Joe Coxwell
Available now as a paperback and as an eBook download for Kindle
(Go to Amazon.com)
Professor Diggz Dorin is not just another tomb raider. She’s a planet-hopping exoarcheologist skilled in unearthing alien artifacts. While tunneling deep below the crust of a small moonlet orbiting the gas giant planet Epsilon-413, she discovers a strange bio-mechanical device, a living transdimensional Entity, which claims to serve as a kind of cosmic genie. The alien seeks only to bring Order out of Chaos, to help shape the astronomical frontier by rolling back entropy and the thermodynamic laws which tend toward greater disorder. Or so it says.
When Diggz wishes for Peace on Earth, the Entity grants her desire in a most unexpected way. Since the very nature of life is conflict, and the planet's biosphere functions in a finely-tuned frenzy of constant upheaval, the Entity's solution is to obliterate the planet's biological contaminant so that there can be peace at last.
Horrified by the devastating misinterpretation of her wish, and the accidental extinction of her home world, Professor Dorin sets out on a years-long quest to undo the damage she's caused, to find the Entity again, unwish her wish, and once again set things right. She's aided in her efforts by a renegade bartending android named Dent and a semi-aquatic, squidlike companion called Tucson. All the while, Diggz is being relentlessly pursued by survivors from the Earth's calamity, and alternately guarded and harrassed by Lt. Syrtis Gabriel of the United Mars Colonies Central Security. Only a miracle of divine proportions can restore the Earth and set Diggz's tortured soul at rest.
Be careful what you wish for . . . very careful! Planet Earth: R.I.P.
Go here, to check out Joe's Website:
http://www.joecoxwell.com/
On joe's website, you will find an excerpt from the book as well as more about the author.
WIN A FREE COPY OF JOE'S BOOK:
*If you check out Joe's Web site and email me at sleepytownpress@yahoo.com and tell me "three" facts that you learned about Joe, I will enter your name into a contest for a FREE copy of Joe's Book.
When the book is released, all names will go into a hat and I will have my grandson, pull a name out and the winner will be announced on the Sleepytown Press Home Page.
(Go to Amazon.com)
Professor Diggz Dorin is not just another tomb raider. She’s a planet-hopping exoarcheologist skilled in unearthing alien artifacts. While tunneling deep below the crust of a small moonlet orbiting the gas giant planet Epsilon-413, she discovers a strange bio-mechanical device, a living transdimensional Entity, which claims to serve as a kind of cosmic genie. The alien seeks only to bring Order out of Chaos, to help shape the astronomical frontier by rolling back entropy and the thermodynamic laws which tend toward greater disorder. Or so it says.
When Diggz wishes for Peace on Earth, the Entity grants her desire in a most unexpected way. Since the very nature of life is conflict, and the planet's biosphere functions in a finely-tuned frenzy of constant upheaval, the Entity's solution is to obliterate the planet's biological contaminant so that there can be peace at last.
Horrified by the devastating misinterpretation of her wish, and the accidental extinction of her home world, Professor Dorin sets out on a years-long quest to undo the damage she's caused, to find the Entity again, unwish her wish, and once again set things right. She's aided in her efforts by a renegade bartending android named Dent and a semi-aquatic, squidlike companion called Tucson. All the while, Diggz is being relentlessly pursued by survivors from the Earth's calamity, and alternately guarded and harrassed by Lt. Syrtis Gabriel of the United Mars Colonies Central Security. Only a miracle of divine proportions can restore the Earth and set Diggz's tortured soul at rest.
Be careful what you wish for . . . very careful! Planet Earth: R.I.P.
Go here, to check out Joe's Website:
http://www.joecoxwell.com/
On joe's website, you will find an excerpt from the book as well as more about the author.
WIN A FREE COPY OF JOE'S BOOK:
*If you check out Joe's Web site and email me at sleepytownpress@yahoo.com and tell me "three" facts that you learned about Joe, I will enter your name into a contest for a FREE copy of Joe's Book.
When the book is released, all names will go into a hat and I will have my grandson, pull a name out and the winner will be announced on the Sleepytown Press Home Page.
