My novel, RED MOON, is out. Buy it, please!

[FlaviusCrispus]

Hi David
You say your book has just been published but some of your reviews date back to 2001! The plot thickens!

OK, you caught me— I should say it's being re-published. RED MOON first came out in October 2000 from Fireword Press, a small print-on-demand publisher. It got great reviews but not a lot of sales— coincidentally, it came out at virtually the same moment as Michael Cassutt, an established aerospace writer, published his novel, also called Red Moon, about the Soviet moon program. Neither one did all that well back then— seems no one was interested in a cold-war era tale of lunar exploration (my novel also incorporates a near-future story line and a more expansive theme, but it tended to get lumped together with the Cassutt book, which was pretty straightforward and had no SF or alternate history elements).

Since then, the world has rather changed— seems several nations are interested in returning to the Moon, the need for alternative energy has grown, and space travel is "hot again." I had a thought a while ago about dusting off RED MOON and seeing if I could get another publisher to pick it up, but Jeremy Robinson of Breakneck Books actually beat me to the punch— he called, said a friend of his had read my book back in the day and raved about it, and would I be interested in having his company re-publish it?

I did go back and redraft parts of the book to bring it current with the post-9/11 world, so you could call it a "new edition." Also, an injustice with the first edition has been corrected: My friend Dan Brenton, who was a close collaborator on the project and wrote maybe 20% of the actual prose, is now properly credited as a co-author (my original publisher refused to have a two-name byline, so he got shunted to the "acknowledgements" page).

For all you interested in historical space travel and the like, visit the Red Moon website for more background on the book and the Firebird project it's built around:

http://www.luna15.com/

Celer wrote:

Thoroughly enjoyed it - hope they make it into a movie!

That's right— I gave you a copy of the first edition when we met a few years back. Glad you liked it! And a movie is my fondest dream, though it's not terribly likely. But who knows?

By the way, how did you get a Faym portrait of yourself done? Or is that an original on your avatar? Almost enough to make you believe in reincarnation...