Cover Story - Thomas Carpenter

In his search for an illustrator, sci-fi author Thomas Carpenter found one much closer than he thought. He graciously shared his book cover experience with us and offers some advice to other indie authors.

Initially I hired out cover design to a friend that did work similar to book design. The first covers he made for The Digital Sea and The Godhead Machine were passable, but not exciting at all. After he made those, I asked him to do the cover for my YA dystopia novel called Gamers. Unfortunately, we didn't see eye-to-eye on the design process. He hadn't read the book and didn't understand the YA market, so I fired him. In the meantime, my wife had purchased Photoshop with the idea that eventually she could make covers. Once I fired the other guy, I asked her to go for it (she'd done a short story cover by this time, which was a good starter cover). We'd walked the bookstores and studied covers for a while so we know want we wanted.

The only problem was that we were about to leave for a few weeks and the book had been waiting for two months for the cover, so in a forty hour period, she made the cover to Gamers from scratch. It's still one of my favorites. After that, I realized she could do it and, except for my anthology series and a few early short stories, she's been doing all my covers. She's also gone back and redone the covers to The Digital Sea and The Godhead Machine. I couldn't be happier, plus the savings on an in-house cover designer is huge.


Having said that, we both know that for a different type of book, like a fantasy series, we might have to hire a designer who can create art from scratch, which we know will be more money, but a cover really has to match the feel of the book.

And is price a factor? Not if you get the right cover. The thing to remember is that the book will be owned by you for your lifetime plus seventy years. Even a $500 cover will pay for itself over that time period.

To see more Carpenter book cover revisions, click here. You can check out all of Tom's books on Amazon or visit his website for other bookstores.

Amazon Links to Works Featured Here:
Gamers
The Digital Sea
The Godhead Machine

The Godhead Machine by Thomas Carpenter

The Godhead Machine is the second novel in Thomas Carpenter's Digital Sea series. In the first novel, we followed Zel Aurora across the planet as she sought the cure for her daughter's illness while evading capture by her former employer, the mysterious Djed.

Two years have passed. Zel's still on the run, though she tries to give her unappreciative adolescent daughter a normal life. An old foe, who she thought was dead, has resurfaced and is hunting her down. Running out of options, she joins the Wiki, but finds that the accompanying reality binder comes with its own perils.

The Wiki is an open source religion. You know about Wikipedia - where everyone can contribute to the building of the encyclopedia. In this case, members are trying to crowdsource their way to create the one true faith to get God's message. Unfortunately, there's too much of a social media aspect inherent to the Wiki that leaves it ripe for abuse and manipulation. When religious leaders are allowed to re-write the rules and twist the message, you're not dealing with spirituality anymore. You're preparing for war.

The other two major characters in the story are Sigh, an orphan girl living on the streets of London, and Nari, a pop megastar whose endorsements build fortunes for corporations and governments. Zel's fate becomes entwined with them. Carpenter keeps us hooked through their predicaments.

While I've read stories where the protagonist was female, I think this is the first novel I've read where all of the major characters were women. Men were relegated to the roles of minor characters and villains, not that he bashes them in a fit of self-loathing. It just so happens that these are three strong, diverse women who are masters of the worlds they inhabit. When forced to deal with adversity outside their domain, their resourcefulness enables them to persevere.

Carpenter's writing has matured. While I enjoyed, The Digital Sea, The Godhead Machine shows a definite improvement. His writing is tighter and more focused. There is no filler here. Action is sparse, but well-utilized. Carpenter would rather have his characters survive by their wits than violence. The dialogue moves the story along at a good pace and is effective at revealing the nature of the characters. Carpenter efficiently weaves the three storylines together, discarding anything that doesn't develop the characters or contribute to the plot.

Carpenter's augmented reality novels are building his reputation as a skilled writer in the new generation of cyberpunk novelists. So before you buy your Google Glasses at the end of the year, be sure to check out his work to see where the future is taking us.

The Godhead Machine is available in various formats through the author's website.

The Best of 2011

Like last year, each reviewer here at the New Podler Review of Books picks the book (or books) which he/she feels are the very best independently published (or small press) work. Before, when it was just Podler, it was very easy to come up with one book to receive the Independent Novel Award. One reader, one judge. Getting four people with very different tastes, not to mention genre interests, to agree on one book out of thirty-three as being the very best would be impossible.

First up is S.B. Jung.

"My pick for 2011 is Flaming Dove by Daniel Arenson. This book is a great read that I highly recommend to anyone who loves a different kind of fantasy fiction."

Libby Cone had two picks.

"I nominate Helen Smith's Being Light—a tale well-told, with interesting characters of real depth—and Gunshot Stigmata by Scott C. Rogers. It takes a great deal of talent to employ a highly unreliable narrator, explore his delusions, and keep the narrative from flying apart altogether. A very sensitive treatment of the world of a very damaged soul."

Rob Steiner picked Oathbreaker Book 1: The Knight's Tale by Colin McComb.

"Vivid language, unique characters, and a compelling story combined to put it far above the other books I reviewed last year. It's the first of a planned series, so I hope to read more of McComb's work in 2012."


For me, the 2011 winner, hands down, was Mirror Shards. This anthology, about the impact of augmented reality upon society, featured a diverse array of authors. Indie author, Thomas Carpenter, assembled the stories from both traditionally published and indie writers and published it under his Black Moon Books imprint. The end result was a highly entertaining and thought provoking read.

