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New excitement from Europa this week.
The Frozen Sky is now an eleven-hour audiobook as narrated by the sly and evocative Amy H. Sturgis. 
She becomes Vonnie in ways I hoped and expected. Amy and I worked together previously on short stories for Starshipsofa, including the original short story of “The Frozen Sky.” She was the natural choice to step into the adventure.
If you’re an audiophile, check it out!
Her audiobook should also be available on iTunes and Amazon this week.
I was invited to join the “Next Big Thing” author round robin by Steve Byrne, a horrific genius who recently released his first novel. Last week he answered the same Q&A, which you can find here.
My Q&A is right below ya… 😉
1) What is the working title of your next book?
It’s so far down the pipeline (July 2013), let’s talk about my latest novel instead, which is The Frozen Sky.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My honeymoon! I’m a sick puppy!
My wife grew up in Germany. We flew to Europe for two weeks, where I met many uncles and cousins, drank too much beer, ate too much fried pork, and toured castles, museums, spectacular forests and waterfalls.
In the Alps, we found our way to Die Eisriesenwelt, “The Great Ice World.”
For eons, melting snow has eroded the insides of these towering hunks of granite. In places, the cave systems stretch for twenty-five kilometers. Some have been developed into tourist sites with gondolas to bring people up the plummeting slopes. They’ve also installed a massive steel wall across the mouth of Die Eisriesenwelt to maintain its lowest temperatures in summer.
Diana and I were lucky. Waiting for the 2pm tour, we heard happy shouts from inside. When the door opened, an overexcited pack of teenagers emerged with their guide… but when he took the next tour inside, he only had the two of us.
It was as silent as a haunted church. Shadows danced away from us into blackness. All you’re given are small kerosene lamps in order to minimize damaging Die Eisriesenwelt with heat and light. No flashlights. No miners’ helmets.
The ice is stunning. Massive formations slump through the tunnels in slow-motion waves, stalactites, hillocks, and lakes. In places, they’ve hacked out channels or stairs in order to move from one cavern to another. The best moments were when our guide set off a magnesium flare, suddenly revealing the vast dimensions of the caves beyond our tiny, guttering flames.
An hour later, he suggested we extinguish our lanterns completely.
In absolute darkness, we heard miles of empty space echoing around us – the creeping ice – and the dead, implacable weight of the rock. In comparison, human beings are fast-lived indeed, like mayflies flickering in and out of the colossal mountain.
Immediately I knew I had to write about it.
At the same time, NASA’s Cassini probe passed Jupiter on its way to Saturn. One of Cassini’s primary targets was Europa, Jupiter’s sixth moon, an ice moon which biologists now theorize is the likeliest place in the solar system to find other life.
Europa’s frozen crust stretches down ten to twenty kilometers in places, beneath which is a deep salt ocean. The ocean floor appears to be torn by hydrothermal vents and volcanoes. It has all the building blocks of life. Scientists imagine we’ll find hardy bacteria like the same primordial organisms that grow in undersea volcanoes on Earth. Of course I thought, What if those single-cell organisms had evolved into higher lifeforms like they did on our planet?
What would those creatures be like? There is no light inside Europa. They wouldn’t need eyes. They would use sonar, taste, and scent.
They might climb out of the ocean into mountain peaks like the Alps.
It seems like a leap from Germany to Jupiter, but ideas are where you find them. I read a lot. The Frozen Sky is a fusion of my honeymoon and a nightmare – light and darkness – fire and ice.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
Science fiction.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I like Marisol Nichols as “Vonnie.” Smart. Tough. Sexy.
She’s not blond, but my favorite example of changing things for a movie is Pay It Forward.
In the book, the hero is an African-American male with hideous burns from a grenade explosion. He’s also missing one arm. In the movie, you have Kevin Spacey with a small, tasteful scar on his cheek.
Aha ha ha.
Far more important to me than hair color is style and mood.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
The back jacket copy is cool (and brief and to the point), I’m just going to run with the whole thing:
“I’m hooked.” –Larry Niven
“A first-rate adventure.” –Allen Steele
BENEATH THE ICE
Something is alive inside Jupiter’s ice moon Europa. Robot probes find an ancient tunnel beneath the surface, its walls carved with strange hieroglyphics. Led by elite engineer Alexis Vonderach, a team of scientists descends into the dark… where they confront a savage race older than mankind…
FIRST CONTACT
Based on the award-winning short story, The Frozen Sky is a new full-length sci fi thriller novel from the international bestselling author of Plague Year.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
That’s a trick question. It’s self-published and represented by agencies for film and foreign rights. Welcome to the confusing e-future! 🙂
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Most of a year.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
When I talk about it with friends and fans, I compare The Frozen Sky to Aliens or The Thing or Pitch Black. It’s a high concept sci fi thriller with scary aliens in the dark.
