It’s here! The cover for my new novel, Divided We Fall, coming this spring!
Divided We Fall is the sequel to We, The Watched. The manuscript was a quarter-finalist in last year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards and received a great review by Publishers Weekly.
Belinda Pepper, who designed the cover for We, The Watched, has returned to do Divided We Fall with brilliant results! Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Divided We Fall by Adam Bender. Coming this spring.
Quick status update: With the cover finished and the book fully edited, we’re nearly there! I’ve still got to get the interior text formatted for the print and eBook versions. Then it’s pretty much just a matter of clicking “Publish.” Keep your eye on this blog for more updates!
I avoided print for years, not because I was on a crusade for eBooks or anything, but because I knew there was a lot more formatting and appearance details to consider.
Finally, this year, I decided to go ahead and pay a few professionals to help me with that. It turned out not to be as expensive as I thought, and the result is amazing! Much thanks to Belinda Pepper for the cover design and Lis Sowerbutts for interior formatting.
I’ve got a pretty exciting update. We, The Watched is getting a brand new cover. And this time it’s professional.
The new cover was designed by Belinda Pepper over at Red Swallow Design. The basic design is a modification of the previous cover, but instead of the CCTV camera, it features the fire-eyed graffiti tag of the secret rebel organization known as the Underground.
For those of you keeping track, this is now the third cover for We, The Watched since it was first published a few years ago. However, the more important thing to remember is that it’s the coolest. By far.
“But that’s not all!”
There was a very important reason for designing a new cover: We, The Watched is finally getting a print version! This freshly revised edition will be sold through CreateSpace and available on Amazon from the start. There’s still a little more work to do before it’s up for sale (these things take time), but I’m shooting to have it ready for purchase in the next several weeks. Stay tuned to this blog for the announcement.
But don’t worry, eBook fans, I have not forgotten you. I have also gone ahead and updated the eBook version to include the new cover, more eye-catching formatting and minor revisions made for the print edition. You can get the Kindle version on Amazon or the ePub version (for all other eReaders) on Smashwords right now!
The latest eBook will be rolling out to Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers over the next few weeks. If you have already purchased We, The Watched online, depending on the store you should be able to download the new version for free (if not, please contact me).
The current debate over the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, PRISM, highlights a great conundrum for citizens of any country: How much personal privacy should one give up in exchange for better national security?
When I wrote my novel We, The Watched and its upcoming sequel Divided We Fall, I imagined a dystopian nation in which the government had used national security as an excuse to take all privacy rights from the people. That’s not the case today, but it’s one possible outcome if the balance swings too far in one direction.
With every call, social media update or credit card transaction, people leave behind a long trail of data that can potentially be stored and analyzed by businesses and the government. The digitization of video and an increasing number of surveillance cameras potentially adds even more data to mix.
Evolving tools for big data analysis provide an ability to parse and make sense of all this information like never before. This technology can be used for good and keep people safe, but like any great power it can be abused without the right privacy checks in place.
Publishers Weekly has praised the manuscript for my unpublished second novel, Divided We Fall.
An independent reviewer from the literary mag wrote that the story “raises interesting questions about the influence of propaganda on the construction of the self, the idea of true tabula rasa and the power of memory.” In addition, “the central love story propels the narrative energetically.”
Divided We Fall received the review after finishing as a quarterfinalist in this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, one of the top 100 novels selected in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror category. Unfortunately, it was not one of the five entries to go onto the next round, but I’m quite happy with how well it did and look forward to seeking representation.
While you’re waiting for the release of Divided We Fall, please check out my first novel We, The Watched as well as my recent short stories “Life Trade” and “Smokers Corner.”
Publishers Weekly has praised the manuscript for my unpublished second novel, Divided We Fall.