Writing Articles

Dulce Truths is On Sale!

4/3/2017

Kitchen sink.

That’s what I could have called this novel: Kitchen Sink.

Because when it comes to alien conspiracy theory and ufology, that’s what I threw in – the kitchen sink.

I mean, Dulce Truths has it all!

The Black Knight Satellite
The 177th Time Travel Division
Secret Moon Bases
Alien Motherships around Venus & Mercury & the Moon
The 1989 & 1991 Russian UFO Crashes
Majestic 12
Alien Abductions
Hybrids
Lemurians
The Atlantis/Reptilian Connection
The Reptilian Invasion of Lyra
Bkti, the Alien Crash Survivor
The Lost Planet Maldech
Hitler & Antarctica
The Hollow Earth Theory
Paul Bennewitz
John Titor
And a whole lot more!

Yes, this book has it all.

The story takes place in a very short 12-hour or so time period as well, all of it taking place hours after the first book ends.

There’s time travel involved, however, so characters are skipping about.

I’d like to mention one big difference from the first book as well:

Said vs. says.

Yep, I’ve switched from the past to the present tense.

I want readers to have more of a ‘now’ feeling when they’re reading, like things are happening right then and there.

We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not expecting a lot of sales on this book, for a variety of reasons.

First, the sci-fi categories on Amazon are very competitive, with books needing about 10 sales a day just to get on the decent Top 100 lists.

Then, it’s been over 2 years since I released the first book.

Finally, I just don’t get that many sales on new books to begin with so my expectations are always kinda low.

Anyways, I’m super happy the book is done and out there and ready for those that like this stuff!

Maybe you’re one of ‘em.

I sure hope you’ll give Dulce Truths a look, or if you haven’t yet, the first book in the series, Dulce Base.

Thanks for reading!

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A Timeline of Existence

4/25/2015

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Sphinx, c 1878

When did things happen?

I like this question, and I like dates…and both are great for making a timeline.

See, lately I’ve been reading a good book called Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock.

It came out in 1995 and really puts some ideas out there for how long humans have really been around. It does more than that, however – it also gives us great dates.

I’ve been keeping track of those dates on a sheet of paper, and 150 pages into the book, I have some good stuff. Supplementing it with some information from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and my own history book on Ancient China, and this is what I’ve come up with:

13.5 billion years ago: The Universe forms

11 billion years ago: The Milky Way Galaxy Forms

4.5 billion years ago: Our Sun Forms

3.5 billion years ago: Life on Earth Starts

3.1 billion years ago: First Supercontinent of Vaalbara Forms

2.7 billion years ago: Supercontinent Kenorland Forms

2.5 billion years ago: Arctica Supercontinent Forms

2 billion years ago: Columbia Supercontinent Forms

1.1 billion years ago: Rodinia Supercontinent Forms

600 million years ago: Pannotia Supercontinent Forms

510 million years ago: Gondwana Supercontinent Forms

450 million years ago: End-Ordovician Extinction (Gondwana Moved Too Far South)

375 million years ago: Late Devonian Extinction (Cause Unknown)

300 million years ago: Fossil Fuel Deposits Form

250 million years ago: Permian Extinction (Siberian Volcano Erupted)

201 million years ago: Triassic-Jurassic Extinction (Asteroid Likely)

100 million years ago: The Dinosaurs Roamed

66 million years ago: Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction (Asteroid Likely, Killed the Dinosaurs)

3.5 million years ago: People Walk, Begin Looking Up

1.8 million years ago: People Begin Moving Out of Africa

1.7 million years ago: Yuanmou Man Walked China

780,000 years ago: Peking Man Walked China

100,000 years ago: Accepted Date for Moving Out of Africa

60,000 years ago: Humans Reach Indian Ocean Areas

43,000 years ago: Siberia is Settled

40,000 years ago: Asia is Settled

40,000 years ago: Culture Starts

30,000 years ago: Cave Paintings Start

15,000 years ago: Tiahuanaco Constructed

13,000 years ago: Antarctica Civilization May Have Started/Been Going

10,500 years ago: Atlantis Destroyed

10,500 years ago: Hall of Records May Have Been Sealed

10,000 years ago: Ice Caps Melt, Sea Levels Rise

10,000 years ago: Agriculture & Sedentary Societies

9000 BC: Holocene Climate Optimum Begins

6500 BC: Cholula Pyramid south of Mexico destroyed by lava

5000 BC: Holocene Climate Optimum Ends

5000 BC: Copper Age Begins

6,000 years ago: Writing Starts

4000 BC: Machu Pichu Built

3400 BC: Egypt Jumps from Neolithic Culture to Monarchy

3250 BC: Very High Levels of Methane in Antarctica

3200 BC: Piora Oscillation Begins

3000 BC: Bronze Age Begins

13 August 3114 BC: Olmecs Start Mayan Calendar

2580 BC: Great Pyramid of Giza Constructed

2558 BC: Great Sphinx of Giza Constructed

2400 BC: Stonehenge Built

1400 BC: The Chinese begin Recording Comet Sightings

1532 AD: Spanish Conquer South America

1761: Chronometer Invented to Find Longitude

1818: Antarctica Officially Discovered

I’m not quite done with this, as you can tell, and you can also probably tell where I’m going.

What do we make of these huge lapses of time? How come we have proof that man was walking in Asia 1.7 million years ago…but some still claim we didn’t leave Africa until just 100,000 years ago…a difference of 1.6 million years?

What happened during those 1.6 million years? I think what happened was flourishing levels of human culture and civilization, which may have been wiped out before…either through natural means or from their own hand.

