In Darkness Bound

Well, it's early 2009 and my free novel, Zero-Option, continues to do well on the various sites where it is featured as a free download. To date several thousand have downloaded and enjoyed the novel. The first half of In Darkness Bound, available for free download from many sites, has been doing well, and sales of the electronic version have surpassed hard copy sales.

I completed work on a new novel back in December, did some rewrites, and submitted it to agents in February. One has requested an exclusive look at the full manuscript, which is now on its way by snail mail. I have a lot of hope for this latest book, and feel it has a great deal of potential. It's an alternate history with a vampire theme, directed at the upper age group of the young adult market -- though written so it will appeal to older readers as well. Embodying romance, a murder mystery, and social commentary, it takes its  cues from such works as Albert Camus' The Plague, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the film version of  The Wizard of Oz, to name but a few. Anyone who is into vampire novels should really enjoy this one, so here's hoping the agent likes it enough to take me on. I've already had some very positive feedback from my select readers, so if things work out, who knows? I could be announcing it's release to you in a year or two.

Of course, as positive as I sound above, I realize the chances are slim that anything will come of all this. It's getting more and more difficult for writers to find agents to take them on these days. Good agents, at least. And without an agent your chances of landing a deal with a "real" publisher are pretty remote. Many of them will no longer even consider works that aren't submitted by an agent. Quite a change from the past, when it was considered impractical to search for an agent until you'd been published.

I've been doing some tweaking of my young adult fantasy trilogy, for which -- regrettably -- I have not yet found an agent. I've still a few submissions on the go and will be sending out more in the coming weeks, but I have to say the process it disheartening and enough to  make one suicidal. I invested a lot of heart and soul into this trilogy and feel passionate about it, yet I just can't seem to get my foot in the door. It seems strange that there's such a lack of interest, given that young adult material is much in demand these days. Indeed, while the SF market has shrunk dramatically, the YA one continues to grow. Younger readers seem to be turned on to books again, and are a passionate and loyal readership that any writer would be nuts to ignore.

The trilogy has all the ingredients publishers are looking for these days: exotic locales, unusual creatures, magic, adventure, romance, a fast-paced and intricate plot, fully realized characters, complex villains, and more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. Maybe if the vamp novel has some success I can ride the coattails of that to get the trilogy published. That's really what it's all about in this business: getting that first book published. Once you've done that, providing sales have been good, the next ones come a bit easier. At least, one would hope so.

I often do sketches or paintings related to the books or stories I'm working on. The two images here (the robot above and the girl to the left) are of major characters in my young adult fantasy trilogy. You can find downloadable versions in the wallpaper section of this site.

Earlier in the year I acquired the digital rights to my novel In Darkness Bound. I'm pleased to announce that you can now get it at Mobipocket (just click on the image above to go to the listing). The price is $6.99, which should make the book considerably more affordable for a great many people. At Mobipocket you can download -- for free -- the reader that allows you to access the digital version of the book. I hope this will satisfy many who have told me they were interested in reading the novel but couldn't afford the hardcopy version. You can also find it at other ebook retailers, some of which I have posted links to in the Buy section of this website.

I must confess that the price of my book has been a major obstacle to sales, despite a great deal of interest people have shown in the work. At 702 pages (290,000 words) the cost is not actually too out of line with what similar length books sell for, keeping in mind that this is a trade paperback, and not the conventional softcover with which we're most familiar. That said, I hope that at $6.99 readers who can avail themselves of the digital format will feel they are getting value for money. I think the price I've set is reasonable; I'm hoping many of you will agree. It's less than what many books on Mobipocket go for. Of course, I'm sure there are some out there who would rather I just gave it away (and, in fact, I have had emails to that effect). However, the simple fact is that I spent several years on this book and I need to make something back from it. Not to mention the fact that I have contracts that I must honor and which preclude me from giving the book away. Besides, I've yet to find  a way of making money by simply giving the book away. I know there seems to be this belief (unproven in hard, statistical evidence) that giving away your book in ebook format somehow boosts hard copy sales; but other authors have experimented with and for the most part it does not seem to have been especially successful. I recall that Stephen King tried it several years ago, allowing people to download a new work he'd written and choose whether and how much they should pay for it. Not long after the project started he abandoned it because few were choosing to pay anything. Certainly my experiences with the release of my shorter novel, Zero-Option, under a Creative Commons License have suggested that the application to readers for donations and the like results in nothing. Except for what little I initially made when I wrote Zero-Option, I have not received a cent. I accepted that possibility when I decided to release it under a CCL, my aim largely being to acquaint people with my work and hopefully spur them on to reading In Darkness Bound (since the two are related pieces of fiction). I shall continue to post free material under CCL, but for the time being In Darkness Bound will remain as is. At least for until my contracts run out, at which point I may very well just cast it adrift on the Internet.

John Carter was born and raised a spacer, his life determined before he was even born. Now a captain in Fleet, he finds himself questioning his commitment to a path in life he did not choose. But Fleet is all the life he has ever really known; and in a world where spacers are ‘crippled’ and essentially outcasts, he is a man with few choices. To leave Fleet would be to leave life itself. But Fleet is old and battered, a pale shadow of the force it once was in the Earth Empire, and its enemies are powerful and growing stronger by the day.

