Larry Hodges Science Fiction & Fantasy

Yes, it’s true – I will be giving away free, signed copies to eight lucky winners. All you have to do is go to the Goodread’s page, and click on the “Enter Giveaway” link. Make sure to mark the novel as “to read” in your goodreads page!

The novel comes out on March 8 from World Weaver Press, but the kindle version is already up on Amazon for pre-orders. (Print version should be up in days.)

18 days until publication . . .in the novel, which covers the election for president of Earth in the year 2100, where the world has adopted the American two-party electoral system, Afghanistan and Egypt both have 18 electoral votes. (There are 1333 total, with each country given electoral votes based on population.) They are both part of Islam Nation, which combined as a political entity in 2050 to consolidate their power as a voting block. Unlike other continental voting regions, it was a mishmash of countries from three continents, Africa, Europe, and Asia, with 31 countries and 211 electoral votes. The big prize is Pakistan, with 49.

How can our moderate extremists (i.e. the third-party challenge to the worldwide conservative and liberal parties) win in these highly conservative Islamic states? Well, let’s just say a highly disloyal member of the conservative president’s inner circle sends them a video of the president doing a highly embarrassing and very unconservative thing – but should they release the tape and win unethically on what they consider a non-issue? All our moderate challenger has to do is take some Eth, the drug that removes ethical constraints, and then he’ll have no trouble doing so!

So what should he do? The world is watching . . . and so is the alien ambassador!

In related new, World Weaver Press will have a new Editor-in-Chief. Co-Founder and outgoing Editor-in-chief Eileen Wiedbrauk will be leaving after four years. A great thanks goes to her for all the work she did in editing Campaign 2100! The incoming Editor-in-Chief is Sarena Ulibarri, who takes over on March 1. She, along with publicist Elizabeth Wagner, have already been a great help in getting the novel ready for publication and in publicizing it. Here’s the World Weaver Press News Release on this.

Here’s a little about the incoming Editor-in-Chief: Sarena Ulibarri earned an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and attended the Clarion Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop at UCSD in 2014. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed,NewMyths.com, The Colored Lens, Kasma SF, and elsewhere. She currently lives in New Mexico with her husband and their Welsh Corgi. See her web page at sarenaulibarri.com.

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Here’s the cover! The novel will be out on March 8, from World Weaver Press. It’s also up on Goodreads, where we’ll have a Giveaway – more info on that soon. It’ll be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Books-a-Million, and Omnilit.

Here’s what Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Quantum Night, wrote: “Larry Hodges is an insightful political commentator and a kick-ass science-fiction writer. A dynamite novel full of twists and turns; this futuristic House of Cards is both entertaining and thought-provoking.”

Back Cover Text

It is the year 2100, and the world has adopted the American two-party electoral system. The cutthroat father-daughter team of Toby and Lara Platt ran the successful 2095 campaign of the Frenchman Corbin Dubois for president of Earth. Toby soon realizes it was a horrible mistake.

An alien ambassador lands outside the United Nations, sparking a crisis. Inspired by the ambassador, Toby resigns from the campaign in protest of Dubois’s corrupt politics—but his daughter Lara takes over. Toby decides to challenge the two major parties—one conservative, one liberal—and run for president himself with a third-party moderate challenge. He vows to put his daughter out of a job.

The alien ambassador tags along on the campaign trail as she learns the violent history and eye-opening politics of 2100 Earth. The campaign for president of Earth takes us to every continent as father and daughter battle for electoral votes and clash over the ideas and issues facing the world of 2100 in this bare-knuckle, fight-to-the-finish political campaign.

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I normally blog here every Monday, but I’m going to postpone it two days until Wednesday – that’s when we’ll have the big cover reveal for Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions

!!! It’s gone through many variations and iterations, but we’ve pretty much finalized it now. See you in 48 hours!

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The following press release just went out to 382 media outlets. (Side note – the cover is almost ready, and will likely be unveiled next week. Here’s the World Weaver Press page for the novel.)

“CAMPAIGN 2100: GAME OF SCORPIONS”
BY LARRY HODGES

Alpena, MI (February 4, 2016) – World Weaver Press has announced Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions, a satirical drama by Larry Hodges that covers the election for president of Earth in the year 2100, will be available in trade paperback and ebook Tuesday, March 8, 2016. 

 Platt ran the successful 2095 campaign of the Frenchman Corbin Dubois for president of Earth. Toby soon realizes it was a horrible mistake.

An alien ambassador lands outside the United Nations, sparking a crisis. Inspired by the ambassador, Toby resigns from the campaign in protest of Dubois’s corrupt politics—but his daughter Lara takes over. Toby decides to challenge the two major parties—one conservative, one liberal—and run for president himself with a third-party moderate challenge. He vows to put his daughter out of a job.

