So I finally did it. I finished and published my first novel. It’s called Advance Guards, and if you want a sales pitch, go to the link and read the blurb. That link goes to the ebook, but there’s also a paperback version now. Yes, I’ve already published one book, A Geek’s Progress, but that’s non-fiction and is my work biography that was written for my colleagues, real and imagined, when I was still working, and then turned into a book. For those of you who actually subscribe to my little website, I think you deserve a longer post. Unfortunately that post is going to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t buy the book because it was written by the King of Bad Marketing™. I’m famously the guy who couldn’t sell a sizzling steak to a starving billionaire, so please buy the book before reading further.
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So what did I do wrong with what will hereafter be referred to as Not-a-Novel (NAN)?
First, it’s unique—never a good thing in a sales pitch. (And I just used the infamous em dash that everybody says means this was written by AI.) Instead of chapters, it’s made up of stories, independent, but interconnected. No, it’s not an anthology. You need to read it in proper order to understand it.
Next, it’s too short at 56,000 words (a little over 200 pages). My wife’s first novel is too long at 180,000 words (about 420 pages), so opposites attract I guess. In the world of ebooks and audio books, who cares how long, or even what, a “book” is?
It’s a family saga that covers a family of 9 and assorted other characters over a range of 40 years, so it uses multiple points of view. Who’s the hero? Who’s the villain? Depends on where you’re at in the story and how you view the characters.
The book is set as a near-future book, and I began writing it in 1979. So hasn’t my near-future been made obsolete by the past half-century? To me, it’s only made it more timely, but I’ll let you read it and decide for yourself.
How would I summarize it? In Hollywood-speak it’s Swiss Family Robinson meets the Jetsons draped in a Shakespearean tragedy. I’d call it a quest for redemption in the modern world from COVID to AI, but that clearly makes no sense at all, so I’ll refrain (That’s called irony, Sonny. Look it up).
Musings of a Restless Mind 