cyberpunk

All the King’s Men blog hop stop

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to the mini blog hop celebrating the release of All the King’s Men, happening tomorrow! I’m glad you could join me today to talk about cyberpunk stories and romance.

My novel is a cyberpunk science fiction romance. I know, it seems like those genres might be at odds with each other, but I wanted to prove that they’re really not.

Science fiction that is cyberpunk usually takes place in cyberspace, a reality of the mind that is connected to other minds or has a theme of technologically enhanced humans. Cyberpunk also usually has a theme of dystopia, in which darker themes are explored, such as government oppression, and what makes a person human. Some other examples of cyberpunk are the movie The Matrix, the novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, the anime Ghost in the Shell and the TV show Dark Angel.

All the King’s Men takes place in the mindnet world of the Cerebrum, a place much like the internet. A person projects their own idea of what they look like using the power of their mind, and they can travel the Cerebrum with a simple thought.

My main character, Fox, describes the Cerebrum this way:

Some said that traversing the Cerebrum looked different to everyone, and that made sense to Fox. Every individual who linked into the mindnet thought differently. To him, it looked blue, with bright points of light and wispy interconnecting trails of mist. Apparently, psychologists could tell what type of person you were by the way you described it, but he couldn’t understand how his psyche could be interpreted like that. Then again, he was literally looking at his own thought process, so maybe what they said was true.

Cyberpunk can be a very dark genre, so I think it’s important to introduce the theme of love and romance. Sometimes, I think that gritty realism goes too far, and leaves the reader with nothing to uplift them.

Fox and Seven both have a hard journey ahead of them, and it seems like it would be impossible for love to blossom in a place like the Cerebrum. But somehow, they struggle their way towards it.

Thanks for coming to the blog hop and reading about the Cerebrum! Don’t forget to visit the next stop on my blog hop at Hearts on Fire!

Fox is a mindnet hacker, and works for the mysterious man known only as King. He spends his time uncovering dangerous secrets and releasing them to the public.

But those who cause trouble are bound to attract it, and despite their precautions King is taken prisoner by an unknown government. And if Fox is going to save him, he’s going to need help—help that comes from the very last place he expected to find it.

Alex Powell is an avid writer and reader of sci-fi and fantasy, but on occasion branches into other genres to keep things interesting. Alex is a genderqueer writer from the wilds of northern Canada who loves exploring other peoples and cultures. Alex is a recent graduate of UNBC with a BA in English, and as a result has an unhealthy obsession with Victorian Gothic literature. Alex has been writing from an early age, but is happy to keep learning to improve on their writing skills. Feedback and comments as well as any questions are appreciated! You can reach Alex at aa.powell.author@gmail.com and at their website alexpowellauthor.com.

Comment below for a chance to win a $20 gift certificate to the Less Than Three book market and a signed print copy of All the King’s Men! The draw will take place on July 31st. Please note that the draw includes all posts on the blog hop!

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Release date for ATKM

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Good news everyone!

I have a release date for All the King’s Men! It’s July 27th, which I think is a great time for a book to be released, during the height of summer. I’m obviously really excited to have something to look forward to in the future.

My cover art for ATKM is coming next month, so I can share that with everyone soon. I’m always really happy with cover art from Less Than Three Press. LT3 has some pretty amazing artists.

In other news, I’m still slowly working on some other projects while also getting the hang of the bookstore business. If you hadn’t already heard, I now own a bookstore, and I have a new kitten who will be my bookstore kitty. He’s already gotten in a lot of trouble knocking over stacks of books and climbing tokitten1 the top of racks. (I’m also shamelessly going to include many kitten pictures in this post.)

I have one mini project in the works, which is the anthology for Gay Romance Northwest. Their call for this anthology is called Magic and Mayhem which is a charity anthology to help GRNW with their various programming and book donations. The call is for either stories with a pairing of mage/cyborg or soldier/tattoo artist. For those of you who’ve attended the conference in the past, this is from the fun Character Type Love Match game that readers played during the last two years.

kitten2

I’m going with mage/cyborg, mostly because I’m a fantasy and sci-fi writer generally. I’m just about 8000 words into it, and it probably won’t be more than 10k words long. That’s due March 31st, so I will be working on that until the end of the month.

My tentatively titled “Far Patrol” ace aro dragon novel is still out on beta. I expect that to take a little while because the novel is almost 60k words long. It’s a pretty hefty one for me, my longest novel to date. The sequel to that is on the back burner while I work on the Magic and Mayhem story.

 

kitten3As usual, I have plot bunnies running amok, and there’s all sorts of story ideas going every which way. But I’m glad to be back to churning out the writing.

 

Cyberpunk

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I’ve been talking about my cyberpunk story for a while now. To be honest, this one was started for NaNoWriMo 2013 and has been mostly finished for the better part of a year. The needed revisions weren’t too bad as far as revisions go – I’ve seen people scrap half of an already written novel, so adding in a few scenes here and there wasn’t a big deal.

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So, yes, it’s finally here. I’ve finished the revisions and it’s currently being read by two beta readers and edited by me. Very soon I will be submitting it for publication with Less Than Three Press. I’m very proud of it, and now that it’s finally almost finished, I think I can let everyone know! It’s currently about 58K words, but it will probably lose about 1-2000 words in editing.

A few of you might be wondering – what exactly is cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is a genre meant to take place in a high-tech world with low-life living. With the advance of our current technology, many writers suddenly saw all types of different places technology could go in the future.

ghost-in-the-shellA cyberpunk setting is one that can take place mostly in cyberspace, and is generally a dystopian setting. A really good example of cyberpunk is the Matrix trilogy. With cyberpunk, the sky’s the limit when it comes to setting – or rather, not the actual sky. The power of the human mind is phenomenal, and cyberpunk often explores this idea.

My main character for this one is a hacker who is being hunted down by an unknown government for reasons not quite made clear. It was a fun one to write, and I hope I see more cyberpunk novels coming out in LGBT publishing.

Blade_Runner_posterA few other cyberpunk examples:

The Matrix (already mentioned)

Inception (movie)

Blade Runner (movie)

Ghost in the Shell (anime)

Psycho-pass (anime)

Neuromancer by William Gibson (novel)

Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (novel)

If you’re a science fiction fan like I am, and you haven’t yet gotten into cyberpunk, I would really recommend it as a genre, especially if you also like dystopian novels.