The alien ambassador tags along on the campaign trail as she learns the violent history and eye-opening politics of 2100 Earth. The campaign for president of Earth takes us to every continent as father and daughter battle for electoral votes and clash over the ideas and issues facing the world of 2100 in this bare-knuckle, fight-to-the-finish political campaign.

Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions will be available in trade paperback and ebook via Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Kobo.com, WorldWeaverPress.com, and other online retailers, and for wholesale through Ingram.

Larry Hodges, from Germantown, MD, was going to be a math professor (bachelor’s in math), but science fiction writing and table tennis (yes, ping-pong) sidetracked him, and now he writes (and coaches the latter) for a living. He is an active member of Science Fiction Writers of America with over 70 short story sales. Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions is his third novel, and combines three of his favorite things: science fiction, politics, and table tennis. He’s a graduate of the six-week 2006 Odyssey Writers Workshop and the 2008 Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop, and is a member of Codexwriters.com. His story “The Awakening” was the unanimous grand prize winner at the 2010 Garden State Horror Writers Short Story Competition. He’s a full-time writer with eleven books and over 1600 published articles in over 150 different publications. He also writes about and coaches the Olympic Sport of Table Tennis, is a member of the USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame (Google it!), and once beat someone using an ice cube as a racket. Visit him at larryhodges.org.

World Weaver Press is an independently owned publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction. We believe in great storytelling.

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Last week in my blog I wrote about the release of the novel on Jan. 26 (yesterday), and the mysterious “Top Secret” cover for the novel. And now the truth has come out – not just for you, but for me as well.

Why was I so mysterious about the cover last week? Because I hadn’t seen it, and had no clue what would be on the cover, despite the fact that at that point, the novel was supposed to have already been at the printer, with copies available two days later for the Confusion SF Convention in Michigan. However, all was not as it seemed.

I’d been emailing with the publisher for many weeks, asking about the cover, and couldn’t get an answer. So you can imagine how my frustration grew daily as the release day approached and the publisher simply wouldn’t discuss the cover with me. I finally resigned myself to the idea that I, the writer, wasn’t to be “in the loop” regarding the cover, and that I wouldn’t see the cover of my own novel until after it was published. You can imagine my thoughts on that. I was also frustrated by the lack of any pre-release publicity – not even a press release. I was told that would go out after publication, i.e. there would be no attempt at building up buzz. Again, I was not happy. There was also an “Upcoming Books” listing at the publisher’s page, but my novel wasn’t on it – neither were any others – it was blank.

Then, late on Thursday night, Jan. 21, five days before the scheduled release, I got that email no author wants to hear – the publisher was closing down!!! Finally I learned why there had been no cover or publicity – since the publisher was closing, the novel wasn’t to be published.(I was asked not to go public with this info until the end of the week, so we’re well past that.)

Or was it?

One day later I received an email from one of the assistant editors, who was negotiating to buy the company. And lo and behold, it looks like that’s happening, and so World Weaver Press will continue! And they still want to publish my novel. However, it’ll have to be postponed. The publication date is now March 8, assuming all goes well.

Hip Hip Hooray!!!

The down side is that the novel was long planned to come out in the middle of the presidential election, since it’s a political novel that covers the race for president of Earth in the year 2100. (With a third-party moderate challenge, a father pitted against a daughter, and an alien ambassador observing and often participating.) The plan was to have it out before the Iowa caucuses, which will be held Feb. 1 (next Monday). So we’ll lose some of that. In an ideal world, of course, the plan is that I’ll be interviewed on all the news shows along with all the candidates, and of course Trump will attack it, calling me a “hack writer,” and that’ll make it a best seller.

Or perhaps Trump will sue me, because he’s in the novel – sort of. I wrote the novel long before he entered the race for president, so I wasn’t taking advantage of that. One of the four main characters is a professional table tennis player who drops out of the pro circuit to run the worldwide third-party challenge for the presidency. He is sponsored by Trump Sports, and uses Trump table tennis equipment! Yep, I decided to make the imaginary Trump Sports a big company in the year 2100, where it’s mentioned six times – the pro table tennis player uses a Trump Maestro Prime racket, wears Trump table tennis shoes, and at one point browses over a pack of Trump sports cards, where the best table tennis players in the world are featured. (He’s disgusted because he’s not included. That Trump is such a hack!)

Of course, Trump does play table tennis, right? (Yeah, I put that graphic together. Please, Mr. Trump, sue me!!!)

The upside to all of this is that now we’ll have time to build up buzz, and we’ll still get the novel out during the height of the presidential race. So . . . should I wear makeup when I get interviewed on CNN?

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