it showed little Julie trying to hold on to her seat, still strapped in. Moments later the strap broke. The horror on her face grew as she flew through the large gaping hole.
     The Spaceplane Aurora drifted high in Earth’s orbit. Holes in its sides. Floating debris. Tumbling bodies. Some burned as they re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

How my dog helps me write. Michael E. Gonzales

On the 5^th of this month the fourth book in my series, The Unborn Galaxy, will be released. Number four, still very exciting. I hope the thrill of a new release never gets old.

This forth book will take those who have been following the many adventures spawned on JILL, the Joint International Lunar laboratory, far, far from the Earth's solitary satellite.

A distant world in orbit around a binary red star set, light years away, holds the promise of humanity’s future. It also contains a deadly secret that unleashes the worst of all greed and the unthinkable—those who would kill for blood.

When Lieutenant Colonel Kathy Selina is offered the choice to relocate to the Antyllus colony, she hardly has a choice.  The military has not only training and time invested in her, but she’s also been given a new SUB body to defeat the deadly disease that would have killed her, as a human.  Kathy, along with her executive officer, Major Dave Mitchel, a handful of SUBs, and the members of the Colony Defense Force, must pit their skills and abilities against the most malevolent enemy the universe has ever faced.

Failure will mean a terrible end for the planet’s native inhabitants, those who’ve come to colonize Antyllus, and certain death for the small cadre of defenders, as well. In a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, how can Kathy, Dave, and their band of soldiers defend an entire world against THE VAMPIRES OF ANTYLLUS?

“Mike, where do you come up with this sh― ah…stuff?” Friends frequently ask me. Well, there are many sources of inspiration. My dog is one of them.

We are a Doberman family. Our dog, Sarge, is a dark chocolate color, he a flop eared and he is a beloved member of our family.

Dobermans get a bad rap as vicious. This would only be true of our Sarge if he thought someone were threatening or hurting a member of his pack.

With us and our friends he’s a real sweetheart. And we just love him.

A month or so ago I wanted to start a new story could not think of anything to write.

I had been watching Sarge play “ring” with Max, our son (Sarge’s brother), then watched him sleep on Max’s lap. Later he came into the den to keep me company.

The TV was on and I noted that with certain sounds emanating from the set he would alert. Doorbells, dogs barking, and gun shots.

I smiled at him and thought to myself, My hero.

It was then that my imagination kicked in, and I began to visualize Sarge as a superhero.

That made me laugh.

Then I started to see him in many guises. As a soldier I saw him, rifle in hand, prepared to do battle with Zombie dogs! He is victorious and returns home an American Hero!

As an Astronaut he journeys into deepest space seeking out new worlds and new life, boldly going where no Doberman has gone before!

Perhaps on another planet he discovers alien Dobies!

And has to deploy robotic drones to keep them at bay!

Well, I never incorporated any of those daydreams into a story, but he sure helps stir up the creative juices. Perhaps the world is ready for a superhero dog? Ah, now I think about it, it’s been done. Of course, not with a Doberman!

The one thing I can say for sure…he is a lover.

Doberman Pinschers eat a lot. They are a large breed dog. If you love dogs as much as I do you’d hate to see one go hungry, so please purchase a copy of my new novel, “The Vampires of Antyllus,” a story he did donate a little inspiration too.

Thanks, ya’ll.

My Web Site:  http://www.mikegonzalesauthor.com/home.html

Please follow me on Face Book:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010275572869

Across a Sea of Stars by Michael E. Gonzales – February, 2018 #blogabookscene #Spaceopera #PrairieRosePub @PrairieRosePub #FireStarPress

Across a Sea of Stars by Michael E. Gonzales – February, 2018 #blogabookscene #Spaceopera #PrairieRosePub @PrairieRosePub #FireStarPress

Blog-a-Book-Scene is a monthly themed blogging endeavor from a group of authors who love to share excerpts from their stories. Find us on Twitter with the hashtag #blogabookscene and #PrairieRosePub.

My third novel, Across a Sea of Stars, is now available, and I can’t tell you how excited I am. I hope everyone who reads my story enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Almost all the main characters are based on actual people I have known, some I served with. I miss the time I spent on Nazer, and hopefully, you will too.

February’s theme is All you need is love.  The excerpt below is from my Science-Fiction novel, Across a Sea of Stars.

EXCERPT:

"Wow." Cris said.

"Is that an oath?" Tattie asked.

"No—it's just—wow. The moonlight off your face is really bewitching,"

"You think me a Sorgina?"

"No, Tattie, I—"

"You think I've cast a spell on you?"

"I didn't say—"

"Then I'll have to break that spell, won't I?"

