"Parting Shot" now available on Amazon

My science fiction/golfing short story, Parting Shot, is now available on Amazon.

The story involves an aging golfer--a former phenom, a hotshot who pretty much wasted his career partying. Now, on the downslope of his career, he has one last chance at redemption.

I know this doesn't sound much like SF&F, but trust me, it is. The possible redemption is as a result of an extraordinary (supernatural, perhaps) event. There are no wizards or aliens or high-tech gizmos. It's a character study of a man and a golf tournament (the US Open). The story is told partly from the POV of the lead character and partly by the TV golf announcers.

If golf bores you, you wouldn't like the story. But if you have even a passing interest in the game, and like SF&F, you might enjoy it. And it's only 49 cents. (Did I mention how inexpensive the story is?)

Here are a couple of short excerpts from the middle of the story, to give you a feel for the story and the writing style:
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After his latest par, a buzz insinuated itself into Gomez’s cocoon of introspection. Startled out of his reverie, he glanced at his caddy, who pointed at the scoreboard nearby. The leader, Steve Hawks, had just hit in the water and double-bogeyed. His score stood at even par for the tournament. Right behind him came Jay Collins, at one over par. Two other players lurked another stroke back, followed at three over par by four men, including…Tom Gomez?

What the hell? Fifth place? How did that happen?

Gomez chuckled to himself, accentuating the wrinkles around his mouth and the crows feet that seemed carved by geologic process.

Figures. I scratch and claw and fight for victories and keep falling short. The one time I tune out the world and say ‘to hell with it,’ I play well. So now what?

More of the same, I guess.

He tried to ignore the leaderboard, but that was like a drunk trying not to notice the bottle of whiskey on the table. It simply tugged at his mind until he was forced to look. Now suddenly in contention, Gomez became distracted by his internal tug-of-war. He hooked his approach shot to the fourteenth green and bogeyed the hole. That dropped him to four strokes behind, and back to ninth place, with four holes to go.

Too many strokes to make up and too many men ahead of me. His shoulders slumped and he let out a deep sigh. That does it, then. Once again, I’ve managed to screw up royally.

…………

Gomez’s career, his reputation—hell, his life—rode on this one shot. A ridiculously tough shot at that. The green sloped away from the bunker and slightly to the left. If he hit the shot too hard, it would roll forever. If not hard enough, it wouldn’t clear the rough separating the bunker from the green—assuming he even got it out of the bunker

Gomez wriggled his feet down into the sand for balance and waggled his club to loosen the tension in his arms.

Focus on the shot, not the consequences. Hit the ball. Follow through. Execute. You can do this.

He swung smoothly and hit the ball perfectly, just as he’d done thousands of times in practice over the years, spraying sand everywhere. The ball flew high and right at the pin. If it didn’t go in, it would land close.

The gallery roared. From that, Gomez knew he’d hit a great shot. I did it. Damn, I did it. I didn’t choke.

The ball landed softly on the green, four feet from the pin and spun toward it. Gomez hopped out of the bunker to watch the roll. The gallery held its collective breath and went silent.

Go, baby, go!

Three feet, two feet, one foot, it was going right at the cup, picking up speed. The crowd roared. This was history in the making.

It’s in! It’s in! It’s—

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Mark.

Another great review of The Mars Imperative

The reviews keep coming in for The Mars Imperative, and every single one of them complimentary. Here's the latest. It's pretty long, so I extracted the best parts to quote here. If you want to read the full review, use the link below.

[T]his is a professional work of fiction that sets high standards, far better than many novels I've read recently. [It] reminded me at the start of a Heinlein juvi and at the end more like an Alan Dean Foster novel.

I have no idea if the science aspect is believable or not but it sure felt believable; more importantly, the science aspect added to the story instead of detracting, a heck of an accomplishment. [T]he book was particularly appealing when it focused on the main character.

[I]n the final analysis … this is a 'new world' story handled with grace and style…. I give it four out of five stars. Count me in for book 2. I also plan to buy another copy for my Dad.

Paul Taylor (IncrementalGuy) from The Motley Fool web site "Science Fiction and Fantasy Books" discussion group.

Thanks, Paul!

