A Life Full of Quarks

Welcome to this website! This website provides information on the novel A Life Full of Quarks, including free-to-read sample chapters, plus links to Amazon and other vendors (both e-books and physical volumes). It also includes news, other interesting links, and musings on science and literature.

Out of curiosity, I looked up how many books are published in a year.

Although I received an online Kirkus Review (starred!) a few months ago, the review is now appearing in the official Jan 2025 edition of Kirkus Reviews.

The novel has been shortlisted for the Reedsy Discovery Editor's choice award! (UPDATE: But did not win.)

On November 20, 2024, my novel A Life Full of Quarks reached #3* on Amazon!...

*..in the niche category of "absurdist fiction."

You can’t just launch a novel and assume the world will find its way to your door, or even to your cash register. You have to advertise, and part of advertising is giving readers a good reason to plunk down their money to read your story.

"Brilliant, Funny, Nostalgic, Scientific - A Perfect Blend of Philosophy, 'Dead Poets Society,' and 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'"

"Heartbreaking and hilarious" -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Science is a word that is used a lot. People often appeal to science: “Science says…” and “Trust the science!” Other people attack science and try to undermine it.

What is science, that garners such attention? Is science really that special and different? How did it come about, and why only in one place, Renaissance Europe? How does science actually work? In a series of essays, I hope to address some of these questions.

In principle, you can slap a book onto Amazon, add a few search terms, and then sit back for the profits to roll in. In practice, given there are many thousands of books published each year, you have to gain attention for your book. This is doubly so for self-published authors. And this is the most painful part for me.

I had written, and rewritten, and edited and polished my novel. Now it was time to move towards actual publication. 

This is my story towards self-publishing.  If you are thinking of self-publishing your book, it may be helpful, though it will likely not be exactly the same path.  There are many, many websites which offer services at almost every level for writers. 

I only recently read Homer’s Iliad in full. Like many people, as a child I became fascinated by Greek and Roman stories of gods, heroes, and monsters. But the translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey I picked up were so awkward and off-putting I quickly lost patience and put them aside.

A few years ago, my wife and I bought the new translation by Emily Wilson of the Odyssey, and over the course of many nights read it aloud to each other.  (Early in our marriage we picked up the habit of reaching aloud to each other in the evenings, and keep an eye out for suitable texts.)  More recently Wilson has translated the Iliad, and I decided to finally read it—though silently, to myself.

We separate fiction into categories, or genres: romance, mystery, historical, and of course science fiction and fantasy. Such categorization is useful as we may prefer romance over science fiction, or fantasy over mystery.

But the mechanism of categorization can be puzzling. How do we delineate what is and is not science fiction?