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Literary Titan Silver Book Award November 2022
The Literary Titan Book Awards are awarded to books that have astounded and amazed us with unique writing styles, vivid worlds, complex characters, and original ideas. These books deserve extraordinary praise and we are proud to acknowledge the hard work, dedication, and writing talent of these brilliant authors.
Silver Award Recipients
ZONT-2 and Beyond by Blair Wylie
The Parables of Chance by John Nicholson
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
An Absurd Hero
Only Afraid of Nothing follows a human and extraterrestrial who join forces to escape the planet and wind up in trouble on a rescue mission filled with danger and mishaps. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
Initially, it came from the idea of an Absurd Hero. A person without rhyme or reason, for or against social norms, against emotional expectations, adding the notions of it not being the character’s fault, became a late change. Someone who can exist happily or, rather, contently with the bare necessities thrown into the outer wilderness forced to keep up with constant changes.
Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing, or did the characters’ personalities grow organically as you were writing?
Can’t say I’ve ever been a type for outlines. I’ll run through an outline in six hours in total and feel the story is told, and the spark for its detailed middles and ends fades to nothing. I enjoy the character growing with the story before they can grow because of it. Feels a bit more custom that way.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The utter randomness of exploration. Things don’t add up, nothing is planned, and prep work can be as important as the failure it leads to and vice versa. I wanted to express living for living’s sake, especially after a fresh start. They don’t happen so abruptly, nor can they be picked out in a fugue memory blurred by the inner monologue when the starting line ends up under your feet.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I have completed several projects with varying connections to each other. The Walter Fang Experiment is the one I’m most excited about, but I also have a Wolfgang continuation in the works and two exploring the colorful tales of Detective Alice Scarlett.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
After surviving a confusing episode, Wolfgang befriends an over sedated human-ish alien who’s looking to leave this retched, green-tiled nightmare. Discovering that she was not your average patient, they flee the psych ward to the stars since Zenu was late for work. Nothing goes as smoothly as he imagines, as he finds himself earning a foolishly manic reputation and earning a criminal status within minutes of being off planet. They steal a second chance by taking up the responsibility of returning Zenu’s kidnapped boss. They travel from port to bar to death sentence on a haphazard journey, if only they could only stay on course long enough to get the job done.
The team builds on, and the messes worsen, all the while tempting fate in a universe of zero-degree absolutes. Functioning on some unseeable absurdity, you may realize how fickle relationships can be where getting sucked into the blackness to be forgotten is at moments a chipped windscreen away. How might these spirits ever survive gallivanting around the wildest places inside and sort of outside of existence?
Women Working Together
The Bush Clinic follows a doctor who is forced to support a hospital where she encounters tribal women fighting for their and their children’s lives in a war that does not value them. Where did the idea for this novel come from and how did it develop over time?
Thanks for asking. I was so pleased to find reviewers who call THE BUSH CLINIC femme-driven. Ha, ha, that was my intent. In all societies, women live in a network of women, although that practice is not dramatized in our novels or movies. For female heroes as far back a Angie Dickinson”s Police Woman, women characters operate in a world of men. Where were her sisters, aunts, daughters, sorority sisters, female colleagues who held strong positions like judges or reporters?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071034/
Women working together is a novel idea in some writing genres. Mostly we see a few forced together like in refugee camps, or the wives of men in leadership like in the church.
I started with the writing principle that the female characters drive the plots of my stories. Nothing happened except by their pushing. That’s in all my stories, but not so much LGBTQ+. I looked at women in combat zones and saw that they had no protection, no cover, no rights even to clean water. How did they manage to feed the children and stay clean?
Women were corralled together and could not resist abuse or separation. My idea was that women talked among themselves and found strategies for how to respond to abuse and support each other, except some were ostracized.
In a free emerging democracy, women must secure the right to vote, the right to open a business, to own property, to choose when to have kids. Access to capital is critical for women to have a voice in business and in politics. Not a token woman on the board of a corporation, but a self-made woman who succeeds by the work of her own hands.
So I developed several of these types in a fantasy story set on another planet to see what obstacles they addressed, what bad behavior they indulged, and how much social power they could accrue. The fantasy series starts with THE BUSH CLINIC, and several novels follow our connected tribal women and intruders from Earth.
The male characters were not neglected. In fact, some get hero roles as militia leaders of generals in the peace-keeping corp. A woman is more interesting when an interesting man pursues her.
What were some of the emotional and moral guidelines you followed when developing your characters?
I feel that women compete and undercut each other. I feel that there’s a hunger among readers to see women who are generous in spirit and want the best for others, but that’s an ideal, isn’t it? Finding the oxygen for oneself is a daily struggle, so which woman has the energy to fight for the group? Unfortunately, altruism is learned behavior.
Just the same, women emulate some who they admire — either for looks or clothes or attracting men or the voice of outrage. The undercutting comes when a genuine position gained through effort is lost or not available. Women (and men) turn to other strategies.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The solutions I found for women in a combat zone were partly about how to handle the children for education and guiding them into different expectations. The tension between Dr. Greensboro, an offworld doctor with the bush clinic, and her growing native assistant Brianna Miller rang true, I believe, for the limitations of how women help women.
What is the next book in the Tribal Wars series about, and when will it be available?
In THE BODY POLITIC Brianna Miller returns to Dolvia as a grown woman with experience and the access to capital to make a difference among the savannah tribes. Her voice in the militia is strong because she contributes connections with offworlders and ideas for managing the kids at risk.
The tribal women who the reader has gotten to know in the first novel each come to the public square in Cylay and partake in self-torching, a protest act against the oppression of Rabbenu Ely. We feel the lost because we know each of the women as individuals.
