Category: Science Fiction

My first completely new novel in seven years, The Inheritors, is due out 30 Jun ’23 – Care to review it?

  1. My first completely new novel in seven years, the myth-metaphysical-coming of age-urban science fantasy (like many of my books, it falls into several categories. apologies if that doesn’t suit you) The Inheritors , is currently available for preorder on Amazon (and it would be kittens nice if you preordered it! it would make all the words in the book so happy!).
  2. The Inheritors will be available and on promo starting 30 June 2023 (99¢ Kindle, $11.99 Print) until 15 July 2023.
  3. Would you like a free The Inheritors PDF or ePub ARC in exchange for a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and/or BookBub? You would? Then comment you would on this post or reach out via

    Let me know you’d like either

    • a PDF or ePub ARC and
    • when the review will go up (The Inheritors is ~400 print pages).

    I’ll email the you ARC ASAP.

Thanks!

The rest of this email contains The Inheritors early reader comments (which will probably end up as front matter in the book along with yours, if you get them to me before 28 June 2023).

<BEGIN HYPE>
The Inheritors coverEarly Reader Comments
Joseph Carrabis’s Inheritors is a wild, time-traveling, mind-bending story… A staggering amount of world-building is layered in every chapter, making you hungry for more. Physics, mysticism, biological science, and theology are woven into dark, thought-provoking settings that are altogether different but connected and reward the reader the deeper they look. Yet, a suitable setting would be nothing without interesting characters, which this book has plenty of. A shape-shifting monster driven by primal desires brushes shoulders with intelligent design, becoming an incarnation of vengeance. A child with a strange gift is abducted from home and must learn to co-exist with beings far different from himself. A boy exposed to dark magic and demonic rituals must tread carefully or become the thing he dreads. All these elements combine into a thrilling tale that concludes with a bang and gets richer with every telling. Yes, this one is a must-read but get ready, because you’re going to want to read again and again.

It is rare to find someone who writes the way Joseph Carrabis does—with the gift of a true storyteller, weaving stories that enrapture readers from the first word to the very last. As they travel through the The Inheritors’ pages, readers will encounter so much more than just the story of a little boy named Tommy. Guided by Carrabis’ carefully-metered and eloquent prose, readers will find themselves on a journey they could have never before imagined possible, challenged to rethink everything they thought they knew about history, time, space, and the nature of life itself. Reminiscent of the works of Pynchon, Clarke, and Vonnegut, The Inheritors is as intricately complex as it is emotionally resonant and will no doubt draw readers back again and again for subsequent rereads. A magnum opus of modern day storytelling, The Inheritors is evidence of Carrabis’ consummate skill as a writer.
<END HYPE>

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 12 (was Chapter 6 long, long ago, now modified)

The Alibi – Chapter 12

 
Cranston stopped at the doors to the precinct’s central office. John Rhinehold knelt beside Cranston’s desk. Rhinehold was the latest edition to the BPD’s undercover cybersecurity squad. Undercover Cranston could get. Rhinehold, too-thin for that tall a frame with an unruly, bushy black beard and always in a tshirt and jeans no matter the weather, looked like an early to mid-twenties heroin addict desperate for his next score. But that’s where the undercover aspect ended. That thick, long braid got caught in drawers, doors, was long enough to strangle him and was the perfect handhold for someone wanting to do damage to Rhinehold’s head.

His head popped up and watched Cranston’s screen light up. Rhinehold smiled, stood, and his head fell back as some cables came up with him, his hair snaked in among them.

Cranston shook his head as Rhinehold extricated himself. Leddy’s ring sounded from his mobile. “POPS?”

He TXTed back. “K U?”

The precinct’s wall mounted blues flashed ON-ON-off ON-ON-off. Chairs screeched across the hardwood floor.

Leddy TXTed “C THS?” and Cranston’s attention returned to his phone. Leddy sent her video through. “SIMON GOT IT ALL!”

SIMON. Situational Intelligent MONitor. She sent him pictures at every stage of SIMON’s development and he had them made into a tshirt collage with the heading “Leddy’s Little Project.”

She loved it.

But “SIMON GOT IT ALL!”?

She had it working?

He needed to pay more attention during dinners.

Its cameras moved through hazy clouds flecked with ash. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing until the drone cleared the clouds. It flew just above street level and revealed the clouds as billowing smoke.

“WRU”

“BPL Johnson w Pen.”

Cranston’s jaw tightened briefly. He didn’t like to interfere in Leddy’s friendships. Getting into that special high school MIT-Harvard thing really made her blossom. She hadn’t been able to focus on anything since her mother passed five years back. Cranston knew his daughter was special, used his connections to get her time with top grief counselors and therapists, but it wasn’t until Penny Lane and her father, Briggs, that Leddy got into the program.

She didn’t make the cut and the reason infuriated him more than her; she didn’t meet their BIPOC or LGBTQ diversity requirements. “Was that a requirement for all the white kids who got in?”

You have to be a paying subscriber (Muse level (1$US/month) or higher) to view the rest of this post . Please or Join Us to continue.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 11 (was Chapter 8 long, long ago, now modified)

The Alibi – Chapter 11

 
Briggs Lane stood at the window of his Lane, Cuomo, and Greenberg top-floor corner office. He held a pair of MIL710 Optical Enhancers to his eyes and focused on Innovation Square. “That stupid bastard. Didn’t he know enough not to shit where he eats?”

