Author: Peter Wood

This is a public thank you to Nicki for putting the final polish on the manuscript with her proofreading. And, wow, so prompt.

Nicki is an author in her own right and you can find out more about her at her website:

http://www.nickijmarkus.com

 

A great deal has been happening with Mparntwe and this second tale of the Terran Diaspora is rushing towards publishing.

In fact the printers are eager to go ahead and are waiting for the pdf document to arrive.

There is a good chance the Australian paperback will arrive within two or three weeks.

My heartfelt appreciation goes to Collins Booksellers in Croydon who now have Attunga on their shelves.

More details on the PURCHASE page.

A fellow author has written a very nice review highly recommending Attunga as a great read for both Teens and Adults.

Have a look at it on the Attunga heading page of the blog – beneath the story excerpt.

Thanks much Ron.

Below is the interview about Attunga which appeared in the local newspaper. There’s a slight mix-up about the singularity which is a predicted event rather than a book.

Derek, a journalist with the Mountain Views Mail, conducted an interesting and enjoyable interview.

Story of future space

12 May 2017 10:32 AM .

 

By Derek Schlennstedt

Healesville resident and freelance writer Peter Wood has taken his first foray into the world of published fiction after his book Attunga was published on 11 March 2017.
The tales of the Terran Diaspora portray events occurring in the 22nd century, 200 years in the future.
The book, ‘Attunga,’ Aboriginal for higher place, follows three protagonists, Wirrin, Thom and Calen and their adventures while living in a large great habitat floating in space near an asteroid belt.
But when Calen encounters a baby dolphin with special abilities, life on the great space habitat changes forever and he and his friends become involved in a conflict over domination of the solar system.
Peter takes his inspiration from Ray Kurzweil’s singularity, a non-fiction book that delves into artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.
Attunga, although being set in a futuristic world encompasses varying degrees of traditional Aboriginal names and values.
Peter said the book started as a short story but once he began writing it ended up being over 400 pages long.
“The tales originally started as a mind game about what the future might hold after reading singularity by Ray Kurzweil, who is a futurist.
“I started roughing out specifications for a self-contained space habitat with considerable living space and the technology needed to sustain it and then one night, from out of nowhere, came the idea of writing a short story to show what life on such a space city might be like,” said Mr Wood.
“And of course it went from being a short story to a big novel.”
The book took a year and half to write and Mr Wood has plans to write a prequel called ‘Mparntwe,’ which is set 100 years before ‘Attunga’.
You can buy the book at Peter’s website https://diasporatales.net/purchase/

Right in the middle of Healesville and next to the town Post Office is the Judith Eardly Save Wildlife Centre and the kind people there have taken it on themselves to be an outlet.

Drop in to get your very own copy of Attunga, browse through all the other books and goods on sale there  and know that you are also helping wildlife.

As per the special request from Shepparton I have added, in the Attunga gallery, a number of dolphin pictures from the trip to Monkey Mia which was the inspiration for dolphins being part of Attunga.

I’ve had a few questions about the character names in Attunga and Mparntwe and I’d like to point out that none of them are made up words. The main characters have been given real First Australian names which have their own special meaning. In some cases the meaning matches their place in the story.

For anyone interested I’ve inserted a glossary as a sub-heading for the Attunga page.

Once a month in my hometown there is a trash and treasure market so I presented Attunga to see if there might be some interest.

Hoping for 9 or 10 sales – I didn’t expect much because how many trash and treasure hunters are likely to be looking for a scifi novel – I was delighted that 17 signed books went out. AND one was stolen!  lol a bit of a back-handed compliment.

If that many people from just one town are interested I might have to rethink my reluctance to chase publicity. 🙂

My misunderstanding.

I was delighted to see a great review on Amazon and invited Attunga readers to make more. Little did I realise that Amazon requires any reviewers to have spent at least $50 on the site before reviews are eligible to them.

Lol – $50 a review is quite an unreasonable ask. No wonder I didn’t get any takers.

An alternative, which I think will help, is to make a review on Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/

It’s free to join and seems to be quite interesting in its own right.

For a while I was under the misunderstanding that reviews on Goodreads showed up on Amazon but that’s not so. (I was tricked because the exact same review on Amazon was also the first for Attunga on Goodreads.)