World, Writing, Wealth discussion

Our first group read (2 of 2 because of a tie) of 2018 is science fiction.

Please join us in reading Michel Poulin's From The Fields of Crimea to the Sands of Mars

This is the seventh and last book of the Time Patrol - Nancy Laplante series.

From the streets of 1854 London, to the battlefields of the Crimean War, to the French siege lines around Maastricht in 1673 and to the besieged Paris of 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, Nancy Laplante 'B', a young field agent of the Time Patrol, continues with her missions in the 17th and 19th Centuries, finding both adventure and love, but also heartbreak.

In Timeline 'C', a parallel line to the original historical timeline, Ingrid Dows is in charge of the American space program and is also a very influential presidential advisor. She also made many enemies who are jealous of her power and influence. While dodging bullets, missiles and political daggers, Ingrid will lead the United States in a series of spectacular accomplishments in space.

Reading Schedule
(Because we started later than usual, I had to abbreviate the schedule.)

11 -20 January (Saturday)
Discuss chapters 1 - 6. Do not need to use spoiler tags for content in these chapters.

21 (Sunday) - 31 January
Discuss entire book. Do not need to use spoiler tags at all.

For the readers who would wish to read my book, I would like to say that it is available for download for free in PDF format on Goodreads (just go to the book page and press the 'download book' button, or the 'read book' under the cover picture. If you wish to obtain a copy in another format, like Epub, it could be obtained at Free-Ebooks.net. You can also email me to get a DOCX format copy from me.

My email is: [email protected]

If you have any questions about my book(s), don't hesitate to contact me, either via my Goodreads author page or via email.

Since we are sharing....I directed Amazon to make my first novel available for free download this week. It began today so please feel free to check it out and to provide me any criticism you think appropriate. I am earnestly looking for feedback from other writers so that I might improve as I grow in the profession. It is called The Demon Sonatas Book One. Thanks to any of you who make the time.

This thread is restricted to discussing the current group read. If you want to make an announcement about your own book, please open a thread in the Announcements & Book Promotions folder.

Thanks Alex. Sorry. Won't happen again.

Good news: I have just been able to get the Kindle and Epub versions of my ebooks, including those for From The Fields of Crimea to the Sands of Mars. So, any reader wanting to get a copy in order to do the group read can ask for one via email. Again, my email address is: [email protected]

Added reading schedule. (Because we started later than usual, I had to abbreviate the schedule.)

11 -20 January (Saturday)
Discuss chapters 1 - 6. Do not need to use spoiler tags for content in these chapters.

21 (Sunday) - 31 January
Discuss entire book. Do not need to use spoiler tags at all.

We can start discussing chapters 1 - 6.

I'm a bit behind :( job interview this week in addition to a shedload of other stuff! I'll try to set aside some time for both books.

Interesting start so far. 11% in and tiring a bit of the dynamic between Jeanne and Gordon.

The alternate timeline stuff is sufficiently mind-bending. Curious to see how that plays out.

One question I do have for the author is whether reading the first 6 books in the series would've made a difference in our understanding of what is going on in the start of book 7.

It would have helped a bit to better understand where 'Jeanne' and 'Ingrid Dows', the other main character in the book, are coming from and what shaped them, but I wrote my book in a way to make it fairly easy to readers to understand the context of the story and catch up, even without first reading the previous books in the series. I suggest to Kent to read a bit more further, as things will fall into place pretty quickly. After all, this is a nearly 700 pages ebook, with the action spread in time over three different centuries, so 77 pages or so read will only reveal a small part of the story's essence.

We can now discuss the entire book w/o having to use spoiler tags.

I'm nearing the end of Chapter 5 (~40%).

I keep waiting for something to happen that forces Nancy or Ingrid into a difficult decision. As of now, they are just superheroines that can do no wrong. And much of what I've read so far is a detailing of events as opposed to an exploration of characters.

The closest thing to a difficult decision was when Gordon confronts Jeanne/Nancy about who she really is. Yet despite the reader being told that she was given a warning for how she handled the D'Artagnan situation, she is allowed to get away with telling Gordon a half-truth.

What I remain curious about is why Nancy is in 1854 to begin with. It seems to be related to learning more about the time period, but what importance does that have for the time patrol people? Maybe this will become clear later, but I find this lack of motivation makes the superheroine stuff quite repetitive.

I have been impressed with the breadth and depth of Michel's knowledge. Writing in so many different time periods, while still getting the details right, can't be easy. The Crimean War part has been particularly interesting for me.

One question that has been nagging at me is a stylistic one. Often, dialogue with tags is written like this:

"Gordon, come here this minute." Demanded Jeanne.

I've never seen it where a tag is capitalized. Is there a story behind that?

About why Nancy is in 1854 is due to a series of events resulting from past actions/occurences exposed in the previous books of the series. Suffice to say that there is a very precise reason why Nancy NEEDS to be in 1854.

As for your comment about a capitalized tag, I am not sure I understand your question, as it is a term that is unknown to me.

I've been wondering about that, too. I started reading, and am struggling a little because things like this keep distracting me.

In the sentence Kent quotes, the standard form of punctuation is to use a comma at the end of the dialogue, and the tag would not be capitalized:

"Gordon, come here this minute," demanded Jeanne.

