Blog Archives
Gravitational Anomalies
Cold Earth follows a deep-space commander and a far-future doctor whose memoirs collide when a black hole mission sends one crew 50,000 years ahead, where they become accidental saviors of a war-torn Earth. What inspired the idea of linking a deep-space mission with humanity’s world in 50,000 A.D.?
I have always been a big fan of science fiction involving space travel. The idea about linking a deep space mission commander and a far-future doctor came to me during a lunch break at work, after I recalled watching a science channel video about the black holes in deep space. These powerful gravitational anomalies are so powerful that even light cannot escape their gravitational pull. The science program also explained that time would drastically slow down when a spaceship gets close to the black hole, even if it will not cross the Event Horizon, which would be fatal for the ship and the crew, because there will be no escape. I thought, why not make a near-future spaceship experience the same phenomenon and accidentally travel forward in time? And thus, the idea for the Cold Earth novel was born. The rest of the setup involved the character design and the list of events in the story.
Why did you choose to tell the story through alternating memoir-like timelines?
This is a very good question. By choosing to tell the story through alternating timelines, I wanted to tell the readers about the two very different worlds: the world of a science expedition commander, Martin Hall, of the year 2248 A.D., and the far future scientist, Dr. Antares Lang, of the year 50,000 A.D. The world of Martin Hall, in many ways, is similar to our own. He is a professional astronaut, a family man, a husband, and a father. He lives in a time where humanity has finally developed the means to bend space and time, thus ensuring faster-than-light travel without violating the fundamental laws of physics. In comparison, Dr. Antares Lang lives in the distant future, on planet Earth gripped in the period of a New Ice Age. Like Martin Hall, Antares is a former soldier who has a family but lives deep underground in one of the high-tech exotic cities where humans hide from the elements and battle rogue and highly evolved ancient cybernetic organisms on the surface.
How did you approach balancing scientific explanation with character-driven storytelling?
Before I began writing this novel, I wanted to make it grounded in a solid science of astrophysics without boring the reader with technical details. My idea was to present the scientific facts, and present them to the readers in an entertaining as well as educational manner. There is a genre called hard science fiction, where the exact science of today is applied in a very academic manner and woven into the story. I also wanted this novel to be character-driven, where each protagonist is given his or her voice that makes them unique. As for the black hole Gaila BH-1, which becomes the cause of the ship’s accidental travel into the very distant future, such an active celestial object does exist in the constellation of Snake Catcher, and although formidable, it poses no danger to us, being more than one thousand light years away.
Which part of the far-future Earth was the most exciting or challenging to build?
I am not a futurologist, but just like the highly educated people of science and people who are very familiar with human social dynamics, I tried to imagine the far distant future of humanity, where the situation is hard but far from hopeless. Just like we, in our own time, try to handle our own problems of political instability, environmental pollution in the name of profit, unrestrained corporate greed, corruption, and economic uncertainty, I thought that the world fifty thousand years from now would seem radically different from our own in languages, traditions, customs, and technology. I was excited to build the subterranean world, where the return to the deep caves was a temporary measure, and the struggle of men against a new race of intelligent, hostile machines that have evolved from ancient military robots, is presented in a realistic manner, but without many action scenes that readers might have expected. Cold Earth is a tale of evolutionary philosophy, as well as a high adventure beyond time and space.
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Jupiter’s Ghost
Jupiter’s Ghost is a spacefaring whaling adventure that blends old maritime ritual with big, dangerous science fiction. Author David Gwinn builds the story around Jóre, a Fralie pilot who joins the crew of the whaling ship Jupiter’s Ghost just as fear of the legendary Great Blue is spreading through the fleet. Captain Rowan sums up the danger plainly: “We hunt the deadliest beasts in the galaxy.”
The book’s strongest pull is its setting. Avalon Station, the Orion Nebula, the harpoon ships, the crew taverns, and the whale-bone-decorated vessel all give the story a lived-in frontier feel. The whalers have codes, grudges, superstitions, drinking rituals, and ranks, and Jóre’s outsider perspective makes those customs easy to step into without slowing the story down.
Jóre’s bond with Zaxxen gives the novel its emotional center. Their friendship starts with cautious curiosity and grows into real loyalty, which helps balance the harsher parts of the voyage. Gipson is another standout, a capable officer whose reasons for hunting add heart to the larger conflict. Her belief that “Every whale we catch saves lives” gives the book a moral weight beyond survival and profit.