Writing this book was a lot of fun!!!!
For our next Next Big Thing, we’ll look for Genre Underground mastermind M. Todd Gallowglas!
Three things for Freaky Mad Friday.
First, stay safe out there, people! At grandpa’s for Thanksgiving, last night during the Pats – Jets game we saw an awesome news clip in which an overexcited dude caught in a mob of wild-eyed shoppers waiting for the early holiday sales at a K Mart started yelling — on camera — that he would stab any motherf****r who pushed his kids again. Boy, is that a store I want to swarm! 🙂
Second, trying to get into the mood, I’ve knocked the Kindle prices of The Frozen Sky and Long Eyes down by a buck apiece. That’s like 30%, guys!! Whotta deal!! Swarm!! Swarm!!!
Third, here’s a sneak peek from inside Long Eyes — the afterword from the story “Pattern Masters.”
Enjoy…
The technology is dated now, but people still use cameras with film, and I continue to see photo processing departments in drug stores.
“Pattern Masters” is one of two stories I wrote before my wife Diana and I went digital. Because I’m a disturbed monkey, I constantly wondered what would prevent me from taking an envelope full of pictures that weren’t mine. The drawers where the photo department keeps the finished envelopes are self-serve. They alphabetize them. You’re supposed to find your own, then bring it to the register with the rest of your shopping.
The cashier never bothers to check whose name is on the envelope. He just rings it up.
So… Would other people’s photos be more interesting than mine? Were they having better vacations, bigger homes, crazy sex on camera, or training ninja dogs able to walk a high wire above gasoline-soaked flaming metal spikes?
All writers are voyeurs. We like to get into other lives and times, or we wouldn’t be writing, and most artists I know are the same. Whether they paint, sculpt, act, or sing, we share that urge capture some aspect of the human experience.
Eventually I got to know the girl in the photo department enough to ask what she saw. “This must be an interesting job,” I said.
“Sometimes,” she said. But mostly she just sat by the same machine, wearing the same white gloves, looking at almost-the-same groups of people standing in almost-the-same groups and smiling.
I thought that was interesting, too. There were patterns in our lives that most of us didn’t see — only the girl at the photo counter. Mundane or not, the pattern was there.
One of my childhood friends is a sculptor. He’s gone on to design artwork, statues, and other structures in city parks, inside libraries, in front of Target stores, and at the tram station outside the Denver Broncos’ stadium, but first he suffered through a long stretch of poverty as he developed his portfolio and his reputation.
As a wedding present to Diana and I, he presented us with a four foot salmon left over from a fountain he developed for a sidewalk near California’s state capital buildings.
“This is cool,” I said. “Can we put it in our yard? I mean, is it weather-proof?”
“It’s cement mixed with epoxy,” he explained. “If it was bigger, you could use it for a shield against a nuclear blast.”
So that’s how Sauber’s statue was born.
Officially it’s official. First we waited for counter-signed contracts from Europe. Then it was World Fantasy and Hurricane Sandy. Now, at last, the ducks are aligned with the stars… if I’m not mixing my metaphors…
Exciting stuff.
Carlson sells new thriller novel to 47North
International bestselling author Jeff Carlson, best known for his Plague Year trilogy, sold apocalyptic thriller Interrupt to editor David Pomerico at 47North via the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Terms were not released, although Maass, an agent with thirty years’ experience in New York, described the deal as “solid.”
Based partly on the success of Carlson’s self-published sci fi thriller The Frozen Sky, 47North’s editorial team invited Carlson to pitch a new novel.
First a short story, which sold 40,000 copies electronically, The Frozen Sky is now a full-length novel that has earned acclaim from genre greats such as Larry Niven, Allen Steele, and David Marusek.
“Jeff is incredibly talented as evidenced by his nanotech trilogy and the all-new Frozen Sky,” said Maass. “Opportunities to work with writers with his imagination, craftsmanship, and drive are why I love agenting.”
Interrupt is slated for publication in July 2013. 47North will release print, Kindle, and audiobook editions.
“They envision Interrupt as a big summer beach read,” said Maass. “This book is a wild ride. It puts Carlson in the same league as blockbusters like James Rollins or Kim Stanley Robinson. Like his Plague Year novels, Interrupt is a plausible, terrifying thriller. He combines real-world biology and astrophysics with secret agents, military adventure, and an especially intriguing heroine. Then he upends our everyday lives with one giant shock after another. I love it.”
Russian rights to Interrupt have already sold to AST/Astrel via Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Carlson’s previous novels appeared in several countries around the world including Spain, where Plague Year was a hardcover bestseller, and Germany, where the trilogy sold in best bid auction to Piper Verlag.
Readers can find advance news, free excerpts, videos, contests and more on the web sites of 47North and Jeff Carlson.