Eleven-Hour Fall Nominated for Red Roses Award

Great news! My debut science-fiction novella The Eleven-Hour Fall has been nominated in the best short fiction category in the Red Roses for Authors Christmas Awards. The nominees were chosen by readers as the best books reviewed there during the year.

Red Roses is primarily a review site for romance books, but they did accept my sci-fi tale back in June, as it was a love story of sorts, with a strong heroine. It received five red roses.

To vote for the winners in both categories, here's the place to visit:

http://redrosesforauthors.blogspot.com/2008/11/christmas-awards.html

And as an added bonus, a few of my fellow Eternal Press authors are nominees as well. Fantastic!

Review For The Eleven-Hour Fall

Red Roses For Authors have just posted a review for my sci-fi romance novella! Here it is:


Robert Appleton/Eleven Hour Fall/Eternal Press/ebook/54 pages

Kate is with a team looking for important minerals on a new planet called Kratos. She is in love with one of the other team members, but Remington doesn't know it - though he seems interested. While exploring a mountain range they suffer a terrible rock slide and are sent sliding down the surface. Kate is trained in survival and when she discovers that Remington is still alive but unconscious she ties them both together and jumps, hoping to land on the surface of the planet with her chute. However, she goes into a long, long free fall. When they are swooped on by huge birdlike monsters and then dropped the adventure begins.

This is a story of surviving and of a determined woman. Kate is going to do her utmost to save her man and she has to fight off various monsters and all kinds of perils. It is a relief when Remington recovers consciousness and starts to help her. This excellent book is imaginative and well written and has a surprise in store at the end. I don't often 'Love' science fiction but I did this one! Five red roses, Linda

Updates!

Plenty going on here at the moment, writing-wise, in the world of Robert Appleton. I thought I'd share a few bits of news.

My flash fiction short Cemetery has been contracted to appear in a print anthology, titled Bits of the Dead, for Coscom Entertainment. Other featured authors include Piers Anthony, Nancy Kilpatrick and Adam-Troy Castro. Zombies abound!

Another sci-fi short story, Grandiloquence, will be published as an e-book by Eternal Press. If you enjoy my Cafe on the Edge of Outer Space, due out there on July 7, you'll love the characters and scenario in Grandiloquence. It's definitely one of my best.

Anticipating the release of Esther May Morrow's Buy or Borrow on June 7 (again, at EP), I've been hard at work completing a few more stories in the paranormal series:

Esther May Morrow's Fruitless (novella)
Esther May Morrow's Lot 62 (short story)

and The Temporal Man, the exciting genesis story for this entire series.

Finally, I've just put the finishing touches to part 3 of my Eleven-Hour Fall trilogy, titled Kate of Kratos. The action scenes are even more epic, the alien world throws up more bizarre creatures, and Kate's character really comes into her own. Again, if you like survival stories, and don't mind a dash of romance, this one's for you.

Thanks for reading!

Till next time, respect the unexpected.

Robert Appleton

I'm Proud to Present...The Eleven-Hour Fall

Well, the time has finally arrived. After much planning, writing, rewriting, climbing and general parachuting into unknown territory, my first novella, The Eleven-Hour Fall, is out today.

The folks at Eternal Press have been a pleasure to work with. My editor Heather Williams really understands the sci-fi genre, and you can see from the book cover how talented the artists are at EP. This one was designed by Shirley Burnett, and it's a corker.

So, on to the story itself...

It’s an exciting blend of science-fiction, romance and survival adventure.

What if you fell from a great height...toward a ground you couldn’t see…and hours later, you were still falling?

For love, for survival, on a mysterious planet light years from home. With the man of her dreams unconscious in her arms, astronaut Kate Borrowdale must escape the treacherous peaks of Kratos and traverse a strange, hidden world beneath the clouds…

And now for a short excerpt:

A quick glance here, a fleeting glimpse during a barrel roll there: Kate's knowledge of the world below was snatched from a dizzying descent. The violet sky streamed as colors in a fresco, running while still damp. Tremendous jets of gas washed up from below, pluming to giant mushrooms from tornado slivers.

