Podium Publishing has selected Audie award winner, Grover Gardner to narrate my first novel, The Silver Ships.

Grover Gardner is one of America’s most popular and versatile audiobook narrators, recording over 650 commercial audiobook titles. In 1999,  “AudioFile” named Grover one of the Best Voices of the Century, and now includes him in their annual Golden Voices roundup of top narration talent. Winner of over 20 “AudioFile” Earphones Awards, he is also the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. Publishers Weekly named him “Audiobook Narrator of the Year” for 2005.

Mr. Gardner has narrated such prestigious books as Stephen King’s, “The Stand”.

Originally, The Silver Ships was an extremely long outline that I cut into three parts…thus the Silver Ships trilogy. But, as I ‘m working on Méridien, the third book, while Libre is with my indie editor, I realize two things. First, I have ideas for more adventures for Alex and his people that won’t fit into the first three books. Second, I have grown quite fond of the people of the flotilla , and I’m not ready to say goodbye to them.

The continuing adventures of Alex and the Librans is in planning now. The present outline will generate a least one more book, Hellébore, but possibly it might generate two more books…for now.

Amazon #1 Best Seller – First Contact Category

My Deepest Thanks To My New Fans!

I’m very humbled by the reception that my first novel, “The Silver Ships,” has received from fans around the world. I appreciate the individuals who have purchased my book or downloaded a Kindle version, many of who have contacted me and shared their impressions with me.

It never occurred to me while writing and publishing my book that on Tuesday, March 3, 2015, just twenty-four days after publishing, that I would access my Amazon book page at the urging of my sister Jan and discover my book labelled with the Amazon #1 bestseller flag for the category of science fiction, first contact.

My thanks again to all my new fans!

One of the most wonderful sites I’ve ever found that is dedicated to readers is Goodreads.com.

The members of Goodreads are passionate about books and communicating with one another their preferences. You only have to read the reviews of a new book to realize how committed the members are to their shared passion—all things books!

The site allows inter-communications via email, members to follow others’ recommendations, and be-friend one another. Members have personal pages, and authors can build their own pages, linking their books, posting on an internal blog, and adding a review widget to their web site to name a few items.

I was able to start a dialog with many of the reviewers who showed an interest in character-driven, space-opera stories. This led to a priming-of-the-pump, so to speak, of my own novel before it was published on Amazon and has set the model for my future efforts.

To the members of Goodreads, I doff my hat. They are a superb bunch of people who care for the written word and the stories of authors.

Published on Amazon!

The Silver Ships was published on Amazon on  February 7th and is available in both Kindle and softcover versions. If you have Amazon Prime, the Kindle version is available for free download!

It took fifteen months from the time I sat down with my 100+ scraps of paper—character descriptions, technology and world concepts, chapter ideas, and smatterings of dialog—to write the story and work the review processes with my editor, Angela Polidoro.

At the heart of the story, I wanted to express my view that the individual counts, that an individual can make a difference. It’s a concept applied in my science-fiction stories, and it’s applied by people in the real world today!