Fire Race Launched

Be cool, dude. You’ve done this before. You have a new book. Wrong punctuation. Make it more personal, because it is.  I have a new book! Fire Race, the sequel to my scifi novel, Firewatcher is launched! It’s available on Amazon, and has been for days. As of less than an hour ago, as I type, it is here and home. Fire Race: the continuation of the story about a few hundred folks who escape an AI by escaping Earth, and then learn how alien aliens can be, and that the aliens are really the locals and that the humans are the real aliens. And, at the end of Firewatcher, they learned about a greater threat and a greater hope. How much to reveal without spoiling it for newbies? Let’s find out.

Here’s a personal moment. Amazon does a good job of saying when something is going to be delivered eventually, but before the truck gets close, there are some vagaries. Friday, November 1, was going to be the delivery day. Cool. Be cool. And have a tough time getting anything done because I was distracted, so make a cup of hot tea and call a friend to talk about it and anything else. (As if November 2024 lacks topics.) 

Fast forward a few hours. Still no delivery, but an assertion that it will be before 10PM. Well, that’s broad. Do chores. Get stuff done. Drink more tea.

As dusk arrives, the box gets here. My mood swings from tea to something stronger – but I’ll type this first. Er, second. First was opening the box and saying hello to my new friend. Welcome to the bookshelf. Nineteen books. Seven non-fiction. Two science fiction. Ten photo essays. How did one of my friends put it? “I’ve never known you not to be busy.” Yep. My next book is going to be a sequel to Dream. Invest. Live.: From Middle Class to Millionaire to Mostly Muddling By – a roller coaster ride through America’s wealth classes (which apologies to Canadians and Mexicans and everyone south of that as I use American to only mean citizens of the United States.) After that, the sequel to Fire Race, but that story is already forming as a series of notes that pull the first two books into a tight trilogy. I hope.

Am I burying the lede? Yeah. But welcome to a real perspective on the book, the series, and my life as a writer.

Firewatcher and Fire Race are the beginning, but they are also only a part of a larger exploration. How will humans react to the threat of an omniscient and possibly malevolent Artificial Intelligence? My characters’ answer was to not wait until the malevolence fully reveals itself. An organization modeled on the French Resistance with a founder modeled on a richer version of Steve Wozniak creates a dummy set of orbital casinos. On their inaugural launch, six of the casinos are populated with escapees. The casinos use analog computers, so no AIs. Their true secret is a revolutionary dimensional drive that lets them travel to other planets, and makes them disappear to anyone on Earth. 

Firewatcher is about one of those ships. They encounter alien aliens, fight, struggle, and work to surprising resolutions. Those resolutions and revelations lead to – spoilers.

Fire Race is about those spoilers, but it treats both species as more than stereotypes. The characters are individuals; some who get along with each other, some who get along with the other species, some who get very upset (#MassiveUnderstatement). And, of course, more revelations are revealed because that’s the way relationships work. But, as I said in the first book, how do you describe tears to someone who has no eyes? One task for me has been finding ways to describe simple things like gender (simple? Ha!) to a species that has no sex.

A long time joy for me has been reading science fiction that made me look at conventions and wonder why they became conventional. Go back and watch Star Trek shatter boundaries in race, gender, economics, technology, and philosophy. By writing about another life form, on another world, I had to challenge myself about the norms we take for granted in history, culture, and, of course, science. I even got to play with math, biology, language, chemistry, and quantum mechanics. I had fun. It was work, but it was more fun than watching yet another Netflix series. (Hey Netflix, call me.)

(Side note for early Firewatcher readers: Yes, I did include page numbers this time. And, I released a revised edition of Firewatcher than also has page numbers.)

For folks who are unfamiliar with the characters, and for folks who want to spend more time with them, buy the book or check one out from the library. And, over on Twitter (won’t call it X), I’m having fun letting my characters comment on what it’s like to be a fictional character.

Now that I have copies in hand, I can start scheduling talks and such. I’ve moved from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend, so my network has been shuffled. Good leads are appreciated. As with the rest of my books, Fire Race is self-published. I’ve given lectures and taught classes about self-publishing as it has developed from something to ridicule to the way most books are published. That process continues to change and generally improve.

The timing is no coincidence. Actually, it is a bit late. Ideally and originally, Fire Race was going to be completed in August or September. It’s a marketing thing. Get the paperback out in late Summer so early shoppers can buy it, read it, buy more copies, tell their friends, and maybe they do the same into the holiday season. But there was that move. My move delayed the process. I almost got the delivery before the end of October. Oh well, November 1 is close enough.

November 1 also means there may be enough time to release the ebook versions before Thanksgiving. News maybe sooner than that.

While I’ve been typing, the meatloaf has been baking. Enticing. 

This has been a bit of my story, but I’m not the only one (another #MassiveUnderstatement.) As I typed on Twitter (won’t call it X),

https://twitter.com/tetrimbath/status/1852383749196886334

Voted and need a distraction from ads that are moot?
Buy a book.
Check one out from the library.
Pull one of your favorites off your shelf.
Dive into other worlds and times.
As for mine, now, nine titles to pick from.
Millions more from other authors.

Read on, and thanks for being a reader. And congratulations to all authors.