Libraries are an important place for book discovery. As an indie author, it’s even more important that I find ways to reach a critical audience of curators: the librarians!
This year I was excited to have an entire shelf to myself featuring my four dystopian novels at the American Library Association’s 2023 conference in Chicago. The event ran from June 22-27. My books appeared in a booth managed by the Independent Book Publishers Association. I’m a proud IBPA member.
Utopia PR bookmark
I made some really fun Utopia PR bookmarks specifically for the event! I’ve got extras and will try to find a way to make these available in the future. Let me know if you’re interested by tagging me on social media.
I had previously displayed and signed copies of The Wanderer and the New West at a pre-pandemic ALA conference in Washington, DC. I was unable to attend this year’s show in person, but I hope to get out to this excellent conference again in the future.
I love finding out that my books are available in libraries, whatever the format. All four eBook editions of my novels, plus the audiobook editions of my last two books, were accepted into the Indie Author Project and available to participating libraries. Books in physical and digital formats can also be acquired separately through distributors including Ingram and Smashwords. Please contact me if you need help finding my books.
Here are few more photos from ALA 2023. Here’s a fun idea: Try to find my novels in each picture like it’s a Where’s Waldo book!
Thanks to IBPA for taking all of the photos in this post!
I have a new short story out! It’s called “Six Straight Roads,” and here’s the short description:
Matt tries to be the hero at his friend’s annual Capture the Flag birthday tournament in this coming-of-age short story set in the Philly suburbs. Sweating and covered with sap, Matt learns who his true friends are beneath the shade of a 20-foot-tall pine tree. In the tradition of fellow sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, Adam Bender reflects on his childhood experiences and the innocence of youth.
It’s fair to say that “Six Straight Roads” has been a long time coming. I began writing the short story back in 2016. I was trying to come up with ideas, and my wife suggested I should write a short story based on a random title.
“Okay, so what’s the title?” I asked nervously.
She thought for a moment and said, “Six Straight Roads.”
I was stupefied more than inspired. What story could I possibly write with such a mundane yet cryptic title?
But then, as I kept running the title through my mind, I started thinking about the games of Capture the Flag my friends and I used to play in our suburban neighborhood in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The various pleasantly named streets formed a kind of grid that we used to set the boundaries and midpoint of the game’s map. It occurred to me that “six straight roads” could form just such a grid.
So, yeah, even though I’m allegedly a sci-fi author (and a dystopian one at that), I began writing a short story inspired by my childhood adventures in suburbia. But hey, if Ray Bradbury could do it, then so could I!
I quickly wrote the first draft of “Six Straight Roads.” However, I guess it never quite felt finished, because I didn’t release it in 2016. Then I guess I forgot about it for a few years, had a child in 2019 (Happy Father’s Day!), and got caught up in writing Utopia PR. It wasn’t until summer of (gasp) 2021 that I gave it another look.
I had just joined a Philly writers’ meetup group and was looking for something to submit for the group to read. I realized this would be a great opportunity to polish up my rough draft of “Six Straight Roads.” I ended up getting a really encouraging critique from a bunch of great writers. They liked the story and had a bunch of great ideas to make it even better. I took many notes, excited to finally finish the damn thing.
And then I put it off for another year. Okay, but in December 2022, I stopped clicking snooze on my to-do list, sat down, and got to work implementing my fellow writers’ suggestions. I finally whipped the thing into shape!
But then of course I dilly dallied on releasing it … until today! I really hope you enjoy it. It’s been on my mind for forever. Please leave a review on Smashwords or let me know what you think in the comments below.
By the way, there’s something pretty cool about the cover. Can you guess what it is? (The answer is below!)
Cover of “Six Straight Roads” by Adam Bender
Yes, I created the drawing with AI! Like probably all of you, I’ve been pretty flummoxed and frightened by the whole AI craze, but I thought one good use might be to help design a quick cover for a free short story. I’ll still hire real people to design my novels but I can’t afford to do that for every little piece I write.
I used DALL-E through the Microsoft Bing AI chatbot. At first I was thinking more literally about the title and tried to get an image of suburban streets from above, but it was kind of boring.
An AI generated suburban neighborhood. Credit: DALL-E/Bing
My other idea was to focus on the story’s main characters hiding out beneath a pine tree. At first I got some really f-ed up looking children, but specifying a cartoon style helped fix that. I still got a weird one with blank eyes….
Not bad but what’s with that kid’s eyes? Credit: DALL-E/Bing
But then I got the one I ended up using. I was intrigued by how the one kid looked kind of melancholy. It looks like there’s a story there!
Ah, that’s better. Credit: DALL-E/Bing
Oh yeah, those kids really do have a story! It’s called “Six Straight Roads.” Hope you like it!
The air quality danger is down to “very unhealthy,” so I can probably go for a walk!
I’m still going to a rock concert tonight (Temples — very good!).
Hey, now I can use some of my leftover N95 masks! Or maybe I can really get stylish and break out my old cloth masks!
Are we getting used to the kind of thing we used to read about in dystopian novels and post-apocalyptic films like The Road Warrior?
People often ask me if this kind of thing inspires me to write. Honestly, what it inspires me to do is to retreat into a popcorn video game like Marvel’s Midnight Suns or an optimistic TV show like Ted Lasso. Ah… fictional England, all they care about there is the next soccer football match!