The Joe Coxwell interview
What would you like readers to know about you?
I've been fascinated with science my whole life, especially astronomy, space science, and the space program. I enjoy teaching high school Chemistry and Physics, but my passion is space. I started reading science fiction in high school, almost to the exclusion of all other literature. i realized after a while that i was short-changing myself by such a limited diet, and tried to broaden my reading. I was able to attend the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM and read from a curriculum based on the Great Books of western culture. I really enjoyed that. I feel far more enriched now than I did before.
Tell us your latest news? I'm currently finishing up the school year, and looking forward to spending more time on my writing and art work this summer. Summers are a re-generative time for me. I love being in the classroom and interacting with students during the year, but summers are "my" time, and time for my family. We almost always go one vacation. Last summer we visited my youngest sister in Washington State. She acted as a tour guide for us all over the Northwest: we went to the Pacific coast at Kalaloch, the Hoh rain forest, Mount St. Helens, and Mt. Ranier. I loved it. The more different environments I can experience, the greater wealth of detail I can bring to the setting s of future stories.
When and why did you begin writing? I've been writing science fiction stories off and on since high school, but it has only been in the last 5-7 years that I began to work seriously at it, finally getting enough confidence to make submissions. I've always had an imagination full of stories, interesting characters, and exotic, extraterrestrial scenes, so it decided it was only reasonable to try to start writing those down.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I' m not sure I really do, yet. First and foremost, I feel like a teacher. Writing is something I do as an avocation, something to refresh my spirit and engage my imagination. I may not actually feel like a true writer until I can hold a copy of my first book in my hand.
What inspired you to write your first book? The first book, The Epsilon Wish, was based on an earlier short story. Friends who read it begged for me to tell the rest of the story. They said that there was so much more I could say, further character development to do, and more environs to describe. So, mostly with my "audience" at Northeast High School in mind, I expanded the story into about a 100,00+ word novel. It took about two years of spare-time writing. I can't over-emphasize the importance of supportive friends and family to the novice writer. Their support is a major source of drive and determination. Without the constant urging of my friends, especially the late Lyn Brown Radford and Carole Lewis, I might never have written the story as a completed text.
Do you have a specific writing style? I like to think I'm writing in the "hard-sci-fi" style or genre, as opposed to pure fantasy. I never really enjoyed fantasy stories much as a child. I wanted the technical details and the scientific plausibility. One thing I have to combat in my own writing si the tendency to become overly technical. I have to walk that fine line between giving the reader interesting science and losing them in overwhelming theory or technical jargon.
What do you feel are your “three” best writing tips?
1) I've heard this over and over: "Write what you know." That's why I write science fiction and not westerns. 2) Make time to write. Don't wait for a time to happen; make a concerted effort to set aside time. Don't even think you have to write complete stories in those intervals. Jot down ideas, scences, fragments of dialog, anything that you can pull from as a source for later work. I regret the times I have "put-off" writing. I've lost the seed of many stories that way. If only I had been disciplined enough to get those concepts down before they evaporated into oblivion. What books have most influenced your life most? Even though this might sound strange coming from a science guy, actually the Bible has been the book with the deepest, most pervasive influence on my life as a Christian. I'm one of those who choose to see areas of agreement between science and scripture, rather than conflict. I try to allow my faith to psotively influence all aspects of my life, so it conseqently is an influence on my writing. There would be stories I would feel very uncomfortable trying to tell; I have trouble writing characters who would say and do things that are tremendously at odds with what I believe. For some, that may be considered as a weakness in writing, but I think for me, it is a strength.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? I positively love the work of Authur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Gregory Benford and Greg Bear seem to have a science backgrounds I would enjoy exploring further. Carl Sagan was always an inspiration to me. One of my favorite quotes by Sagan is' "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
What book are you reading now? Haven't got time to read for pleasure right now, except for current science magazines like Discover and Astronomy. I recently read a book on dealing with Autism, especially Asberger's Syndrome. At Christmas, I received as a gift and interesting book of random facts called the High IQ Bathroom Reader. I've mostly finished that. I recently read Hot, Flat and Crowded, a book about how increasing population and climate change affects the economy and such.