The reason is that, even thought the line of dialogue is a complete sentence in itself, the sentence is being quoted, so the line of dialogue in quotes is only part of the larger sentence that includes the tag.

If it was an action tag rather than a dialogue tag that would be different, e.g.

"Gordon, come here this minute." Jeanne frowned.

I am sorry, but English is not my first language and I never had classes in English grammar. Rather, I had basic classes in English while in primary and part of secondary school, then improved my English gradually in the following years, notably by reading a lot. I am thus asking for your indulgence if you find that my written English is not perfect. I am hoping on the other hand that the imagination and research I put in my books will more than compensate for the few English mistakes the readers may find.

I am sorry, but English is not my first language...

Apologies if my question implied anything about the quality of your English. I hadn't so far noticed anything to make think that it wasn't near native, if not native.

I've seen indie authors do something interesting things with punctuation and grammar, so I thought maybe you had chosen a similar path.

Regarding the capitalization thing, it would probably be a big pain to change, but I do think the story would flow better. I know when my eye sees a period, I automatically take a short pause.

Suffice to say that there is a very precise reason...

Ok, good to know.

That is okay. In truth, the finer points of English grammar still evade me.

About why Nancy 'B' is present in 1854, the short explanation is that, a few years earlier, the Time Patrol discovered that she was involuntarily part of a 'time causality loop' that could cause major damage to History's integrity if they tried to modify it. A time causality loop is an event where the effects precede the cause, mostly due to the vagaries of time travel. Basically, the Time Patrol had partnered in the 1940s with a French-based charitable foundation (the d'Orléans Social Foundation) which gave financial support to the efforts of the Time Patrol to improve the conditions of the poor and downtrodden after WW2. Then, over a decade later, the Time Patrol realized too late that they themselves had created the d'Orléans Social Foundation by assigning young Nancy 'B' the role of Jeanne d'Orléans, years AFTER its creation. Basically, the Time Patrol had to send Nancy 'B' to the 19th Century AFTER they found out that Nancy 'B' was already there! Since the d'Orléans Social Foundation was by then a critical supporter of the social work done by the Time Patrol, they had no choice but to send Nancy 'B' in the past retroactively, to avoid a ruptured causality loop that would have possibly split the timelines again. I hope that this will make sense to you, Kent, as this situation was developped gradually along the six previous books of the series and explaining it in detail would take pages.

I've so far read it ten times and still can't quite wrap my mind around it. :)

Is a "time causality loop" a real theoretical concept?

I will read over your explanation of the A, B, and C timeline concept a few more times and then give the above explanation another go.

A time causality loop is actually a concept that has often been used and explained in a number of sci-fi books involving time travel and written by various authors. I also believe that scientists working on theories about time mention the concept on some occasions.

I believe that the best for you, short of reading all the previous books in the series, is to simply read about Nancy's adventures and not worry about why she is in that time period. As for the A, B and C timeline concept, it is simply a variant of the old concept of parallel timelines used by many authors before me.

Ok, fair enough. :)

I did just pass the point where she explains the B and C timelines to JFK. I found that interesting. I like how you worked the mob theory about the JFK assassination into the story, and how Ingrid prevents "future" events like the Bay of Pigs invasion.

I wonder what's going to happen to the CIA...

The pregnancy "scandal" was a nice injection of uncertainty for our superhero. I can't help but think, though, that this could've been introduced earlier. Now I feel as though Nancy has some sort of purpose. She's rescued her three sons and is now running from the Time Patrol.

The idea of robots turning up in the 18th century to hunt Nancy down would have been an interesting turn of events. It may still happen, of course, but other than this Jack Crawford guy, everyone at the Time Patrol seems fairly level-headed.

One thing I don't understand is when it says 2779 BCE (not sure if I got the exact year right), Future Site of Auckland. So the Time Patrol headquarters chose to exist 5,000 years ago but with modern technology?

No, it is a bit more complicated than that, Kent. The Time Patrol was actually created in the future, in the 34th Century civilization of the World Council, represented by Farah Tolkonen. While most field agents of the Time Patrol are from the 20th or 21st Century, its technology is that of the 34th Century. Its main base was also originally in the 34th Century, but the danger of being attacked there by an enemy capable of time travel (the Imperium) pushed the Time Patrol in building a mobile base that can fly and travel through time and to move it to the distant past, in the year 3000 BCE (Before the Common Era, the non-religious alternative to BC, Before Christ). They chose New Zealand because no Humans had arrived there yet and wouldn't still for about another 300 years. By having their base in the distant past, the Time Patrol would be safe from any historical alteration made in modern times by the Imperium with the goal of 'erasing' the Time Patrol from history, notably by killing Nancy Laplante before she could help create the Time Patrol. Thus, to be sure to destroy the Time Patrol, the Imperium would have to search through the whole of the past and of the planet in order to find its base and destroy it.

Thanks for the explanation! This one I understand. :)

We can still continue to discuss this book, but I wanted to take a moment to thank Michel Poulin for allowing us the privilege of hosting your novel as our book of the month read.

For those of you who read his book, I encourage you to leave a review.

Thanks, Michel!