Beyond The Empire

Hello, and welcome to my new blog, which just happens to have the same name as my new science fiction novel: Beyond The Empire. Promoting my book---and my other writings, which are also mainly science fiction and fantasy---is one of two main goals I've set for this blog. The other will be to provoke some political discussion among you-all over my opinions on various current events, historical events, scientific discoveries, etc. which I will try to post here as often as I can, interspersed with a few excerpts from my own writing and sometimes also news from the larger world of science fiction.

I believe that the phrase Beyond The Empire also works in reference to many of my political and social views, as may become clearer once I begin posting some of them. I realize that combining politics/current events and science fiction on the same blog may seem like a lethal combination to some people; but frankly, persons who can't relate at all to at least the general run of my politics are probably unlikely to buy my books anyway, so I will ignore the advice of some of my friends, give it a try and see what happens.

Comment by you upon these opinions of mine will not only be welcome, but I will see it as being extremely important to the future of this blog. Hopefully, there will be a mixture of  views represented by your posts which should lead to some interesting discussions; but I'll take it as it comes, whatever it may be. Obviously we all have to stay within the usual rules for posting online. Comments which fall outside the bounds of legality or common decency may lead to bad results for the poster. Otherwise, though, let's just try and have some fun with this.

Before getting to the politics and such, however, I must  return for the remainder of this posting to the science fiction aspect. I've been writing short science fiction and fantasy works for a few years now, and have occasionally enjoyed some success with them, but this is my first novel, so I can only hope that readers will think it's as exciting, funny and insightful as I have tried to make it. In a separate post here I will soon put up a sample of the novel, upon which everyone is as welcome to comment as they will be on my political opinions. Other samples drawn from various parts of the book will follow at convenient intervals, possibly about one per week.  

Beyond The Empire is currently available on Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book at http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-The-Empire-ebook/dp/B004RCLY1G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1299784914&sr=1-2, but anyone who doesn't have a Kindle reader may buy an e-copy directly from me for the princely sum of $4.99, and I'll format it as a Word file, PDF or a few other formats which my computer can produce, per what you ask for. You can contact me for that purpose at highlander2112@sbcglobal.net

Spammers and other undesirables who abuse this e-mail address will not only be detected and blocked by the spam filter but will also be tracked down by the nastiest space-pirates I know and summarily dispatched. Thus ends my introductory post. I'll be following it almost immediately with an excerpt from Beyond The Empire and then with my first political post, so I hope you'll look for those and comment/buy the book as you will.
-----William E. Frey