What are your current projects? I have some rough ideas in mind for a sequel to The Epsilon Wish, but before I write that, I'd love to finish several short stories I have in pieces, and pull 6-8 of them together into a collection. If The Epsilon Wish does well and builds something of an audience, I'd like to offer them the short story collection as another publication, maybe next year. I'd also like to spend some time this summer painting a few canvases. I don't want to neglect my art work at the expense of the writing; but on the other hand, I want to work the writing, striking while the iron is hot.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book? Like in my paintings, after its all done, I'm bound to spot imperfections. At the request of my daughter, I kept the dialog clean and profanity-free. I'm not one for gratuitous obscenity either, but there was a place or two where I honestly felt the character ought to say something profanely expressive. I wrestled with the question ever since I started writing for an audience. Do you have to use harsh language sometimes in order for the character to be believable in the situation in which they find themselves. I think so, but I balanced that against the fact that many of my first readers are going to be my high school students. I know they hear worse, even in their music, but I feel an obligation to show them a proper role model. Ditto for my daughter. So, in the future, look for action and adventure, but don't look for salty fishermen (i.e. Deadliest Catch) who would have to have two out of every six words bleeped. I'll have to let my conscience guide my writing, and I'm pretty such Randy Young at Sleeptown will be fine with that.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? I was always interested in writing. I loved to write for class in high school and college. Even research papers were not so much a chore as they were an opportunity. In college, I wrote for the University of West Alabama's Livingston Life student newspaper. That's the closest to actual journalism I ever got, but it planted the seed of future writing.
Could you share a little of your current work with us? In the same way that you could say that The DaVinci Code is "about" the suppression of the feminine in the Catholic church, you could say that The Epsilon Wish is about intelligent design in the Universe, and what difficulties humans might encounter if we contact an truly alien intelligence with an almost godlike superiority over us. In that novel, I wanted to explore the notion of forces in the cosmos that act in opposition to the normal tendency for things to run down and go towards greater disorder (entropy). What winds up the universe? Are there other beings who seek to bring order to their surroundings, even on a cosmic scale? Would beings with godlike powers still acknowledge the existence of an ultimate creator God? I wrote the story to entertain, but there are some deeper things for those who wish to consider.
Anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? I'm not formally trained as a writer or journalist, so every time I write, I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I know my writing is a work in progress; hopefully I'll become more proficient as time goes on. Practice makes (almost) perfect.
Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work? I've really enjoyed the stories of Larry Niven, especially his collection called N-Space. I love the fact that his universe is built in "known space," and that he makes use of real science. It's difficult to lock my favorite down to a single author. Read The Epsilon Wish, and you will see the answer to that question by the references to other authors and details which were meant to be an homage to those writers.
Which of your books is your favorite and why? The Epsilon Wish will be my first born. Hopefully it won't be my only child.
What do you feel is the hardest thing for a writer?
Definitely, breaking into print. Or for that matter, getting an agent or editor to even read a submission. Of course, self-promotion and marketing is not going to be a piece of cake, either. The upside is that I'm going to get to meet a lot of nice people, even if they don't want to buy a science fiction book.
Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it? Every time a write reaches into himself to express an idea or story, there is the learning which comes from self-knowledge. As I wrote The Epsilon Wish, I was trying to imagine an alien Entity with almost limitless abilities. What I personally experienced was that as big as I made my alien Entity, I knew that my concept of a universal creator God was even bigger. I don't consider my novel to be a work of religious fiction, but for those readers who have a Christian faith, they may read between the lines and find something to cherish.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Surround yourself with a circle of friends who will encourage your writing. You can search for the true advice of critics later. The important thing is to keep engaged in writing and not have harsh comments, or even lack of interest, dash your enthusiasm. As you write, write at first for those friends who are your immediate audience. Later, you can seek to find a wider audience. Join a writer's group, go to workshops, learn all you can about the craft of writing, search yourself and your life experiences and find those stories that need telling. Trust that someone out there wants to read a story exactly like the one you've written. You might not appeal to everyone, but you may yet become someone's favorite author.