Yet another great review of The Mars Imperative

Here's another terrific reader review for The Mars Imperative:

I really enjoyed the science and engineering aspects regarding space elevators. After having read so much about them in other SciFi novels, I always intended to educate myself about the science and engineering that must be involved, but never did. I'm taking TMI as my primer into space elevator technology.

What I liked best about the book was the dialogue. MTC wrote great, both internal dialogue and conversational dialogue. Through his dialogue he developed several strong characters which I look forward to following into his next books. The plot was strong and like all good SciFi, believably takes today's issues and projects them into space. And perhaps best of all, it had its funny parts, lots of them actually, which just made it all the much more fun to read. Good humor must be extremely difficult to write because I so rarely see it, especially in SciFi. […] I'm ready for all of the other Planetary Imperatives.

By the way, I plan to take advantage of the Fair Use Doctrine and use excerpts from the book to teach my 9th grade Biology class about symbiotic relationships and organic molecules. I'm always looking for ways to introduce popular fiction into my teaching. The average reading grade level of my high school students is 3rd grade, so I'm constantly using fiction to teach science content in a way that will get them more interested in reading. I'll also put a check-out sleeve on the back cover so they can check out the book to read. I know it'll just get lost or stolen anyway, so at least you'll sell more books to me that way!

Sara Burns (GeoGoddess) from The Motley Fool web site "All Things Sci-Fi" discussion group.

Still more reviews for TMI

I've gotten some more extremely complimentary reader reviews for The Mars Imperative in the last week. Here's another:

From Author's Den:
Fresh, unique, and smart, "The Mars Imperative" is a fly-by-the-seat science fiction juggernaut of excitement and adventure. The concept captured me immediately and the characters and plotline deliver thrills and chills not easily forgotten. One can easily picture this as the next cinematic blockbuster in the vein of "Star Wars," which was also revolutionary and ahead of its time in its day. — Shannon Phoenix

More reviews for The Mars Imperative

Formal reviews for The Mars Imperative are trickling in. In addition to the one I posted earlier from Coffee Time Romance, here's one from science fiction author Rick Taubold (More than Magick):

Good science, great characters, excellent story!

Science fiction is often given a bad rap in the public eye because readers believe that the "science" part is going to be incomprehensible. I'm pleased to say that Mark Terence Chapman's debut novel, "The Mars Imperative," is anything but incomprehensible.

Good fiction begins with good characters: characters first, story second. The science part of science fiction should be integral but not primary. By making his characters sympathetic, Mr. Chapman immediately engages the reader in his characters and their story, and his characters have flaws, like real people.

To many readers, "small press" sometimes means mediocre writing, riddled with grammar mistakes, poor editing, and a flimsy story. Mr. Chapman's novel is not only wonderfully written, but the story is truly excellent. Even more amazing is how the author handles the science. Instead of bogging down the narrative with it, he opens his chapters with excerpts from his fictional Encyclopedia Solaris to fill the reader in.

Bravo, Mr. Chapman, on a superb piece of accessible science fiction whose characters and story will remain with the reader for a long time after closing the book.

In addition, there are a number of reader reviews posted to Amazon and elsewhere. For a full list, see the Book Reviews page on my website.

New venue for The Mars Imperative

For those sci-fi fans who also love romance novels, The Mars Imperative is now available for sale from Coffee Time Romance & More (the "& more" part signifies other genres besides Romance).

For a complete list of the online booksellers who carry The Mars Imperative, go to this page on my website.

Enjoy!

Mark.

My first book review!

My publisher and I sent promotional copies of my first novel, The Mars Imperative, to a number of sci-fi-related web sites. So far, only one has responded with a review: Coffee Time Romance, of all places. (They've branched out into other genres.)

Here's the salient part of the review (the preceding text is merely a description of the story and characters):

Science fiction is one of my favorite genres. The thrill of a new world is what Mr. Chapman gives us in this book. Although right now none of what happens is possible, there is always the possibility of it happening some day. That appealed to me because I could visualize it all happening and it seemed so wonderful! Mr. Chapman opens up new ideas and creates a fascinating place.

