I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the SPACE HOLES: FIRST TRANSMISSION by B. R. Louis Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Author: B. R. Louis

Pub. Date: March 26, 2024

Publisher: CamCat Books

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 320

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/SPACE-HOLES-FIRST-TRANSMISSION 

Saving an alien planet is nothing compared to meeting your sales quota.

Marcus Aimond, untrained tag-along aboard humanity’s first intergalactic exploratory commerce vessel, has a singular mission: sell off-brand misprinted merchandise.

When the rookie and his crew encounter the Nerelkor, a frog-like civilization, he is thrust head-first into an alien civil war. The opposing factions, Rejault and Dinasc, are stuck in an ill-fated feud driven by deep-rooted ineptitude. To avoid the planet’s total annihilation and establish a local sales office, Aimond and the crew must survive arena combat, reshape the very structure of the planet, establish world peace, and stay alive—for the sake of positive branding, of course.

Excerpt:

For some context: Hoomer, the pilot, wakes up after being knocked unconscious by falling debris in cave full of strange machines. The ship’s AI, Galileo, is present with her via a computer known as the Gainsbro Wrist-Mounted Communication Device for Simple Communication or G.W.M.C.D.F.S.C.

“Oh good, you’re not dead,” Galileo said. “I mean, I can fly the ship on my own, but it’s nice to have company.”

“The heartbeat didn’t give it away?”

“I’m equipped with an array of on-board health applications. All of which are entirely falsified.”

“I feel like we’d have picked up on that,” Hoomer scoffed.

“Your pedometer reading is 3,932 steps.”

“That seems right.”

“But you’re not counting, are you?” Galileo queried.

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

The G.W.M.C.D.F.S.C. sported twenty-six state-of-the-art health and performance metric applications. On one end existed sleep tracking, nutrition charting, and a daily stress tracker. Later development yielded the dream tally machine, teeth alignment tracking, and shoe width graphing. Each application was crafted by Gainsbro’s Interior Metric Conversion Group, a team designed to take all of the imperial units and convert them into metric. Having had no prior experience with software development, except with using basic math formulas in a web browser, management assured executive leaders they could not only handle the challenge, but do so without impacting, or utilizing, the budget.

They recruited a recruiter who recruited a professor of programming, who in turn recruited a student by mandating an assignment for the semester, which was then put off until the final twelve hours of the term. The result, a stellar listing of applications, each with about three lines of code: a random number generator, a static output, and a noise.

“So the heart rate monitor that keeps track of if we’re alive…” Hoomer said.

“A restful seventy-two beats per minute,” Galileo disclosed. “Which it would likely remain had you actually died.”

“Great.”

“On a positive note, you would continue to burn a wondrous amount of calories while no longer actually being able to move. On account of being less living.”

“You’re going in the toilet when we get back.”

            Gold lights bounced back and forth across the communicator as a rewarding dinging chimed.

            “Congratulations, you’ve reached your step goal,” Galileo cheered.

            “Haven’t moved from this spot.”

            “Yet you’re pleased, aren’t you.”

            Hoomer’s deadpan glare broke. “Yes,” she conceded.

            “It’s the ding.”

            “It’s so cheerful.”

About B. R. Louis:

 

B. R. Louis is a pediatric critical care nurse, outdoor enthusiast, and tech nerd with a love for storytelling, writing, and making people laugh. Travels around the world have introduced him to different cultures and unique forms of storytelling. Through all of the exploration and time spent in countless discussions, he’s found the one innate thing that ties all people together is our ability and desire to share laughter.

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Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of SPACE HOLES: FIRST TRANSMISSION, US Only.

Ends October 8th, midnight EST.

Book Playlist

This is surprisingly difficult to come up with. Most of the time I like to put on something instrumental. Groups like Two Lanes, We Are All Astronauts, and Explosions In The Sky provide some great ambiance. I’ll search for music to match the feel of a scene, or if I’m editing, anything repetitive can help me drown out background noise without stealing focus. I’ll sometimes listen to the same song on repeat for an hour or two since I’m effectively tuning it out but it’s still working to keep me in the zone. It probably sounds like something that would drive most people nuts, but it works! 

I do love discovering new music. While I’ll keep the more lyrically dense stuff for when I’m working on a different type of project, I’ll often let YouTube cycle through playlists or jump me between similar sounding songs. The only downside to that is sometimes I really fall in love with a song or band and can’t find them again as I wasn’t paying attention to who or what it was. It leaves me digging through history and sampling bits of songs to find that sound again.

The most variable part of all of this tends to be the volume. I don’t think there’s a pattern or trend to it. Sometimes I need the music to be barely audible or I can’t focus. Other times, if I’m not giving myself some form of tinnitus, I’m not really feeling it completely. 

As for some specific tracks:

BLACKSHAPE – ITIIITIATIIHYLIHYL
TOOL – Disposition
HÆLOS – Somnum
We Are All Astronauts – Ether
TWO LANES – Distance
M83 – My Tears Are Becoming A Sea
Reasoner – I’m Still Here
Explosions In The Sky – Day Six
Alt-J – Nara