I've been fascinated with science my whole life, especially astronomy, space science, and the space program. I enjoy teaching high school Chemistry and Physics, but my passion is space. I started reading science fiction in high school, almost to the exclusion of all other literature. i realized after a while that i was short-changing myself by such a limited diet, and tried to broaden my reading. I was able to attend the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM and read from a curriculum based on the Great Books of western culture. I really enjoyed that. I feel far more enriched now than I did before.
Tell us your latest news? I'm currently finishing up the school year, and looking forward to spending more time on my writing and art work this summer. Summers are a re-generative time for me. I love being in the classroom and interacting with students during the year, but summers are "my" time, and time for my family. We almost always go one vacation. Last summer we visited my youngest sister in Washington State. She acted as a tour guide for us all over the Northwest: we went to the Pacific coast at Kalaloch, the Hoh rain forest, Mount St. Helens, and Mt. Ranier. I loved it. The more different environments I can experience, the greater wealth of detail I can bring to the setting s of future stories.
When and why did you begin writing? I've been writing science fiction stories off and on since high school, but it has only been in the last 5-7 years that I began to work seriously at it, finally getting enough confidence to make submissions. I've always had an imagination full of stories, interesting characters, and exotic, extraterrestrial scenes, so it decided it was only reasonable to try to start writing those down.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I' m not sure I really do, yet. First and foremost, I feel like a teacher. Writing is something I do as an avocation, something to refresh my spirit and engage my imagination. I may not actually feel like a true writer until I can hold a copy of my first book in my hand.
What inspired you to write your first book? The first book, The Epsilon Wish, was based on an earlier short story. Friends who read it begged for me to tell the rest of the story. They said that there was so much more I could say, further character development to do, and more environs to describe. So, mostly with my "audience" at Northeast High School in mind, I expanded the story into about a 100,00+ word novel. It took about two years of spare-time writing. I can't over-emphasize the importance of supportive friends and family to the novice writer. Their support is a major source of drive and determination. Without the constant urging of my friends, especially the late Lyn Brown Radford and Carole Lewis, I might never have written the story as a completed text.
Do you have a specific writing style? I like to think I'm writing in the "hard-sci-fi" style or genre, as opposed to pure fantasy. I never really enjoyed fantasy stories much as a child. I wanted the technical details and the scientific plausibility. One thing I have to combat in my own writing si the tendency to become overly technical. I have to walk that fine line between giving the reader interesting science and losing them in overwhelming theory or technical jargon.
What do you feel are your “three” best writing tips?
1) I've heard this over and over: "Write what you know." That's why I write science fiction and not westerns. 2) Make time to write. Don't wait for a time to happen; make a concerted effort to set aside time. Don't even think you have to write complete stories in those intervals. Jot down ideas, scences, fragments of dialog, anything that you can pull from as a source for later work. I regret the times I have "put-off" writing. I've lost the seed of many stories that way. If only I had been disciplined enough to get those concepts down before they evaporated into oblivion. What books have most influenced your life most? Even though this might sound strange coming from a science guy, actually the Bible has been the book with the deepest, most pervasive influence on my life as a Christian. I'm one of those who choose to see areas of agreement between science and scripture, rather than conflict. I try to allow my faith to psotively influence all aspects of my life, so it conseqently is an influence on my writing. There would be stories I would feel very uncomfortable trying to tell; I have trouble writing characters who would say and do things that are tremendously at odds with what I believe. For some, that may be considered as a weakness in writing, but I think for me, it is a strength.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? I positively love the work of Authur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Gregory Benford and Greg Bear seem to have a science backgrounds I would enjoy exploring further. Carl Sagan was always an inspiration to me. One of my favorite quotes by Sagan is' "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
What book are you reading now? Haven't got time to read for pleasure right now, except for current science magazines like Discover and Astronomy. I recently read a book on dealing with Autism, especially Asberger's Syndrome. At Christmas, I received as a gift and interesting book of random facts called the High IQ Bathroom Reader. I've mostly finished that. I recently read Hot, Flat and Crowded, a book about how increasing population and climate change affects the economy and such.
