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Front cover by Jade,
DreamCraft 2008 edition.
AQUAMARINE
by Mel Keegan
274pp
cover by Jade
Price:
US$22.50
US$9.95(eBook)
Or order from Lulu.com:
 
Read the first
10% of this novel online ... in our next upload!
READER ALERT / CAVEAT:
the sample readings offered here encompass about the first 10% of these works, and they're uncensored, unabridged. If you will be disturbed by candid descriptions of same-gender romance, or by realistic violence, please don't download! These samples are not intended for younger readers. By clicking to open these documents, you agree that you are of age in your local jurisdiction; you know what you are about to read; and the material will not disturb you ... 'nuff said.
Any "content warning" to readers?
Realistic violence, frank description
of same-gender relationships, some
coarse language.
First edition cover.
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
First edition cover
Two editions:
Millivres edition: mid-2000
DreamCraft edition: mid-2008.
DreamCraft eBook: mid-2008.
Amazon release: end-2008.
IN PRINT?
Yes.
If you are interested in stocking this title,
please see our notes on
distribution and supply. Please do contact us!
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AQUAMARINE
"A new sci-fi adventure by the master of gay thrillers"
Mel Keegan's name is a byword for thrilling gay adventure
in the past, present and future. His new story is set in the
late 21st Century when major land masses have been submerged
by rising oceans and the Earth is a world of water. Russell
is a hydrologist, based on the giant floating platform of
Pacifica; his lover, Eric, one of fifty Aquarians, is a new
sub-species of human who can breathe underwater. When the
pair refuse an attractive offer for Eric's services on a
suspicious salvage operation, Eric is kidnapped and a
fast-paced intrigue starts to unfold on the "acorn principle" ...
a small event turns out to be the key to a major war which
would involve the whole Pacifica region
Reader reviews for this novel are online here, at Amazon.com; and you
can post your own comments to this site: see our Reader Review page!
(Please note that this is a "moderated forum," where comments will
be monitored, and may be edited prior to posting).
 The SF List
Reader reviews of this title
Read the first segment online!
(Note: see our caveat.)
Reader reviews for this novel are online on our Review Page
and at Amazon.
(You can post your own comments to this site via the Readers Review page.
Please note that this is a "moderated forum," where comments will be monitored,
and may be edited prior to posting to prevent burned fingers and trodden toes!)
AQUAMARINE is once again MK's property, since the rights
have 'passed back to the author.' This is tremendous news for
DreamCraft, and also for readers who either haven't been able
to find a copy of AQUAMARINE (it's been hard to track down
recently), or ... readers who have been driven bananas since
2000, by the 'tatty' presentation of the MPG issue. If you've
read the 'Keegan Speaks' page, you'll know that 'things went
haywire' at the pre-press stage.
The book was never proof-read!
MPG went to press off the 'raw' files which Mel had emailed
from Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, normally a book will be proofread
four or six times before being published. (At DreamCraft, all
books are proofed five times by humans and twice electronically.)
This means very few errors get through. No book is error free,
but you can get close, and we do. For seven years, readers have
loved AQUAMARINE even though they've had to grit their teeth
to get through the typing hiccups ... they can't be called
'proofing errors,' because the book wasn't proofed!
So we've
invited MK to go back to the 'raw' files, the exact, same
files that were emailed from Fairbanks, and not only will
they be properly proofed by DreamCraft,but MK has the chance to
take a 'second bite' here: rework, redevelop, re-edit. The
story won't change, but parts of the narrative are almost
certain to. The end product will be far superior to the
MPG presentation in many ways. We'll have a full-color cover,
with a genuine depiction of the characters and locations
rather than a monochrome (blue) pic of a young man; the
interior text will be thoroughly proofed and error free; and
the narrative will have been re-reveloped. Any writer will
tell you, good books are not written, they're re-written ...
and we're looking forward to wonderful things with the
DreamCraft edition of AQUAMARINE.
We hear you asking, WHEN?!! Well, it's as simple as this:
it'll be in print when MK has had a chance to get to it,
which means, literally, as time permits. The HELLGATE
story is under development, ICE, WIND & FIRE is being
re-keyed, to get it into digital form pending an eBook,
and the next new title on the Keegan list is APHELION.
We'd guess that AQUAMARINE and DEAD OF WINTER will be
along in 2008. But remember, that *is* a guess!
Mel Keegan comments on AQUAMARINE
I was very gratified by the Millivres edition cover note, "...the master of gay
thrillers." The cover on this one is actually pretty good —
excellent use of "spot color" while the publisher cuts costs by
avoiding a full-color jacket ... the cost of 4-color (litho, or
full-color) printing contribues big time to the cover price of a
book.
I was rather perturbed by the Millivres edition typesetting for two reasons:
first, AQUAMARINE is a fairly small book that should have been about
225pp, and was blown out by 100pp by "loose" type ... I wondered,
couldn't we have had a full color cover on a slimmer book?! And
then I started to look through the text and realized something bad
had gone wrong. The full story is told elsewhere on this site, but here let
me just say, the Millivres edition of AQUAMARINE was not proofread! I never saw the galley
before printing, and years elapsed between me emailing the
raw files from Fairbanks, Alaska, and receiving the printed books.
I was much more than mildly surprised by the presentation of the
text, and am actually surprised that the book wasn't "roasted" by
readers even more than it was! Readers' comments at Amazon
tell the story: one reader gave it 4 stars and said the fifth star
couldn't be awarded because of the production qualities. That
makes me sigh, because I had no ability to in any way affect them,
but I also acknowledge that a star-rating is granted to the book
overall, which includes the publication package. I'm just pleased
to have delivered my side of the bargain ... the story!
Speaking
of which, this one was great fun to write, though it spent many
years in the desk drawer. I was just finishing it when early news
of the disastrous "Waterworld" movie production reached me. There
was nothing to do with AQUAMARINE but finish it and shelve it, and
let the movie fade into the past. (Something similar had happened
with DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT, my 18th Century highwaymen historical ...
I'd just finished it, and no sooner did I mention it to my editor
at GMP than I learned they were going to press with a book set in
the same era. My story was shelved while we waited for the right
time to come for its publication, and of course things didn't go
well for GMP in years to come).
AQUAMARINE is a romp, but the
science is actually very sound. There's nothing impossible, nor
even implausible, in the story, and I had loads of fun with both
the characters and the technology. Researching this one was quite a
challenge. The whole thing was done in Fairbanks, just south of the
Arctic Circle, and with the temperature at about -20 degrees just
outside the door, I did the vaster majority of the research on the
Internet, while thinking nostalgically of the South Pacific region,
to which I was due to return soon enough. I had a great time writing
this one, and I'm sure that sense of fun comes through in the book.
The 2008 reissue is another enormous pleasure to me, because (!)
this time around we get to fix the typographical errors ... and
put a full-color jacket on it. The typeset has been brought in
at about 230pp, it's had one or two proofreads at the time of
this writing (April 2008) and is due two more before we publish.
With a little luck, it'll be online at the same time the massively
rebuilt 2008 website goes up! And cheers to DreamCraft ... they've
done a fantastic job.
   
Readers who
enjoy science fiction in general also love HELLGATE in particular ... take a look right now?
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