I think it was back in November when E.J. Robinson contacted me about reading his book, Robinson Crusoe 2244 — in complete contravention of the Awesome Indie Compendium of Stuffy Rules: “I won’t take any free books from people, nor respond to lobbying efforts.”
These indie authors, I tell you. Running around and messing things up for everyone, that’s what. Don’t they know the best way to get noticed is to write a novel, send out queries for 10 years — no simultaneous submissions — and hope a meteor strikes a convention center filled with the top trad-pub authors in their genre? That’s what I used to do, by cracky, and I learned to like it. By cracky.
Anyway, I picked up his book…I read it…and loved it! What a great story. Excellent writing. I contacted E.J. Robinson and told him I was interested in having him included in my list of upstart indie authors, the Awesome Indies. He agreed, and here’s his book…just over there, off on the left side of the screen. Go ahead, scroll down a little, that’s it, do I have to tell you everything?
Robinson Crusoe 2244 — funny name, considering how the author’s name is Robinson. Just the kind of story a cheeky indie author would pen. (If you were to attach electrodes to both ends of Daniel DeFoe’s coffin, you could power a small city for a year, he’s spinning in his grave so quickly).
Imagine our world, after a great and terrible war, devastated by genetically engineered diseases that turned huge swaths of the population into hideous monsters called “renders.” Now insert a young hero living in an oppressive society that grew up out of that destruction, and that’s the crucible for this book. Very well executed, too. Had me on the edge of my seat or cheering or laughing in all the appropriate places. There are certain parallels to the original story (of course), and I kept looking for those moments when they’d pop up. What great fun. Still, I hate to say “no spoilers” when it’s influenced by such a popular tale. Suffice to say our young hero is shipwrecked in a “wasteland filled with unspeakable horrors,” as his blurb states.
Get the ebook here while supplies last! — http://amzn.com/B00MC3S1KE
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For those of you indie authors who don’t get to listen to many self-pub podcasts, here’s one with Mike Faricy. He’s a great guest on one of my favorite podcasts. He describes his mostly bare-bones approach to self-publishing, and more importantly, he talks about how his career didn’t take off until he got 5 books into a series. Before that, he’d written 5 standalone novels which didn’t really sell. By book 9 in his series, he switched careers and became a full time author. I love his attitude: just do the damn work, move forward. Hey, it works for salmon. And like salmon, we all die at the end.
John L. Monk 