Announcing Kirov - Military Science Fiction

The Writing Shop is pleased to announced that author John Schettler has completed a new novel in the popular military science genre.

Kirov – Military Science Fiction (Naval) – Available Mar 15, 2012

The battlecruiser Kirov, is the most power surface combatant that ever put to sea. Built from the bones of all four prior Kirov Class guided missile cruisers, she is updated with Russia’s most lethal weapons, given back her old name, and commissioned in the year 2020. A year later, with tensions rising to the breaking point between Russia and the West, Kirov is completing her final missile trials in the Arctic Sea when a strange accident transports her to another time. With power no ship in the world can match, much less comprehend, she must decide the fate of nations in the most titanic conflict the world has ever seen—WWII.

The novel is an intensely focused naval saga, where the crew of the lost Russian battlecruiser must struggle to understand what has happened to them, and then make a choice that could be decisive in the outcome of the war—who’s side are they on? It is late July of 1941, and Germany has only recently invaded Russia, driving on Smolensk and Leningrad. The Nazis are clearly their enemy today, but it is the British and Americans who are their enemy tomorrow. After decades of suspicion and enmity, the Russia of 2021 is again at a major crisis point with Western powers. Yet, at this crucial time, Kirov finds herself just days and miles away from a secret summit at sea between Churchill and Roosevelt. On August 9, 1941, the two great leaders meet to plan cooperation in the war and lay down the Atlantic Charter, which decides the framework of post war power in the world and becomes the basis for the new United Nations and NATO.

With the hindsight of history as their guide, Kirov races south toward the secret meeting place at Argentia Bay in Newfoundland. Even as she cruises for the Denmark strait, both Roosevelt and Churchill prepare to embark for the sea journey as well. The Russian battlecruiser has an opportunity to decisively affect the outcome of the war, and all future history, but the Royal Navy soon discovers what they believe to be a fearsome new German raider in the Norwegian Sea, and they join with America’s Atlantic Fleet to bar the  way and hunt down the most formidable surface action ship in the world.

The novel is an exciting, tense and highly focused naval saga that makes the fabled hunt for the Bismarck look like a training exercise!

Kirov is by John Schettler, the award winning author of the Meridian time travel series, is in final review and being readied for a release in mid February, 2012, by the Writing Shop Press. The book will be released on Amazon and Smashwords in popular eBook formats and sell for $4.99.

ISBN 978-0-9849465-1-8 - 320 Pages, about 120,000 words.
For more information and final release date please visit www.writingshop.ws

MERIDIAN V: Golem 7

JUST RELEASED! (12/12/11)

Book V in the award winning Meridian Series Time Travel novels has just been released. The book brings this quintet of novels blending sci-fi and historical fiction to a satisfying conclusion, with the promise of more to come. Buy Golem 7 on Amazon.

Book V: Golem 7

"Nordhausen is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind the Palma Event. Now the project team struggles to discover how and where the Assassins have intervened to restore the chaos of Palma, and their search leads them on one of the greatest naval sagas of modern history--the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck.

REVIEW:

The title Golem 7 refers to an industrious grouping of Kelly Ramer’s search Golem programs, who seem to be well ahead of the others in uncovering alarming variations in the history. By some means the Bismarck was not sunk on its maiden voyage, and now the team must sleuth the course of events in that campaign to find out how and why, and try to put the ship back in its watery grave before its fifteen inch guns wreak havoc on British convoys, and the time continuum as well!

 

This volume presents a new approach in the telling of the story. The same crisp and informative dialogue is used here to set the parameters of the history and mission, but the main weapon used by the project team this time is information. After identifying the key Pushpoints involved, the author then launches into a convincing and exciting alternate history retelling of the campaign, where all the little details in the history are keenly elucidated and one comes to feel that the history itself rested on the most precarious stack of small, inconsequential events.

These live history scenes alternate in groups with the more familiar chapters set in the Berkeley Lawrence Lab facility, as the author shows us results on a live stage peopled by the real historical figures instead of having his team members just talk about it in the lab. In those scenes, the team tries to understand how their interventions have affected the history we have just witnessed on stage, and try again with another intervention until they get the change they are hoping for.

As it turns out, the Bismarck is one slippery fish to reel in! In fact, after reading this you will come to feel that it was sheer luck that the British managed to sink the German ship at all, and wonder if someone actually was operating in time to control these odd events--a possibility darkly hinted at by the conclusion of the novel. The details here, some ferreted out of individual ship logs and eyewitness reports, are astounding. If you like naval sagas, as the author clearly does, you will love Golem 7. The treatment of the live history scenes, while unique, reads much like a C.S. Forester novel, and that is a compliment, to be sure."