The overall rating is "4 coffee cups" out of 5. A 4-cup book is described as:

Outstanding Great Read
This is a very outstanding book you would like to keep to read again in the future.

Here's the full review.

Mark.

Amazon's book rankings are puzzling

Do you ever pay attention to the book rankings on Amazon? I didn't used to, until I had books for sale. But now I'm befuddled by how they do their rankings. One would think that the more books are sold, the higher the book would rank on the bestseller list. But that doesn't appear to be the case, at least not entirely.

Case in point: My first nonfiction book (OS/2 Power User's Reference: From OS/2 2.0 Through Warp) was published in 1995, before Amazon existed. Before the book went out of print, it was added to Amazon's sales list (in 1997/1998), and sold a few dozen copies. Fast forward to 2007, and my first novel, The Mars Imperative, debuts. When the first copy sold, it rocketed up the sales rankings to #291,000+. 8^} Just out of curiosity, I looked up my old OS/2 book, and saw that it was ranked #4,100,000+. That made no sense. How could a book with dozens of sales be ranked 4 million places lower than a book with only one sale?

And it gets weirder. By the time the second (and last) copy Amazon had in stock sold, the book had dropped to #600,000+. Upon the second sale, it shot up to #78,777. Did that mean there were more than 500,000 books with exactly one sale to their credit? That hardly seemed likely. But how could one sale make a difference of 521,000+ positions otherwise?

Then, while waiting for the next shipment of nine books to arrive at Amazon, I noticed that the ranking had dropped to #700,000+. Did this mean that all those books with one sale had suddenly shot up to three or more copies? That seems unlikely. Perhaps those other books were all brand new and had just caught on and were now up to eight or ten copies sold; but come on, how likely is it that half a million books were just recently added to Amazon's sales list? And if they were indeed older titles that for whatever reason sold only one copy before, why would they all suddenly get a few more sales? A few books, maybe. But all half-a-million of them?

None of this makes sense (and still doesn't explain why a book with one sale would be ranked four million places higher than one with dozens of sales. The only answer I can think of is that time is factored in with the number of sales, such that a book with hundreds or thousands of sales from ten years ago is ranked lower than one with tens of sales today, especially if the older book is out of print and can't be ordered anymore. (I concede that there's no point in ranking a book highly that's out of print and can't be ordered. But in that case, why rank it at all?) Still, it's not exactly an accurate measurement of where a book ranks in terms of overall sales.

Well, I guess it's all pretty meaningless until a book reaches the top 40 or so and makes it onto the various bestseller lists.

That's something to look forward to, anyway. 8^}

(Update: Three more sales, and the ranking jumped to #93,727.)

Mark.

The Tesserene Imperative cover

I just got the final cover for The Tesserene Imperative from the artist, CJ England, and here it is. What do you think? (Click on it for a larger view.)

It does a great job of capturing two different scenes from the book in one (but I won't give away which ones they are; you'll have to figure that out for yourself).

This brings us one step closer to completion.

Oh, and here's my new banner, with both covers on it:

Writing time

With all the promotional activity going on around me (for my first novel, The Mars Imperative), as well as the work on my second novel (The Tesserene Imperative)--editing, cover design, and so on--t's been weeks since I've had much time for actual writing.

When I signed the contracts for my first two novels, I was within 3-4 chapters of finishing my fourth novel (My Other Car is a Spaceship). Here I am, five weeks later, and I'm still not finished with it. I finally had some time to write this past weekend, and managed a chapter. That puts me into the final chapter, with perhaps a short epilogue to follow. With any luck, the first draft will be done by this weekend.

Finishing a novel is always bittersweet. First, there's the exultation that comes from completing a project of that magnitude. (A hundred thousand words or more of original composition isn't a trivial task!) Then it's followed by the thought that you may be leaving old friends behind forever (unless there's a sequel coming). Finally there's the realization that you have months (if not years) of editing, polishing, expanding, trimming, and more polishing ahead before the book is ready for publication. (Not to mention all the time spent on promotion, cover design, blogging, web design, preparing blurbs and excerpts, lining up personal appearances, and the multitude of other tasks that go with selling a book.)

So, even when the book is done, it isn't done by a longshot. But at least it isn't boring.... 8^}

Mark.