Corrupting Power
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500 Patrons!
🕑 Added 2023-05-13 01:27:12 +0000 UTCWell, the counter says it's 500, and while I'm sure the number will probably drop back below that once the month ends, it's still quite the sizable marker, and deserves to be celebrated. The next chapter of Before The Storm will drop either tonight or tomorrow, but until then, this should keep everyone busy for a bit. ;)
Attached to this post you'll find both a PDF version and an EPub version of an unpublished novel I wrote back in 2015/2016 called Nothing Beats Rock. Here's the pitch paragraph I used to shop it around:
The telekinetic spy known as Rock thinks he's just erased his own mind to allow him to go on the run from Watchtower, the agency he works for, who, incidentally, just tried to kill him. Unsure of who to trust, especially himself, he's determined to find out who's really calling the shots over at Watchtower, but his former co-workers, the psychic known as Paper and the invisible man known as Scissors, have been dispatched to catch him, by any means necessary. The only thing Rock has to go on are prerecorded memories, instructions left behind for him to use, locked away within his mind, dug up and played back whenever his subconscious seems to think he needs help. A blend of The Bourne Identity, Memento and The X-Men, Nothing Beats Rock is a thriller that proves sometimes you can't even trust yourself.
I did a very light/quick edit pass just to clean up some very obvious typos while I was formatting it into EPUB format, but keep in mind, this is nearly a decade old. I tried shopping it around a couple of times, back in 2016, when I finished the second draft, and again in 2018, but couldn't seem to get any of the publishing houses to bite.
Book publishing is a weird game, and I've gotten extremely close a number of times, but haven't seemed to find one of the big companies who wanted to buy any of my novels.
(Not counting Quaranteam, I've written a handful of books, none of which have been picked up, despite me regularly pitching them, and despite a couple of them having basically fallen apart at the contract negotiation part right at the very finish line.)
NBR was written in response to a fellow creative and I bitching about how so many people were doing 'amnesia stories,' but weren't really doing anything interesting with the concept. I gave Bourne Identity a pass, since the book had been written in 1980, and said that I liked how both Memento and Total Recall had approached the idea, but how nobody had really dug into the idea as well as I wanted to in fiction, beyond maybe Philip K. Dick's story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which was (very loosely) the basis for the Total Recall movies. My friend suggested I work on the idea while I was sitting around waiting to be needed, during a point in my life when I was doing a lot of that, so I did.
The result was Nothing Beats Rock.
The book reads better than I remember it being, and the rotating perspective approach doesn't feel (to me, anyway) like a gimmick, which made me feel more comfortable with letting the project escape its cage. (Each of the three characters is written in a different way -- Rock from 1st person present perspective, Paper from 3rd person past perspective, and Scissors from 1st person past perspective.) The ending might still be a little rushed and the primary antagonist may still come across a bit too mustache twirly (highly technical term) but I think the project's worth letting people see, and maybe you'll get some enjoyment out of it.
It's 95k words long, so don't feel like you need to blow through it all as fast as you can. I created a channel on the Discord for people who want to talk about it, barring in mind you should probably use the spoiler tag for the first week or two. There aren't any plans to revisit the story in the immediate future, although I suppose if there was interest in purchasing a print copy of it, I could probably make that happen.
Anyway, have at it. See what you think. And thanks for being around to support my work. It means more than I can tell you that you're willing to help me survive as a writer. Enjoy!
Comments
OkieDokeDude
500? Wonderful! Well done! That is just a tribute to your skill as a storyteller. As we cannot see the number count, I have no idea where we were when I joined, but 500 is well above where we were then. I'm holding onto Rock so I'll have a good read this weekend but will report my thoughts once I've absorbed the book. I joined for QT but have quickly become rabidly invested in more of your outstanding work and await with more than a little impatience each additional chapter. As others have already stated, I cannot believe a publisher somewhere hasn't picked up several of your works. Hopefully that changes for you soon as - although the Patron numbers here will surely climb - you deserve a much wider audience that only true publication can give you. Thank you for sharing your craft with us Patrons.
Ostynew
I have finished the book. Very nice. While not perfect better than many mainstream authors are releasing. Personal opinion was that it was rejected by publishers not based on quality but because it didn't fit in the algorithm they were currently using.
Ronan
Just finished NBR. Loved it. The ending conversation was great, cathartic even.
Ronan
Congratulations on 500! I'm about 25 pages in and enjoying NBR. I agree with Dashinhi - you right great stories, that include sex. For me, that's a major draw. I would enjoy your works with or without the erotic scenes. (but with is fun! :D )
pohmii Holloman
Congrats on reaching 500. You doubled since i joined
Dashinhi
Well, you do a good job with "the story comes first." On the second read of NBR, I do feel that the end of the conflict seemed a little quick, but I'm not sure how much you can extend what is basically "plan executes well." But I've never been particularly creative outside of my specific field.
Corrupting Power
Cheers. I've always tried to adhere to the concept that the story comes first, but also to leave in all the juicy sex scenes that normally get cut out of fiction. It's like the Player King says, "We stick to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do the things onstage that are meant to happen off, which is a kind of integrity, if you look at every exit as an entrance somewhere else."
Dashinhi
I would love to see a sequel to that other one.
Dashinhi
Good story - I enjoyed it. I'm sure you already know this, but compliments are quite literally nothing unless they're actually made - you're a damn fine writer. Your DMcT stories are (to me, at least) ones that simply have graphic sex scenes in them, as opposed to "smut" or erotic stories - the sex scenes are well done, but whatever the foundational tale is always far better. And in most cases, your sex scenes are less purple than some of the romance novels I've read.
Corrupting Power
So Quaranteam: Book One was self-published through Amazon. I've also self-published a different book on Amazon under a different name. Neither have had spectacular sales or generated any sizeable amount of income for me as of yet. All the other novels I have that haven't been published are (mostly) free for me to do what I want to do with. (There is one exception, as one is under option for another few months.) I still float some of them out in front of agents and publishers every so often.
Stephen
Have you thought about self publishing through Amazon etc? Or is there a devil in the details there that I don’t know about?
Edward Becerra
Nothing beats Rock? Sounds like a story that should be *papered* over, eh? I'll give it a read. And thank you.