On Inkasar he watches as a mission he should never have had degenerates into chaos. He is lucky to escape alive, and the fleet he commands limps out of the system in need of repairs and R&R. But the political leaders of the Federation have other ideas, and Carter’s fleet, beaten and weary after the debacle on Inkasar, is ordered to Obsidian, a backwater world of religious fundamentalists, out on the Fringes.

In the Obsidian system the two most powerful corporates in the empire are set to wage war. At stake: an inhabitable planet and the transit point that lies close to it, a gateway to a possible treasure-trove of riches that will make the victor the most dominant force in existence. But Danielle Grenier, the Secretary General of the Federation Assembly, is determined they will not have it, and she doesn’t care what she has to do to stop them—even if it means bending the very laws that are the foundation of the Federation she so strongly believes in.

Tensions rise as Fleet takes up position around Obsidian and on the surface of the planet. Fleet Marines, under the command of Colonel Suzanne Morrow, prepare to evacuate the population. In orbit, Carter’s ultimatum to the commanders of the corporate fleets lays the groundwork for all out war. As the situation deteriorates, the citizens of Obsidian scramble to secure allegiances.

Back on Isis station near Earth, Grenier wages a silent war with Admiral Christiana Novarro, abetted by her ally Admiral Silas Jackson, the head of Naval Intelligence, a man with ambitions of his own who is determined to replace Novarro and return Fleet to its former glory. Using the resources of his division, Jackson has conspired to send one of his operatives to Obsidian to ensure that Fleet is the victor.

As ships battle in orbit about Obsidian and conflict rages below, the odds seem stacked against Fleet. But Carter knows his enemies well, and events are about to take place that will change the face of the empire forever. The question is, will history remember Carter as a hero or as the man responsible for setting the Federation on the path to destruction?

One thing is certain: lives will be changed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

*If you wish to purchase the novel, then click on the picture of the book and this will take you to where you can now order a copy. 

To all you wanderers and seekers who have made it this far, I welcome you and hope you'll find something of interest on these pages.

To get more of a taste of In Darkness Bound, I am now offering you a chance to read one half of the book -- some 142,000 words. You can go to the Large Sample section, which also lists all the chapters in the book, and click on one of three different download formats (PDF, DOC, TXT).  Zero-Option, an award winning short story that takes place in the same universe as In Darkness Bound, and follows the further exploits of one of the characters featured in the book, is available for online reading or download. Also available is the short story Choices, which takes place in the same universe as In Darkness Bound and Zero-Option. I have added The Wall as well, though this story is not part of The Chronicles of the Earth Empire.

Book History is a brief history of how In Darkness Bound came about, a testament to how difficult it can be to realize a dream.

Ruminations includes some thoughts on getting published and speculations on the future.

In Cover Design you will find a brief explanation of how I went about designing the cover for this book and why I chose to do it myself.

As I am also an artist, I have included a gallery of some of my work over the past thirty odd years. For more about that, visit the section marked Art Gallery in the navigation bar.

Buy! is a page of links to major online book retailers where you can purchase the novel. I recommend comparison shopping.

I've established a Guest Book which I hope you will find the time to use to leave comments on this site and its contents.

Want a visual impression of In Darkness Bound beyond the static images you'll find in this website? Then head to the Book Trailer section and download and watch the animated mini-movie. You'll need a player like Windows Media Player to watch this as it's in .wmv format.

The Bios section features brief character sketches of some of the major figures of the novel In Darkness Bound.

There's a Wallpaper section for those who would like to decorate their screens with some images from the book.

Ship's Log is the ubiquitous blog, which hopefully I'll be able to add to on occasion, when I'm not busy working on my books.

That would seem about it for now. This website is in its nascent phase and I hope it'll grow into something attractive over time. Thank you for taking a look.

Lindsay H.F. Brambles, Ottawa, 2007

New to this site is The Wall, a short story I wrote almost thirty years ago. It was, in fact, my very first short story. As with Zero-Option, I have provided it in a variety of formats. You can also read it online. (Click on the cover image to go straight to the story.)

Can't find The Wall or my other free stories in a format you like? Then head over to manybooks.net where the stories are available in a wide variety of formats, including for cell phones and iPods.

Additionally, I have also added to the site Choices, another story in the Chronicles of the Earth Empire series. This short work of fiction (just under twenty thousand words) takes place some time after Zero-Option. (Click on the cover image to go to the story.) As with The Wall and Zero-Option, I have provided it in a few formats. Hopefully you'll find one that works for your particular needs.

You will also find all my free material, including Choices at manybooks.net, where the selection of download formats is much broader than what I can offer. Go there for this story and many other fine ebook offerings from one of the best free ebook sites on the Internet.

If you want to get a further taste of what In Darkness Bound is about, then read the award winning Zero-Option. I've posted the novella on this site and all you have to do is click on the image of the cover to the left or use the navigation bar to take you to the story. Zero-Option features one of the main characters of In Darkness Bound some four decades after the events that took place on Obsidian.

It's free and it's complete, and you can even distribute copies of it if you want! In fact, I encourage you to do so.

Happy reading.