thriller – Wetmachine

Defcon Leaning

John July 13, 2010 - 3:11 pm July 13, 2010I Fear These Things, My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

Looks like I’ll be heading to the mother of all hacker conferences, Defcon 18 in sunny Las Vegas 2.5 weeks from now. I’ll be attending parties and tech sessions, trying to not get hacked, and, mainly, selling my famous geekoid hackerific novels from a table in the vendor area.

I’ve got two reasons for wanting to attend: (1) I’m writing another hackerific novel, Creation Science, and I want it to feature either some action at Defcon or at the least, some characters (white & black hat) who are Defcon types. So I’ll be doing passive research & keeping my eyes open. (2) I want to sell books and get some notice for my books. If ever there were a target market for them, I think Defcon must be it. Maybe with a little luck I’ll get some notice as the author of what may well be the ultimate hacker book.

Any of y’all as have been to Defcon or who plan to attend this one, I would appreciate your saying hello in the comments. Any advice on how I can meet my two objectives would be especially welcome. In particular, what’s the best way for me to get the word out to the Defcon crowd about my books before I get there?

On Highest Authority from Soviet Russia: Sundman Novels “not shit Dan Brown”

John November 24, 2009 - 9:28 am February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

So, checking my Wetmachine referer logs this morning, I found that this livejournal entry has already sent me 54 visitors. Since the page is what appeared to be (and in fact is) Russian, I turned to Google Translate, which provided this wonderful text:

A good example for the present writer can become a success John Sandmena.

This is a modern writer, he wrote great novels of an action and distributes them for free. About how this is done you can ask from him, look at the website or call in at www.wetmachine.com kickstarter.com.

In place of, say, Lukyanenko, I have started to click links kickstarter.com. Sandmen requested for the next novel 5 000 dollars. Who? Yes to all. “Kick” it just for this purpose and is intended to collect money from the crowds of internet users in all sorts of interesting initiatives.

John had something to show his readers:

novels “Acts of the Apostles” and “Developing Obama”[Ed: ????] is not shit Dan Brown. “If Brown was Sandmenom, according to Jeffrey Zeldman,” he would have realized that this thriller is far from absurd, flat and one-dimensional. “

Credit confidence Sandmenu from the Internet community for the next novel, ”Science works” expressed in the amount of U.S. $ 8 059. Slightly more than requested by the author. And how much money you need to write this novel?

Note — my final Kickstarter tally was not quite as great as the amount pledged — about $900 did not clear when presented to credit cards; plus, Kickstarter.com and clearing house Amazon.com each take cuts (including on that $900, by the way). But still, not half bad. Or as we say in Russian, according to Google Translate, недурно.

Be the Geekoid Novelist's Guest on Martha's Vineyard

John November 13, 2009 - 9:51 am February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

Over on on Kickstarter, I’m seeking backers for my new project, a biotech thriller called Creation Science.

I’ve just added a new “reward”: You and a friend can be my guest for a weekend next spring or summer at my house on Martha’s Vineyard. Join me and my wife for three days and two nights at our tiny but friendly house in Vineyard Haven. You’ll stay in our guest room & we’ll provide breakfast; we’ll give you a guided tour of the island, lend you one of our cars for up to five hours, let you borrow our bikes, and you’ll be the guest of honor at a dinner party for which Dear Wife Betty will prepare a meal of at least 5 courses.

See the Creation Science page on Kickstarter for details.

Feynman Nine

John January 14, 2005 - 8:17 pm February 24, 2013General, My Thoughts Exactly

In my technoparanoid thriller Acts of The Apostles (which you can download for free by clicking on the left), two characters named Dieter Steffen and Pavel Isaacs develop a nanomachine for rearranging human DNA. There are implications for Gulf War Syndrome, and hints of a plot to lure the Americans back to Iraq for a second war, where they’ll be beaten. (Acts was published in 1999). They call the machine Feynman Nine.

Recently sometime-Wetmachiner Ron sent me these links:

Feynman Nine becoming reality, and and one of the leading bioinformatics molecular biology researchers around is indeed named Pavel in real life. He’s working on algorithms for rearranging genomes.

At some point in the future I’m gonna compile a compendium of all the stuff I made up for that book that has since happened.

Or else I’ll get Ron to do it — he’s been sending me “Acts of the Apostles technology sitings” for years.

AofA Technology: Monster Cells

John May 12, 2004 - 6:18 pm February 24, 2013General, My Thoughts Exactly

As many of y’all know, I wrote Acts of the Apostles, (a nanotech thriller about (among other things) Iraqi bioweapons programs)during the years 1995-99.

As the book was science fiction, it contains a lot of stuff that I just made up. Since then it’s been fun to collect instances where the real world has caught up with Acts.

Here’s a link to an article in the Washington Post that describes an effort by Craig Venter(!!) to create an artificial cell that’s in many ways similar to the “monster cell” of AofA.