He placed the MIL710s back in their padded box, placed that in a desk drawer, closed the drawer, and pressed his thumb against what appeared to be a lock. The drawer hissed as the desk sucked it a microscopic inch or two further in and sealed it in place.

He stepped around his desk – mahogany and large enough to play shuffleboard on – and past a five hundred gallon salt-water reef tank dominating a windowless wall and custom made by a team from the New England Aquarium in exchange for time, materials, and an anonymous ten million dollar donation towards unspecified marine research.

A post-doc from NEAQ came in once a week to make sure the tank and its highly illegal denizens were in good order. Lane ran his hand along the side of the tank and something flashed out from under the reef. It smashed itself against the tank’s clear acrylic wall and Lane smiled down at the circular rows of teeth before continuing on to the wall opposite his desk. Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa hung there. He smiled, lifted his fingers to his lips, kissed then touched his fingers to the carving’s frame.

The wall opened and revealed what Lane’s deep intimates referenced as variously “the weapons locker,” “the Predators’ trophy array,” and “Elon Musk’s wish list.”

That last one always gave Lane a chuckle.

Musk was an ass.

Never invited Briggs to any parties, never accepted Lane’s invitations to dinner when he was in Boston.

What a fucking ass.

Lane lifted a smallish disco dance club’s glitterball from its birth in the hidden compartment to reveal a small, gold nameplate with HIVE engraved on it.

Lane turned the glitterball over and placed his hand inside. A moment later the HIVE – a prototype Human Immersion Visual-audio Enhancer – hummed and Lane fitted it over his head.

The HIVE’s separate facets, much like an insect’s compound eyes, captured video-audio feeds from whatever was available – a newscast, a store camera, municipal video, people livestreaming, devices uploading to the cloud – and built a real-time 3D immersive environment for the wearer. Tilt your head forward and you walked forward, lean forward and you ran, turn your head and you saw from side to side, tilt your head back and you looked up, down was down and so on.

You have to be a paying subscriber (Muse level (1$US/month) or higher) to view the rest of this post . Please or Join Us to continue.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 10 (was part of Chapter 5 long, long ago. Maybe this is an example of authorial inflation?)

The Alibi – Chapter 10

 
William “Bill” Cranston grabbed the railing as he jogged up the stairs to Precinct House 17. He may have been a linebacker in college, but that was thirty-five years ago and now he needed to pull himself up inclines when he jogged them.

He snapped his hand back as if he touched a high-tension line.

The railing was shaking?

Sure, ’17 was one of the oldest precinct houses in Boston, still brick-and-mortar as they say, and with wide-paneled hardwood floors and high ceilings and big fans hanging down because putting AC in a building about to be decommissioned was a waste of tax dollars, but that decommissioning order had been on the books for twenty years Cranston knew of once. The city discovered it would cost more to put up a new precinct house rather than get rid of this old one, but somehow the money set aside for a new precinct house never made it into a working AC system.

Cranston made it a point to dig deep whenever he had to investigate a city or state official. He was going to write a book once he retired. Fuckers I have known, he was going to call it.

Old or not, ’17 was still solid. granite anchored the railings. They could shake? Like that?

He looked up and down the street. No fifty-three foot TT or heavy construction vehicles in sight, but dogs barked and pulled on their leashes. Pigeons, robins, and starlings took flight. The leaves on sidewalk maples, willows, and elms shivered as if chilled by a late October wind.

He touched the railing tentatively, one finger stretched forward, his body slightly turned and ready to pull away.

Nothing.

He shrugged and continued up the stairs. The desk sergeant looked up and nodded as he entered.

“You feel that?”

The desk sergeant shook her head. “Feel what?”

Cranston continued up the next flight to the offices. His phone vibrated in his pocket. A moment later he heard his daughter Leddy’s distinctive TXT ring and read the screen. “U OK?”


Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 9 (was part of Chapter 4 long, long ago, now modified slightly)

The Alibi – Chapter 9

 
Thorne let the Lady Eglesia‘s systems bring it into the harbor while she dozed on the deck, barely moving from where she slept through the night. She headed out to deep water after hallucinating being back home and visited by her people’s mythical water being, the Bunyip.

Those hallucinations were becoming more frequent.

Usually a quick trip home cured such things. She’d take AirCon’s corporate jet and be there and back in four day’s time. One day to get there, two days with her people, one day to get back.

But who to leave in charge?

Shaul. Not here next-in-command but capable never-the-less.

The Eglesia’s alarms sounded. A shoreside distress signal. Somebody breaking into AirCon HQ and caught in her team’s latest tech gadgets?

She sighed and her eyes fluttered open to the Boston skyline, the the morning sun at her back.

Something bobbed in front of her boat. It looked like a man in the water. It faced the same direction she did.

It turned towards the Eglesia as if suddenly realizing it was there. The sunlight shone off the water making it difficult to see.

Thorne shaded her eyes then opened them wide. “What the – ”

Her mobile alarmed.

The thing in the water dove and was gone.

Thorne read the message on her mobile. She shaded her eyes and looked towards AirCon HQ.

A cloud of gray smoke climbed the thirty story Innovation Square tower. Swirls of denser smoke pulled and pushed the cloud up the side of the building like some Wind Spirit King Kong waving its arms and legs.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

The Alibi Previous Chapters