I’m not sure why, it might have been watching Star Trek when I was a young kid (the old series with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy), but I’ve always loved science fiction. Books, movies, television, I would consume all I could. I still love a good science fiction movie or book, even now in my early 60s. Part of it is my love of learning. A good science fiction book (or any good book, for that matter), can educate as well as entertain.
I started writing at age twelve when I taught myself how to type because I knew if I wanted to be a writer, I had to be able to type. I assume the stuff I wrote when I was twelve was pretty bad. But it got me going on writing. Even while I was pursuing my career, writing was always my first love and I would spend a lot of free hours typing on my computer.
For decades, I’ve been fascinated by the thought of mining asteroids. I remember in the 1980s reading a speculative article in a magazine about asteroid mining and the rich resources that are available there including nickel, iron, precious metals, and something very valuable in space: water. So, when I started writing my first novel, Rock Killer, it had to be about asteroid mining. That became my third published novel and my first science fiction one.
For years I’ve thought about writing a sequel to Rock Killer. I even had a few chapters written when a hard drive crash in the late 1990s destroyed what I had (the backup failed, too).
I went on to write some fantasies and other science fiction novels. But always in the back of my mind was the thought of writing a Rock Killer sequel. Technology had advanced, however, in the years since I wrote Rock Killer. I had people mining the asteroid but now it looks as if asteroid mining, if it happens, will mostly be done by robots. So the sequel had to become a stand-alone novel with robots, not people doing the dangerous work.
I always knew the sequel would be about terrorists aiming an asteroid at the Earth and the devastation that would cause and the efforts to keep it from impacting. For example, a medium sized asteroid hitting the Earth would have the power of a nuclear weapon. It could wipe a city off the face of the planet.
In Annihilation from Above, terrorists hijack an asteroid in a near-Earth orbit. They alter its path so that it will hit a major world capital, killing tens of millions. NASA’s technology isn’t designed to deflect asteroids so close to the planet. So another way must be found to save the city. NASA astronauts Howard Drayden and Jonny Park will risk their lives trying to change the asteroid’s orbit with untried and new science. Will Park and Drayden succeed or will millions die?
Annihilation from Above will be released on May 30th 2023 and is now available for pre-order on
Kindle from
Amazon.
