❀New Scifi/Mystery Book Alert❀: The Edison Enigma by Thomas White

 

Title: The Edison Enigma

Author: Thomas White

Publication Date: February 29, 2024

Pages: 196

Genre: Scifi/Mystery 

Edison, a Chicago physicist, manages to successfully transport an object through time. Almost immediately following this success Dr. Edison is shut out of the facility and told by benefactor Raphael Barrington, to take a vacation. He is contacted by Don Rivendell, a grizzled old man with a secret. Rivendell explains to Tom that he is not the first person to discover time travel. Someone else went back and changed history by saving a young girl from dying in an internal combustion engine explosion.

Dr. Edison is tasked with going back and fixing history. He travels back to 1904 to find the younger version of Rivendell and stop him from saving the girl. 

You can purchase your copy of The Edison Enigma at Amazon at https://t.ly/_NOoo.

Book Excerpt:

Tom, Lori, and Jerzy entered the lab and stood on the landing, looking over the commotion. There was a hustle and bustle of frenetic activity as lab personnel moved from station to station, checking data, preparing modules, and entering critical information.

“Every time I come in here, I expect to see tables with bubbling test tubes and old, toothless women sweeping the floor,” Jerzy said.

Lori laughed. “Well, it would be hard to explain what bubbling test tubes have to do with this project, but I get your drift. We are kinda like Dr. Frankenstein with this whole thing.” Tom vaulted down the stairs and skipped to the control area on the opposite side of the room. He high-fived everyone he passed and crossed to an older, balding man with a semi-circle of gray hair around the fringe of his scalp. A short gray mustache covered most of his upper lip. The man had a slow gait caused mainly by forty straight hours on his feet. Tom hugged him. 

“Bruce! This is it! I feel like tap dancing!”

“Well, I’ve put up with worse from you. We’re just running the final check-down now; almost complete. The data you just sent down is perfect.” Bruce had a New Jersey accent highlighted by a Yiddish lilt that caused his mustache to bounce when he spoke. 

The retrofitting of the building was designed specifically for this project. Constructed like a sports arena with a high domed ceiling, the lab was ten thousand square feet open from wall to wall. Three levels encircled the room starting at the floor. Each subsequent level rose above the one below and contained a series of computer stations lined up like the NASA control room, collating, interpreting, or generating data. The entire room was connected, hardwired, and air-gapped to The Quint's central motherboard. The Quint was the fastest and most potent AI computer known to man and contained the most significant elements of learned behavior and artificial intelligence. More significantly, it could determine and pinpoint a specific moment in time. 

In the main staging area, in the center of the room, was the masterpiece of the entire project - The Time Tube. The Time Tube was a four-story, transparent tube made from indestructible acrylic conducive to energy absorption. As energy swirled through the Time Tube, it created the power needed for time travel. It stood 18’ tall with an eight-foot diameter. A raised platform ran halfway around and had six steps that led up to a full-size door allowing access to the Tube. 

The lab's roof was six stories high and supported a series of lighting instruments, air conditioning units, and safety mechanisms.  Among the other things that lived in the ceiling was a series of tubing that wrapped around the room like a tornado and converged from the roof to the lab's centerpiece. This series of tubing was called the Cyclone. Air was pushed through the Cyclone at incredible speeds, producing centrifugal force. That energy transitioned to Euler acceleration, creating a variation in the angular velocity. Theoretically, this opens a window in time and allows the object to pass through.

After years of research, study, and failed experimentation, Tom finally understood that time is, in fact, parallel, meaning that time moves through us rather than us moving through time. In essence, time is an ever-evolving moment. We move from one plane to the next as we move forever forward. The wonder is that it is infinite, never-ending, so we will never reach the edge of time as time continues to build moment next to moment. Once Tom accepted that theory, the means of moving through time began to evolve. 

With enough energy, we can freeze ourselves in a moment, thus staying still as time moves on. The challenge became moving through thousands of moments to move back in time, or more accurately, let a specific moment of the past catch up to you. It had taken Tom and his crew almost five years to reach this point. They believed they could generate enough energy to move back and forth within their time sphere to moments that have happened or will happen and return to their own designated moment and survive. 

One of the most daunting challenges the team had to overcome when sending something through time was having the entire entity arrive in the same moment. Any portion of an entity that arrived a millisecond later than any other part of that entity would be split in two by the paradox of time. Using an optical lattice clock allowed the team to calculate to a precise moment. When coordinated with The Quint, the top or bottom, front or back, the side to side of any entity would arrive at the same exact moment in time so as not to be split apart. 