Brianna Miller takes on an assistant named Kelly Osborn who is my heart’s favorite in the series. Kelly is a poet and trying to find her place, betrothed to a warrior who she fears, but still relating her love of the savannah and the people in her published poems. The differences between cynical Brianna Miller and emotional Kelly Osborn are stark and tell us more about women working together.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
On Dolvia, Lt. Mike Shaw demands Dr. Greensboro’s doctoring skills at the hospital, forcing the closure of her bush clinic. She witnesses forced labor, forced migration, and the threat of an epidemic from bad water. She sees how tribal women–often wearing burkas–find solutions for saving the children in a conflict zone, and she commits to the their cause for Home Rule.
Brianna Miller is an isolated girl–a mixed-blood orphan–among the Dolviet tribes. With the lessons from Dr. Greensboro, the abuse from soldiers, the sisterhood among victims, Brianna prepares for a future she will choose for herself. But first she must travel offworld.
The Bush Clinic
The Bush Clinic is an imaginative and deeply thoughtful space opera that surprised me with its depth. While this is a science fiction novel, it only serves to create a fantastic background to contemporary issues people face in third-world countries today and provides a creative twist to distill modern issues down into a poignant narrative. In this book, we follow a doctor on Dolvia, who is forced to leave her clinic and support a hospital where she witnesses an epidemic and sees how resourceful tribal women have to get to save their kids and survive a conflict where corporate greed fuels the engine of war. Among the tribe is a girl whose storyline shows readers the abuse natives face at the hands of their colonizers and shows the strength of sisterhood in the face of adversity.
Author Stella Atrium channels the best of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the way it utilizes epic fantasy to tell a tale of oppression and colonization. What I like most about this novel, though, is the stark reality of the characters’ lives. While this is a science fiction novel, it still feels grounded and authentic, giving the novel a gritty feel that makes the emotion that colors this story feel raw and biting. The author sets up this emotional battery so well that it feels much more potent when hope and light shine through the darkness. Because of this, I found The Bush Clinic to be a moving and impassioned story; possibly because I was able to relate to the characters.
Readers will also find a vibrant and well-defined backdrop to this story beyond the insightful commentary on society. With plenty of time spent throughout the novel creating a world that feels lived-in and exotic, readers will enjoy the variety of cultures, species, and ideologies throughout this book. This lends to the epic feel of this fantasy story and made me feel like we are only scratching the surface of a backstory that feels deep (good thing this is only book one in The Tribal Wars series).
With strong female protagonists and inspired themes of solidarity, unity, and sorority among women, this science fiction book will appeal to readers looking for a meaningful story that is contemplative and intellectually invigorating. The Bush Clinic is an entertaining and inspiring sci-fi novel that will appeal to readers looking for a book with a relevant and thrilling storyline.
Pages: 496 | ASIN: B0B9VH51CW
ZONT-2 and Beyond
Twenty years in the future, a Russian man named Timofey Semenov develops a solar shield to help lower the temperatures on Earth, intended to help with climate change. His structure is named ZONT-1, but before it could impact global temperatures, it is heavily damaged by a massive solar flare. But Timofey doesn’t give up. He forms alliances with men he’d rather ignore to bring his ZONT-2 project to life.
ZONT-2 and Beyond by Blair Wylie shows that despite someone’s best intentions, not everything goes the way you want. Hounded by terrorists, unrest, and global politics, Timofey, with his business partner and personal enemy, Alain Dufort, must work together to get the ZONT-2 project off the ground. They navigate personal problems, international alliances, enemies, and the occasional bombing to bring their vision to life. ZONT-2 and Beyond contains a large cast of characters in various political and influential positions; some are not who they seem.
This novel is not for the faint of heart. It’s an abundantly complex book filled with technical details about space structures, scientific farming strategies, and geopolitics. Perhaps because of the author’s background in engineering, the book reads as almost a manual rather than a fictional story. Much of the story is summarized rather than shown as action, and there is a lot of scientific and engineering dialogue. There are also many characters to keep track of, as almost every chapter introduces someone new.
While the subject matter is very interesting, I believe the story’s execution could have been improved. I commend Wylie for his ingenuity in putting together the various threads of the story, weaving in and out of politics and business arrangements, and the ability to immerse the reader into the story.
ZONT-2 and Beyond is a hard science fiction novel that will appeal to readers that love to know how things work and want to read the science behind the story. With a plot that is not implausible, this is a fantastic read for those who enjoy sci-fi’s technical aspects.
Pages: 208 | ISBN: 978-1-80016-536-6
I Just Love The Story
Taken Away follows a space crew who has woken up early from their cryogenic sleep to encounter a vast array of unforeseen problems and challenges. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I am a huge fan of Alien I just love the story a lot of inspiration.
Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing or did the characters’ personalities grow organically as you were writing?
The ideas, come from people I know just friends and family just my surroundings.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Betrayal Courage and perseverance love.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I have a part two to my 1st book reincarnated in an Alien body.
Author Links: Amazon | Writers Republic
nuclear weapons. Most of the humans that remain live underground, in the caverns
of Mars. A small band of specially chosen soldiers is given a mission to reclaim Earth,
to see if it’s fit for colonization. They’ve trained their whole lives for this mission.
Still, nothing in the cosmos could possibly prepare them for what they are about to
unearth.
The human brain can only fit so much stuff in it, so instead of learning a little bit
about a bunch of topics, they chose a bunch of soldiers and make them learn a
lot about a smaller number of topics. As a unit, this made them stronger… But if
someone died, that knowledge died with them.
People thought that meeting intelligent life would bring peace. They were wrong.
When the soldiers landed on the planet’s surface to investigate something that
should not be flourishing human settlements. The squad encounters very bad and
dangerous circumstances and suddenly survival became the most requested need.
LITERARY TITAN 