Pulp Fiction Time Travel on Sale for 99 cents

 

Romance, mystery, pulp fiction, unscrupulous writers, and even more unscrupulous publishers….oh, and Time Travel, too.  It’s all there in Take Back Tomorrow, on sale now for just 99 cents at Amazon. This is part of an Amazon Countdown deal, so the price will go up in increments for the rest of the week.

41 Amazon Reviews with an average 4.5 stars.

“Raymond Chandler meets Robert Heinlein in this fun and inventive crossover SF novel from Richard Levesque.” —J. Orr, Amazon Reviews

“Apart from stopping to have something to eat I haven’t been able to tear myself away from this until I had finished it. This is good old time story telling that is well written, and definitely well worth reading.” —M. Bowden, Amazon UK Hall of Fame Reviewer

What if all you had  to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?

That’s not just a philosophical question Eddie Royce has to answer. It’s a choice he has to make when the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s goes missing and his unscrupulous publisher becomes convinced that Eddie knows all of the older writer’s secrets—not just the secret of where he’s gone, but the secret of how he’s traveled in time.

Until now, Eddie’s fooled himself into thinking he’s got the system figured out, “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare and rewriting them as space operas to make a name for himself in the pulps. But when he finds out that Chester Blackwood—his idol and inspiration—has been cheating the system in ways Eddie could never have dreamed of, the hack science fiction writer finds himself in the middle of a plot that his pulp readers would never have imagined.

Now he has to do all he can to save himself—and Blackwood’s beautiful daughter—from the powerful figures who all want Blackwood’s secret. And violating the laws of the universe might just be the least of Eddie’s problems.

“The pace of the story is quick, and the time transitions are handled well. Overall, this is a good novel, one that even readers with little interest in sci-fi might enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly.

“Hardboiled 30′s crime thriller meets time-traveling pulp science-fiction for an original fast paced, page turner.” —S. Sager, Amazon Reviews

“It has a distinctly ‘noir’ flavor as well as an old school science fiction feel. It is fast paced and clever.” —C. Pellitteri, Amazon Reviews

From Amazon

Guest Post at The Cellophane Queen’s Blog

Today, you can find a guest post I wrote over at the Cellophane Queen’s blog–a post about time travel literature and my novel, Take Back Tomorrow, in particular. The book’s on the cheap for today–just 99 cents. So, head over and read the guest post, and if you want to follow the links to Amazon for some inexpensive but fun reading, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Time Travel for Less Than a Buck

Between now and Friday, my time travel novel, Take Back Tomorrow is on sale for just 99 cents at Amazon.

39 Amazon Reviews with an average 4.5 stars

“Raymond Chandler meets Robert Heinlein in this fun and inventive crossover SF novel from Richard Levesque.” —J. Orr, Amazon Reviews

What if all you had  to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?

That’s not just a philosophical question Eddie Royce has to answer. It’s a choice he has to make when the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s goes missing and his unscrupulous publisher becomes convinced that Eddie knows all of the older writer’s secrets—not just the secret of where he’s gone, but the secret of how he’s traveled in time.

Until now, Eddie’s fooled himself into thinking he’s got the system figured out, “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare and rewriting them as space operas to make a name for himself in the pulps. But when he finds out that Chester Blackwood—his idol and inspiration—has been cheating the system in ways Eddie could never have dreamed of, the hack science fiction writer finds himself in the middle of a plot that his pulp readers would never have imagined.

Now he has to do all he can to save himself—and Blackwood’s beautiful daughter—from the powerful figures who all want Blackwood’s secret. And violating the laws of the universe might just be the least of Eddie’s problems.

“The pace of the story is quick, and the time transitions are handled well. Overall, this is a good novel, one that even readers with little interest in sci-fi might enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly.

“Hardboiled 30′s crime thriller meets time-traveling pulp science-fiction for an original fast paced, page turner.” —S. Sager, Amazon Reviews

“It has a distinctly ‘noir’ flavor as well as an old school science fiction feel. It is fast paced and clever.” —C. Pellitteri, Amazon Reviews

“Apart from stopping to have something to eat I haven’t been able to tear myself away from this until I had finished it. This is good old time story telling that is well written, and definitely well worth reading.” —M. Bowden, Amazon UK Hall of Fame Reviewer

 

Give Me a Minute: Time Travel Paradoxes

Photo Credit: Jonathan Kotta

Continuing with the time travel theme here for a bit longer and thinking specifically of the sub-theme of the time travel paradox. There are several variations on this, and it’s an aspect of time travel fiction that makes people love it or hate it, or maybe both. The basic idea is that the time traveler goes back in time and does something that directly impacts his or her future. For example, the time traveler goes back in time and accidentally kills a boy who would have grown up to be the time traveler’s grandfather, thereby preventing the time traveler from ever having been born. But he existed in the first place to be able to make the trip through time, so at what point was he not born, or no longer to-be-born, and what happens to him then?

