When Stanley, an intelligent orangutan, is thrust into a battle for his own survival, he uncovers a deadly conspiracy at the heart of the corporation that created him. In a future where genetic experimentation has led to the creation of uplifted animals, Stanley finds himself at the center of a dangerous experiment by the powerful Hellinix Corporation. As his mind and body are pushed to the limits, Stanley must navigate a world of politics, greed, and betrayal as he fights for not only his freedom, but for his very survival.
With action-packed thrills and thought-provoking commentary on the ethics of genetic manipulation, this science fiction novella will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you’re looking for an exciting sci-fi story with a powerful message, don’t miss Stanley.
I’m releasing this first chapter of the story into the wild for you to enjoy. Please let us know what you think. If you’d like the rest of it, let us know.
NB: This is an unpublished first draft of the first chapter of Super Time Tokyo Zombie Party, a novella (or a novel?) in the Zero-Point Awakening series. This story comes after Counterpunch (Book 5) and before Beach Head (Book 6) in the reading order.
This is unedited draft, so you are reading it at your own risk. 🙂
Chapter One – Rina
The missile struck Shimbashi on a Thursday. Rina Jin had just clambered onto a stool to perform her spinning owl dance for a couple of dour-looking forty-somethings in matching salmon pink sports jackets, when a light bright enough to pierce the edges of the hoarding over the front window stunned her into silence. A few heartbeats later, the room rocked like it was a level three earthquake.
“Why are you stopping? Come on, we’re paying for this.” The guy had a greasy mustache. Rina knew the type. She’d never date them, but they paid well. Neither man seemed concerned by the flash of light or by the shaking. A light swung slowly back and forth above the table. Shadows spread and retreated, advanced and retreated.
“I’m so sorry,” said Rina. “I lost my concentration. Please let me start over.”
One of the first stories we wrote as ZZ, Hunter is a dark supernatural thriller story (YA) which is a prequel to the His Storm Blows Out the Light series (which begins with book one, Mindstorm). This story is available to you when you subscribe to our newsletter (along with two others). Definitely check them out if you have not already.
This is the brand new cover
This YA dystopian science fiction story, tells the story of a group of scrappy super-teens with psychic powers who are thrown together to fight against the shadowy Athena and the organization that is moving against them.
This is also one of the first covers Andrew tried to create. Here’s the original attempt for comparison.
The new cover is definitely easier to look at… And in case you did not know, there’s a brand new novel in this series coming soon! (It is currently going through the editing process, but we will update you when it is ready). The new book is called Psychclone and it continues on from Mindstorm.
Let us know what you think of the cover and if you’d like to see more from the Mindstorm world, then let us know that too.
The full box set of the Zero-Point Awakening series is ready for you to read! Featuring all eight books in this fan-favorite series. 1700+ pages—8 full novels—of alien invasion, assassins, scoundrels, and explosive military sci-fi action.
If you prefer to read complete series, then this one is for you. If you like stories about unlikely heroes thrown together by fate to defend the Earth from an impending alien invasion, hyper-intelligent orangutans and secret societies of assassins and high-tech weaponry, then you will love this series.
Sometimes we get asked how many projects we are working on. The truth is, it is far too many all at once and each of them is usually at a different stage of production. Some are just concepts with character sketches and ideas, some are fully completed drafts waiting for time to redraft or edit and others are rambling works in progress. This is an update about one of those. Codenamed “Muni”, this is a novel that has been in progress for… actually years now. Would it be fair to say that I was blocked for some time and unable to finish it? Yeah… that would be a fair comment. But now things are flying along and the draft is (as you will see from the progress bar below) getting much closer to completion than ever before.
So what is Muni?
It’s a dark fantasy set in an analogue of late Victorian/early Edwardian England. There is sorcery and bone magic, the East India Company (or something like it) and a magical guitar. At some point this will be finished and I will be able to write the blurb for it, but for now this will have to do. See? We are working on things in the background and some of those projects are nearly ready to release into the wild! Keep coming back for updates on where we are with Muni. I’m very excited about this book and I hope you are going to love it as much as I do.
It seems like every author and their dog is playing around with AI-generated art. Luckily, there is still a place for photoshop (or in this case GIMP). This is a composite I made using bits of AI-generated art. The cool thing here is that I learned to do the lighting effects on the figure. That’s something I have never been able to do properly before and this was a great experiment which I think has turned out well. What do you think? Anyway, back to writing!
So where are we at? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are still here writing up a storm. As some of you may know, we have completed the Zero-Point Awakening series. Series one is fully complete at a binge-worthy eight volumes. There’s also a prequel, Wunderkind which is one of the best books in the series in our not-so-humble opinion.
Side-by-side of the original Splice cover and the new cover
In other news we have updated the text of Splice and that updated text is now available with the new cover.
We have a warm place in our heart for the old cover, but the new one looks great and should do the trick nicely.
New Projects – Fantasy
After writing nine plus books one after the other we were understandably a bit burned out, so we have been focusing on new projects and trying to recover. One of the upcoming projects is code-named “Muni.”
It will be a Mark Lawrence, Will Wight-style action adventure/dark fantasy set in an analogue of Victorian England. This novel is still in the first draft phase, but progress is good and we believe it is currently at about 60% complete. Once that one is done we will be working on a brand new YA fantasy trilogy set in the Edwardian era – Code-named Phoenix. But more about that in the future.
New Sci-fi
For our readers who enjoy a good science fiction adventure, book two of our dystopian sci-fi series, Mindstorm is coming soon. The draft on that one is complete and we are proud to announce that we are doing a collaboration with one of our good friends and also a brilliant writer, JJ Segwis, on that and the final book in the series. Book 2 is currently titled Psyclone and we will announce ARC availability and release dates in due course. Book 3 of the series is in the planning stages but we promise it will be an amazing ride and a fitting end to the series.
We also have a brand-new space opera series dropping soon, so keep on the lookout for that!
And that’s it for now. We will come back in a few weeks with another update on where we are with these projects and much more. Thanks for reading and for your support!
The last 18 months we have been writing up a storm to finish the ZPA series and now it is done! We are super happy about that, not only because it means we were able to see the series through to a conclusion but also because it means we can now work on other projects that we have been wanting to get to. We are also a bit tired so have been taking a holiday for a couple of weeks. Now, though, we are back at work and will soon have something new to share with you. Those of you who are part of our private Facebook group or in our ZZ Discord already know what I am talking about. If you want to be up to date on all things ZZ and get the inside view, come and hang out with us.
For everyone who has been waiting for the ZPA series to finish before you dig into it, here it is! As we like to say, we think it is a binge-worthy investment. And if you enjoyed it, please leave us an honest review. It helps more than you know.