Her arms slowly encircled his neck and she kissed him, pulling her body into his. His arms, slowly at first, engulfed her. In their embrace, they slowly sank below the water. Cris hardly noticed. The warmth she brought now exploded inside him. He felt a joy he'd never known, he felt stirrings deep inside his soul that he had never felt or even imagined possible. His desire for her was bound to another feeling he did not recognize; their combined heat melted the two emotions, and together they combined into one. The seething heat of his passion fired a furnace within him that powered a new engine whose pistons hammered in his chest and in his mind.

The water around them seemed to boil and a light formed where their breasts met. The light grew in intensity until the entire pool was aglow.

Tattie and Cris were both blinded by the light's brilliance. Their eyes closed tight, but their lips never parted and the water seemed to evaporate around them. Then the rocks, the forest, and the planet itself all dissolved until they floated free in a swirl of stars. A yellow light ripped the firmament apart and Cris's eyes opened. It was dawn and he and Tattie lay naked upon the water's edge, where they had slept.

Across a Sea of Stars is available on Amazon.

  

Images by Mike Gonzales, one by NASA.

Next month’s theme, “Beware the Ides of March."

Until then,

Mike

Michael E. Gonzales

Order Across a Sea of Stars here:

https://www.amazon.com/Across-Sea-Stars-Unborn-Galaxy/dp/1984038060/ref=as_sl_pc_as_ss_li_til?tag=httpliviajwac-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=b14117cef21e9d34ec121910787c5d19&creativeASIN=1984038060

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Moon-Rising-Unborn-Galaxy-ebook/dp/B01CBNSAEG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Broken-Moon-Unborn-Galaxy/dp/1540645681/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Web site:  http://www.mikegonzalesauthor.com/home.html

Follow me on Face Book:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010275572869

Happy, Marketing, New Year! by Michael Gonzales

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

Wow, 2018, and still no flying cars.

I missed posting last month, I was celebrating my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with my beautiful bride, Katie.

We went east to lovely Cape May, New Jersey, where we stayed in a B&B that was built in 1863!

Cape May is right on the beach, and is better known as a summer vacation spot. But in December they decorate the nineteenth century village to look like a Christmas Card. It was magical!

I want to talk briefly about marketing. I’m new to this so, I’ll not be offering a silver bullet that will bring your work to the attention of millions. Sorry, but if you know where the Lone Ranger

may have dropped some of his precious ammo, please, let me know.

What I have learned thus far is that marketing is difficult, expensive, and dangerous.  

“Dangerous?” you ask, “Mike, how is it dangerous?”

Being expensive, marketing has its charlatans. There are people out there who will offer you thousands of book buyers, and hundreds of positive reviews, for a given price.

Some will even openly sell you reviews. The more you pay, the better the review. Then they publish it to their website, which, they claim, is seen daily by tens of thousands.

Sound to good to be true? Well, just remember grandma’s advice, “If it sounds too good to be true…”

Thankfully, Cheryl, of PRP, has steered me away from a bunch of these.

I am sure there are legitimate individuals, and companies, out there who will effectively market for you.

I am also sure it will not be cheap.

The trick is to avoid the bogus, and then select from the real marketers, those that will provide the best bang for the buck.

I’m sure that, like me, you get dozens of unsolicited emails daily with marketing offers, and other writing/publishing related deals that are guaranteed to put you and your book at the top of the NYT best seller list, and keep it there for weeks.

My guess is that 99.99% of all that is garbage.

After giving this problem considerable thought, I have figured out how to actually accomplish all that; thousands buying your book, hundreds of positive reviews, and eventually, weeks at the top of the bestseller list.

That’s right, a jewel of wisdom for certain success…and for only $29.95!

No, just kidding.

But there is a method, it’s not easy, in fact it may be the hardest way of all.

The secret is…write a good book.

                               Be the best writer.

To do this you have to go back to school, you have to learn the art, the trade, the techniques. For many of us this means a return to basic English. Not all of us, mind you, I am well aware that some of you are masters of the English language, to rival Winston Churchill himself.

Anyway, that’s my advice, gleaned from my limited experience thus far.

I would dearly love to hear from others. What have been your experiences, have you had success marketing your work, if so, how, who did you go with, if you went with anyone?

Did you attend any seminars on writing that other might seek out? How about online courses?

Well, there’s my rant. I hope it starts a discussion. Post your comments here so that we might all help one another.

Speaking of marketing, I would be remiss were I to fail to mention the pending release of my third novel, Across a Sea of Stars. If you like action, adventure, space opera, and romance, I believe you’ll love number III in The Unborn Galaxy series ― Across a Sea of Stars.

Again, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Read books I and II of The Unborn Galaxy -- before the release of book III, Across a Sea of Stars.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Moon-Rising-Unborn-Galaxy-ebook/dp/B01CBNSAEG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Broken-Moon-Unborn-Galaxy/dp/1540645681/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Web site:  http://www.mikegonzalesauthor.com/home.html

Follow me on Face Book:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010275572869