Meridian V: Golem 7 is now available on Amazon.com here

Meridian IV: Anvil of Fate Just Released!

The Writing Shop Press announces the release of Book IV in the award winning Meridian Series Time Travel novels by John Schettler. Meridian IV: Anvil of Fate is now available on the Amazon Kindle store and will also be released on Smashwords.com in numerous other eBook formats by Friday, Nov 11, 2011.

In volume IV, the Time War continues with a major intervention by the Assassin Cult aimed at defeating Charles Martel at the famous Battle of Tours. More on the Meridian Series novels here, including reviews and video trailers. Book V in the popular series, entitled Golem 7, is due out in 30 days!

Two New Meridian Novels Scheduled For Fall Release

The Writing Shop has announced that the popular "Meridian" series time travel novels by John Schettler will continue, with a fourth book entitled The Anvil of Fate due out this fall in eBook format, followed soon after by a fifth volume tentatively titled Golem 7.

In the fourth volume, Anvil of Fate, the cryptic ending of Touchstone is clearly explained, and the project team now faces the most significant attack yet from unseen adversaries in the future, an "intervention" at a key moment in the 8th Century that threatens to completely alter the entire  course of Western history in an outcome that is absolutely catastrophic, to say the least. The project team sleuths through the history to identify three key "Pushpoints" or levers on the historical events, and to think of what may have happened here gives one a real shudder.  VIDEO TEASER HERE

The fifth volume Golem 7 begins just days after the conclusion of volume IV and sees the project team finally attempting to reverse the effects of the Palma Event, which was restored to the timeline earlier in the series. But far from just being about 'unfinished business,' it stands on its own as a unique alternate history novel set in the early years of WWII. When Chief Historian Nordhausen puts his hand squarely on the neck of the man he believes is now responsible for the plot, the threads of his research lead the team into the midst of one of the greatest naval sagas of all time. The author has also ended this one with a deep hook that opens the possibility of further series  novels "in the future."  VIDEO TRAILER HERE

The Meridian series explores the successful efforts of a project team at the Berkeley Lawrence Labs to travel in time, and the opening book, Meridian, focuses on the struggle to reverse a modern day terrorist event that makes 9/11 pale by comparison. Building on the award winning success of the series opener, two sequels have already been published, Nexus Point and Touchstone.

In the first sequel, Nexus Point, the team discovers that their technology has been discovered and used by adversaries in the future, and that a "Time War" is now underway where each opposing side is attempting to influence key moments in the meridians of history to alter events and secure a decisive cultural and political advantage in their world of the future. The third volume, Touchstone, sees the Berkeley team drawn further into the complex struggle in a harrowing mission to Egypt at the time of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone during Napoleon's invasion. Here they meet and learn more about the adversaries in this Time War and are slowly entangled in operations aimed at preserving the meridian of history as they know it.

This trilogy of novels will soon be joined by these two new volumes to form a "quintet" of stories, all related to one another in one massive Time travel adventure series. But don't look for chase scenes and gunfire here, and there are no mandatory teenage characters or cute little kids about as in typical run of the mill Hollywood treatments of this genre. These novels are heady, intriguing looks at key crisis points in history where the effects of even minor interventions can cause major consequences.

Ever since H.G. Wells first penned his landmark novel, The Time Machine, the genre has been extremely popular in its ability to blend both science and historical fiction together in one story. All the key elements of the genre are here, a plausible theory of how time travel is possible, incredible plot that has a new twist around every corner, the confounding effects of paradox and, of course, time shifts into key moments of the past where the team seeks to influence the "Pushpoints" of history, the actual triggers that set off and influence the outcomes of major events. Yet the theory here is that the really great events are set in motion by small inconsequential moments in time, little accidents, mishaps, stumbles, loose threads in the weave of time that become the real movers and shakers of history. Sleuthing the history to find these key moments makes up a large part of the fun and enjoyment in these stories.The four key characters are sharply drawn, the dialogue crisp and intelligent, the plot well structured and full of surprises.

Both new novels are now in final review and should be available in the Amazon Kindle store, on Smashwords.com and many other popular eBook outlets this fall.

