#thesecretroot

[thesecretroot]

On page 142 of the next volume - real progress! Can’t wait for all of you to read this....

[thesecretroot]

Hard at Work

A vacation is the best time to write, and I'm up early concocting new perils for Edie and Clara in a distant future filled with crazy technology, terrible choices and some unexpected friends...Book 2 of The Mesh Chronicles continues to grow...

[thesecretroot]

Big News...

Book two is coming in 2015...and it's title will be... A Time to Change! So what is it all about? As we learned in The Secret Root, sometimes time is not on your side, and in this second volume of the Mesh Chronicles we learn that being ripped out of your own time and set adrift in the midst of a war can be hard on anyone. With blazing new characters, and action in the distant past, the distant future, and thrilling points in between, A Time To Change demonstrates once again that there's no place like home...

[thesecretroot]

Love Those Amazon Reviews!

Love the reviews for The Secret Root on Amazon! Check them out here.

[thesecretroot]

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3AT93QW8VR8S8/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B009LK59FG&nodeID=133140011&store=digital-text

[thesecretroot]

What is The Secret Root actually about?

That's always a tricky question -- how do you describe a 100,000 word novel in a way that doesn't make you (the author) sound either like a jerk or a pretentious loon.  I think the easiest way to approach the question is to be simple: the book tells the story of three teenagers who disappear from our world and placed in a future that may or may not be their own.  They must figure out how they got there, and how they can get back -- but they also may have a more important job to do before they return: they need to save the world.

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It was a dream, and in dreams you have no choices: either there are now decisions to be made, or they were made for you long before ever the dream began.

Neil Gaiman

[thesecretroot]

So who influenced The Secret Root?

Ah, that's always an interesting question -- if you list your influences, will it seem like you're merely derivative?  If you list your influences, will it make you seem less original?  Will it be a turn off to those who don't like your canon, or will it create unreasonable expectations in those who do?

Well, I don't care!

The books and authors that influenced The Secret Root are hardly confidential, and I want everyone to read them because they're great!  Here are a couple of important ones (with more to come later on):

1.  William Gibson, Neuromancer. 

Anyone who writes science fiction of any kind these days and denies the influence of William Gibson is either profoundly dishonest or lacking in the most basic kinds of introspection.  When this book came out, it completely changed my sense of what a "virtual world" could be -- in fact, I don't believe I had ever really visualized one except in the Jules Verne "there's another world at the center of the earth" or Isaac Asimov "there's another world around a star several light years away."  Gibson's idea of cyberspace (he even invented the word) was critical to my (very different) idea of what cyberspace actually is.  In his world, it's simply a computer network.  In the world of The Secret Root, however...

2.  Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (or, in England, The Northern Lights). 

This book is incredible for a whole host of reasons, ranging from the philosophical depth to the brilliant technique.  But what always does it for me is the surpassing strangeness of the experience -- you are placed in another world, so similar to ours, yet different in critical and telling ways.  The disorientation is powerful and, well, fun.  In The Secret Root the characters also are forced to deal with a kind of disconnection from the "normal," but in a very different way -- their world is not a parallel one but...you'll see!