Subsequently, above the main control area, against the back wall, was the read-out of an optical lattice clock, accurate to one second every 400 million years. It was this technology that allowed Tom and his staff the ability to pinpoint a single moment in time. The optical lattice clock uses laser beams instead of atoms to calculate the second. The light from the laser excites the strontium atoms and increases the accuracy of determination of time.

With The Quint’s exceptional calculation ability, Tom could capture moments within a zeptosecond, one trillionth of a billionth of a second, targeting specific areas of history or periods of time, with phenomenal accuracy.  Projecting these moments into the future would allow them to move forward in time as well. Theoretically, at least. 

That theory would be tested this afternoon.

About the Author

 

Thomas White began his career as an actor. Several years later he found himself as an Artistic Director for a theatre in Los Angeles and the winner of several Drama-Logue and Critics awards for directing. As Tom’s career grew, he directed and co-produced the world tour of “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out Of Their Shells”. The show toured for over two years, was translated into seven different languages and seen by close to a million children. Tom served as President and Creative Director for Maiden Lane Entertainment for 24 years and worked on many large-scale corporate event productions that included Harley Davidson, Microsoft, Medtronic Diabetes, and dozens of others. The Edison Enigma is Tom’s third novel following up Justice Rules which was nominated as a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association 2010 Literary contest, and The Siren’s Scream.

Author Links  

Website | X (Twitter) | Facebook 1 | Facebook 2 | Goodreads

❀New Nonfiction/Writing Book Alert❀: Mastering Your Scenes by J.A. Cox

Title: Mastering Your Scenes
Author: J.A. Cox
Publisher: J.A. Cox
Pages: 78
Genre: Nonfiction/Writing

Mastering Your Scenes was written with one main purpose, to help give authors and writers a creative boost in their scene writing and toss writers block into the oblivion of the abyss. In order to accomplish this each chapter is written in a workbook like format so that the steps provided can easily be implemented after they are explained. For each element of scene writing that is presented J.A. Cox explains the How, Why and When of its use along with his own description so that the information is easy to assimilate. He provides copious examples from his own writing of these elements in action as well as from shows and movies.

You will be given an anatomical look of what composes a scene and understand what goes into creating scenes that are engaging, seamless, and bristling with activity without any fluff. Mastering Your Scenes gives you the practical advice you need to keep your readers turning pages and falling in love with your characters. With the steps you will learn there will be no more question of if that scene fits or seems out of place.

“A slim, concise and well focused treatise on how to write and master scenes and how writers can become authors by mastering scene writing. The various elements of a scene are discussed with well known examples and the key facts of each element are presented in depth, with a well laid out structure. The focus on the when, why, how, and the practical application tie up the various aspects of an element neatly and are very well explained. The author’s observations based on experience in each area further adds to the utility of the treatise.”

– The International Review of Books

Buy Links:

Amazon | Kobo

 

Book Excerpt

Since this book is all about writing a scene, it would be a good idea to discuss what it is before we begin talking about how to build one.  I am sure that you already have many ideas on how to answer the question above, but please humor me for now.  

Let’s look at a scene in this manner:

• As an episode.

• As a segment of an episode.

Some episodes are short, and some are long, it really all depends on how they are made.  Also, an episode is the medium in which a portion of a series plays out.  A scene can also be viewed in the same manner, as a medium in which a portion of your story plays out.  On that notion, some may be short, and some may be long, but they still fulfill the same purpose.  They provide the boundaries to contain all of the myriad of things that will take place at a certain point in the story.

Consider that within an episode that there are segments in which very particular things happen, such as a robbery at a bank, a high-speed chase along the highway or even a ship being boarded by pirates on the high seas.  All of these segments placed into a written format would actually be the scene itself.  I hope I am not confusing you but am just trying to convey the fact that a scene in a story fulfills the purpose of both episode and segment combined.

The purpose of this book is to look at the pieces that go into creating the segment so that you can create the most dynamic episode possible.  Another very important factor about a scene, is its continuity.  Whether one scene directly spills into the next or it is briefly interrupted as you transition to something else for a few scenes and pick back up where you left off, you still want things to be seamless. One of my goals is through the use of these elements to empower you with the ability to do so with ease. You can think of each element as a layer on which to build each scene in your story and as your story evolves your use of each will shift as some may not be needed and others will be essential.  I will help you to realize how they all tie together to bring out the best in your scene creation.

– Excerpted from Mastering Your Scenes by J.A. Cox, J.A. Cox, 2020. Reprinted with permission.