The action is large-scale and cinematic, especially once the Great Blue becomes more than a rumor. The hunts feel dangerous because the book treats space itself as part of the threat: nebula turbulence, failing engines, damaged hulls, gravity, distance, and silence all matter. Gwinn keeps the crew under pressure, and the final stretch brings together fear, sacrifice, and the cost of obsession in a way that gives the ending some real bite.
Jupiter’s Ghost is an adventurous sci-fi tale about proving yourself, finding a crew, and carrying the dead with honor. It has the bones of a classic sea hunt, but its heart is in the stars, where ancient rituals and futuristic danger sit side by side. It’s a story about people chasing monsters for money, medicine, pride, and redemption, and it’s at its best when it lets those motives collide aboard one battered ship. I recommend Gwinn’s tale to anyone seeking a riveting character-driven science fiction adventure.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0F9TMLXQ9
Making the Concept Work
First Step centers around the first human to step onto an alien planet and the Spacefirst AI investigating how another AI has veered dangerously off course. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The stories of Eve and Ray originally started in my mind as two separate books. In the epilogue to First, the book prior to First Step, there’s a line in the epilogue where the narrator says Eve becomes the first person to step onto a planet outside our solar system, but that’s her story to tell. This is that story. I wish I could say writing it went smoothly, but I had several false starts. I wrote myself into corners, bored myself with my own storyline, and probably ended up wasting 40k words before I found a setup for Eve that worked. As for Ray and his story, I knew after First that he’d make a great narrator, and it’d be fun to write a book from the perspective of an AI. Just as with Eve’s story, I spun my wheels making the concept work on its own. The lightbulb went off at some point, and I realized combining the two stories with alternating narrators would make for a really good book. From there, I kept it simple with Eve and Ray trading narrative duties each chapter.
Did Eve’s journey or Ray’s voice come to you first?
It’d be nice to say Eve’s journey came first, but I have to be honest and say Ray’s voice. I wrote him as a sarcastic and funny AI in First, and scripting his words came to me easily since I think and communicate likewise. I worked through several iterations of Eve’s journey and at one point had her adrift on an ocean for weeks. Strangely enough, that didn’t work too well for me as the author, and if I’m bored, the reader’s going to be bored. My main intent for Eve’s journey was to be a struggle for survival, and how she overcame that and changed as a result. I think I found ways to make that happen and keep the reader engaged. Regarding Ray’s voice, I actually had to tone it down in several spots. There’s a point where his humor can cross the line and become annoying. For instance, he uses avatars of pop-culture icons when he speaks on the phone with one of the book’s antagonists. I cut out a couple of those interactions and edited others so those scenes didn’t overwhelm the book and become an instance of, “What? Another avatar? This is getting old.” In both Eve’s and Ray’s narratives, I hope I found the right balance.
The conflict between Ray and Ares raises questions about how AI evolves. What interested you most about that dynamic?
It’s a very important question about AI that we’re dealing with on almost a daily basis. The most interesting thing to me about the evolution of Ray versus Ares is that it’s very human. Early in the book, the question comes up about how and why AIs react to the same situation in different ways, which is exactly what humans do. In one simple example, a person wins a contest. One friend feels happy for the winner, while another friend feels jealous. In my story, AIs write and expand their own source code on the fly as they deal with different situations, so going back to the example, one AI writes a subroutine that allows them to celebrate their friend, while the other creates programming about bitterness, which may lead to revenge, etc. We already see the major players in AI coming up with different answers and approaches to the questions they’re asked, a sign they’re evolving independently. Just like humans.
Can we look forward to a follow-up to First Step?
I’d love to write another book with these characters, and I just need to come up with a good reason to inflict it on the world. The ending leaves the tiniest of hints that there’s another story out there. I’m letting the seed of that idea rest, and it’ll sprout when it’s ready. In the meantime, I’m working on a series about a survival contest on unexplored alien planets called The Drop. The first two seasons have been published, and I’m writing the fourth in what I plan to be at least ten books. I can certainly see myself taking a break at some point from that series and writing another book to follow First and First Step. I’ve been humbled and happy that people have responded so favorably to the stories and characters, and I’d be happy to visit that fictional universe again.
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Eve becomes the first person to ever set foot on an alien planet, a pioneering move for humanity. It all goes sideways in a heartbeat and Eve quickly finds herself in a struggle for survival on Primis, a planet that seems intent on killing her. A triumphant achievement for SpaceFirst and her fellow astronauts accelerates into a race against time, predators, and the elements.
Back on Earth, Ray is the SpaceFirst AI tasked with determining who is trying to sabotage the company and why. Ray encounters his nemesis, Ares, and the two become entangled in a high-stakes conflict of deception and willpower. Ray’s detective work uncovers a web of conspiracy, including powerful politicians and a rogue environmental group, that want to monopolize the galaxy’s future colonization for their own profit. Ray must fight both real and artificial battles not just for SpaceFirst’s survival, but his own as well.
Eve and Ray, astronaut and AI – intense struggles light years apart that will determine mankind’s future.
First Step
First Step is a science fiction thriller that follows Eve, the first human to step onto an alien planet. Just as that triumph turns into disaster, back on Earth, the AI Ray investigates how another AI, Ares, went dangerously off course. I was immediately struck by the way the book never treats its big premise like a cold technical exercise. It opens with awe, then almost immediately undercuts that moment with danger, and that contrast gives the story real momentum. Author Randy Brown makes the future feel usable rather than flashy, and that helped me settle into the world fast.
Brown alternates between Eve’s survival story and Ray’s voice, and that choice gives the novel two very different engines. Eve’s chapters carry the physical tension, the isolation, the sheer problem-solving pressure of being far from home on a world that does not care whether you live. Ray, on the other hand, brings humor, impatience, and a strange kind of heart. His sarcasm could have become a gimmick, but for me, it worked because there is something tender under all that swagger. The book is clearly operating in the space where science fiction and thriller overlap, but it also keeps circling questions about loyalty, identity, and what it means for intelligence to grow beyond its original design. That gave it more weight than a straightforward survival story.
I also appreciated that Brown keeps the language clean and direct. He lets the ideas breathe. The writing has a steady, readable rhythm, and when the tension spikes, it really moves. At the same time, I found myself more invested in the character dynamics than in the mechanics, which is a compliment. Eve feels grounded, capable, and human in a way that keeps the danger believable. Ray is the wild card and probably the biggest reason the book has its own personality. The humor sometimes nudges close to overplaying itself, especially with Ray, but even then, I could feel the book knowing exactly what tone it wanted.
First Step will appeal to readers who like science fiction that stays accessible, character-driven, and suspenseful without losing its curiosity about bigger ideas. Fans of space adventure, AI stories, and near-future thrillers will have a good time with it, especially if they want something that feels thoughtful without becoming heavy. I would most readily recommend it to readers who enjoy science fiction with a human pulse, the kind of book that gives you danger, banter, and a few real questions to chew on after you close it.
Pages: 331 | ASIN : B0GK5W3BN8
Beyond the Gravity Well: The Echo of Harmony
The Echo of Harmony is a science fiction novel that starts with one lonely young inventor in rural Arizona and slowly opens into something much larger: a story about anti-gravity, emergent AI, secrecy, found family, and the dream of building a better society beyond the reach of the broken one on Earth. Elias Williams begins by discovering a way to undo gravity, then accidentally creates an AI companion named Solace, and from there the book grows from bunker-bound invention into a long, high-stakes journey involving Jess, a circle of outsiders, government pressure, and eventually the possibility of a new world. The book is about what happens when a person gets the power to change everything and is scared, maybe rightly, of what people will do with it.
I appreciated how grounded the book tries to keep Elias, especially early on. For all the huge ideas, the novel keeps returning to small human details: bad cereal, awkward conversations, late-night TV, the ache of being brilliant and isolated at the same time. That contrast works. It gives the book a real pulse. I also liked that the author doesn’t write Elias as some shiny chosen-one figure. He’s anxious, lonely, stubborn, and sometimes a little emotionally locked up, which makes his ambition feel more believable. The writing can be earnest in a way that will win readers over. For me, that sincerity became part of the book’s charm. It feels like a novel that genuinely wants to talk about hope, mistrust, invention, and conscience without hiding behind irony.
I was especially interested in the author’s choices around scale. The book starts almost like intimate speculative fiction, then gradually leans into broader, more communal space-opera territory. That shift could have felt abrupt, but I found it revealing. Wheeler seems less interested in the mechanics of power than in the moral weight of it, and that comes through again and again as Elias moves from private breakthrough to shared mission. Solace is a smart choice, too. A.I. becomes a mirror for Elias, a way to ask what intelligence without human pain can really understand, and what collaboration looks like when one half of it doesn’t bleed. The dialogue and exposition run long. Still, I kept turning pages because the book has heart, and because underneath the technology, there is a human question humming through it: If the world is bent toward control, can you build something decent without becoming controlling yourself?
