Clouds Fall to Earth, Book Cover Creation

Clouds Fall to Earth is a novel about people who have lived in the air for 1500 years.  I started writing it in 2011 and progress has been irregular, but I have completed the rough draft of all 14 chapters and am now upgrading the book some for others to read and offer critiques.  The artwork above is the first product of composing prompts for a AI generated cover art.  My brother has been helping me on this--I give ideas and course corrections and he talks to AI.  So far we have about 30 or so images.  None of them are close, yet, but this one, a sort of diagram, presents a level of detail I want.  All the other images are more like photographs, somewhat realistic, if science-fiction is realistic.

Clouds Fall to Earth

Sunset from Craggy Gardens Visitor Center, BRP.  9/10/17

Chapter 1.
Hunting Day

Rho Aquilae encounters earthbound people for the first time. 

I began writing Clouds Fall to Earth in 2011 and worked on it off and on for two years, roughing out seven of the planned twelve chapters. I also created much of the world in some detail, including history, economics, technology, and culture. It actually connects with my short story "Shoreless Ocean of Eternity", which you can find in my when earth whispers collection. "Shoreless", then, is a prequel. Clouds Fall has been "on the shelf", untouched, since 2013, but always in the back of my mind.  This is chapter one.  It's not perfected yet, but I think it might be of interest.  I'd rather have something of the book out for people to read than for it to lay buried in my computer.  And this might motivate me to finally finish writing it and get it published.

Read the chapter HERE.

Welcome World Readers!

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[UPDATE 7/11/17: Check out my Creator Page at PATREON]

“Chaotic terrain” is an astrogeologic term to describe a jumbled landscape on a planet, such as Mars.  It’s a type of landscape not really seen on Earth, but I think it's appropriate for our world on spiritual, cultural, and political levels.  At the same time, there’s incredible beauty everywhere.  I write stories that attempt to capture both the chaos and the beauty of life by embodying ideas that are often neglected or missing in literature—what I call, the missing elements.

After being a social activist since 1988 or so and writing countless letters to the editor and guest commentaries, in year 2000, I decided to write a novel.  It took a long time to rewrite and revise.  I didn’t finalize the current covers until a month ago.  And early this year I hired a recent seminary graduate to proofread the book again. The title is Universal Man, which is a turn on the concept of the holy, catholic (universal) church we ascribe to in the creeds.  Do I give away too much by saying that the main character, Stanley Timmons, represents the visible Church?  At least he does in my mind.  It was my intention to give him that role, though I hope I’ve made him to be a true-to-life person and not anything like an archetype. The primary characters, including Timmons, take their beliefs to the logical, often disturbing conclusions.

The book is in three volumes. An early reader called it a contemplative thriller.

My dear wife told me once that publishing short stories would bring attention to my novel.  That never came true.  Not yet anyway.  After the novel was more or less complete, I wrote about 30 short stories and got a number of them published in small places here and there.  But I got tired of rejection letters.  At about 250 rejections, I quit “submitting” stories, deciding rather to “dominate” them, hence my book When Earth Whispers & Other Mostly Speculative Tales, speculative meaning not strictly real-world, and that would include horror, contemporary fantasy, and science-fiction.  You can buy the book at Amazon, but since you probably don’t know me, I suggest you first read a couple stories here on my blog.  All of them are published or linked here and you can read them totally for free.  For this purpose I recommend one of the flash stories—complete stories in 1000 words or less.  Maybe try “Deprescience”.  A now retired editor at God’s World Publications said about it in the comments section at Every Day Fiction:

“This story is filled with surprises, the main surprise being its consistent and profound surprises themselves from beginning to end. Very well written, bolstered by obvious wisdom and literary panache. I was captivated by the scope of this quite brief masterpiece.”

So, you can find story titles and links on the blog column on the right.

If you like it, or are at least intrigued by “Deprescience”, try “Genius” or “Not the Wrong Planet”.  My almost shortest story is “Spark” at 544 words.  Then if you wish, try something longer, and when you’re ready, tackle the novel.  Or start with the novel.   After all, I wrote it first.  It is filled with surprises, too.  One interesting thing is that the novel contains numerous photographs of the real locations in the story, or locations that served as models for writing the scenes.  For ordering books, go to my “official website” ChaoticTerrain.com. It’s far more straightforward than this messy blog.

By the way, the monarch butterfly in the photograph is a male I raised in my house, and it’s perched on a milkweed plant (asclepias tuberosa) I grew from seed.  I had just released the butterfly and it had not yet taken its first flight.  But then it did and flew up into the wide world, perhaps to travel a thousand miles. Of course I hope that’s a metaphor for my stories, all of them and the novel, homegrown.

            -Meredith Eugene (Mickey) Hunt

(Not to distract you, but if you are fascinated by insects, watch my HD close-up video of a monarch butterfly emerging from its chryrsalis shell.)

The Final Cover of UM 3/ Then a Soldier

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The text on the back cover is the "All the World's a Stage" speech from the play "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare.  I may not have mentioned it elsewhere, but the monarch butterfly in the "logo" of Chaotic Terrain Press is feeding on zinnias in our garden, our vegetable garden of the fall of 2016. I grow three types of milkweed on our modest gentleman's farm we call Windfall, and raise monarchs in our house. The photo captures the butterfly in motion.

The Cover of UM 2/ The Chinook Assembly

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The final version of the cover, in black and white. There's a lot of meaning to this cover image. You'll have to read the book and study the interior photographs to discover what and why.  All the photos in the novel are actual location shots, or at least of places that served as models for the writing. Those are real places, transposed into the story's geography.

The Cover of UM1/ Graceful Runner

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This is the final cover of Universal Man 1/Graceful Runner.  For a long time I had it in color and then later it just seemed to create a better mood and unify the three volumes in my black & white experiments.  Note how the background image shows through on the back cover, and there it is still in color.  I thought this a nice touch.

Universal Man/ 3. Then a Soldier

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This is the underlying cover photo for Universal Man/ 3.Then a Soldier. I took the photo in Arlington, VA in May, 2011. If you look closely at the cover on Amazon or a copy of the paperback, you'll see that the photo is in color behind the screen on the back, while the photo on the front is in black & white.  UM/3 is now available, and today I rebuilt our simple website from scratch and linked from it to where you can purchase the book either with a significant discount or with a free Kindle Edition, which is readable on any computer.  The Kindle version has nearly all the interior photographs in color. The CTP website link is HERE, and in the upper right corner of this page, below the banner photo.

The Chinook Assembly is Available NOW!

In the electronic Kindle version, which includes color photographs of location shots or of places that guided me in the writing. Order it HERE. The print version should be available in a week from now.  If you order the paperback, the Kindle version comes with it for free.

Graceful Runner is Available NOW!

The link to the novel's Amazon page is HERE.

NEWS!

My novel Universal Man will SOON be back in print.  I plan to have the first volume, Graceful Runner available no later than January 22nd. Then, The Chinook Assembly will be available by Ash Wednesday. Lastly, Then a Soldier, will be available by Easter. One feature in this new, second edition will be a number of original black & white photographs of story locations. See the new cover!