Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Harmonic Wars Update!


Hello everyone! I'm happy to report that my SciFi novel "Harmonic Wars: Guardians of the Crystal Skulls" is doing well. We placed it on sale for the holidays at 3L Publishing for $5 off the regular price. I wanted to share my most recent 5 Star reviews on Amazon and my comment.

"Initially I had a hard time following the story and the characters. I had to keep going back and rereading parts to make sure I was following along, which for a non Sci Fi reader was frustrating. However, once I got the gist I enjoyed how the characters played out. I really enjoyed finding various influences or what I thought may have influenced the author from the Bible, to Greek Mythology, to Star Trek! I liked how it ended on whether or not good was really going to conquer evil and left me wanting to know how evil Arturo was going to become. When the next one comes rest assured that I will be buying a copy!"

And now my comment:

"Thanks so very much for your kind review! It is always a challenge to learn about different cultures, and in this book I created three totally new cultures from a highly advanced society. This story has a very rich history that was thousands of years in the making, so in effect we are coming into this story at the end of a war that was at a stalemate for 10,000 years. Much like the epic story "Dune" there are various groups in my book that need to be introduced. In truth this book is a prequel to a much bigger story that I hope to release next summer. Until then, please enjoy this intro!"
~D.B. Stearns

This is very true. When you introduce new worlds, new civilizations and societies it takes time to introduce them properly so that the reader has an understanding of why they act as they do. I worked hard to ensure that this was done as quickly as possible so we could move on to the main theme of the plot. In this case, I needed to introduce the story of how and why Ana and Arturo developed the way they did, because I have already written the next story that picks up in the ongoing battle. 


Here is another recent 5 Star review on Amazon.
R.M writes:
"I slogged through the Prologue. This is nothing new for me while reading science fiction. I tend to read and re-read paragraphs to make sure that I get the gist of things for the first chapter or so. Harmonic Wars: Guardians of the Crystal Skulls, was no different in this aspect, but once I got through the Prologue, I was off and running.
I read the book during the course of one day, taking breaks to eat, and walk my dogs. D.B. Stearns joins authors such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Brown and Larry Correia, in writing a book so compelling that I have difficulty in putting it down. Harmonic Wars: Guardians of the Crystal Skulls is a genuine page turner.
I am looking forward to the next book in D.B. Stearns's Harmonic Wars series."

Wow! I am absolutely honored to even be mentioned as an author amongst such literary giants in the industry. All of these kind words are so greatly appreciated, and motivates me to write the best story that I possibly can. Thanks, and I will not disappoint my readers!

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Harmonic Wars at Wizard World Austin

This past Halloween weekend we spent at Wizard World Comic Con talking all things Harmonic Wars. What an amazing event! Here are some of the videos and pictures from the weekend. My good childhood friends Gary Bopp and his wife Kristi Kennedy came out and helped me promote "Guardians of the Crystal Skulls" while they did some cosplay as "Gamora" and "The Winter Soldier." Gary had a Halloween basket made out of the head of Captain America ... it was awesome!


I shot several videos as well, and I will share them too. I think every time I picked up my camcorder the cosplayers all ran. Then I would set it down to talk to a potential customer about Harmonic Wars and the aisle was FLOWING with cosplayers. Talk about bad luck, huh? Oh well, I still had fun.



Here are some more short videos from Wizard World.







These two people in my opinion were the best dressed unique cosplayers.



I loved the throw back to the Matrix. 















There were so many Star Wars cosplayers that it was impossible to find the best. My neighbors at Wizard World were all dressed up as Trekkies on day one, then Star Wars on day two. You can see several members of the cast of Anomaly Podcast at the end of this video.





Several players from the new Star Wars were in force at this Comic Con. She had her thermo-nuclear detonator! It was chaos when they went across the aisle with the Jedi cast members of Anomaly Podcast. We tried to get some pictures, but it was too over crowded for any good shots. Sigh.



And what is Wizard World without The Incredibles? 




There were many cosplayers and Trick-or-Treaters throughout the weekend, and we gave out lots of candy to many well dressed kids and adults alike.





















I found these two hanging around together. Loved the idea that two friends went as retro and modern Batman together. There were many people dressed as both Batman and Superman. It makes me wonder why they haven't thought to make a movie of the two? They could even have them battle each other! Wouldn't that be cool?  ;-)







This Green Arrow was the best of several that we saw.














We really enjoyed the variety and the great creativity of the costumes we saw. Here are several that we liked:







And Leeloo had her Multipass in her hand! Cracked me up! I love original movies like this.

















There were a great many women who went as "Poison Ivy" but only some of them wore enough to modestly cover many key areas on their bodies. My nephew had a great time looking at those examples, I'm sure! I prefer the ones who were so much more creative than the young female who was dressed in cellophane and nothing else. I guess there's one in every crowd, and there were several in this crowd. Still, it could have been much worse. 

We made some great new friends, great business contacts, and had a great time. Harmonic Wars is currently sold out at Amazon, but the next print is coming out very soon to honor all back order requests. It is also available at Kindle, iBooks and Nook. Check out the book! It is an epic struggle of good vs evil, with action, battles, romance and a dash of humor thrown in for good measure. See ya soon!