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We reviewed 33 books last year. Over 150 submissions were rejected due to various reasons. Time is a big factor. We rejected some well-written stories because we didn't have the time to stick with a book that didn't grab us right away. When we were open to submissions, we received 20-30 submissions each month. It's just too much for us to handle. We need more reviewers to handle the flood. Until then, we'll finish up the remaining submissions from 2011 before we open the submissions window for a new batch.

Thanks for reading!

Mirror Shards Anthology

Mirror Shards is a short story anthology published by Black Moon Books, the imprint of indie author, Thomas K. Carpenter. This time around, Carpenter serves as both author (he contributed one story) and editor. He accepted submissions from unpublished and published authors.

Much like Carpenter's novel, The Digital Sea (which was reviewed in this blog earlier this year), the stories in this anthology all have augmented reality (AR) as a common element integral to each story. However, how each author incorporates AR into their story is as varied as the authors themselves. It would be difficult to provide a detailed analysis of all 13 stories so I will provide a taste of each.

We're shown how a submarine pilot guides a gaggle of tourists in the depths of the Indian Ocean in "The Watcher" and jacked in with a bio-engineered assassin dropped on a distant ring world in "El Matador".

AR is a positive force that advances the effectiveness of smart detectives in "Witness Protection" while helping a young woman survive an encounter with a crime syndicate in the cold of eastern Russia in "Of Bone and Steel and Other Soft Materials". It enables a singer to adopt new personas while Earth is under the boot of alien overlords in "Stage Presence, Baby". And it enables revolutions in the corporate dictatorship of "Gift Horses".

The darker side of AR is explored as well. It is used to bring about an advertizing apocalypse in "Below the Bollocks Line" and adds a new dimension to imprisonment in "The Sun is Real." It fosters the ugliness of narcissism in "A Book By Its Cover".

Some stories balance the two. It props up the ego of the actors in "These Delicate Creatures" but also restores their humanity when art becomes protest. And in the sexual slavery of "More Real Than Flesh" it provides an escape hatch.

I have to say that there isn't a bad story in the bunch but I was still able to pick out two stellar stories that rose above the rest: "Music of the Spheres" and "The Cageless Zoo".

"Music of the Spheres" is probably the best math story I've ever read. A math major helps his sister with her geometry homework and it doesn't come across as dull, instead it turns into a lesson she has to teach him later in life. The underlying theme is about what happens to those who are left behind when AR takes over society. The author, Ken Liu, poignantly shows how one can cope with watching dreams die.

My favorite is Carpenter's own, "The Cageless Zoo", which is about a widow and her two children visiting a zoo full of predators who are kept from eating people by AR implants. The mother is confronted by a zoo official who demands a copy of her late husband's research, which she doesn't want to surrender for fear of it being buried by the Darwin Institute. Not only does Carpenter's story present us with a unique use for AR but it provides us with an excellent demonstration for how epigenetics could work in nature on a fictional beast. But forgetting the science for a moment, it was a fun read along the lines of Jurassic Park, but without the dinosaurs.

Carpenter has amassed a diverse collection of highly entertaining and thought provoking AR stories in Mirror Shards, Volume 1. As with all good anthologies, I now have another list of talented writers whose works I can explore further. I look forward to the next installment of this series. Highly recommended for all sci-fi fans.

Mirror Shards is available in print and ebook formats through the publisher's website.

The Digital Sea by Thomas Carpenter

The world is a bleak place in Thomas Carpenter's The Digital Sea. Rising sea levels, changes in climate, dwindling resources and overpopulation have forced governments to enact population reduction laws and trade in population bonds. But a global one child policy isn't working fast enough for some, leading them to consider more drastic measures.

Escapism via augmented reality (AR), what people refer to as the Digital Sea, is very popular. Whether accessed via glasses or “mods”, surgically implanted neural networks, people are able to wallpaper over the despair and ruin to see a rosier reality. Or you can observe what's others have projected over themselves and their surroundings. It's geocaching taken to a whole new level. Unfortunately, just as opening an email attachment may introduce a virus to your computer, accepting someone's AR program may grant them permanent control over your perception of reality.

Zel Aurora has a daughter who is deathly ill. Fortunately, Zel is highly skilled at parting the waters of the Digital Sea to reveal what people try to hide. And she can use it to wash away her tracks. For this, she receives enough money to acquire the medical equipment and medicines to keep her daughter alive, albeit barely. They've also been on the run from a former employer, the Djed, who Zel spurned. Tired of running, and her daughter in desperate need of better treatment, Zel decides to return to his employ, hoping that his desire to use her skills overrules his anger.

Besides Zel, there are several other characters that figure prominently in the story. I wondered how well Carpenter was going to tie their individual storylines together, but he pulled it off. Even though he shifts around a lot, at no point did I forget who any of them were. Carpenter deftly shapes and defines all of his characters, providing us with a diverse group. He deserves credit for writing a story where one major character is an amputee and another suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, yet neither falls prey to stereotypes.

While The Digital Sea is well written, it could have used an editor's oversight. Overall, Carpenter does a good job self-editing but nobody's perfect. Typos got past him (“too” and “to” swapped, “artic” instead of “arctic”, missing verbs) and there were times when there were too many short, choppy sentences and fragments. An editor would've helped to catch the mistakes and offer suggestions to improve the flow of the narrative.

But despite my complaints, The Digital Sea is a good story. There's plenty of intrigue to captivate the reader's attention. The characters challenge the reader in that it's not a good versus evil situation. They're just pawns on opposing sides, trying to eke out a living in a difficult world. It will be interesting to see where Carpenter goes from here with this series.

Links to purchase The Digital Sea and other works by Thomas Carpenter may be found on his website.