A Day in Paradise

When I first started listening to podcast novels, I had a hard time getting used to the fact that unlike dead tree books, unless the author decides to tell you how much of the book is left, you have no idea how many chapters are left. When Matthew Wayne Selznick’s performed the final chapters of his first book and brought the podcast novel “Brave Men Run” to a close, I along with several thousand listeners were left at the edges of our seats waiting for more.

Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era, is hard to describe. As a sci-fi story, set in an alternative version of the early 80s, BMR introduces us to the “Sovereign Era” and the politics surrounding the revelation that amongst humans live “Sovereigns” each of whom weilds extraordinary abilities. As a character study, BMR looks at this monumental event through the eyes of Nate Charters, a teenage Sovereign who fights to deal with the sudden realities of who he is and the past which has been hidden from him.

At it’s core, Brave Men Run is not about spaceships, action sequences or any other elements which are commonly associated with science fiction. BMR is about it’s characters, and the character development and dialog which takes place between the characters is masterfully done.

While Brave Men Run is a complete book and satisfying read, the author has left many questions open in regard to the “Sovereign Era” as well as Nate’s character and the history of “Sovereign” people. The premise could very easily support several more “Sovereign Era” books.

Matthew Wayne Selznick has released the audio versions of BMR for free on Podiobooks.com and has made the electronic versions of the book available for the cheap price of $5. As an independant, self published author, Matthew has placed the future of the series in the hands of the readers.

I throughly enjoyed the book, and would recommend it not only to sci-fi fans, but to all bookworms who are interested in a good read and the growth of independent authors. In support, I’ve set up a page through which you can subscribe to the podcast or buy the ebook or paperback version.

So visit my Brave Men Run page, subscribe to the feed, buy the ebook, blog about it, and tell your friends to do the same. You won’t be disappointed.

And the internet grinds to a halt!

Seriously though, I went to blog something yesterday and discovered that my page was taking forever to load. It was pretty clear that the reason for the delay was the ads which were being displayed synchronously from google and holding up the display of my page. I did a bit of surfing and found this problem on just about every site I visited, either because of adsense advertising or the use of the google analytics.

I went to search for something and for about 40 minutes google was dead. Scary!

Having said that I’ve noticed some nice things about the Gmail chat interface. It is a lot smarter than your average Ajax client. As I type I noticed that because I was logged int Gmail someone sent me an IM. Google must be down (again) because when I look at the chat sidebar I get an “Unable to reach Google Mail. Please check your internet connection” which is followed with a little clock which is ticking down until it will try again. Strangely I can still respond to the IM, although my messages aren’t going anywhere.