Ctein and 'Ripple Effect'

Elmo and Ctein, 2015

A brief update on what an old friend of TOP is up to these days: Ctein, co-author (with John Camp AKA John Sandford) of Saturn Run, has written a new book, this time with David Gerrold, who is most famous in fandom for being the guy who wrote the famous Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." Ctein and David's new book is Ripple Effect.

Before we get to that, Ctein has been busy cementing his legacy by putting all his old TOP columns online independently, a project that is ongoing, but going well, as you can see:

https://ctein.com/Columns.htm

Some of these columns are dated now (there's not a great hue and cry now for a review of the 2013 MacBook Air), but many of them remain useful and contemporary. A pertinent one at the moment is "It's Never Too Early to Start Planning for an Eclipse." As you probably know, the upcoming eclipse is happening a month from Friday, on April 8th. The article is still on TOP, of course, but now can also be seen Ctein.com.

Ripple Effect
As for the new book, Ctein and David are serializing it online through Patreon. Here's the Home page. Ctein says, "It's a natural disaster thriller, and it's quite the roller coaster ride, all 155,000 words of it. I don't want to spoil the story for you, let's just say it's about a very big wave." You can bet the science in it is going to be accurate.

They plan to publish it over the next year in weekly increments, which you can sign up for at the Patreon page. But, so you can see if you like it and want to keep going, the first 10,000 words are free—more than enough to get a sense of the writing and the story. (That link is to the free part.) The weekly installments are in pleasant-to-read ~3,000-word chunks and the cost is only $3/month. You might want to read a little more at first, though—the weekly postings are already up to Chapter 22.

The authors would be grateful if you'd help pass the word along.

Have a look for yourself. I'm interested in the publishing model and will be curious to see how it works for them, but of course I wish them all the success in the world!

Mike

UPDATE: Ctein has chimed in, in the comments. To see the full Comments section on any post, click on "Comments [#]" in the footer, or click on the post title and scroll down. —Ed.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "Funny you should mention Ctein’s posts. I have the link in my favourites and am slowly working my way through. Just finished reading 'Lazy? Does not compute!' before this article. Hope the book goes well."

Comments

[Sam Pieter]

Hooray for the pacemaker - the amount of posts per day are significantly increased. More to read every day and that’s great.
Will you pick up the writing of your book, I wonder?

[Kye Wood]

Two things.

Thing 1. Cteins article on the definition of 'time' is mind blowing.

Thing 2. I withdraw my conscientious objection to the Olympus TG-7 being in the 10 camera list.
Because DxO Photolab now supports it. As a consequence, its JPG and raw output now meet the criteria of sufficiency. Just.

Although the fact that my old tiny Canon S120 files look like full frame files by comparison, should make Olympus hang their heads in shame.

[ctein]

Thank you for the publicity, Mike!

Anticipating several questions by readers…

1) "How is Elmo doing?"

Elmo is just fine and continues to regale us with witty conversation while he rules the, ummm, roost.

2) "So, you and David have decided to self-publish?"

No, we are pursuing a conventional contract through our agent; the book is currently in the hands of one publishing house for consideration.

Patreon isn't about selling work, it's about supporting artists and other creative sorts. Mike's got his Patreon page for TOP (you've all clicked on Mike's support link in the right column, right... right?), David has a personal Patreon page that is separate from the one for our novel, and in a few months I'll have one of my own (which will be announced here, you can be sure of that).

Patreon isn't designed nor intended for self-publishing — we're trying something new by serializing the book on that platform. Very Dickensian of us.

3) "Why should I sign up now instead of waiting for the whole book to be serialized, in which case I could get it for three dollars?"

Yeah, you could, and we will not turn up our nose at the $3 (greedy grin). I expect some people will do just that, but the whole idea is to help support us in our endeavors.

At this time about a third of the book has been serialized, so, y'know, for three bucks you can read enough of it to figure out if you're going to want to subscribe to the rest. Give it a try! You can always cancel.

4) "Why don't you and David self-publish RIPPLE EFFECT as an e-book?"

Because (a) the returns are uncertain and (b) that actually costs money! We'd need to hire a professional copy-editor/proofreader along with a layout person to design the e-book. I have friends who do that, so I can get a very favorable rate, but we'd still be out a number of thousands of dollars. There's a cardinal rule of being a professional author: money flows to the author, not away from them!

Why do we need to bring in professionals? As a wise person once said, "The author who proofreads their own work has a floo for a client," (as you will observe when you read the serialization).

(please excuse any word-salad. Apple Dictate's fault)
pax / Ctein
==========================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
==========================================

[Roger Bradbury]

Shouldn't that be, "has a foal for a client,"?
: )