MERIDIAN SERIES VIDEO TRAILER FEATURING ALL FIVE NOVELS

Doom On Ice

Well... Here we are. The dreadful date of Sept 27, 2011 has been the focal point of so many predictions of doom on the internet that I can't begin to count them. Suffice it to say that the puny comet Elenin is now lined up with the sun and earth, and since this supposedly triggered earthquakes, including the big 9.0 in Japan last March, we were told to expect a mega-quake on this date. We were also told Elenin was so big that it would literally blot out the sun and there would be three days of darkness. But it's a beautiful, quiet sunny day here in Monterey, CA...No earthquake, no darkness, no Blue Kachina, no Red Kachina, in fact, no Elenin--the darn thing has been breaking up and diminishing in size for weeks now.

Let's face it folks....No, the world elite, on vacation, are not all out heading for their underground bunkers. And NO, these hidden sites have not been nuked lately, and NO there is no massive Brown Dwarf crackling with a super magnetic field about to toast us all here on Mother Earth.  No, I'm sorry,  there is nothing about this on a Swiss Frank either. It's all nonsense--all of it--junk on the Internet posted by people who don't seem to believe their lives have any viable or meaningful future. Perhaps it's a shadow of the times, with the economy so dark and gloomy that it inevitably manifests in these predictions of utter doom. And face it, there's more than one shyster out there making money off this, be it giving seminars or selling "insider info" on "what's about to happen."

Doomers, it's time to put that doom on ice or reset the doom clock again. You've still have all your doom dates in October to look forward to, and of course your 2012 doom schedule as well, but like this day, good old Sept 27, 2011 these dates will also pass uneventfully by, and you'll just have your ordinary, and apparently hopeless lives in front of you. Just this. Just this, and nothing more. Oh, yes, we'll have earthquakes, and typhoons and all the rest in the years ahead. We've always had them, and we always will.

What we won't have is the earth getting fried by Nibiru, or a hail of Elenin tail debris pummeling us to death. It would make a great Hollywood blockbuster however. You want doom? There's plenty home cooked to go around without needing a rogue planet to crash the dinner party. Look no further than the Banksters and the Fed, the IMF and Wall Street. There's all the doom you'll need for years to come.

In the meantime, the pumpkins are stacking up outside the grocery stores, the Christmas ornaments are being hung in the big mall anchors. The leaves are turning, fading, falling. It's autumn, and may it be a lovely one this year. And for those of you who cannot see a spring in your lives next year...Believe.

The Great Equalizer

It's amazing how the Internet empowers us these days. The entire phenomenon of POD publishing has, in just a few years, morphed into a new digital eBook revolution. More books are now selling in the Amazon Kindle store than in their printed copy store. This does not surprise me, though it seemed to catch Borders Books off guard, and their inability to adapt to the digital revolution like Barnes & Noble did led to their sad demise.

One of my favorite bloggers, Juan Cole, recently posted a lament for the loss of Borders, fearing it may signal the end of the book store. Something about browsing the books, smelling the newly printed editions, enjoying a quiet read with a cup of coffee cannot be put into a Kindle. But readers are voting with their dollars, and the industry will follow this new digital trend, as I have.  My Kindle sales now exceed actual physical book sales on all  my novels and, in an effort to generate interest,  I've been making some video trailers and posting on Youtube.

Here's an example of a trailer for my Silk Road series novels:

And here's a trailer I made for the popular Meridian Series Time Travel books I've written.

One of the fun parts was composing and recording the background music on my electronic keyboard, a tool that puts a full orchestra at your fingertips, quite literally. Tools like the computer, the Internet and this keyboard allow creative individuals to compete directly and successfully with the big publishing houses that once had complete control of an author's work. Those days are gone, as the Internet has become a great equalizer in the business of publishing. The challenge, of course, is how do you market your books effectively?

At the Writing Shop, my full time business, I've helped many other authors get their materials ready for both book and eBook publishing. Let's face it, a lot of very gifted people may be great writers, but they may not be artists and designers as well, with the required computer skills to produce their book blocks, cover designs, eBook formats and marketing materials. I've been privileged to help many through my Author Services Program at the Writing Shop, and to teach them about how they can put the Great Equalizer to work for them as well!

Are you an author with a successful marketing method for the Internet? I'd love to hear about it, and would be happy to publish your thoughts about the digital revolution and how you can reach more readers on my Writing Shop web site.

Thanks for reading!

John Schettler

Good Reads

I recently discovered an interesting web site, GoodReads.com, and put up an author's profile page there for my novels. With over 5 million users, its a kind of literary Facebook, where people share their favorite books, write reviews, share what they are reading now, join discussion groups and forums, etc.

So give it a try and make some literary friends!

JS