Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Raj Anand and his science fiction novel, Apophis.
Author’s description:
January, 2022: A dark monstrous twin-headed apparition – Apophis – feverishly races past the expanse of the Milky Way galaxy and bolts to the edge of the solar system. Recklessly accelerating, the sinister rock-dyad enters the gravitational keyhole of the blue planet and continues its resolute inebriated journey – to soon arrive with an apocalyptic impact on Earth.
December, 2012: Five sentient beings born in different cities – New York, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Azores Islands and Istanbul, discover amongst haunting memories of their phantasmal past lives, that it is their destiny to save humanity from the evil forces unleashed by the alien fiends – the Skyllats.
And now, the reincarnated 9-year-olds must rely on their shared, ancient wisdom to prepare humanity for the war across the galaxy that is imminent.
Guest Post:
The author provided us with the following guest post. Enjoy!
Ten years ago, one early morning, I wrote this note to myself. Which I discovered recently (I had forgotten about it), lying in an innocuous folder on my computer. What surprised me most was that in that prescient note to myself, I virtually predicted the course of my life over the next ten years – between 2010 to 2020.
It is as if some thing or someone is holding me down. I tied to the ground, wishing not for what I wish for am staring into space just above my bed.
What do I want to write about? I want to write stories about lost loves, a shared loneliness, deep longings and stories about missing the moment. But these stories need to be rooted in the here and now, and into a yesterday forgotten, and into a future remembered – all living and breathing – as I breathe.
But I don’t write, I wait to stir and in moments I do. But then I find a strange stillness, overcome me. I move, but only to prove to myself that I can.
Perhaps I am waiting for an angel or a muse to arrive and whisper, ‘hither lies thy destiny – you do know that – don’t you?’ But she remains hidden, perhaps she imagines that I have no need for her. Although, I remain unaware of such an imagining by her.
As a storyteller, one narrates and attempts to transport a reader into that other fleeting world. Where she (the reader) arrives without protection or gravity, travelling across an infinite, intricately interwoven web. The story nurtures the animate and the inanimate, several characters, a mountain, a home, several birds and even animals. All this, while the story obfuscates, turns and twists – to soon become what it should.
The page becomes a playground amongst vivid moments imagined, and amidst exasperation and exhaustion – we begin to develop a kinship – enlightened by the smile of a child or murdered at the hand of a mad man. In a moment where night would be day and a day would soon become dusk, we begin another voyage. The epiphanies flow, one into the other – joined assiduously, realized lovingly. And as readers, we are inspired to create, to dream and to love.
Sometimes – just sometimes – such effervescent stories become a part of our very being, a part of our metaphors, a part of everything we hold dear, stored away carefully, forever.
So, when do I start? When should I start? I have to, of that I am certain!
For I am willed by a distant force from across the universe to write, to fall into a deep magical trance and then to disappear within. That power is waiting, building a gale force inside, while she gathers an immense energy, that will burst forth any moment now, and when it does – it will mark a moment of great beginnings.
But such moments are dangerous too, when time races past at an enormous speed and in that whirlwind, everything that I am, everything that I was – shall be uprooted and annihilated. Permanently ended.
And I shall be lost completely.
Only to recall weeks or months later, that this enormous destruction is also a progenitor of great new beginnings and from this apocalypse – a new silence shall arise.
A silence broken only by feverishly written words, spoken by truly magical beings that amidst a verdant strife shall begin to realize their destinies. As shall I.
About the Author:
Savinder Raj Anand is an architect and has been teaching Architecture & Design at various Universities in India for more than 12 years. A long-distance runner with a wanderlust to explore the world, and write stories that traverse across diverse cultures. He lives in Goa with his daughter, a dog, and two cats.
Inspired by his then 18-month-old daughter – when she quoted Socrates – while they together sat in a children’s bookstore in Bangalore (LIGHTROOM) in early January of 2015, he has completed this – his first book – as she turns 7 years old.
Find the Author at
https://www.rajanandbooks.com/
https://www.instagram.com/rajanandbooks/
https://www.facebook.com/rajanandbooks/
The book is $0.99 During the Tour
Yes, there is a giveaway.
Savinder Raj Anand will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.
My Favorite Excerpt:
The Barred Spiral Milky Way Galaxy
At the Edge of the Solar System
January 17, 2022 (Earth Time)
A dark monstrous apparition, slingshot from across another realm, camouflaged in a jagged, charcoal black rock, adroitly surfed the gravitational waves of the universe. Feverishly racing past the expanse of the Milky Way galaxy, it bolted to the edge of the solar system and arrived from above the plane of the ecliptic – gyrating closer to the sun.
The dark fiend continued its charge forward, cutting across the path of Venus – nearly crashing onto it, before it deftly decelerated and reached a stable orbit in a retrograde rotation around the pale-yellow planet. This tenacious temporary satellite immediately scrambled to steal a fragment of the protesting planet’s enormous momentum. Catapulted along the plain of the ecliptic, recklessly accelerating at an impossible speed – it shattered, splitting into two.
The newly formed rock dyad – a small black moon orbiting a sphere of death – pulled free from Venus. It continued its inebriated journey, salivating at the opportunity to rain a resolute chaos upon an orphic azure-blue bubble still 40 million kilometers away.
Unbeknownst to the alien rock dyad, a faint sliver of gold orbited nearby. The 7.5-meter-tall and 3.2-meter wide Sentinel Space Telescope clothed in a gold foil, with a giant heat-reflector shield strung along its back; cooled to 40 degrees Kelvin by a two stage, closed cycle Stirling cryocooler. Its 0.51-meter aluminum mirror, dutifully scanned any and all Inner Earth Objects larger than 90 meters in diameter that ever dared to fly across its 200-degree angle of regard.
The Sentinel Observatory, alarmed by the presence of the ghostly twin-headed monster, recorded the black rock dyad’s trajectory, shape, size, mass, and rotational dynamics, before it urgently sent a coded message to its home base in southern Japan.
Becoming Extraordinary 