Rogue's Angels Present : The Amazing World of Machine Civilization Series

Please welcome Clayton Barnett author of The Amazing World of Machine Civilization Series

Clayton Barnett will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

The Amazing, Unfolding World of Machine Civilization Series

by Clayton Barnett

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GENRE: Science Fiction

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NOTE: Echoes of Family Lost and The Fourth Law are only $0.99

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

Back in pre-history, antediluvian times for you classicists, the OELVN Katawa Shoujo was released on January 4^th, 2012.  I called off work to download and play it.  For talented amateurs, it was pretty good; good enough to pray on my mind for months.

Almost seven months later to the day, I was in my walk-out basement… thinking.  I sent a text to a friend and co-worker who is a talented artist and musician:  ‘We should make a visual novel.’

‘Sure.’ he wrote back. ‘What’s a visual novel?’

By January I’d written and coded – after teaching myself RenPy – Act One. Six months after that, all 80,000 words of a four-sided story, along with his art, music, and sound f/x, was complete.  A commercialOELVN.  Just like that.

Time passed.  He followed his muses leaving me to wonder if I’d ever write anything again.  A bit more than a year later, on November 3^rd, 2014, he sent me a text this time:  ‘doing anything for NaNoWriMo?’

‘What’s NNWM?’ I sent back.  Twenty-threedays later the manuscript for “The Fourth Law” was complete.  I published it on Christmas Eve, 2014, with the sequel, “Echoes of Family Lost” already in mind.  Just over four years later, I’ve five novels and one children'searly readerall set in my future history of Machine Civilization.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

A passing familiarity with both current coding and hardware capabilities. What the idiot main-stream press constantly calls ‘AI’ are merely Expert Systems.  A true AI will require a robust quantum computer, which areonly in prototypes right now, and will likely be unrecognizable to us once they come into being.  I touch on that with the three of tribeTohsaka who care nothing for humans:  Shandor, Qin, and Ninon.

However my stories might have technological elements in them, they are fundamentally about relationships.  Between friends, families, lovers.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novels?

No clue.  Really. As I mentioned at the first Tour stop, it’s as if I’m sitting in a movie theater with a laptop.  I watch what they show me and write it down, later editing it into a coherent narrative as best I can.

Sometimes – rarely – I’ll catch a glimpse or thought while I’m going about my ‘normal’ life, but 80% of the time it’s a matter of sitting down and typing.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

Rather than expertise, I’d say ‘deep experience’ is the apposite phrase here. Besides memos and short emails, I’d never written any fiction until that visual novel we made, followed a year later by Machine Civilization.  Prior to that, I have read voraciously my entire life:  an average of 150-200 books per year, fiction and non-fiction (military history is of particular interest to me).  That massive, unconscious database has been leavened in the last ten years by my introduction to anime and manga by one of my mentors and heroes, Steven Den Beste.  The visual element of anime, especially, can be felt in my works.  I have heard several times that “you don’t write novels!  You write screenplays!”

I plead guilty.  I tend to make only the briefest description of a scene then immediatelypopulate it with dialog.  If I havea ‘style,’ that’s it.

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I’ve already a handful of notes and about 20,000 words for another novel set about ten years after these five.  The core is another love story, but I am still exploring antagonistic possibilities.  After that? Who knows!

6. If you could be one of the characters from these books, who would it be and why?

I amone of the characters in my books:  Clive Barrett.  In losing one of his family he loses his soul.  Interestingly, prior to that happening, he shares a trans-Pacific freighter voyage with a deadly young woman named Maya (“Cursed Hearts”).  What’s left of his humanity was almost enough to draw her back from the abyss.  We can never gaugethe impact our casual comments and actions will have on those around us.

7. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

Best – I will always recapitulate this, ad nauseam, simply because I think it is so important: start your story in the middle. Don’t worry about the magnificent world you’ve imagined, the regal bloodlines, the ruins of the galactic empire… no one cares.  You are telling a story about a handful of people to the person whose eyes are on your book right now.  I’m not Gibbon and neither are you; we’re here to entertain and just possibly open the minds of those who open our books.  NEVER waste that chance.

Worst – try to get everything right. I’ve been a design engineer, hell, I havea US Patent around here somewhereand am currently a pharmacy technician.  What about that advertises expertise in quantum computing?  I’ve never served in the military, but all three parts of “Friend and Ally” are built around battles.  Did I do my homework and research to my utmost?  Yes,I did.  Will there be a grognard that will send a snarky message about 60mm v. 120mm mortars?  He already did.  I don’t care: the story works and the characters thrive.  I’m a fiction writer; you want perfect?  Talk to God.

8. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

From NaNoWriMo forums I learned the terms ‘pantser’ and ‘plotter’; that is, seat-of-the-pants vs. nailing everything down from the beginning.  While I sometimes make notes, which, honestly, are mostly questions to my unconscious, I sit down – on my pants – and write.  What happens happens!

9. How do you maintain your creativity?

Alcohol and music, primarily.  A couple of glasses of wine after DayJob goes a long way to opening all the myriad ways of my story-mind.  Every novel has been influenced by a particular genre of music. When writer’s fear sets in, I’ll take the dogs for a long walk to try to clear my mind.  Writing, much like a marriage, is a job, not some romantic frivolity.  Give it the respect it deserves and you will be richly rewarded.  Treat it with contempt and good luck getting past chapter one in one and three years in the other.

For the record:  six books in four years and 27 years of connubial tranquility.  Work.

10. Are your plotting bunnies, angels or demons?

I find this nonsequiturquestion extremely funny!  By my second novel,I was older that there are no such things as coincidences.  

