Sero, Part IIV

There is a strange thing about the internet. It is immensely lonely. You have the entire world at your fingertips, yet it is rare to see anything that relates to you on it. Instead, you find photos, videos, and even articles about other people, people who you have never even met before. These people are, of course, interesting and at times naked, but it’s never you in any fashionable way. Instead, if you are on the internet, its in the form of a social networking site or one of the fourteen friends in that photo taken back in 1997 when you were banging that one chick. Granted, in 1997 I was ten and the only thing I was banging was my spoon against the cereal bowl.

I was a terrible child.

I’ve never regarded the internet as a way to find myself. Never have I goggled my name, I don’t advertise this blog very much, and I usually avoid revealing who I actually am. Most people know me as Irish, and to a lesser extent as Irish87. Yet, if you go to Amazon.com and type in the word Sero you will find my crappy, self edited ebook Sero.

I haven’t sold many books. Then again, I haven’t advertised very much. In fact, I haven’t advertised at all, with rare exception to my own blog. My friends have bought the book, my family just asked me to send them a copy, and a few strangers who I will most likely never hear from again bought it. Apparently they were bored. Oddly enough, however, there is a strange amount of pride I’ve gotten from simply being able to type in that word, Sero, in a website and the first product is mine.

Unfortunately, if I google Sero I am bombarded with cell phone websites. Oh well.

-Irish

P.S.: None of this was proofread or edited in any fashion. And yes, this was one giant advertisement for my book. GO BUY IT! FEED ME!

Science versus Religion

As mentioned beforehand I am not a fan of science fiction. Mind you, I don’t necessarily dislike it because I think it is a bad genre, I’m just not as fond of it as some folks are. I think my biggest problem with it is the same issues I have with fantasy: every other novel is the same old thing featuring the same old characters and the same old plot lines. Nothing feels original or even very relevant.

With all of that in mind, I chose to write Sero in a way which would hopefully reflect our own society and some of the sociopolitical issues we tend to have. The biggest societal argument in the novel is the battle between science and religion. To say this is not something that we deal with in our life is an inability to see the forest through the trees. We deal with it constantly and often times when we side with one we are automatically forced to go against the other.

For me, I am not now nor have I ever been very religious. In fact, I’m somewhat disdainful toward organized religion. The entire thing seems like a scam to me, but then again I find the same disturbing traits about many scientific opinions. The easiest to point out is Global Warming. If you don’t believe in it you’re called a Denier and made to look like an apathetic bigot. There seems to me that there is no in between for the idea either – you are either fully for man-made global warming or you are the religions enemy.

I always believed organized religion was a way to ease our minds when it comes to death. Mind you, I am incredibly spiritual and I do believe in a higher being, but I don’t follow any religion. And no, I don’t pray to the Earth Mother. I simply acknowledge there is something bigger than me and that I am insignificant in comparison. That, mind you, does not then mean I am insignificant to myself or those around me. I live my life for myself, not for anyone or anything else. When it comes to science, I can’t help but think that it is quickly replacing religion. Simply put, the newest religion in America is science.

So what happens to our old religions when we find new ones? Ask the ancient Greeks. An entire civilization lost their Gods because of a new one. In Sero, my goal is to delve into an America that has fully replaced its Gods with science, and rightfully so. Nevertheless, the science they love, while miraculous, is also causing them to take life for granted and abuse their own bodies. Integrity, the willingness to helps others, the ability to show compassion, these are all traits we’re taught so that our maker will judge us favorably. Well, when our maker is irrelevant and our keepers don’t care what we do, why do we care how we act?

The main character, Atlas, has a long history of this battle between science and religion. Coming from a religious family he was taught the morals any good child of God would learn, but he fell to the call of science in his late teens after an accident.

This is not a novel about how evil science is, nor is it about how evil religion is. In essence, it is simply an argument for balance.

-Irish

P.S.: For Good Measure: BUY SERO HERE!

SERO: An example

In an effort to sell more product, I have decided to post the first chapter of my novel Sero. I do hope that you enjoy it…

Double Clicking

I want to make a plea to all those reading this. Unfortunately, because of my constant playing of game for the Games on the Cheap! video series, my mouse has broken. Well, alright, it isn’t broken yet. Nevertheless, every time I click the left button it double clicks, making my life utter hell. Doing simple and otherwise ordinary things have become a test of my patience. So, with that in mind, I have a request…

Buy my book.

The book itself is only $1.99 and even if you don’t have a Kindle you can download it to your PC. Yep, folks, you don’t even need a Kindle. How amazing is that?! Each time that you buy my book I receive $0.70. This means that to buy a new mouse (or Mass Effect 2) I have to sell a LOT more books. So go on then, be all nice and stuff and get me a new way to ruin the rest of my life! Oh c’mon, it won’t hurt.

