Two brand new editions of "Black Sunrise" and "The Time Saving Agency" - books 1 and 2 in the Quantum Series by Christina Engela - are now available (along with the entire Galaxii Series) on GGG mall, a local digital content provider based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa!
"As I'd explained previously, my project for 2019 is to revise and reformat the Quantum Series to the same stringent standard as I did to the Galaxii Series in 2018!" Said local Port Elizabethan writer Christina Engela proudly. "The first two titles - originally written in 2005 - have already been completed and are already available!"
What is the Quantum Series about? Well, it's sci-fi with a touch of fantasy, it comes with interesting, believable characters - good guys and villains, and a couple that are hard to place - and the stories contain a lot of "heart"... Told in Christina's own unique style, these books come loaded with what she calls her "warped sense of humor"... which tends to get readers who didn't see it coming, around corners with a solid left-hook! Her writing has been compared to Douglas Adams and even to the great Sir Terry Pratchett (Focus Mid-South Magazine).
Christina's books are available on GGGmall for R30 each as epub format downloads, and the website caters for visitors who wish to see prices in USD ($).
The Quantum Series centers around residents and goings-on on Deanna - a faraway planet on the outskirts of the Terran Empire. It is somewhere around the 22nd century, and life is pretty tough for settlers and explorers and adventurers carving out lives on the frontier. On Deanna however, things aren't exactly as cut-and-dry as that... For starters, Deanna orbits a sun named Ramalama... and has two fairly small moons, which the first settlers to reach the colony named Ding and Dong. To give you an idea of what to expect when visiting the small backwater Terran colony, Ding frequently gets bumped by visiting starships who fail to see it when entering orbit, and the small moon - only about fifty feet around its equator - plummets to the surface. Naturally, life and property insurance is quite a business on Deanna.
The Tourist Office spends quite a bit of time each month, locating the missing moon, polishing it, and putting it back up in orbit again with three space tugs - after all, the moon features in the Encyclopedia Galactica and is a big draw for Deanna's burgeoning tourism industry! Deanna is known - at least to tourists - as the planet that plays ping-pong with one of its own small moons!
Set against this backdrop of insanity, the characters go about their daily lives, playing their parts in the broader story line. First we meet Cindy-Mei Winter, the female lead - a former CIA (Colonial Intelligence Agency) agent who (for reasons that become clear in the first novel) has had to start over on her own, and set off on a "road-trip" through space in order to find her feet again. Then there's Gary Beck, otherwise known by the handle "Beck the Badfeller" - his professional name as a bounty hunter, who is the male lead.
Among the aliens sharing the planet with the Humans, there are the Jim-waians, who generally keep to themselves and run small businesses and maintain their own neighborhoods in Atro City, the capital of Deanna. Then there's Fred the Arborian - a walking, talking, sentient alien plant who carries - or rather wears his own pot wherever he goes, and generally either creates loads of drama - or solves it. A refugee alien called Mark - formerly the commander of the Gimp ship that arrives to bomb Atro City in "Black Sunrise" - takes shelter in the basement of the Grauffis sister's ranch house, and for reasons that will be explained in the stories, is protected by some of the locals.
The only quantum physicist to live on Deanna - Dr. Gleichstein - who has an adorably little dog called Vluffy (due to the Herr Doktor's accent). Vluffy wears a little asbestos doggy-jacket and often helps the fellow look for his eyebrows - or otherwise spends a lot of time hiding under things.
Sheriff Peggy-Ann Muller, who runs the central precinct in Atro City, is a real SOD. Not that she's a bad person, or mean at all - unless you're a 'perp' - it's just that she's in charge of the Sheriff's Office Deputies - and anyway, that's what it says under the badge on their cruiser doors.
The colorful members of the Skeggs Valley Dynamite Fishing Club are retired military veterans with interesting backgrounds - such as the Space Fleet or Starmarines, who like to camp out on weekends and blow the crap out of the fish in the nearest river - and they often either lend a helping hand, or get into all sorts of trouble!
These two stories set the background for other stories and other new characters that appear in follow-up titles, and over time, enrich the overall experience for the reader!
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If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.
If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to christinaengela@gmail.com or use the Contact form.
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.
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