Sunday, February 08, 2009

Pepe Now Available

Here it is folks... Pepe is now a published novel -- electronically, that is. Click on the graphic at the right to buy and download your copy for USD4.95.

Half of my royalties will go to Father Joe's Mercy Centre. They appear in the story as Fr. Antonio and Mercy House. That would be about USD1.20 would go to help homeless children and AIDS victims, the other USD1.20 will help put food on our table.

Anyway, here's jacket cover blurb:

The year is 2040. We have people living on Mars, but haven't sorted out life on earth yet. To the boy washing windscreens at the traffic signal, it could just as well be 1940.

The boy is Pepe. He doesn't know who his real parents are. His 'grandma' dies in a slum fire, and he is left to fend for himself and his grandma's biological granddaughter, Po, whom he treats like a real sister. They live in an abandoned construction site with other homeless children. With help from a young computer hacker named Raul and a mystical old man named Atsuko, Pepe discovers his true identity.

The villain: General Don Juan Clemente, who seized power from the king ten years ago, and installed himself as president for life. The General has a degenerative disease that is paralysing him. However, his brain has been linked to a computer network that enables him to control the country and destroy any threat to his power. Right now, his biggest threat is the very existence of Pepe.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

coming VERY soon

Pepe is now in the process of being formatted for release. It should be any day now, that I replace this graphic at the right with one that says "Now Available".

The publisher prevailed on me for one last change. It's now set in 2040 and thereafter, not 2020. She thought 2020 was too early to expect the sea water to rise to the point where dikes were necessary to protect coastal farmland. It didn't matter to me whether it happened so soon -- actually it does matter! I hope it doesn't! -- but I also lament one bit where the general (who took over the country by force in 2002 (to be changed to 2042) has a campaign called "2020 - Cardovia's Year of Vision". However, I've been told now that opticians don't say 20-20 any more in reference to normal eye-sight.

As for keeping it in 2020, I suppose the only mistake would have been adding the prospect of global warming and rising seawater. I suppose it's not certain how soon they'll begin rising. It's just that I read Cosmos Magazine that the changes could be as early as 2020, so in a panic, I went to my manuscript and and added dikes to protect my beloved Cardovia from too much change.

The other technological advances described in Pepe are probably on target. We might have Binary to Neuro technology by then (linking computers directly to people's brains), which is one of the central high tech ideas in the book -- changing an already despotic head of state into the ultimate villain.

As far as missing it, I'd be in good company. I think William Gibson set his story, Virtual Light, in 2005. George Orwell was certainly off the mark for 1984 (aren't you glad?), and as for Arthor C. Clark's 2001 ...