 

About the Author

J.A. Cox is a husband, father and disabled veteran. He is passionate about Jesus Christ and has a desire to allow God to use his writing to bring glory to his name and reach others for him. His other passions lie in: 1) Empowering people by teaching about things that he is knowledgeable in in a simple and fun as well as interesting manner. 2)Inspiring others that they may realize how the true potential to overcome their perceived dilemma lies right between their ears and how they allow it to manipulate what their eyes behold. 3) Helping people to realize that being healthy truly begins with realizing how important it is for them to be intimately acquainted with their own body in order for others to help them resolve its maladies that beset it. Along with those, he enjoys entertaining with fiction based on the concept that fact is stranger than fiction and then stretching it just a tad to create some memorable page turning moments that you will likely recall for some time to come.

Author Links  

Website | LinkedIn

❀New Business & Careers Book Alert❀: How To Be Resilient In Your Career by Dr. Helen Ofosu

 Title: How To Be Resilient In Your Career
Author: Dr. Helen Ofosu
Publisher: Routledge
Pages: 196
Genre: Business/Careers

How To Be Resilient in Your Career: Facing Up to Barriers at Work shares vital career advice to help professionals navigate common "internally disruptive" career experiences such as harassment and bullying, imposter syndrome, membership in an underrepresented group, toxic workplaces, discrimination, and more.

Dr. Helen Ofosu draws on twenty years of helping employers acquire talent and coaching professionals through difficult career choices to unpack these layered and complicated issues in an easy-to-follow way. Dealing with the dark side of management, the book outlines various issues that can occur in the workplace, or during a person's career journey, and offers practical advice on how to overcome these obstacles and setbacks. Using her considerable HR experience, Dr. Ofosu also offers coveted insights from the employer's point of view. For people who have already tried other options to resolve their complicated career issues, this book offers an essential guide that equips readers with a knowledge base to make informed decisions around building and sustaining a thriving and resilient career.

How to be Resilient in Your Career: Facing Up to Barriers at Work is a reliable resource presented with nuance, depth, and specificity. Psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, and HR professionals who are looking for effective advice when supporting people struggling with these issues, will greatly benefit from this book, as will early career professionals, and established earners looking to resolve their career issues.

You can purchase your copy at Amazon at https://t.ly/_rspc. 

Other Buy Links:

Audible | Barnes & Noble | Indigo

Book Excerpt

As a Work and Business Psychologist, I have seen the immense value of using psychometric testing to support my clients’ efforts. Psychometric tests provide test-takers with objective feedback about themselves. Depending on the test, it can give insights into someone’s personality and how that may impact their relationships with their peers, subordinates, superiors, clients, etc. In terms of personality tests, I prefer those that measure or are linked to the "Big Five" Factors or traits of personality sometimes known by the acronym OCEAN or CANOE. Regardless of the preferred acronym, the letters stand for Openness to experience (intellectually curious, imaginative, and spontaneous vs. practical, confentional, and preferring routine), Conscientiousness (discliplined, dependable, and careful vs. spontantaneous and disorganized), Extraversion (warm, sociable, and emotionally expressive vs. reserved and thoughtful), Agreeableness (trusting, helpful, and empathetic vs. critical, suspicious, and uncooperative), and Neuroticism (anxious and prone to negative emotions vs. calm, even-tempered, and secure). Each of us will fall somewhere on a continuum for each of these traits and these qualities are stable across our lifetime.

About the Author

In good times and bad, resilience is one of the major keys to success – including career success. Dr. Helen Ofosu believes this applies to employees and entrepreneurs, individual contributors, subject matter experts, leaders, and executives.

That’s why her approach to career and executive coaching is to help people get ahead in a way that insulates them from future setbacks – or recover if things have gone sideways. This is also why, as a consultant, she helps organizations become stronger and more resilient, so they are ready for both the anticipated and the unexpected challenges that all organizations face at some point.

Part of what sets her apart from many career and executive coaches is her experience on the inside, as an HR and professional development professional, within large corporate workplaces and her intimate knowledge of typical HR processes and systems.

Clients come to her when the stakes are high. They can count on her to share insights and customized services that few others can deliver. They love that she has developed countless hiring tools and helped to resolve many HR problems over the years.

Her “insider” experience gives her clients an edge in getting hired and promoted in the public (and private) sector, and in managing their careers as they progress.

And as an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist (her field is more commonly known as Work and Business Psychology), she takes an evidence-based approach by using the latest research and best practices to increase the odds of her clients’ success.

Author Links  

Website | Brainz Magazine | Podcast Interviews | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram