Kindle Price: $2.99
Bert Hoover jumped from a bridge, only to be rudely rescued by a flying saucer. Now he’s on the backward planet of Mardalu, enslaved by the brutal Morans. His only friend is Janice, but she’s been sold into slavery as well.
Escape won’t be easy, especially for a chronic under-achiever. After that, all Bert has to do is the impossible: find Janice, rescue her, and somehow find a way back to Earth.
Bio:
Brent Nichols is a novelist and technical trainer living in Calgary, in the Canadian prairies. He's been writing since an early age, and publishing to Kindle and Smashwords since the start of 2011.
What will readers like about your book?
Bert the Barbarian is filled with action and humour. In some ways it is a fairly serious story, but above all, every single page is fun to read. There is high adventure with wisecracking heroes and monstrous villains, and an interesting world to discover.
Why did you self publish?
Traditional publishing is frustrating and glacially slow. I like having control of the process and managing my own career.
What is your writing process?
I use Dragon speech recognition software, because my hands ache if I type too much. On a good day I'll put in anywhere from 800 to 2000 words. I usually begin a novel with two or three pages of outline, and I add more details to the later parts as the story progresses. When the first draft is done I let it sit for a month or two, and then I edit and edit and edit. After that it goes to my beta readers. Then I edit some more.
How long does it take you to write your first draft?
It usually takes me close to a year to get through an entire first draft. I do a lot of writing for several weeks straight, but then I often need to stop and let the story percolate in my brain for weeks or even months.
What inspired you to write this particular story?
I'm fascinated by the way that we become the people we are. How much choice do we have? To what extent can we choose to change? Bert the Barbarian is the story of a weak man who must become strong. I wanted to explore issues of identity and transformation. I also wanted to write a fun adventure story, of course. It's an action-packed page-turner, and that made it a lot of fun to write.
Excerpt
Every life contains moments of regret.
When you've just lost your grip on a slippery bridge railing and you're plunging toward a dark river hundreds of feet below, the regret takes on a certain urgency.
Bert Hoover spent the first ten feet of his plunge thinking indignantly, "But I changed my mind! I wasn't really going to jump!"
For the next twenty feet he worried that his last thoughts were going to be that, after ruining his life with cowardice and incompetence, he had screwed up his suicide the same way. He even had a fleeting instant of exasperation with himself for his neurotic habit of self-analysis.
He was tumbling backward as he fell, looking at the sky. Now his body rotated and he could see the river below him and nothing in between but the air. He felt a rush of adrenaline so intense that he laughed out loud. Time slowed to a crawl. He could see droplets of water glittering like diamonds, thrown into the air as the river crashed into the pylons of the bridge. He heard waves and wind and the cry of a bird, and he felt cold fingers of air move across his body as he tumbled. He felt intensely, wonderfully alive.
These final moments were the high point of his life so far. He suddenly understood why fools paid good money for bungee jumping. That experience had to be a pale shadow of this, though. Bungee jumpers expected to survive.
His body completed a rotation and he found himself looking up at the bridge, far away and retreating quickly. He hoped his life wouldn't pass before his eyes in the moment before death. It had been three decades of boredom and anxiety, and he didn't care to repeat it.
He spun one more time, watched the sky go past, and found himself staring down at the water. It was very close now. He wanted to stay in the moment, but in spite of himself he squeezed his eyes shut. In the final second before he hit the water, Bert remembered why he'd decided to jump.
Are you a Indie author? Would you like to be interviewed for this blog? You can!
Available from:
Bert Hoover jumped from a bridge, only to be rudely rescued by a flying saucer. Now he’s on the backward planet of Mardalu, enslaved by the brutal Morans. His only friend is Janice, but she’s been sold into slavery as well.
Escape won’t be easy, especially for a chronic under-achiever. After that, all Bert has to do is the impossible: find Janice, rescue her, and somehow find a way back to Earth.
Bio:
Brent Nichols is a novelist and technical trainer living in Calgary, in the Canadian prairies. He's been writing since an early age, and publishing to Kindle and Smashwords since the start of 2011.
What will readers like about your book?
Bert the Barbarian is filled with action and humour. In some ways it is a fairly serious story, but above all, every single page is fun to read. There is high adventure with wisecracking heroes and monstrous villains, and an interesting world to discover.
Why did you self publish?
Traditional publishing is frustrating and glacially slow. I like having control of the process and managing my own career.
What is your writing process?
I use Dragon speech recognition software, because my hands ache if I type too much. On a good day I'll put in anywhere from 800 to 2000 words. I usually begin a novel with two or three pages of outline, and I add more details to the later parts as the story progresses. When the first draft is done I let it sit for a month or two, and then I edit and edit and edit. After that it goes to my beta readers. Then I edit some more.
How long does it take you to write your first draft?
It usually takes me close to a year to get through an entire first draft. I do a lot of writing for several weeks straight, but then I often need to stop and let the story percolate in my brain for weeks or even months.
What inspired you to write this particular story?
I'm fascinated by the way that we become the people we are. How much choice do we have? To what extent can we choose to change? Bert the Barbarian is the story of a weak man who must become strong. I wanted to explore issues of identity and transformation. I also wanted to write a fun adventure story, of course. It's an action-packed page-turner, and that made it a lot of fun to write.
Excerpt
Every life contains moments of regret.
When you've just lost your grip on a slippery bridge railing and you're plunging toward a dark river hundreds of feet below, the regret takes on a certain urgency.
Bert Hoover spent the first ten feet of his plunge thinking indignantly, "But I changed my mind! I wasn't really going to jump!"
For the next twenty feet he worried that his last thoughts were going to be that, after ruining his life with cowardice and incompetence, he had screwed up his suicide the same way. He even had a fleeting instant of exasperation with himself for his neurotic habit of self-analysis.
He was tumbling backward as he fell, looking at the sky. Now his body rotated and he could see the river below him and nothing in between but the air. He felt a rush of adrenaline so intense that he laughed out loud. Time slowed to a crawl. He could see droplets of water glittering like diamonds, thrown into the air as the river crashed into the pylons of the bridge. He heard waves and wind and the cry of a bird, and he felt cold fingers of air move across his body as he tumbled. He felt intensely, wonderfully alive.
These final moments were the high point of his life so far. He suddenly understood why fools paid good money for bungee jumping. That experience had to be a pale shadow of this, though. Bungee jumpers expected to survive.
His body completed a rotation and he found himself looking up at the bridge, far away and retreating quickly. He hoped his life wouldn't pass before his eyes in the moment before death. It had been three decades of boredom and anxiety, and he didn't care to repeat it.
He spun one more time, watched the sky go past, and found himself staring down at the water. It was very close now. He wanted to stay in the moment, but in spite of himself he squeezed his eyes shut. In the final second before he hit the water, Bert remembered why he'd decided to jump.
Are you a Indie author? Would you like to be interviewed for this blog? You can!
Discover new writers! Follow Indie eBooks
No comments:
Post a Comment