The Kindle version is available on Amazon here, at only $2.99, while the trade paperback is available here at around $14 — but use the sale code BOOKDEAL25 for 25% off (I assume until Dec. 25th.)

So far, it’s received two Amazon reviews:

4.0 out of 5 stars
Good read!
By M. Cunningham
Verified Purchase

This is a fast pace science fiction thriller which pits college students against the powers-that-be in a realistic near-future. The dialog and characters are well-developed, believable, and the author seems to capture the mind-set and vernacular of the intellectual college students who tend to rebel against the status-quo. Some of the story had me ‘on the edge of my seat’ so to speak wondering if the college rebels were going to succeed. The novel also gives one much to think about concerning government power, educational systems, capitalism, and the limits of social equality. I heard echoes of Robert Heinlein here (which made sense in reading the author’s end-notes ‘Quotes from the Golden Age of Science Fiction’.) The only disappointment for me was I now have to wait for book 2 to see how the conflict proceeds.

4.0 out of 5 stars
The story took a moment to get going, but …
By Benjamin Olsen
Verified Purchase
The story took a moment to get going, but became one the most engaging reads I’ve encountered in months. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Red Queen: The Substrate Wars

The Kindle version is available on Amazon here, and I just figured out how to make it free until Tuesday, so please give it a read and review it as kindly as you can.

Kindle Format now FREE, regular price $3.99. Trade paperback in a few days.

“Red Queen is a story about the yearning for freedom and agency in a world dominated by bureaucrats and propagandists, and it would not have been published by a major house. The world of Red Queen is just a decade or two away, and looks very much like the world we live in, just a few steps worse. In the tradition of Heinlein’s If This Goes On–, I have extrapolated from current trends and imagined the politics that result. The authoritarian tendencies we see in modern western states will probably be reversed at some point–but what if they just keep getting worse? This is especially true of the US, with its 9/11-justified surveillance and interception of every citizen’s email and message metadata, and a penal-industrial complex that imprisons about one in three black men at some point in their lives, often for victimless crimes like drug possession. A more serious terrorist incident might lead to even more restrictions on freedom and privacy. And that’s where Red Queen begins.”
 

Red Queen: The Substrate Wars

The Kindle version is available on Amazon here, and at only $0.99 for a week or two so my friends can all buy it cheaply. Of course I want some good reviews to get it going, presuming it deserves them!

Red Queen: The Substrate Wars, first book in a long series.

Set on a California college campus just a decade or two from now, the world of Red Queen is post-terrorist disaster, repressive and censored — rather like China today, but with a stagnant economy and no jobs for young people. In that sense it is a dystopia, though not so far from our own day and time; only a few steps beyond where we are now. The students are cowed but not unaware, and they seize the opportunity to make a difference when their smarts and courage allow it. And so they change the world.

This is Book 1 of Substrate Wars, the series: A growing band of campus freedom-fighters discover a new technology that could either destroy the world, or save it. They take on the responsibility of using it for good. Homeland Security is one step behind them. Spies and traitors lurk. Shall it be repressive bureaucratic stagnation, or human expansion to the stars?

Kindle Format now at $0.99, regular price $3.99. Trade paperback in a few weeks.

Red Queen: The Substrate Wars

I’ve finished a readable draft for the second part of Red Queen: The Substrate Wars, first book in a long series. Beta readers of Part 1 generally liked it and wanted to keep reading, so if you were holding off thinking it’s bad, maybe that will encourage you to give it a read.

In this part, our growing band of campus freedom-fighters discover a new technology that could either destroy the world, or save it. They take on the responsibility of using it for good. Homeland Security is one step behind them.

[edit: removed drafts since full book is available]

There are interesting questions about how much techno-geekery and science you should throw at the reader. Those who aren’t into it will see a paragraph of unintelligible babble and skip over it (“it’s magic!”), and those who are into it will read every word and try to find holes in the science, which they will of course be eager to point out.

So I need a wide variety of readers to help me decide just how far to go. There’s also an interesting problem with exposition: it’s necessary for the omniscient narrator to just tell the reader things, but they are more convincing coming from characters. But then you have long dialogues where characters go on in an unrealistic way. This has been accepted as part of the artifice since the time of the Greeks, but you can go too far. Let me know what you think!

Questions, errors, and comments to: jebkinnison@gmail.com. Hope you enjoy it.