What are your current projects? I have some rough ideas in mind for a sequel to The Epsilon Wish, but before I write that, I'd love to finish several short stories I have in pieces, and pull 6-8 of them together into a collection. If The Epsilon Wish does well and builds something of an audience, I'd like to offer them the short story collection as another publication, maybe next year. I'd also like to spend some time this summer painting a few canvases. I don't want to neglect my art work at the expense of the writing; but on the other hand, I want to work the writing, striking while the iron is hot.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book? Like in my paintings, after its all done, I'm bound to spot imperfections. At the request of my daughter, I kept the dialog clean and profanity-free. I'm not one for gratuitous obscenity either, but there was a place or two where I honestly felt the character ought to say something profanely expressive. I wrestled with the question ever since I started writing for an audience. Do you have to use harsh language sometimes in order for the character to be believable in the situation in which they find themselves. I think so, but I balanced that against the fact that many of my first readers are going to be my high school students. I know they hear worse, even in their music, but I feel an obligation to show them a proper role model. Ditto for my daughter. So, in the future, look for action and adventure, but don't look for salty fishermen (i.e. Deadliest Catch) who would have to have two out of every six words bleeped. I'll have to let my conscience guide my writing, and I'm pretty such Randy Young at Sleeptown will be fine with that.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? I was always interested in writing. I loved to write for class in high school and college. Even research papers were not so much a chore as they were an opportunity. In college, I wrote for the University of West Alabama's Livingston Life student newspaper. That's the closest to actual journalism I ever got, but it planted the seed of future writing.
Could you share a little of your current work with us? In the same way that you could say that The DaVinci Code is "about" the suppression of the feminine in the Catholic church, you could say that The Epsilon Wish is about intelligent design in the Universe, and what difficulties humans might encounter if we contact an truly alien intelligence with an almost godlike superiority over us. In that novel, I wanted to explore the notion of forces in the cosmos that act in opposition to the normal tendency for things to run down and go towards greater disorder (entropy). What winds up the universe? Are there other beings who seek to bring order to their surroundings, even on a cosmic scale? Would beings with godlike powers still acknowledge the existence of an ultimate creator God? I wrote the story to entertain, but there are some deeper things for those who wish to consider.
Anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? I'm not formally trained as a writer or journalist, so every time I write, I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I know my writing is a work in progress; hopefully I'll become more proficient as time goes on. Practice makes (almost) perfect.
Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work? I've really enjoyed the stories of Larry Niven, especially his collection called N-Space. I love the fact that his universe is built in "known space," and that he makes use of real science. It's difficult to lock my favorite down to a single author. Read The Epsilon Wish, and you will see the answer to that question by the references to other authors and details which were meant to be an homage to those writers.
Which of your books is your favorite and why? The Epsilon Wish will be my first born. Hopefully it won't be my only child.
What do you feel is the hardest thing for a writer?
Definitely, breaking into print. Or for that matter, getting an agent or editor to even read a submission. Of course, self-promotion and marketing is not going to be a piece of cake, either. The upside is that I'm going to get to meet a lot of nice people, even if they don't want to buy a science fiction book.
Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it? Every time a write reaches into himself to express an idea or story, there is the learning which comes from self-knowledge. As I wrote The Epsilon Wish, I was trying to imagine an alien Entity with almost limitless abilities. What I personally experienced was that as big as I made my alien Entity, I knew that my concept of a universal creator God was even bigger. I don't consider my novel to be a work of religious fiction, but for those readers who have a Christian faith, they may read between the lines and find something to cherish.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Surround yourself with a circle of friends who will encourage your writing. You can search for the true advice of critics later. The important thing is to keep engaged in writing and not have harsh comments, or even lack of interest, dash your enthusiasm. As you write, write at first for those friends who are your immediate audience. Later, you can seek to find a wider audience. Join a writer's group, go to workshops, learn all you can about the craft of writing, search yourself and your life experiences and find those stories that need telling. Trust that someone out there wants to read a story exactly like the one you've written. You might not appeal to everyone, but you may yet become someone's favorite author.