You’ve got the Back to the Future version of this where the time traveler has to correct the situation before he’s wiped from existence forever. And a thousand variations on the theme.

Robert Heinlein

Two classic SF stories dealing with the subject are Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” and Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies.” Bester’s piece takes the idea that a time traveler could kill a person’s ancestor and thus prevent that person from being born (Terminator, anyone?) and then messes with the idea, working with a theory of time which would prevent the plot from actually working. Heinlein’s story takes the paradox and cranks the volume up to eleven. The result will make your head spin. When I teach this one in my science fiction class, I usually subject my students to Homer and Jethro’s version of “I’m My Own Grandpaw” just for my own sadistic pleasure.

Along with the “grandfather paradox,” there’s also the other question of a time traveler creating multiple versions of him/herself at a given time. I travel back in time to yesterday, and there are two of me. If the me that was already there yesterday becomes aware of the today-me who’s gone back in time, the yesterday-me may do something to keep the today-me from making the journey, thereby leaving the time traveling version in a bit of a bind, as he may never have made the journey in the first place.

A fun version of this is Stanislaw Lem’s “The Seventh Voyage,” in which a space traveler gets caught in a time loop and begins to encounter multiple versions of himself. Getting the different versions to cooperate with each other is the only way he can save himself (themselves?), but it’s easier said than done.

Another “problem” with time travel fiction is that the time traveler should really be omnipotent, able to travel to whatever time is necessary in order to solve whatever problem the plot presents. But where’s the fun in that? In Wells’ The Time Machine, there’s a period where the time traveler is without his machine and things go rather badly. When he gets it back (sorry, spoiler!), it wouldn’t be at all difficult to run the machine backwards a day or two and warn himself. But doing so would ruin the story, and thankfully Wells didn’t go there. I’d like to think he would be horrified at the prospect of such a deus ex machina ending. Other writers, though, have played with the idea to varying degrees of success.

In my time travel novel, Take Back Tomorrow, I tried very hard to avoid the paradoxes, and I think I succeeded. So far, no one has complained about such things in the reviews, so I think I managed to pull it off, dealing with the last “problem” described above by having my time travel method be one that’s rather out of the time travelers’ control.

What other books or stories have handled the theme well in your opinion? Or have created such a mess with the paradoxes that you’re ready to give up on time travel stories?

You can find more time travel posts this month at The Cellophane Queen’s Blog, including one of mine in about a week.

Time Travel / Alternate History Month with The Cellophane Queen

It’s Time Travel month on The Cellophane Queen’s blog.

All through the month of September, Marva Dasef is devoting her blog to posts about time travel and alternate history with guest posts from authors who’ve written on the theme in a variety of ways.

Here are the people who’ll be guesting on the subject:

Pat McDermott: Irish kings still rule the Emerald Isle…and a princess is in trouble.
Renee Duke: The two little Princes in the Tower disappeared five centuries ago – so what are they doing in our time?
Sherry Antonetti: “Everyone thinks they know what happened in the Trojan war and afterwards, but no one ever bothered to ask me.” –Helen of Troy
Richard Levesque: What if all you had to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?
Penny Estelle: Billy Cooper shrugs off a history assignment until he comes face to face with a 14th Century legendary hero!
Heather Albano: Time travel via a timepiece? If you get the right one.
Pippa Jay: Space, time, sexy. What more can one say?
Penny Ehrenkranz: Lindsay Baker’s purchase of an antique mirror sends her back in time to salvage a love torn apart by class restrictions.
Nancy Bell: Would you like to be one of King Arthur’s knights? No problem.
Frank Allan Rogers:  Can a 21st C. man survive in 1847?
Marva Dasef to fill in the gaps with an Alt History story and using a wormhole to travel between worlds without taking any time at all.

All of this has gotten me thinking about time travel fiction. When I teach H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) in my science fiction class, the students always enjoy the narrative. It serves as a great introduction to modern science fiction because Wells makes a point of having the Time Traveler discuss the scientific basis on which his time machine works–the idea of time being the fourth dimension and the possibilities of moving in various directions within that dimension the way we do in the other three.

While thinking about this yesterday and doing some looking around online, I came across a short story Wells published in 1888 called “The Chronic Argonauts.” It’s a simpler time travel story, but clearly an influence on the novel he’d publish 7 years later. Here, too, there is a time machine as well as discussion of the fourth dimension that’s pretty close to what he would use in the later novel.

Wells stands out by making his time travel fiction grounded in science, something not found in earlier time travel narratives dating back to Hindu mythology. In most of those stories, characters are transported to the past or the future through mystical means–sometimes in dreams, sometimes by sleeping for extended periods, sometimes with divine help. And I would argue that those stories aren’t exactly science fiction.  Maybe closer to fantasy.

