Indie e-Con Scavenger Hunt - Stop 24

Hey all! Remember Indie e-Con, the shin-ding I put together last year? Tons of fun, wasn't it? Well, I'm doing it again, but this year over on my new GiraffeCrafts blog. Next week. *screams*

Anywho, in build-up for Indie e-Con, we're holding a scavenger hunt. You know, the sort where you hop from blog to blog and end up with a string of something that you email to someone and get a prize.

Well, there's a number at the end of this post that you'll be collecting.

As for the prize? It's pretty shiny, too.

Ace Carroway 2-Book Paperback Set

3 random ebooks from Indie e-Con authors

Cover Design by Alea Harper

Bookshelf Necklace donated by Rachel Rossano

(Please note that the Ace Carroway Paperbacks and the Bookshelf necklace are US only. If your name is drawn and you live outside the U.S, you will be supplemented with extra ebooks, and a second name will be drawn to receive the papberbacks and necklace)

And, yes, that's the self-same Alea Harper who designs the graphics for Indie e-Con, and who did the covers for both my Rizkalands and the Ankulen. Whoever gets their name drawn is in for a TREAT.

Please note that this is the LAST stop on the hunt, however, so please yourself over to Kandi Wyatt's blog and

Have you read everyone else's posts? Well, onto the author I'm featuring. Guy Worthy. Guy's the author of the Ace Carroway books that someone will be winning, and I've read the first one. An interesting little story that reminded me a bit of Hogan's Heroes. (No, I'm not dating myself ... my mom made my sister and I watch all of the old shows ;) Just set in WWI, instead of II, and with a sixteen-year-old female pilot in place of Hogan. (Which ... is historically inaccurate, but the author admits it, and I don't think a fellow could get away with what Ace did.) My one complaint about the story is that Ace is a bit on the Mary Sue-ish side, as I never really saw her struggle with anything until nearly the end of the book, but I'm hoping that the next book shows more development for her character.

On to what Guy has to say.

Hello! My name is Guy Worthey. I’m @guyworthey on twitter and @guywortheyauthor on facebook and I blog at guyworthey.net.

I write a novella series about Ace Carroway and her adventures in a world that’s almost 1920s earth. The stories are old-fashioned yarns with dastardly villains, narrow escapes, humorous banter, and outrageous plots. Our dauntless hero is Cecilia “Ace” Carroway. She’s strong and smart, and trained throughout childhood to get that way. She leads a marginally-organized gaggle of five male associates of various shapes, sizes, abilities, and dispositions. But let’s yak about inspiration.

One item a writer needs is inspiration. This can be anything. Today, for example, I was chatting with my son. He showed us how he persuaded a computer program for electronic music to find a pitch from his cello input and match it with a synthesized tone. BOOM. Inspiration. My mind drifted to an E. E. “Doc” Smith space opera where spaceship pilots were described as artists, as their feet and hands danced on all the controls. Suddenly, I had a vision of an organist improvising a musical riff, and the music gets interpreted as control sequences for the spaceship. This sort of pilot would control the spaceship by composing music in real time. I know that’s awful heady and nerdy, but, hey, that’s me. This idea went into my little notebook of random synapse firings for potential later use.

A couple of things inspired me to write Ace Carroway stories. One is a deep and abiding nostalgia for pulp fiction, especially the more fantastic stories such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, or the Tom Swift and Doc Savage stories. One example of pulp fiction is “Doc Savage and the Polar Treasure.” The Doc Savage stories were written by ghost writers, but all the early ones were by ghost writer Lester Dent. It’s short, action-packed, and a bit bizarre. The characters are sharply drawn. It gives the reader the feeling that they are in the hands of a good storyteller, but the reader cannot guess how the tangled threads will connect at the end. That’s the sort of thing I strive for with the Ace Carroway stories.

The number two inspiration was feminism. It’s high time for smart, strong heroines. By day, I’m an astrophysicist. In that field, even forty years ago, gender equality was a hallmark. Not a soul would claim that men were inherently more suited for astronomical pursuits. And yet, today, the day I write this (May 13, 2018, for the record) that pernicious 15% pay disparity hangs on, giving lie to our noble intentions and righteous words. If men and women are treated equally and esteemed equally, why are women paid less? The obvious answer is that bias remains. I’ve been on committees that research this bias (let me be clear: I study stars and galaxies, not people, so I mostly just listen and learn when I attend such meetings), and the causes are complicated. There are institutional biases, societal biases, biases regarding childbirth and child rearing, and even patterns of language usage that affect downstream pays scales.

Anyway, long story short, I like to dream up ways that men and women can retain their romantic sizzle and chemical attraction while still treating each other with mutual respect. And so, turnabout being fair play, putting a woman in charge is an excellent way to reveal gender based power politics, and so I have leapt into the fray with Ace. I feel that I need to put in a disclaimer: you’ll hopefully never consciously notice the feminism in the stories. Ace fights bad guys. She does not organize leaflet campaigns. In fact, most of the feminism gets displayed via her associates. I’m not likely to write about a construction worker whistling at Ace, but if he did, it would be one of the associates that would come over and break the whistler’s nose, not Ace.

My final inspiration is dorky: I just wanted to spin some fun blarney.

Anything from a romance that breaks up to a stubbed toe can be inspiration for a story or a character. I guess the bottom line is to pay attention. Writers observe.

With that said, “Here’s looking at you!”

This is an 8, by the by, not a fancy S. Which is what I might have thought it was when I first saw it...

Now, take it and all of the other letters that you've been collecting and fill in the blanks below:

You can pop your results into this form here! (And please note that, yes, Kyle Robert Shultz's and Guy Worthy's letters are backwards. We had to swap their positions in the hunt at the last moment and completely forgot to get them to trade graphics. So sorry!)

If this is where you're starting, please hop over to Kandi Wyatt's blog, to find my guest post which is the start of this journey. To find a list of all of the blogs, in order, go here.

Done with the adventure? You're welcome to join us over at FB for the Meet-and-Greet, where several of us and some more authors, are going to be hanging out and being awesome!