Free Promotion — Stars Rain Down

That’s right! Stars Rain Down is once again free through the Amazon Kindle store! You have until 11:59PM PDT tonight, Tuesday the 24th to grab a copy. When will it come up for sale again? I’m aiming to be a bit more cunning with these promotions, and will be hosting a free day every three weeks, so if you miss this one, you only have to wait until half-way through May. If you miss that one, you could always pester someone who already has a copy.

Download a copy! Tell a friend! Eat something delicious and take a nap!

I Might Frame This…

Tonight’s best sellers in Space Opera for Amazon’s Kindle store.

Hip To Be Square

I decided to take the weekend off from working on Universalis and instead see what I can do to increase Stars Rain Down’s sales. The process has so far involved taking a hard look at my materials, asking myself what could be better, answering as truthfully as I can muster, and then improving what I can.

As my mother always said, “If it isn’t working, change it!”

Stars Rain Down Sales Rally

Most likely thanks to Joe Konrath’s blog post (and the repost at Kindle Nation Daily), Stars Rain Down is enjoying a bit of a sales rally. Today’s sales have nearly matched the entire month of October’s, and the novel is currently ranked #82 in the Kindle store’s Science-Fiction Adventure charts, right between William Gibson’s Count Zero and a World of Warcraft novelization (that’s Science-Fiction?).

Remind me never to malign Tuesdays again.

If you’ve been considering buying a copy, there’s never been a better time than the present. Let’s see just how far up the charts I can go.

First Progress Report

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”
—Frank Herbert, Dune

Hey look, it only took me two weeks to get around to the first post! No need to congratulate me, faithful reader. Success is its own reward, after all.

I’ll be avoiding specific details about the book as I post these, since I’ve found it can really sap momentum. You find yourself talking about the story, the characters and the setting, and at the end of the day, you’ve used up all of your excitement. It’s essentially the same kind of work as the writing itself, and I’ve found it’s better to invest that effort in the task that actually helps me finish.

Grod knows I need all the help I can get.

I’ll tell you this much, though: the book is called Hurt Tomorrow, and it’s a sci-fi action thriller. The story is a lot more personal and focused than something like Stars Rain Down, and my ultimate goal is to produce a novel as tightly paced and exciting as an action film.

I’m still working on the opening scene, and have a word count somewhere around 650. I always find the start of a project to be the slowest part; you’re trying to establish setting and tone, and at the same time, there’s a lot of pressure to really nail it. These are the pages that need to hook the reader, and that requires a lot of care and attention.

I hope to be done with the opening chapter in the next few days, and then catch my wind and start plowing through pages. My daily goal is 1,000 words (which I obviously haven’t been hitting so far), but I know from experience that I can occasionally knock out 4-5,000 in a night… especially if I have an impending deadline. Man, I wish I had deadlines.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
~Chris

Release Announcement: Stars Rain Down is Out!

We here at Oktopod Digital Press are proud to announce the release of our first full-length novel, Chris J. Randolph’s Stars Rain Down.

Sometimes, it takes a crisis to figure out who you really are.

In the near future, an irreverent astronomer named Marcus Donovan discovers a strange relic hidden beyond Mars, and he commandeers an exploratory vessel under false pretenses to investigate.

While Marcus and his crew venture off into the unknown, a mysterious alien legion appears in Earth orbit and invades. Human civilization is dashed apart in the blink of an eye, and Jack Hernandez, a search and rescue specialist, is one of the lucky few survivors. Along with a handful of friends, Jack joins the scattered resistance and wages a desperate terrorist war against the aliens, striking back any way they can.

In the bloody struggle to reclaim their planet, Jack and Marcus are each thrust into roles they never could have imagined, in a conflict as old as time. The fight takes them from China to Africa, and from Earth to Mars, while the secrets they uncover shake their understanding of humanity itself.

Stars Rain Down is about the horrors of warfare, and what happens when idealism collides with a savage fight for survival. Dominated by an enemy who shows neither compassion nor regret, the last remnants of mankind discover that every choice leads to unforeseen consequences, and mercy can triumph even in the face of mortal rage.

Looking to start reading right now? Stars Rain Down is now available everywhere in a variety of formats.

Download Links:

Update: Stars Rain Down is currently an Amazon Exclusive!

Other options will return in April. Thank you for your patience.

Also available in print.

I doubt there’s anything left to say that I haven’t already said in the past month. Thank you so much for following us here at Oktopod, and I hope you enjoy what we have to offer. There are great things yet to come around these parts, so stick around. It’s gonna be an exciting ride.

~Chris J. Randolph

Title and Origins

I said I’d talk about the title in another update, and behold! This is that other update. Instead of just describing how the name came about, though, I thought I’d take the opportunity to explain the whole history of Stars Rain Down, from its inception in the margins of notebooks, to the final novel you’ll be reading on September 20th.

That history is complicated by the fact that Stars Rain Down didn’t start as just one project; it was actually four (or more) separate ideas that I eventually combined into a single, stranger whole.

Grab a snack. This is gonna be a long one…

Let’s Talk About Terrorism

Don’t run away. I know it’s a scary word (scares the pants off me, in fact), but its ability to elicit such a powerful reaction is what makes it so intriguing. That’s why I wanted to write a novel that confronts the issue head on, and it’s what inspired me to explore the subject from new perspectives.

Now, I’m not generally a fan of post-modernist philosophers (for a number of reasons I won’t get into right now), but Jean Baudrillard wrote something about terrorism that caught me off guard. To paraphrase, “By dealing all the cards to itself, the system forced its opponent to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are savage, because the stakes are savage.”

This sparked an idea that smouldered in my head for the next five years, and eventually led to some very big questions: What could drive an otherwise ordinary person to engage in terrorism? Can terrorism ever be justified? At the other extreme, who could resist the urge to strike back once all hope is lost?

Weekly Excerpt & Call to Action

Aloha friends,

Time for another update, a few days later than originally intended. First up, it’s now been a full week since the last pledge, which is the source of my gradually swelling panic. My efforts to garner attention seem to be running into brick walls, and occasionally the steel girders behind those brick walls.

Bad luck can’t last, though, and I’m bound to start finding friendly venues soon.

Of course, I’m just one man, and I’d very much appreciate any help you wonderful souls can provide. Every friend you tell, link you send, and blog comment you post could be the difference between this project’s success and failure. You also have a significant advantage over me when telling people about the project: you’re not the guy running it.

I know many of you have already pledged your hard-earned dollars, but if you could please take a few minutes to spread the word today, I would appreciate it more than words can express.

Next up is this week’s excerpt from Stars Rain Down. This is one of the shorter chapters, about a tenth of the way into the story, and occurs right as the invasion is starting. The character is Jack Hernandez, who’s a member of the Emergency Response Corps. They’re a humanitarian aid group sort of like the Red Cross, but turned up to eleven.

Hope you enjoy today’s reading!

An Excerpt From Stars Rain Down

Starting today, I’m going to be reprinting the Kickstarter updates here at the Oktopod blog. I have a little backlog, but it’ll only take us a couple days to get caught up.

The following is a selection from the very start of Stars Rain Down, and it’s almost exactly half of the chapter. I won’t set the scene for you because, gosh darn it, that’s what this section is supposed to accomplish. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and without further ado…