Big news! The Crow’s Gambit book trailer is now live!

 https://youtu.be/3bWdosAP0oc 

Let me know what you think. The contest is still very tight and I need all of your support. Please share this link with others and encourage them to Pre-Order. 

Now for upcoming events. This weekend I’ll be taping a Q&A session about the book and its characters. That means I need your questions. Email, DM, or post your questions to the Facebook page over the next few days. I’ll do my best to answer them and post the video the start of next week. 

As always, thanks for your support. 

PT 

Happy Wednesday afternoon! 

The Nerdist Contest continues to roll on and we’re doing alright but (there’s always a but)…we’re closing in on the final two weeks when ANYTHING can happen. Now more than ever I need your support with Recommendations, Pre-Orders, and spreading the word about Crow’s Gambit.

For your entertainment today I thought I would explain how the original concept for Crow’s Gambit started. In 2001 I was living in New Jersey. If you have ever lived in that region you realize it is saturated with airports. Philadelphia, La Guardia, Newark, JFK, DC and Boston aren’t that far, regional airports, air strips in fields, and a few military bases. The point is there are ALWAYS several planes and contrails in the air. 

Then on September 11th the World Trade Center was attacked and the FAA grounded all flights. And the skies were empty. It’s kind of a like a noise you don’t notice until it’s gone. I wouldn’t say it was eerie exactly, more unsettling. That was when I started to wonder, what would happen if the planes never flew again?  

For several years I thought about it (I do that, I’m an engineer, I think about things for fun). How would society adapt? What new or old technologies would be called into play to fill the gaps? I started writing the resulting story for NanoWriMo in 2015 and here we are. 

Thank you for following along and supporting the next phase of this story’s journey. Please let your friends know about the story and if you’d like to contribute a Recommendation it would mean a lot. More to come… 

PT 

We are under the three week mark and Crow’s Gambit is in the top three (at this posting)! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate not only the Pre-Orders but the comments and well wishes. Thank you. 

In today’s update I’m going to give you a little background on how travel by rail has replaced air travel in the world of Crow’s Gambit. The following section is excerpted from Chapter 5. 

“When the decision had been made to replace air travel with rail travel the U.S. had finally embraced the idea of superfast trains, or bullet trains. A new railway system, the Puma, had been designed unique to the North American continent and the new world reality. Construction was far from complete but the Puma already ran from Los Angeles across the southwest and up to Chicago and from there across to New York City. Necessity may be the mother of invention but it is also the destroyer of barriers. By slashing government red tape, providing large amounts of funding, and excessive use of eminent domain the new system had been designed and completed in record time. Trains could now run the breadth of the continent at over 300 mph.” 

The next few weeks will be exciting. More to come… 

PT 

Thank you so much for joining the team to get Crow’s Gambit published. We are currently in fourth place but it would only take a few fence sitters or referrals to get us into the top three. If each of you asked one person to consider pre-ordering or at least Follow the story it would be a tremendous gift (copy link to send here).

Today I’m going to share a little background on what TYPE of story this is. 

What it is not. This is not a dystopian future story. Yes, bad things have happened and the world has been upended. However, the underlying theme is that humans adapt and persevere. They find new technological solutions when old ones are taken away from them. And yes, they psychologically stop noticing the constant menace around them. 

What it is. While I would not tag the story as full blown Hard Science Fiction it is grounded by existing knowledge and theory. Let’s face it, I’m an engineer. It’s really REALLY hard for me to put something in a story without trying to figure out how it would work. 

We are almost to the three week mark. Stay with me. More to come… 

PT