Dickens, Aliens, and Me

My first ambition was to be an astronaut. My dream was to make first contact with aliens who could take me on a private tour of the galaxy. I
would check out the window every night to see if a UFO had landed in my back
yard. (Surely, they could sense that I was waiting for them. . . ! ) For various
reasons, it never did, and I didn’t get a chance to go looking for them, but
that has now changed.

You might know that most of Charles Dickens’ novels were
published in monthly or weekly installments. He pioneered the serial format of
narrative fiction, which became the dominant mode during the Victorian period for
novel publication and still exists in some magazine formats.

The advent of print-on-demand technology in the 1960s turned
the publishing industry on its head. It spawned the giant, Amazon, but it also wrested
the ability to publish out of the hands of a few big publishing companies and into
the hands of indie (independent) presses or even the authors themselves. This
has had positive and negative side effects (a story for another day).

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon launched a new platform using
serialization called “Kindle Vella.” The author can publish an episode
(chapter) at a time and leave comments for the reader. Readers can give a heads up for the chapters
they like. In that sense, technology is bringing
the readers and authors closer together.

Also, it puts more power in the readers’ hands. Instead of taking a chance on an entire book
that you might end up hating or bored with, you can read at least three episodes
for free. (As a special Amazon is now giving you 200 free tokens, which means
you can really read about 15 chapters first.) Then you purchase tokens (at a reasonable
price; the total book is about what a new release e-book would be) to “spend”
on chapter-episodes of books that you really like. You start at Amazon.com and
can read it there or (after you read your first episodes and purchase tokens)
it will also be available to download onto Apple devices (Kindle Reader app or Kindle device)
or you can keep reading right on Amazon.com.

Back to meeting aliens and venturing into a new space . . .
literally.

Motes (short for Mozart) is an extraordinary young girl born
on Mars. When a boy is found dead in her dorm room, the private Martian school
for gifted students expels her. Motes has nowhere to go besides the remote
planet of Veld where her estranged father is studying mmerl, the native
sentient species, some of whom are mysteriously disappearing.

This is a story close to my heart. I rewrote it during the Covid
pandemic, and I’m really excited to be able to share it directly with readers
this way!

You can check out SNOWDANCERS (the entire novel is uploaded)
at “Kindle Vella” on Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B096R3YF29

Hope you enjoy Mote’s amazing adventure!