I got word today that Steven McEvoy at Bookreviewsandmore.ca has posted a review of book 1, Fidelis.  As you can guess from the review, I’ll be definitely interested to read his review of book 2, Spero.  I hope I was able to sustain Steven’s interest!

Fidelis is the best speculative fiction I have read since the early 80’s. Reminiscent of Heinlein’s writings with the skills of a master wordsmith, A.R. Horvath has created an amazing world and looks to a possible future that is dark and brooding. He creates a world in which the United States has entered a second dark ages after a military defeat. The writing is superb, the characters believable and engaging. As you read you become transported into the events by Horvath’s skill with the pen for he draws you in and captivates you. His storytelling is masterful.

Read the rest of the review.

The biggest day of shopping each year is coming up in just a few days.  We are all told we must buy buy buy in order to save the economy.  Just in time, I am bringing out the first book Fidelis, with a new cover and larger print.  This second edition of the soft cover has the same cover as the hard cover of Fidelis.  Now, with the Birth Pangs series now consistently themed, you will find that a gift of the Birth Pangs series is an attractive, matching gift for the holidays.

If you recently purchases a copy of Fidelis in the first edition cover, please contact me and I will send out the second edition to you for $10 which includes media mail shipping.  This is essentially sending you a copy at cost.  Email me at author@birthpangs.com.

I note that Amazon.com is now selling Spero for $14.35, undercutting me by a good sixty cents!  No biggie.  I can still do what Amazon.com can’t, though, and that’s sign the books.  An autographed set of a second edition Fidelis and first edition Spero is just right for the readers in your life.

In conclusion, make sure that if you buy Fidelis in soft cover that the cover is red and has the ISBN of 978-0979127656. Hopefully, the old one (978-0979127618) will be replaced by outlets like Amazon.com and the reviews transferred over appropriately.

Jean Heimann has posted a review of Spero on her blog.  She also had reviewed Fidelis.  Check out her Spero review! (The link to her review of Fidelis is posted on that same page)

This is a continuation of an interview done originally by audio. That audio is lost, so I am responding in text. This is question 9:

It is clear in your writing that you go to great lengths to develop masculine men and feminine women, yet you go to great pains to make your masculine men not macho, and your feminine women not submissive or needy in the least, while remaining very feminine. What draws you to explore these issues of masculinity and femininity?

I suppose there are two aspects of this question.  What draws me to explore these issues and how did this get reflected in the presentation of men and women?

The ‘draw’ is easy enough.  In my own life I felt that there were a missing components of ‘masculinity’ in my own life, like I was meant for something quite different- as a man- but for one reason or another I was not acting like a full man.  If there is a ‘masculine ideal’ I wasn’t measuring up.  There seemed to be others who felt the same way, even if their conclusions were different.  The extraordinary success of Elridge’s “Wild at Heart” I think illustrates this.  I don’t think that only men feel this disconnect, either.

At any rate, it seemed to me as I tried to find a way to resolve this issue that the very structure of our lives de-masculinizes and de-feminizes us. Read the rest of this entry »

Please visit www.birthpangs.com/cart to buy Spero

(and Fidelis) from the author or from Amazon.com

Fidelis, my first book, is Latin for faithfulness.  The second book, Spero, is Latin for hope.  Spero is an exploration of what hope is and why we need it.  It is an exploration of what things are good to put our hope in and what things are bad to put our hope in.  In the fictionalized America of the future portrayed in the Birth Pangs series, all of the things that people have traditionally put their hope in have been brought low.  There are no government agencies, no schools, and not even churches.  In the face of daily perils, people have to figure out how where they are going to place their hope.

It is interesting to me that the political candidate running on ‘hope’ is also running on ‘change.’  I think this illustrates the root of the problem.  The best place to put your ‘hope’ is where it won’t shift beneath your feet.  Also, we need to be clear about what things we hope to overcome.  Nearly all of our systems and institutions are geared to address certain day to day realities that are important but not, I’m afraid, ultimate.  There is one problem that surpasses them all:  death.

Spero is about people- even good people- putting their hope in lesser means to tackle lesser problems and being confronted with the consequences of that approach.  Spero is about being confronted with our chief problem and challenged to consider what possible solutions there might be to that problem… and whether any of these are within our control, or obtainable by our own effort.