I have been working, slowly, on a new novel. I am not addressing the COVID-19 pandemic or our imminent environmental doom. Those are great topics for other authors, but not much of an escape for me.
Yes, I’m still writing in the dystopian genre, and it’s not another comedy (though writing a political satirewas a great escape from a depressing series of years!). I’m having a good time figuring out what makes my characters tick, as well as spending more time on the world building as well. In other words, I’ve been taking a lot of notes. However, I’m feeling optimistic that the end product from all this will be worth the effort.
Recently, a great dystopian game took me by surprise.
But before I get to that, I want to give you a geeky origin story about the PC upgrade that enabled me to play it and some other awesome games! See, I’ve always enjoyed games but had started to get a little behind on the hardware. Sure, I have a Nintendo Switch and that’s always fun, but there were an increasing number of PC games I wanted to give a try.
A couple of months ago, I finally went ahead and upgraded my graphics card to an AMD Radeon 6700 XT. Not the best you can get, but definitely a good mid-range card to help me get my gaming fix, and more than enough to play some of the indie titles I was eager to try. To complement the card, I also upgraded my monitor to a 32″ screen with 1440p resolution and a silky smooth 165Hz refresh rate.
Upgrade complete, one of the first games I enjoyed on the new system was…
Stray
Why wouldn’t I want to play a cat in a dystopian future? Credit: Annapurna Interactive
I write dystopian fiction, so obviously I had to try this dystopian game. Stray was a short but sweet game with engaging storytelling throughout. The game begins with a cat slipping into an underground city where humans went to hide when the planet became inhospitable. However, the only life left down there is artificial. Well, that and radioactive rat things. As the cat, you help a little robot remember its past and try to help a group of sentient robots escape to the surface.
It’s cute! And scary! What really makes it unique is you explore the Blade Runner-esque world from the perspective of the cat. Messing around in the feline way (scratching doors, leaping from the floor, to a table, to a shelf, to a…) keeps the gameplay feeling fresh. And the neon-lit world looks absolutely beautiful.
Definitely worth a play if you’re looking for a sci-fi game that’s not about a beefy soldier shooting up aliens.
Oh, and by the way, I probably didn’t need a big PC upgrade to play Stray, but it sure does look good with the graphics settings turned up to 11. I definitely did need the upgrade, however, to play…
Marvel’s Midnight Suns
Planning your next move is half the fun. The other half is the KAPOW that follows. Credit: 2K
This one isn’t a dystopian game, but I did have a dystopian experience when I bought it not long after launch. After a couple really fun introductory battles, Midnight Suns started crashing … and crashing … every 15 minutes. I learned on Steam that some other players were having the same problem. But when I checked with 2K support, they basically gaslit me, forcing me to do all kinds of tests of my system rather than entertaining the idea that it might be their software that was the problem.
Then one day, 2K released a patch and the crashing stopped! Guess it wasn’t my system’s fault. Hopefully, my countless crash reports helped some other players out as well.
But I digress. While I could have let all that irritation stop me from playing Midnight Sun at all, the truth was those 15-minute play sessions were blissful while they lasted.
Midnight Suns is by the creators of XCOM and similarly has turn-based tactical fights. As a somewhat older gamer with a young child in the house, that kind of thing is really more my speed these days than a faster-paced action game. Anyway, Midnight Suns is like chess with superheroes and explosions! What’s not to like?
While this isn’t a dystopian game like Stray, it does focus on the darker, magical side of the Marvel Universe. While you still get to have heavy hitters like Iron Man and Spider-Man on your team, it’s cool to see a game feature this less frequently adapted side of the comics.
My only complaint (now that it’s stopped crashing) is that there is a whole lot of time between battles spent talking with heroes and wandering aimlessly around a mansion. It’s not unenjoyable, but the battles are so much more fun, and sometimes I just want to play a few of these in the row. I often only have an hour to play, and I feel like I end up spending 45 minutes of each of these periods outside of battle. The game could just use a little balance.
Speaking of balance, I feel like I’ve spent more time complaining about this game than praising it. Honestly, though, I do recommend it! If you’re a Marvel fan or like turn-based fighting with big production values, give this game a try.
Update (4/3/23): I jinxed it! After running fine for a couple of months, Midnight Suns tonight began crashing again for no apparent reason. Be warned.
More to Come!
When I started writing this blog post, I planned to feature a couple more games, but this is starting to feel a bit long! How about instead, I do a part two in not too long? In the meantime, let me know in the comments your thoughts on the above games or any recommendations you have about what I should play next on my upgraded PC!
Did you know?
I created two games based on my first novel, We, The Watched.
Dystopian authors like dystopian books! The fine folks at Shepherd, an up-and-coming competitor to Goodreads, recently asked me to write a list of five favorites from the same genre as my debut novel, We, The Watched.
For some reason, a lightning strike seemed appropriate after that title.
And no, I didn’t just list all my novels. It’s a mix of classics and some newer books. When you finish, also check out Shepherd’s dystopia bookshelf for more great reads recommended by other authors.
Please sound off in the comments if you’ve read any of my picks, or if you’d like to make some recommendations of your own. I’m always looking for my next read… After all, dystopian authors like dystopian books!