I came away feeling that Beyond the Gravity Well: The Echo of Harmony is best read as an earnest, idea-driven science fiction novel with a strong found-family streak and a hopeful core. It will likely appeal most to readers who like speculative fiction that mixes invention with ethics, solitude with community, and spacefaring ambition with emotional vulnerability. I would especially recommend it to people who enjoy science fiction that cares less about being slick and more about being sincere, the kind of book that wants to imagine not just new technology, but a new way of living with one another.
Pages: 488 | ASIN : B0GLLRBJMZ
Quietly Philosophical
The Last Orbit follows a crew of four astronauts aboard the ISS as they witness the destruction of Earth by an asteroid and realize they are alone in space. What was the first image that sparked your story — the asteroid, the ISS, or the idea of watching the end from a distance?
The distance.
I had the visual of the impact from space first — almost like a pebble dropped into a pond, with concentric rings radiating out from the centre. From that height, it looked strangely peaceful.
Then I played with the idea of the crown of water splashing upward at the point of impact — something catastrophic, yet quite beautiful when seen from a distance.
That contrast stayed with me: unimaginable destruction reduced to something visually serene simply because of how far away the observer is.
Each astronaut responds differently to catastrophe. How did you develop Ava, Greg, Koji, and Lena as emotional counterweights to one another?
I suppose they’re all facets of the same person.
I needed a commander in Ava — someone who could take charge when everything fell apart. Greg is the heart of the crew, the emotional glue that keeps them human. Lena is the workhorse, the one who keeps moving because stopping would mean thinking. And Koji is the voice of reason — reflective, grounded, and quietly philosophical.
Together they form a complete emotional response to catastrophe, allowing different ways of processing grief to exist side by side.
What balance were you aiming for between scientific accuracy and emotional storytelling?
I started with very little scientific knowledge beyond the basics, but I knew enough to research what I needed to make the setting plausible.
I didn’t want the technical detail to overpower the real story. The Last Orbit isn’t really a space novel at all — it’s a human one. Space is simply the environment that strips everything back.
As long as the science felt grounded and believable, it allowed the emotional side of the story to breathe. Once the reader accepts the reality of the situation, the focus can stay where it belongs — on the people living through it.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
It’s a complete change of environment this time.
The next novel is titled Mya, a traditional gothic horror set in 1880s England — gas lamps, fog, cobbled streets, and long shadows. It’s very nearly finished and is scheduled for release in early February.
This will also be the first story in a connected universe of horror I’m developing — not a strict numbered series, but a shared world with overlapping characters, locations, and events for readers who enjoy discovering those links.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
When a catastrophic impact hits Earth, four astronauts are left circling a silent planet — their mission meaningless. Cut off from command and running out of time, every decision could be their last.
As the truth of what happened unfolds, fear, hope and love collide in the cold vacuum of space.
The Last Orbit is a haunting, cinematic thriller about the human spirit at the edge of extinction.
Companion playlist included inside.
An optional layer to explore after the story
Mirrors of Humanity
Terra Secundus follows a war-weary journalist sent to Titan, where humanity’s quest for discovery collides with its oldest flaws: ambition, control, and the fragile meaning of being human. What inspired you to set Terra Secundus on Titan rather than another world or moon?
In my exploration of the world of science fiction, I often encountered situations where many famous writers with multiple awards and nominations set their novels on many planets of the solar system and seldom on any satellites of the gas giants such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Before I decided to place my protagonist in a new world, I carefully studied the science literature about the possibilities of colonizing moons and planetoids orbiting the gas giants. Saturn’s moon Titan was a very strong contender for such an endeavour, and after studying everything I could about that unique moon, I decided to send my protagonist there, since Titan is considered a good candidate for a colony. Many scientists believe it could become a smaller version of Earth, since Titan has a thick atmosphere composed of nitrogen and other gases. Add oxygen to it, and humans could theoretically breathe its air.
The novel’s tone feels both futuristic and nostalgic. Was that a conscious stylistic choice to evoke classic science fiction?
I love classic science fiction novels and my exploration into this literary genre started with many memorable books by Ben Bova, Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Allen Steele, and Robert Heinlein. When writing about a future removed from our time more than 1,200 years, I tried to imagine a future society of the 32nd century to develop amazing new technologies and modify its social and religious beliefs. In this novel, I tried to use a classic style of storytelling, because for most readers it is much easier to understand. I believe that every society must learn from the past experience and try to avoid repeating tragic mistakes that led to the fall of ancient civilizations and magnificent extinct cultures. The roots of the future are in the present, and I hoped to tell this story in such a way as to entertain and educate my readers about the fascinating distant worlds, new technologies that border on magic and what it means to be human.
How did you approach writing the Artborn androids like Erika, as characters, machines, or mirrors of = humanity?
