Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Guest author at Warp Speed Odyssey

Despite a near-catastrophic PC meltdown I faced a few days ago, I was fortunate enough to have managed to write a guest post on Warp Speed Odyssey blog about my latest cyberpunk thriller, Through Stranger Eyes. In it, I explain a couple of things about what I had in mind while writing the book, the “what if” questions that triggered the story and the plot, and a bit about the setting. You can read all about it here.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

[…] The story takes place several decades after the end of the last great war that saw the planet almost destroyed and had billions in casualties. Ten mega-corporations (The Matriarchs) run the world as a form of government and all of them deal in body augmentations among other things. Due to the lack of habitable areas on the planet, cities are now stacked one on top of another and they are called stacked megacities. If that’s too hard to grasp, imagine going to your window, looking out and up, and seeing the bottom part of another city on top of you instead of the sky. 

You can read the full post at Warp Speed Odyssey.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 1 Comment

Crutch Words – Walk – part 1

 

It’s been a while, but I’ve been super busy, I assure you! I’m setting up another website, this time for my book cover design business (or hopefully, soon-to-be business) and I’ve been spending a lot of time creating book covers (you can check it out here, if you like, but please bear in mind that it’s still under construction). Between family, writing my novels, designing book covers, learning about important legal stuff for both of them, and managing life, there’s hardly any time left for blogging. Still, I haven’t abandoned it completely. It’s just that I can only do it whenever I get some free time and if I have enough energy left (which is not as easy to find as you may think).

So, here’s a new list of synonyms that will hopefully help new and seasoned writers alike. This time, the word I focused on is WALK. Needless to say that you shouldn’t swap all instances of walk with these synonyms. Each word has a deeper meaning and can convey your message correctly only if used properly.

So here’s the list:

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Through Stranger Eyes – Cyberpunk Thriller – Release date and other things happening

Lots of things have been happening for a while now. First of all, I’m getting ready to publish my next novel. The book’s official release date is October 13, 2019. The genre is cyberpunk thriller. If you’re unfamiliar with cyberpunk, then the best (and simplest) definition is that it’s a futuristic urban dystopia, and practically all things cyberpunk can be summed up as, “high tech, low life.”

If you’ve watched movies like The Matrix, Blade Runner (both films), or the TV show called Altered Carbon, then you have already taken a taste of what Cyberpunk is all about. Or you may have read books like Neuromancer by William Gibson or Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. If you’re a gamer, look no further than Deus Ex and of course the game all cyberpunk fans are waiting (myself included), Cyberpunk 2077. All the above fall under the category of Cyberpunk. As you can understand, the subgenre is quite broad and is tightly related to Science Fiction.

At the moment, the book is with a handful of blog reviewers to get the word out, and of course my trusty team of ARC readers in order to get some early reviews when it goes live. So I’m quite anxious to hear what they think of it. To be honest, out of all the stories I’ve written so far, this has been my favourite and I’m really looking forward to hearing their thoughts.

Hmm, I forgot to mention the book’s title, didn’t I? The book is called Through Stranger Eyes and the series it’s part of is called Matriarchs – Silicon Gods. Through Stranger Eyes is book 1 of 3.

I have also finished drafting book 2, though it needs a lot of work before any of my beta readers get to read it. A LOT!

Lastly, I have been trying to find a decent plot for book 3. So far, I’ve come up with 5 different plots, but none of them impresses me much. I know how the trilogy should end, it’s just that I don’t like the way the events leading to the end unfold. It will come to me eventually (hopefully), but for the time being it feels like I’m churning out sub par ideas, and that is what annoys me the most. To be clear, each book has its own story line and its own heroes. Events take place in different periods, and by the end of the series the reader will have a clear understanding of how the world has evolved and been reshaped from its key players. So each book has to have a strong and independent plot from the previous books in the series.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more info on the world, the characters, and everything else related to the book.