Wow, what an idea, huh? But really, how do you explain writing at Tiahuanaco 8,000 years before humans learned how to write? How about advanced mathematics hundreds of years before writing came around?

When you start looking at things like that, you really have to ask questions. I hope you’re asking them, and you can do that by reading interesting books. But the most interesting thing, to me at least, are the gaps:

There’s 6.5 billion years from our galaxy to our sun.

We’ve got 900 million years between some supercontinents.

Another 62.5 million years between dinosaurs and people.

There’s 1.7 million years from when people walk to when they leave Africa.

There’s 3.4 million years between people walking and the accepted date for leaving Africa.

We have 20,000 years between cave paintings and the start of culture.

The Hall of Records is located in the right paw of the Great Spinx, but it was sealed nearly 8,000 years before we think the Sphinx was actually built.

Folks, people in the past weren’t stupid. We often like to think people just 100 years ago were dumber than us, but it’s likely the other way around. What if people were around a lot earlier than we thought, and what if they were a lot more advanced than we thought? That’d be pretty revolutionary, huh?

Thanks for reading.

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New Cover for Dulce Base 2

3/22/2015

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I have a new cover for Dulce Base 2!

A fortnight ago we discussed ideas for Dulce Base 2, and all during that time I was getting this cool cover image finished. Joe Shawcross did it, and he’s done quite a few of my books before, including the first book in this series. So it was important for me to keep that consistency.

You can contact Joe on Deviant Art if you’d like – he takes commissions. How it worked this time was I gave him some ideas that I had for the book. This is what those looked like:

Tube Train Platform Battle: In this idea, there’s a group of American Special Forces on a subway platform when the doors of a train open. Huge, larger than usual Gray aliens are there and a battle takes place.

Divide & Conquer: A map of the U.S. or the world is shown, and you can see gray aliens and shady government/military people looking it over. It’s clear that some conspiracy is afoot and most people of the Earth will suffer.

Battle at the Ship: A spaceship of some sort, and here’s a fight right at the opening or gangplank. Perhaps some aliens were rushing to get away and our team of Special Forces was hot on their tail. I’d imagine this is a real blood and guts scene.

Overrun: Our poor, lone Special Forces soldier. He’s gotten separated from the rest of the team, and now a group of Grays or other hideous-looking aliens have surrounded him. He’s dead, you know it.

Joe went ahead and did two sketches for the ideas he liked best, and we had these:

I was real torn on which to do, because they both look cool. In the end we ended up going with that first image there, because it’s got such an iconic look. Plus, everyone in the Sci-Fi Community on Google+ said that was the way to go.

After that I got the image done and then had the same title and layout guy do this cover. I had him give me two versions, because I’m not yet sure of the title:

I haven’t even started writing this book yet, but the cover is finished and I hope to put the finished book out this summer. At this point I’m just letting ideas percolate in my mind. I have some wild ones, and I think I’ll really throw them and the kitchen sink in there. That means time travel, alternate dimensions, government conspiracy, and a situation where the good guy might not be the winner.

Yep, That’s what makes a good Book 2, suspense and a bit of a let-down heading into Book 3. You’ll want to be along for the ride, and you can start with Dulce Base, available exclusively on Amazon. Thanks!

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Early Ideas for Dulce Base 2

3/13/2015

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What will I write to follow up my successful sci-fi alien thriller, Dulce Base?

It’s a good question, and I’m not really sure. I do know how the book opens – suddenly and bloodily – but I’m not sure where we go after that. I mean, I know the basic “wrap-ups” that you do when you do every Book 2, but after that I’m trying to find my way.

I need the meat of the story. For that, I’ll go to space…deep into space.

That picture is where we’re at, our local solar system, and I got these cool images from Wikipedia’s Earth’s Location in the Universe page.

If we move out a bit we see that we’re just part of a larger solar interstellar neighborhood:

Pulling out a bit more makes it clear we’re part of a local galactic group:

And that’s just part of the Virgo Supercluster:

And there are lots of superclusters:

And after that it’s just snowy static on your TV:

So where do our aliens come from? If we go by the accepted wisdom – and what I put in Dulce Base – they come from the Zeta Reticuli system, which looks like this:

Yeah, as you can see we’re in the same galaxy, though they have their own solar system, the Reticulum constellation. That puts them 39 light-years from us, or 12 parsecs. And if you’ve got the right kind of equipment, that’s just a hop, skip and a jump away.

But there’s something even closer than that, and this is system here, Arcturus:

That’s the system where the Black Knight Satellite is from. Aliens living on the sixth planet of a seven-planet system called Epsilon Boötis sent it, oh…possibly thousands of years ago, who knows?

But it’s there, we know that. Epsilon Boötis is only 36 light-years away, and it plays a part in our story. So does the mothership that’s been parked behind Mercury since the French Revolution started, and so do the towers on the moon. We’ll even throw the rooms in the rings of Saturn in there as well.

Yes, this will be a fun and exciting book, and this gives you an idea of where I’m going with the story I hope. Part of it is space. In Book 1 we went deep underground and we’ll go even deeper, much deeper. So deep, in fact, that we’ll come out the other side.

Yes, this will be a very fun book, and I hope you’ll stay tuned to hear more about it!

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Dulce Truths is On Sale!

A Timeline of Existence

New Cover for Dulce Base 2

Early Ideas for Dulce Base 2

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

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Dulce Truths is On Sale!

A Timeline of Existence

New Cover for Dulce Base 2

Early Ideas for Dulce Base 2

Writing Blogby Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)