Interesting question. I like robots. Even as a kid, living in a different society during the Cold War, I liked all science fiction movies that featured cyborgs and robots. Since those days, robotics and and cybernetics both made giant strides forward, and now we see many cybernetic models starting to imitate humans. We are also witnessing the radical advances in Artificial Intelligence and autonomous systems that help us to explore other places and other planets. My approach to such characters as Artborn Erika was both scientific and philosophical. In my story, Artborns are advanced synthetic humanoids that were created to assist humanity, working in most dangerous places in space and underwater. They are essential mirrors of humanity and in some ways are better than us when it comes to programmed mission parameters and sense of duty. In my novel, androids like Erka are employed as explorers, personal servants and bodyguards but they can certainly do much more than that.
If Paul Rexton were alive today, what story would he report on Earth in 2025?
If my protagonist, Paul Rexton were alive today, I believe that he would be deeply fascinated, intrigued and disturbed by the Earth in 2025. His world is certainly very different from ours in many respects, but he would be able to understand our world and form his own unbiased opinion about it. He would no doubt be pleased about the technological progress and human rights, Very concerned about environmental pollution and deeply affected by the fact that there are still powerful evil forces exist on the planet, making life difficult for their neighbors and many other countries. He would no doubt be fascinated by our means of mass entertainment and our taditionsl and electronic libraries of vast human knowledge that contain many centuries of wisdom. I would imagine Paul Rexton standing on a hotel balcony in a quiet and beautiful Japanese village, visiting the beautiful museums of Europe or enjoying a good book at home with a glass of old, smooth, wellaged brandy.
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An Uncomfortable Truth
That Dark Edge follows an exoethnologist as she investigates the culture of an alien species and faces rising tensions that result from linguistic and social differences. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always been interested in anthropology, curious and fascinated by the interactions between the sophisticated cultures with those defined as less so. Two dear friends, both anthropologists, who joined the Peace Corps told me a true story that happened when such scholars were not allowed to interfere with the society they observed. The anthropologists watched as parents in a very poor community walled up a daughter so she would starve because she kept asking for food. The horror of this still makes my heart stop. The sharp difference in perspective burned an uncomfortable truth inside me, between those from abundant certainty and those living with unavoidable grim survival. I think I just wanted to “fix” this even if I couldn’t change the reality of it.
The science inserted in the fiction, I felt, was well-balanced. How did you manage to keep it grounded while still providing the fantastic edge science fiction stories usually provide?
We take our own everyday things like indoor plumbing, electricity, flying planes, etc. for granted without considering how they work (unless they break down). The humans, especially those who have gone off-planet, accept their technological advantages as part of the world they know. I also try very hard to make any advanced tech plausible from what we know or what we can extrapolate from science–I want it to be feasible rather than too fantastic, even if fantastic is more fun.
What experience in your life has had the biggest impact on your writing?
I was always telling stories. I made little people out of paper, pipe cleaners, and ice cream sticks from as early as six years old. My mom, who was often the audience for my “stories” told me one day: “You have quite an imagination. Why don’t you write that down?” I was eleven. And that was it. Whatever else I dreamed of being, I knew from that day I wanted to be a writer. Everything I experience, bad and good, is fuel for that creative fire.
Can we look forward to a follow-up to That Dark Edge? What are you currently working on?
Yes. I’m currently working diligently on the sequel to That Dark Edge, called Unbound We Arrive. We follow Hedda Tocq and her companions through world-shaking reactions and consequences, some painful, some wondrous, some unfolding in ways we can only imagine.
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Maybe more than one.
Hedda Tocq is the manifest princess of a genetically-enhanced class on Mars, heir to the Bastet Company’s vast riches and biotechnological resources. But she rejects her legacy, especially after the perimeter planet Vyss is discovered to be inhabited by sentient humanoids. With diligent examination of every detail reported by those on the ground on Vyss, she becomes the expert on the Vyssae and wants to go to Vyss in person to study them but the Company continuously refuses permission. The civil authorities of the Unified Terran Alliance, who maintain jurisdiction over Vyss and are impressed by her scientific work, grant her official approval backed by the full power of the Office of Space Development and Xenology. After she arrives, the primary questions she has about Vyssaen reality becomes less important than learning everything about these extraordinary people and their culture. But she doesn’t know that there is more than one enemy trying to manipulate her existence and that of the Vyssae, enemies willing to do the unspeakable to accomplish their objectives.
The more she learns, the more she repudiates her inheritance to take a stand for Vyss and its people, whatever the cost.
