RULE OF CAPTURE a Kindle promotion for January

Rule of Capture

My novel Rule of Capture has been out for six months now, which means it’s bargain ebook time—my publisher Harper Voyager has the Kindle version available beginning today for less than the price of a cappuccino, far enough in advance for those who want to check out the follow-on Failed State when it comes out in August 2020.

Thanks to all of you who have already checked the book out and shared your thoughts on Amazon, Goodreads, social media, and by word of mouth.

RULE OF CAPTURE—on Kindle in January for $2.99

Failed State

Also available for pre-order: FAILED STATE

 

RULE OF CAPTURE—the book trailer

Book trailer as cinéma vérité—a window into the world of my forthcoming novel RULE OF CAPTURE, coming your way in a month and now available for preorder. Better with sound, so you can appreciate the awesome ambient score by Zed Hamblin Di Menno, the up-and-coming Austin filmmaker who directed and produced this, shot here on location in dystopia TX.

More about the book and preorder options (including print, e-book, and audiobook editions) here.

 

Publishers Weekly—Starred Review for RULE OF CAPTURE

Stoked to see this Starred Review of RULE OF CAPTURE in the new Publishers Weekly—”a glimmer of hope that the usurpers of the Constitution may be beaten at their own game, ‘one case at a time.'”

(And the part of me that worked hard to tune this generic polyphony especially loves reading that “Brown keeps tight control of his narrative even as this alternate America slips its gears.”)

PW on ROC 6-14-19

TROPIC OF KANSAS a Kindle monthly deal

Preorder Tropic of Kansas from Amazon

Just found out that my novel TROPIC OF KANSAS is a Kindle monthly deal, on sale through the end of June for $1.99—a great chance for those who haven’t read it, in advance of my new related book RULE OF CAPTURE coming out later this summer (and now available for preorder).

 

RULE OF CAPTURE cover reveal

RuleOfCapture PB hi-res final

I am delighted to share this cover reveal for my new novel Rule of Capture, forthcoming from Harper this summer. Please click through to the Harper Voyager blog for a guest post in which I get to share my more detailed thoughts about the cover, explain why it suits the story so well, and tell a bit more about the story and what we mean when we call it a “dystopian legal thriller.” And if it sounds interesting to you, please consider pre-ordering the book, which will be available in print, e-book and audio formats.

Cover Reveal: RULE OF CAPTURE by Christopher Brown

 

2018 Reading

wiener martial law

I’ve been keeping a low profile online lately as I finish revisions on my forthcoming novel RULE OF CAPTURE, but I was able to share some of my 2018 reading over at the Aqueduct Press blog, including some of the weird research I have been doing for the new book—like the curious little handbook pictured above. Thanks to Timmi Duchamp and the folks at Aqueduct for having me back again.

TROPIC OF KANSAS e-book a Kindle monthly deal

This week brought the news that Tropic of Kansas is a Kindle Monthly Deal from now through November 5—$2.99 for the e-book. Thanks to all of the folks who have already checked it out.

This week’s memory feed also served a reminder of one of my favorite squibs on the book, from one year ago in Booklist:

Booklist on ToK 9-27-17

A nice boost as I crank on what’s next.

Book birthday

Preorder Tropic of Kansas from Amazon

Today is the one-year anniversary of my novel Tropic of Kansas. I have been very fortunate in the reception the book has had, and am deeply appreciative of the support of readers, reviewers, colleagues, and the team at Harper who made it possible. The book’s recognition last month as a finalist for the 2018 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel was the culmination of an amazing year.

If you read the sampling of what folks have said about the book, you’ll find many crediting the author’s prescience, or remarking on the way the book seems ripped from the headlines. The truth is that I worked hard to set the book in a very different version of reality from the one we live in. It was essential to do that, I thought, to take the book where I wanted it to go. I wanted to imagine an America facing the kind of revolutionary unrest I saw people enduring in other parts of the world when I began writing the book in 2012, often as the consequence of our own actions. At the same time, I tried to ground it in realism—a speculative realism that puts a fun house mirror up to the world. So I focused on the parts of America I see out there that we have allowed to degenerate into what we used to call third world, threw in ideas like CEO presidents, corporate mercenaries, flying killer robots, ecological exhaustion, direct democracy, network politics, insurrection, and the possibility of Anthropocene renewal, and played with the mixing board. That my dystopian experiment resulted in a book whose scenes echo in the daily train wreck that is our newsfeed just proves the well-established truism of the Gomi-no-Sensei.

 

 

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Tropic of Kansas is a dark book, as many remarked. It went to dark places in an effort to find its way to a more hopeful future. It didn’t get all the way to utopia, but you could see it from there, out there on the horizon. Tropic of Kansas did well enough that I get to write two more novels that explore similar territory, through the point of view of a lawyer in an America that is experiencing the end of the rule of law— “Better Call Saul meets Nineteen Eighty-Four.” I’m about to turn the first of those books in, which has been a lot of fun to work on. Part of the aspiration, in addition to telling an entertaining story, is to frame a window onto the possibility of American renewal, grounded in green thinking and emancipatory politics. I like to think that science fiction has a role to play in imagining better real tomorrows, especially if it works hard to tell the truth, and that if we do our jobs well we might even fashion a means to actually open a crack in that window.

I appreciate the opportunity, and the support of all of those who have given my work a shot.

Talking heads

In the year 2017, science fiction writers will be invited to appear as commentators on Sunday morning public affairs shows.

I was deleted to have the opportunity to appear as a guest on “Story in the Public Square,” a great new program hosted by Jim Ludes of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University in Newport and G. Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal-Bulletin, broadcast on Rhode Island Public Television and the SiriusXM P.O.T.U.S. channel. We discussed Tropic of Kansas, dystopian realism, and the nexus of speculative fiction & American political life, in what I thought it was an engaging conversation. I very much appreciated the opportunity, and expect we will see more public dialogues like this as our daily reality becomes increasingly science fictional.

Story in the Public Square: Christopher Brown