But who are you trying to blame, Katie girl - no one ordered you on this frozen rock. You've got what you came for; he's just in a coma, that's all. Next time, next time, next time...

Her clock read 15:34. The fall had lasted how long? An hour and five minutes? That couldn’t be right. They seemed no nearer to the swirling cloud below. Another updraft caught them and Kate felt like they were floating again.

Kratos was a large planet in terms of circumference, yet physicists knew very little of its topography. The range of mountains in the northern hemisphere, the peaks of which Kate's party had partially surveyed, suggested mind-boggling geography. Scans, however, had failed to penetrate successive cloud layers. Experts cited an electromagnetic anomaly in the atmosphere as the reason for this. As a result, estimates of the height of those peaks varied by many miles. The surface of Kratos was, as yet, an unexplored world.

After all their bullshit, I'm the one left praying to a parachute.

Kate tried to relax through a fairly deep breath. Her shoulders ached. The fall now seemed smooth, consistent, almost gentle as they stopped spinning. Her throat was dry and ready for cracking. A terrible hunger began to swell inside as she tasted inviting flavors in her saliva, or at least thought she did. Remington never so much as twitched in her clutches.

To read the rest of Kate's adventure, buy The Eleven-Hour Fall in brand new e-book form at Eternal Press. You won't be disappointed!

New Book Contracts Signed!

I'm excited to announce the imminent publication of three new e-books by Eternal Press.

An up-and-coming publisher based in Australia, EP boasts a rosta of very talented authors - their book reviews back up that claim - writing in genres as diverse as Erotic Romance and Science-Fiction. I was thrilled to learn I'd be joining one of my favourite poets (and long-time published author) Sally Odgers at EP. A chance to resurrect our famous Fanstory time machine? You never know.

So, which books are mine?

Well, I'll post more info on each title shortly before publication, but for now here's a short preview of what to expect from Robert Appleton in 2008:


THE ELEVEN-HOUR FALL (sci-fi romance novella)



For survival, for love...on a mysterious planet light-years from home.


With the man of her dreams unconscious in her arms, astronaut Kate Borrowdale must escape the treacherous peaks of Kratos and traverse a strange, hidden world beneath the clouds.


Landing April 2008.




CAFE AT THE EDGE OF OUTER SPACE (sci-fi romance, for the EP Coffee Break Selection)


The setting: the distant future. Due to our planet's overpopulation, every child is exiled from the earth on his or her sixteenth birthday. They are not allowed back until they reach twenty-six. On the voyage out, each is paired with a mate in order to kick-start "adulthood". And they must all pass through the 'cafe on the edge of outer space', the legendary waystation orbiting Earth.

Frank Archer isn't ready for life away from home. He's smitten with his new girl, Emma Whitaker, but a ten-year banishment just after high school isn't exactly the rite of passage he wants. Nor is surviving a deadly explosion. But he's out there with a beautiful girl to protect, and it's time for the boy to become a man...whether he likes it or not.

Coming soon...



ESTHER MAY MORROW'S BUY OR BORROW (paranormal short story anthology)

Writing as Arthur Everest.


Who is Esther May Morrow? Why is it that her strange shop, resembling something out of medieval England, has remained unchanged from the nineteenth to the twenty-third century. What is she selling? And who will come to buy...?

SPELLBOUND – featuring an eight-year-old boy and an old army canteen.

GIN RUMMY - Set in 1899. Featuring a professional cardsharp with a dark secret and a desire to win at all costs.

CRETACEOUS – featuring an old man, his dying dog, and a chance for immortality.

THE FACE NEVER LIES – featuring a vengeful Marine and a special pocket watch.

MISS OLIVIA - Set in Hollywood 2237. Featuring a celebrated male prostitute and his unrequited love…for Olivia de Havilland!

Eerie, amusing and always original, these stories address the personal journeys of five haunted individuals, for whom quirks of time shed new light on their dilemmas. No one who enters Esther May’s shop is ever the same again.

Coming soon...


In the meantime, check out the catalogue of quality titles available from Eternal Press.

http://www.eternalpress.ca