Month: November 2012

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing2 Comments

Discerning book reviewer of excellent taste, Ms. Melanie Sokol, has just posted the first review of ASCENSION POINT in the history of the internet. If you only have time to read one line, make it the last one: “Ascension Point is a must read.”

melanie_unabridged's avatarBecoming Author

I recently got a sample of Dan Harris’s Ascension Point from Amazon.com. I’d always assumed Indie published novels were crap, Harris’s sample proved me wrong. So, I pushed out a preliminary view of the sample about two weeks ago on my blog, “A Preliminary Review: Ascension Point by Dan Harris” and then bought the book ($4.99 on Amazon).

Harris gives a lot of information about his book at his website, dan-harris.net, including a synopsis of Ascension Point and places to buy it.

Ascension Point is science fiction in the “it’s the future” sense of the genre, with the Seryn race, Harris mixes in a bit of fantasy. As I read through the novel, I felt more and more that it was a YA novel. Why? Luc, Neela, Abe, and Ariadne, make up the Chosen, representatives of their races to read the Book of Ascension and achieve enlightenment…

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Ascension Point Now Available In Used-To-Be-A-Tree Format!

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing3 Comments

This is almost the last ‘Ascension Point Now Available’ post, I promise.

But it’s a belter! My good friend Steve has cast his beady eye over a proof copy and declared it fit for sale. So to all of those folks who prefer their interstellar space opera to come on 294 pages of gleaming white paper–you’re in luck! I’ll post some photos as soon as I have them, so we can all bask in the shiny paperiness.

You can grab it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Who needs the digital revolution, I ask you. Paper’s been good enough for five hundred years. Pesky kids with their e-readers, and their Pokemons, and their skinny jeans. I tell you, back in my day… (falls asleep)

Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing1 Comment

A bit of a diversion from our normal schedule of science fiction, but this is too good not to share. Futility Closet has posted a list of twenty rules that an aspiring writer of detective stories must abide by, originally collated by S.S. Van Dine in 1928.

My favourite:

“7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.”

Marvelous.