I’ve posted earlier on some of the differences between fantastic time travel and science fictional time travel. I’m interested to see what some of the other writers will be throwing into the mix as they share their ideas on the subject this month. I hope you’ll drop by Marva’s blog to join in the conversation.

Getting Some Perspective on Bad (and Good) Reviews

I’ve had books for sale on Amazon for more than a year-and-a-half now and have had the good fortune to rack up quite a few reviews, mostly 4 and 5 stars but a few stinkers. I know there are some writers who claim not to read their reviews, but I’m not one of them. I have come to embrace the idea that readers are the new gatekeepers of the literary world–not so much agents any more–and I want to see what my readers think. Even when what they think isn’t so nice.

When I got my first negative review (and it wasn’t entirely negative, mind you), I was incensed because the reviewer made some personal comments about me and what she perceived were my politics based on some characters in my book. I talked to people, who calmed me down, and started developing a new layer of the thick skin I used to count on when waiting for agents’ rejection letters.

And then that review was followed by lots of positive ones, so I felt better again. The balance in my world had been restored.

Or had it?

The negative review, I’ve often found, is motivated by some specific thing that let the reader down. I’ve had readers comment negatively on the lack of science in my time travel novel and the reliance on tropes having to do with virtual reality in Strictly Analog. In those cases, there was something in the books that took the readers out of the plot, caused their suspension of disbelief to falter, and they had a negative reading experience. It wasn’t just that they didn’t “get it”–in fact, they didn’t enjoy it. My fault? No. Just a poor match between reader and book.

It’s easy to write off those negative reviews and bask in the positive ones, but in many cases I’ve found there’s also some bias in the good reviews–a book clicks with a reader because it reminds him/her of events or places or people the reader is fond of; or because the reader was amused or aroused or intrigued or curious. The reader was able to suspend disbelief and was taken to another world populated by characters the reader could care about. Mission accomplished. Does that make me a genius? No. My book found its audience; that’s all.

Of course, if a writer is getting reviews that complain about typos and poor editing, holes in the plot, character inconsistency, lack of interest, a dud ending, etc. then it’s time for that writer to pull the book and hire an editor. Fortunately, I haven’t had any reviews like that, but I would argue that even those can be useful for writers, showing them their shortcomings and motivating them to improve.

I recently ran across a negative review of Strictly Analog on a blog (and was grateful that the blogger opted not to post the review to Amazon) in which the reviewer criticized the handling of technology in the book, arguing that some of it was inconsistent with the other tech in the novel and that there was far too much time spent explaining the technology rather than developing plot and character. Rather than being a knee-jerk complaint based on the reader’s biases, this was actually an intelligent, thoughtful, well-reasoned critique that gave me a lot to think about. The bottom line was still that this reader, I suppose because of his own techie knowledge and lots more reading in the genre, couldn’t suspend disbelief, kept being taken out of the world of the novel, but I was still able to learn something from the review.

Ideally, that should be the function that reviews perform for writers. They may or may not affect sales: most people tend to look only at the overall star rating and maybe read the first one or two reviews, never getting down to the real stinkers. But for the writer, it can be helpful to try reading between the lines of those reviews, to look for the places where a book failed a reader as well as the places where a book grabbed a reader and wouldn’t let go. That’s what we want to do, after all. And it’s good for writers to know how close they’re getting to the mark.

At the same time, it’s important not to be misled by the gushing praise. That may be as biased and knee-jerk as the barbs.

We need to look for the reasoned, analytical, and carefully considered reviews. Those are the ones most likely to shed some real light on how a book is doing. The rest, treat with interest, but not as weighty deciders of one’s fate.

So…I wonder about other writers: do you take it personally when your work gets a thumbs-down? And as a reader, what sorts of things prompt you to write and post a review?

It’s Not Too Late–Take Back Tomorrow Is Still Free

In case you missed it, I’ve been running a giveaway of my science fiction novel, Take Back Tomorrow and it’s still available for one more day as a FREE download from Amazon.com.

“Raymond Chandler meets Robert Heinlein in this fun and inventive crossover SF novel from Richard Levesque.”—J. Orr, Amazon Reviews

What if all you had to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?

That’s not just a philosophical question Eddie Royce has to answer. It’s a choice he has to make when the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s goes missing and his unscrupulous publisher becomes convinced that Eddie knows all of the older writer’s secrets—not just the secret of where he’s gone, but the secret of how he’s traveled in time.

Until now, Eddie’s fooled himself into thinking he’s got the system figured out, “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare and rewriting them as space operas to make a name for himself in the pulps. But when he finds out that Chester Blackwood—his idol and inspiration—has been cheating the system in ways Eddie could never have dreamed of, the hack science fiction writer finds himself in the middle of a plot that his pulp readers would never have imagined.

