Showing results by author "Johnny B. Truant"

They are coming. The countdown has begun. First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming.

The world's old political borders have dissolved. The NAU is civilization's carcass, a nation ruled by two political parties: Enterprise, the sink-or-swim party where each party member has no one else to blame for their starvation or astronomical wealth; and Directorate, whose members have a guaranteed safety net but can never rise above their station.

In 2013, Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt published 1.5 million words and made their full-time livings as indie authors. In Write. Publish. Repeat., they tell you how exactly how they did it: how they created over 15 independent franchises across 50+ published works, how they turned their art into a logical, sustainable business, and how any independent author can do the same to build a sustainable, profitable career with their writing.

Two weeks after the end of The Beam's first groundbreaking season, one thing is abundantly clear: the more the world changes, the harder those in power work behind the curtain to keep it all the same. With Shift, the NAU's national election, now just days away, the country's political parties fight even harder to win the citizen's minds—minds that are almost all permanently connected to The Beam, addicted to connectivity more deeply than any drug. Only those with the courage to think for themselves can work to change what seems like a certain future.

Find the missing. Fear the found. Three months have passed since the aliens' arrival, but little has changed in the skies. Motherships still hover, impervious to attack and communication. Spherical shuttles ferry about with unclear intentions. But the abductions of select humans have ended, and most of those taken have been returned - dazed, incoherent, and prophesying glory or doom, but home where they belong. Still, nine seemingly unconnected people remain missing.

Cameron Bannister and his group of survivors have endured the fall of their great city and gone searching for what they once believed to be a weapon but found to be something else entirely. It's something that will decide the fate of all humanity - innocent or guilty - if Cameron can summon the will to start the doomsday clock ticking.

Two years after first contact, Astral forces have established their fragile kingdom around the globe. Motherships occupy the cities. Shuttles patrol the lawless outlands. The pacifist class of Astrals known as Titans assist humans in running their alien empire while bloodthirsty Reptar peacekeepers ensure that order is kept. And unseen in the ships above, a third class of visitor calls the shots - the unseen Divinity, worshipped and feared by citizens in equal measure.

What they have lost, we must find. The resistance has nearly been wiped out, its numbers reduced to a scant fraction of what they once were. Meyer has fallen. With hope nearly a memory, something must turn the tide of war. A deadly weapon, known only as Thor's Hammer, brings promise of salvation. Now the scattered remnants of the human race must find the device and recover it before the aliens can discover its location. Because if the rampaging Astral forces beat them to the weapon, the fate of Earth will be sealed.

With the human race decimated, only a handful of survivors still wander the planet. They've forgotten the Astrals, and they've forgotten their pasts, ready for a fresh start…or at least that's how it was supposed to happen. In a small desert village without memory, the Lightborn labor unseen - while in the Mullah stronghold beyond, Clara fights an old battle to free the minds of mankind. She's come up against a wall. She's fallen into a trap. And now, finally, the walls have begun to crumble.

The ending has begun. The arrival of a metropolis-sized Astral vessel (the so-called "Eternity ship") sounds the opening bell for the beginning of humanity's end. Judgment is over, and now the Horsemen have come to restart the planet's clock. As the final countdown begins, Meyer and his crew find themselves with only two options: stay in the city and die, or run into the coming apocalypse and take their chances.

Iterate and Optimize is a behind-the-scenes peek into how indie publishing company Sterling & Stone grew their three-author team into a juggernaut, and a next-level guide for authors looking to explode their sales and do the same. In their cornerstone publishing guide Write. Publish. Repeat., best-selling authors Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright explained how to build a thriving international publishing empire with no luck required.

Angels and demons, myths and legends. It's been six months since Reginald Baskin became a vampire too fat to live happily with the beautiful undead - six months in which Reginald and his 2,000-year-old maker Maurice have learned that safety does not come with power. These days, Maurice is deacon of the vampire nation, but plenty beneath Maurice are still plotting to depose him...or dispose of him. But when a new and ancient threat rears its head, the Nation faces extinction and the truest of deaths - and Reginald, Maurice, and Nikki might be the only vampires able to stop it.

Immortality has met its match. Ever since the ring of fire, the world's vampires have seen their mortality. They won’t live forever after all - not if the angels who created them decide to snuff them like candles. What do the angels want? What did their command to “restore balance” truly mean? For most, the angels’ decrees mean mass murder and mass turnings...but the humans aren’t sheep, and won’t just lie down and take it forever. As Deacon Maurice tries to maintain order with Reginald by his side, panic consumes the vampire nation.

When overweight treadmill salesman Reginald Baskin finally meets a co-worker who doesn't make fun of him, it's just his own bad luck that tech guy Maurice turns out to be a 2,000-year-old vampire. And when Maurice turns Reginald to save his life, it's just Reginald's further bad luck that he wakes to discover he's become the slowest, weakest, most out-of-shape vampire ever created...doomed to "heal" to his corpulent self for all of eternity.

Desperate to forget the sudden death and illuminated betrayal of his new wife and longtime girlfriend, Ebon Shale flees to the quiet seaside town of Aaron, a place that's been calling him back since he was a child. But once there, Ebon feels lost. The small town's citizens are as odd as its energy, and seem to shift the reality before him. Will Aaron help Ebon forget, or will it swallow him whole?

Every writer wants to create timeless, memorable stories and characters who feel like real friends. The masterclass is no further away than your TV. Classic television holds up because of one thing: great writing. Fancy sets, innovative effects, or famous actors come and go over time, but well-written characters we connect with stand the test of time. No show in recent history has done that better than the 90s classic Friends.

When Eila Doyle first sees the strange boy beckoning in whispers from somewhere deep in her imagination, she questioned her sanity. She was used to seeing strange things with her eyes closed - that's what Eila did all day while strapped to the Blunderbuss, building whatever the Ministry of Manifestation required - but never before have those images felt so real, or so dangerous. After Eila learns the terrible truth about her reality and the monsters inside it, she thinks that maybe madness might be her only escape.

Amit is a member of the order of shadow monks, his every waking moment is spent training his body and mind to the peak of human ability - and beyond. But the order is pacifist, a repository for deadly weapons with their safeties permanently set to "on". Until everything is taken from him, and Amit decides that turning the other cheek is no longer an option. Now, every ounce of his training will be put to the test. His epic quest for revenge will see wrongs righted - or see Amit forgotten in an unmarked grave.

One drug saved the world. Now, the same drug threatens to destroy it. Ian Keys's rocket career took him to the top of pharma giant Hemisphere - creator of Necrophage, the drug that paused the outbreak and allowed the infected to live among us as normal. Ian's new position gives him access to secrets. To information the company doesn't want others to know. And now, an anonymous insider has begun feeding him ominous hints. Ian can't say what's wrong at Hemisphere, exactly - only that something is.

Throughout the 21st Century, our world (at least for those of us inside the NAU) has become increasingly connected. So much so that we really are now thinking as a single fluid organism, changing not just how we live our daily lives, but who we are as a species. In Sterling Gibson's newest thoughtful exploration, one of the NAU's most renowned thinkers explores and illuminates how hyperconnectivity and The Beam have changed us forever.