Hello, I’m Rhett Pennell, an award-winning children’s picture book writer/illustrator and toy designer (you’ve seen my work all over the toy shelves at Walmart, you just didn’t know it)...and for just short of three decades I’ve had the germ of this crazy space novel crawling around in my head. It’s about bloody time I got it out into the world. So here goes...
PIPERVERSE is science fiction at its science-fictioniest -- jam-packed with robots, bizarre inventions, other worlds, alien creatures, time travel, and enough general weirdness to fill an entire season of Doctor Who. But at its core it’s the story of an awkward but ingenious young girl who must face overwhelming odds to save her uncle and get back home…creating a universe or two along the way.
Twelve-year old Piper is too short and too smart for her age, unable to relate to anyone around her, and very, very lonely…and that’s all BEFORE the day a mysterious explosion rocks her school. Now, loud voices are speaking in her head, she has the intense feeling the sky is laughing at her, and Uncle Seven, the mad scientist of her family, the man she’s been taught all her life to fear, has moved into her basement.
Thanks to her uncle, Piper’s world is suddenly full of talking baby doll robots, genetically modified pets, and glimpses of scientific wonders that could change the world. Life just became a whole lot more interesting…until one of Uncle Seven’s experiments goes horribly wrong and he dies. With Uncle Seven’s robot servants under orders to destroy all his brilliant inventions, Piper is driven by desperation to do what she must to save his work--and, if possible, him. That means using his most dangerous creation: an actual time machine. But something goes wrong--instead of traveling back in time, Piper finds herself whisked away to another world, trapped there with confused time-traveling aliens from dozens of planets.
With her mind and body altered to survive in this hostile place, Piper and her new friends (a bathroom-cleaning bug monkey and the towering teen emperor of three worlds) must defend themselves against savage monsters, negotiate with the native scientists who want them gone at any cost, solve the mystery of why they are all stuck on this alien world in the first place, and never forget her primary mission: Save Uncle Seven!
This is my first novel. In a perfect world, I’d love to provide illustrations for PIPERVERSE as well. To that end, please take a peek at my work at www.rhettpennell.wix.com/illustration .
I’ve never entered a contest like this. Let’s see how it goes! (Ack! Now I actually have to join Twitter to push this thing, don’t I? I resisted for so long...) Anyway, if you’ve read this far you are my hero. Hope you like the samples that follow. If you have any thoughts or opinions, I’d love to hear them. I want to pound this story into the best it can be.
All the best,
Rhett
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Here’s a shortcut to some sample chapters:
Chapter 5 - Beach Party On The Moon
And then skipping ahead to...
Chapter 8 - Reading, ’Riting, and Rudimentary Xenopsychology