Now he has to do all he can to save himself—and Blackwood’s beautiful daughter—from the powerful figures who all want Blackwood’s secret. And violating the laws of the universe might just be the least of Eddie’s problems.

“The pace of the story is quick, and the time transitions are handled well. Overall, this is a good novel, one that even readers with little interest in sci-fi might enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly.*

“Hardboiled 30’s crime thriller meets time-traveling pulp science-fiction for an original fast paced, page turner.”—S. Sager, Amazon Reviews

“It has a distinctly ‘noir’ flavor as well as an old school science fiction feel. It is fast paced and clever.”—C. Pellitteri, Amazon Reviews

“Apart from stopping to have something to eat I haven’t been able to tear myself away from this until I had finished it. This is good old time story telling that is well written, and definitely well worth reading.”—M. Bowden, Amazon UK Hall of Fame Reviewer

Download your FREE copy now!

*This review was of the manuscript version submitted to Amazon’s Breakout Novel Awards competition in 2012.

Free Download Take Back Tomorrow Noir Time Travel

Take Back Tomorrow is available as a FREE download from Amazon.com.

“Raymond Chandler meets Robert Heinlein in this fun and inventive crossover SF novel from Richard Levesque.”—J. Orr, Amazon Reviews

What if all you had to do to make your dreams come true was violate the laws of the universe?

That’s not just a philosophical question Eddie Royce has to answer. It’s a choice he has to make when the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s goes missing and his unscrupulous publisher becomes convinced that Eddie knows all of the older writer’s secrets—not just the secret of where he’s gone, but the secret of how he’s traveled in time.

Until now, Eddie’s fooled himself into thinking he’s got the system figured out, “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare and rewriting them as space operas to make a name for himself in the pulps. But when he finds out that Chester Blackwood—his idol and inspiration—has been cheating the system in ways Eddie could never have dreamed of, the hack science fiction writer finds himself in the middle of a plot that his pulp readers would never have imagined.

Now he has to do all he can to save himself—and Blackwood’s beautiful daughter—from the powerful figures who all want Blackwood’s secret. And violating the laws of the universe might just be the least of Eddie’s problems.

“The pace of the story is quick, and the time transitions are handled well. Overall, this is a good novel, one that even readers with little interest in sci-fi might enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly.*

“Hardboiled 30’s crime thriller meets time-traveling pulp science-fiction for an original fast paced, page turner.”—S. Sager, Amazon Reviews

“It has a distinctly ‘noir’ flavor as well as an old school science fiction feel. It is fast paced and clever.”—C. Pellitteri, Amazon Reviews

“Apart from stopping to have something to eat I haven’t been able to tear myself away from this until I had finished it. This is good old time story telling that is well written, and definitely well worth reading.”—M. Bowden, Amazon UK Hall of Fame Reviewer

Download your FREE copy now!

*This review was of the manuscript version submitted to Amazon’s Breakout Novel Awards competition in 2012.

Take Back Tomorrow Free Science Fiction

Take Back Tomorrow is available as a free Kindle download today at Amazon.com.

Eddie Royce thinks he’s got things all figured out. He’s managed to cheat the system and gotten himself published in the sci fi pulps by “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare. He doesn’t mind being a cheat and a plagiarist as long as no one finds out. But then he meets Chester Blackwood, the most famous science fiction writer of the 1930s, and discovers that Blackwood has a secret much bigger than Eddie’s. Worse, the unscrupulous publisher they both work for has caught the scent of their deceptions and is threatening to make their lives difficult.

When Blackwood disappears, Eddie is caught up in the mystery. With the help of Blackwood’s beautiful daughter Roxanne (who has secrets of her own), he tries to piece together the puzzle, but soon he discovers more secrets hidden in the Hollywood Hills, secrets that seem to open doors into the past and the future. When the hack science fiction writer finds himself in a situation more fantastic than any pulp plot he could have imagined, he has to make a choice: sell out to the Hollywood elites who want the secret behind Blackwood’s success, or save himself and Roxanne from the sins of her father even if it means defying the laws of the universe.

Free Kindle Day

All three of my books are available as free downloads today at Amazon.com. If you’ve read one, here’s your chance to grab the other two.

Take Back Tomorrow:

A time travel novel set in 1940s Los Angeles where a hack writer gets himself in a plot far more bizarre than anything he’s dreamed up in his fiction.

Dead Man’s Hand:

An urban fantasy novella in which the hero–a lawyer who specializes in helping the undead and paranormal–goes in search of a dead man’s hand and gets more than he bargained for.

Strictly Analog:

A dystopian science fiction novel in which the hero, living in a future California that has become an independent nation, enters a world of underground hackers and renegade gearheads to save his daughter after she is accused of murder.