My first novel, Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall, has been out as an ebook for a bit more than a year now, and the reviews keep coming in. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have chalked up quite a few and they’re running extremely positive. B&N takes the prize, with 280 customer reviews posted and an average of four stars out of five. Of these, there are literally dozens of five-star testimonials and a bunch of four stars. Of course there are pans too but not too many. Amazon started slowly but has been gaining momentum with 25 reviews so far and a four-and-a-half star overall rating.
It seems somebody out there likes Dinosaur Wars. The reader/reviewers who ‘get’ Dinosaur Wars the best are those who understand it was intended to be a fun read and not something deeper, darker or horribly twisted. It’s an adventure story and lovers of adventures are chiming in that it suits their tastes just fine.
All this justifies my long-standing faith that my science fiction stories will build up a solid readership over time. As Dinosaur Wars:Earthfall takes off, I can’t help but feel a bit of satisfaction that I chose not to use a conventional publisher or an agent. I had spent quite a bit of time consulting with potential publishers and agents, and came away from that experience feeling that they were more interested in having me change my story to fit their preconceived notions of what readers would want, rather than my interest, which was to put my stories in front of readers and let them decide for themselves.
Well, the results are in. I didn’t need to change Dinosaur Wars in order to find readers who would like it. And I can sell it on my own without the intervention of money people from the publishing world. It’s just between me and the reader. I write what I hope readers will like, and readers either agree or they don’t. You can see both types of reactions in the reviews but happily for me and for Dinosaur Wars, the main reaction is delight.
I’m honored and grateful. Blush blush. Next, how about a movie deal?
I got a question regarding something mentioned in, I believe, both current Dinosaur Wars books. The Khe are mentioned, and according to Dr. Ogilvey they were another race of pteronychus. Does this mean they looked exactly like the Kra, or were they just similar in appearance, being a species on their own? Were there any distinctive differences between the Kra and the Khe other than the Khe being big game hunters and noticeably less concerned about the environment (since they wiped out multiple species)?
Thanks for a tough question, Inferdramon. You see, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking through the differences between Kra and Khe. You are correct in thinking they’re not too different. My idea was that it was a sort of Cold War between them, so, yes, exactly the same species, just slightly different appearance and uniforms. Another thought that I’d had, vaguely, was that they once had a hot war comparable to World War II, but that was over now. In that light, those scenes carved on the walls of the catacomb and the Temple of Death included Khe prisoners and um, er, entrees at the feast. This was a fun question. Perhaps I’ll do some more thinking and a little more writing on the subject sometime soon.
Someone I know who is interested in Dinosaur Wars mentioned a couple things to me that I wanted to ask you. He mentions that faster than light travel is impossible and he says that the Kra not diverting the asteroid didn’t make any sense. He also doesn’t understand the “half-assed” bombardment and then ground invasion the Kra pulled. I guess he thought that they would have just blasted the entire planet or something.
What I wanted to ask you was mainly why the Kra didn’t divert the asteroid. I thought it was because there wasn’t enough time or they didn’t have the right tech to do so.
Inferdramon,
Thanks for the questions. Your friend is a pretty tough critic, but I’ll give it a shot. First, faster-than light travel doesn’t happen in Dinosaur Wars, except when the light has been stopped and put in a container. Then you can walk circles around it. That’s what kekuah is all about. Light in a bottle. My only defense for having dreamed it up is, hey, this is fiction. Star Wars and Star Trek did okay with faster than light travel, so I think motionless light, which by today’s science is also impossible, is still fair game for science fiction. Maybe kekuah will get some particle physicists thinking… Regarding that “half-ass” destruction of humanity, I think your chum has really missed the point. How do you expect to feed a whole world full of tyrannosaurs, utahraptors and other hungry meat-eaters, including the Kra? Uh huh. Don’t kill off the humans just yet. And finally, you got it exactly right on that last point, Inferdramon. The asteroid was unknown to the Kra until it was way too late to do anything about it.
Thanks for the reply. I’ll inform him of your response.
Looks like I guessed right on why the Kra didn’t try to destroy all the humans from up in space. I had theorized that there were two reasons the Kra didn’t do this. The first one was that the death ray, as revealed by Saurgon, had limited sight range. Yes it could zoom in really far, but not that far. As Saurgon stated, he could shoot down in the relative location of an enemy, but not be certain they are killed unless he could zoom in farther. The second reason was that it was mentioned in the books that the Kra have taken to eating humans, being carnivores and all. And it was part of their culture to eat their fallen enemies.
I think the reason why this person I spoke with missed the point is that he didn’t read Dinosaur Wars; rather he just read reviews and excerpts. I did point him to Smashwords where Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall was still available to read for free.