About a year ago, I wrote the story and basic direction for an animated short, of about 20 minutes, called “Angels and Demons.”  I handed it off to my artist friend.  He’s made scores of storyboards and two animated tests. Perhaps one day soon you will see what I’ve been plotting!

BLURBS:

A history beginning in our near future, these stories are set in a world where the US dollar has been displaced as the world’s reserve currency, prompting its economic and political collapse, with a few areas able to hold onto civilization.

At the same time, across the Pacific, under a resurgent economy brought about by the implementation of new technology and deregulation, three Japanese companies produce breakthroughs in both artificial intelligence and robotics. These newly made people exhibit an odd interest in the goings-on of the former United States.

To-date, my chronicling of this interest of theirs has led to stories that populate five novels, which I would like to share with everyone now!

The Fourth Law- In the near future, 23-year-old apprentice nurse Lily Barrett lives in a shattered time.  Following its economic collapse, the US has devolved into a group of a few barely functional smaller states and vast swathes of barbarian badlands. His sister has been missing for years, and her father, after earning the opprobrium of most of the world for running a state terror organization, presumed dead.

Two things keep her going: her live-in job at a small, Catholic orphanage in the city of Waxahachie, Republic of Texas, and Ai, her odd but dear friend, whom she met online; a young woman who only shows herself to Lily as a rendered CG image.

Troubled by her past, haunted by her name, and facing an uncertain future, Lily seems only a quiet, simple life.  But, that past and her present conspire against her.

Echoes of Family Lost- Alive!  After four years believing her older sister lost and presumed dead in the horrible Breakup of the United States, Lily Barrett gets word from her dear friend, Ai – and Ai’s family of Machine Civilization – that Callie Barrett is very likely alive… but over 900 miles away in Knoxville.

Using the resources of her and Ai’s family, Lily puts together a search party to go find Callie:  old, broken, and burnt Orloff – an expert in surviving in the Badlands, Ai’s little sister, Fausta – her machine mind controlling a Combat Android to protect her friend, all together in a cart pulled by their sturdy pony, Clyde.

It’s almost a thousand miles to go, with something very odd trying to limit their ability to communicate over distance and even to cross bridges.  A chance meeting along the way in Huntsville, former Alabama, wrecks their plans, and puts all of their lives in danger.

Cursed Hearts- Even with San Diego occupied by the Mexican Army, Katarina Sosabowski pursues her MBA at UCSD, and is happy to welcome and put up her visiting step-cousin from Japan, Christopher Dennou, for a night so he can complete his enrollment the following day.

But a minor earthquake brings a major surprise:  Chris’s younger sister, Maya, murders their mother and escapes Neuroi Institute, the research facility that created them.

While Chris and ‘Cat’ grow closer to one another, Maya inexorably crosses an ocean and half a continent to take back her brother, killing anyone who gets in her way.

Friend and Ally- Model 5 is a prototype designed to fit seemlessly into human society.  A meeting in Tokyo derails Nichole’s planned training as she is dispatched to Portland, former Oregon; the last working deep water port on the West Coast of the imploding US.

There, under her cover as a Graduate Engineering Student, she is to do her utmost to nurture the people and politics of the City-State into a Friend and Ally of the Japanese Empire.  But from the first day in her new home, all of Nichole’s plans go awry.

Beset by those who want this small lamp of Western Civilization snuffed out, Nichole must find within herself the courage and ability to protect her new friends, at whatever consequence to herself.

Foes and Rivals- After residing nearly a year in Portland, Nichole’s life seems to finally settle down: with her classes, friends, and lover.  But troubling rumors about secret deals between the City’s master and the savage horsemen to the east reach her ears.

With her own skills augmented by her friends and allies, she sets plans into motion she hopes will thwart those in opposition to her dream of a peaceful future.

Once again denied a quiet, normal life, Nichole is faced to make hard, dangerous choices that will jeopardize her, her friends, and the survival of the City itself.

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EXCERPTS :

The Fourth Wall:

~oooOOOOoooo~

“hooo.....hoowwlll!....”

~oooooOOOOOOooooOOOOOoooooo~

“hah...haaawooooollLL!”

“Lily!”

“LILY!  You’re not a wolf!  Wake up!”

She groggily sat up from her bed.  Huh?

“It’s three in the morning... you need to help your kids!”  Ai shouted at her from her phone.

The kids!

She flung the cover aside and pushed her glasses onto her face.  Now she could hear the siren.  What was it this time?  Tornado, airstrike, barbarians... the last was almost a year ago when they lost Texarkana. Wait.  She shook her head to try to wake up.  This time, she’d an unimpeachable information source.

“Ai.  Status.” She said into the darkness.

“A fission weapon was detonated outside San Francisco about ten minutes ago; the weather pattern indicates fallout will travel north of you, into parts of former Kansas and Oklahoma.  But, winds do change...”

“Right.” She started pulling her clothes on. “Wake up the Fitzhughs; I’ll be there in a minute.”

She walked from her bedroom through her main room, glancing at the monitors.  She suddenly bit hard on her lower lip.  On the monitors, Ai stood at attention in a Texas Field Forces uniform.  For some unknown reason, she forgot to render her pants. Striped green and white panties? Lily worried about her friend sometimes.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

One time engineer, some time pharmacy technician, full time husband and father, Clayton Barnett stumbled into writing a traditional novel November 2014 during National Novel Writing Month.  Liking the results, he edited what would become “The Fourth Law” and set about teaching himself self-publishing.  In the following four years he has produced four more novels as well as a children’s early reader, all in what is now called Machine Civilization.  

Clayton Barnett lives in central Ohio with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs.

Book Links

https://tinyurl.com/yag5u9wd

https://tinyurl.com/yc57lpgp

Website

https://machciv.com

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Clayton Barnett will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2922