Essentially it is only two bucks, three dollars less than a cup of Starbucks OMGFUCKME coffee. And, if you want, I will replace that coffee with a OMGFUCKME short story entitled: How I Ripped People OFF and how you can too!

-Irish

A Brief Understanding

Hey people… BUY MY BOOK!

I’m sorry, that was incredibly rude of me. Seriously, buy my book…. please? No? Okay.

In an effort to better extrapolate on this odd little story that I have concocted I have decided to post a few short guides to understanding the Black Sun universe. Here are the five basic things you should know:

1) This is a book about a war between religion and science: No, it is not biased. In truth, I am spiritual but not religious, but I’m also a fan of technology, while also being terrified of killer sex robots. I simply wanted to write a story about what would happen if one of those two beliefs, and science has become a belief, became almighty. Some would say that religion is currently in that spot, but I disagree. I think a lot of our society has gone the way of secularism. Granted, I don’t much care, certainly not as much as some do.

2) This is soft science fiction: While I have somewhat detailed description of the science at work in the novel, I went straight to the psychological story instead. Instead of making a purely science fiction story I wanted to force down its throat Carl Jung.

3) Funny named people are an excuse: The main character is named Atlas… you know, the guy who held the world on his shoulders. In the novel their names give away what sort of roles they were intended to play, even if they did not succeed in doing so. Basically, however, it was an excuse not to name my main character John or Gustaf.

4) This is an amateur novel: It is written by somebody (me) who has never written or published a full novel before. This is why I don’t feel right for charging anything more than $1.99. If nothing else, this novel is worth buying so that you can point at me and laugh at my inferior writing skills.

5) IT’S CHEAP! BUY IT!: Go on… buy it!

-Irish

Šero

Earlier this summer I had an urge… also, I was dared to do this. A friend of mine, knowing full well my disdain for science fiction and fantasy, felt the strange compulsion to dare me to write a fifty thousand word science fiction novel. So naturally, me being a fat American who cannot exist without constant competition and the pride that comes from winning, I finished the novel in four months and it stretched out to over a hundred thousand words. Before you ask, no, the twenty bucks was not worth the four months of time. My pride, however, is nice and engorged.

I seriously thought about trying to get it published, but I found one major flaw in the novel: it wasn’t very science fictiony. Instead, it was a story about technology advancing far beyond our expectations and replacing our oldest source of miracles: the Baby Jesus… or whichever infant diety you may worship. There was also a large amount of political themes, including the much feared one-world-government theory, though I forced myself to stop before going apeshit and spending seventy thousand of those words ranting against Europe.

Here is the basic premise of the novel: With the creation of Atom, a type of nanobot which circulates in your bloodstream, humans have become far more efficient. The Atom delivers small doses of necessary drugs and vitamins which help fuel us, as well as fighting against disease and illness. It has become a must-have for people suffering with AIDs or HIV, making the disease effectively neutral. The one problem from Atom is the side effects that come from having large amounts of plastic and radioactive material in your bloodstream at all times: cancer. Nevertheless, while the Atom causes cancer, it also eats away at it just as it would any other tumor or medical issue that one may have.

After a good hundred years of this miraculous invention those studying religion has dropped to the point of near nonexistence. In many countries, including America (known now as the North American Union), it becomes illegal to openly demonstrate religious ideals or to even open a church. From this denial of faith a large group of religious zealots, as they’re often called, have formed and created the Šero Advent. Under the leadership of John Haley they begin a campaign of terror, including mass executions.

To stop John Haley and the Advent they send two spies, Advani and Evelyn. As agents of the special forces unit Black Sun, the two spies delve deep into the Advent, but are eventually caught. To save them from the wrath of the Advent, Investigator Atlas (not his real name, obviously) is sent to find them. As he begins to dig deeper and deeper into the mess he begins to unravel his own history and the truth behind Black Sun and the Advent.

So there you have it, that is the basic premise of the story. Over the next few days I will be trying to introduce some of the characters and the background story of Šero via posts. I chose to self publish this novel because I don’t much care about publishing through a publisher. It’s not that I have some odd hatred of them, I would rather just self publish this and thanks to the Amazon Kindle I am able to do that relatively painlessly.

Now, I don’t expect to sell a ton of books and I don’t really much care if I am hated or loved for this novel. I just enjoy writing and, even though I am not a massive fan of this genre, I found a lot of enjoyment from writing it. If you’re interested in buying the 100k+ word novel then you can follow this link to the store front. And yes, I really am only selling it for $1.99. I’m a realist.

-Irish