Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven was Mandated Memoranda Publishing’s first eBook, available in June of 2013. It follows the career of Michael Babbage, freelance reporter, during five years of world turmoil and upheaval from 2018 to 2023. Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven extrapolates today’s headlines into tomorrow’s nightmares. Click here or on the book image to read an excerpt in a new browser tab. Click learn more to view Amazon’s landing page for Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven. Thank you.
Tag Archives: Tianming
Quo Vadis II
We’re almost finished with a round of editing for Tragic Wonders. In prior posts, you’ve seen some of the stories and essays that we dropped from TW because of thematic duplication. We’ve also separated out two poems that now provide a transition from the stories to the essays. The next step is copy editing. Seems the company is geared towards Microsoft Office production but, for the money, they’ll accommodate Amazon Kindle requirements. Whew! Actually, they’ve been encouraging, cooperative, and fast. We’ll see how much we can say about them at a later date.
At this point, we plan to get TW out before Christmas (Thanksgiving is the real goal, but…). To do that, I want to have at least two professional reviews in place before issuing the press release and posting the Kindle book to Amazon and registering with the LOC and Red City Reviews usually posts to Goodreads but Goodreads requires an ASIN, Amazon’s ISBN equivalent… You get the idea, the timing will be tricky. Also, we were planning on switching from PRWeb to PR Newswire. You know, the PR firm recently hacked for customer data.
We’ve had several favorable reviews on TW’s all important cover. Yes, it turns out we do judge a book by its cover (among other things, like favorable excerpts from perhaps unfavorable professional reviews).
Right now, we have Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven priced at 99 cents. We’re going to raise the price back to $2.99 when TW comes out at 99 cents. In other news, we’ve decided to postpone publication of A Digital Carol until next Christmas. Actually, we’ll get it out before Thanksgiving 2014 to pick up on the buying season. We’ve already got the cover concept roughed in.
Yup, we’ll get this marketing thing down, yet. Hopefully, before we’re out of funds.
We plan to start Who Shall be God early in 2014 while ADC is in editing (yes, book three, that became book four, is book three again). The WSBG themes are coming together. It turns out that the 38th parallel not only runs through the Korean DMZ but through Virginia and Maryland. Hmm, I wonder if that’s significant given what DC has been doing lately?
Book five is about China. We’re still waiting for Xi and company to declare their intent after the Third Plenum meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Other news of interest is that China has twice the shale gas reserves as the US does. That should swing the balance all other things being equal. We’ll see.
And finally, we’ve updated our links page.
Red City Review for Tianming – Mandate of Heaven
Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven by Adolphus Writer and Nomi Smith
In the not too distant future, the world is falling apart at the seams, which is depicted in the political thriller, ‘Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven’ by Adolphus Writer and Nomi T. Smith. This fast paced novel tells the story of Michael Babbage, a freelance reporter who is hired to document and analyze what is happening to the civilization of man. Between the political conflicts that have arisen and the natural disasters that are destroying the balance of society, there is not much to hope for besides an alternative to the failing situation at hand. The United States is a nation at unrest, but due to the strong will of President Moses Orestes, he refuses to let his people give up on the nation that he cares about so dearly. When Yellowstone erupts, half of the United States population has to move to Canada, while elsewhere in the world weak governments are taking advantage of the fact that other formerly powerful states are falling apart. Nuclear explosions are also reshaping the Asian continent, as Michael strives on to find answers on how to stop the ongoing calamity from continuing.
It is clear due to the complexities of this book that a lot of work was put into the creation of this story. Not only is it thought-provoking, but the characters and the situations that they are thrust into are a joy to read. The descriptions of the United States falling apart alone are very chilling, but to think of our entire world failing so helplessly during such an unmanageable point in time is rather frightening. The characters are all well-developed and by the end of the narrative things start to weave together in a pleasing and surprising manner. Although the natural disasters that occur seem a little bit farfetched, the reactions to them and the other manmade fiascos are plausible, given the other conditions that are occurring. Michael is a very likeable character, someone who the reader will be rooting for as he tries to figure out what is going on in this very unstable predicament that Earth has found itself in. (Reviewed September 19, 2013 by Red City Review, used by permission.)
To purchase a copy of Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven, click here to find it on Amazon.
Best Laid Plans
We’ve gotten Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven on Amazon’s bookshelves. Figuratively speaking, of course, since it is only out as a Kindle Edition. We’re offering it for free the Friday and Saturday before Father’s day 2013.
We’re now turning our attention to the second book, Tragic Wonders. We renamed it from Horrors of the Heart since a small circle of readers thought it had little horror in it (except for the grammatical errors). It will still be an anthology of stories and essays delving into our souls’ deepest fears and needs. We’d like this on shelves by the fall. The art department has designed the cover and we plan to post a thumbnail of it soon.
Book three is: Who Shall Be God. It is a fictional account of the struggles of two families, the Stadists and the Libertas, who live north and south of 38th street, respectively, in a Midwestern city. We have a cover in mind and the ending sketched out in broad outline.
Book four will be an anthology dealing with the perils of this digital age: from genetic engineering to surveillance and the Singularity. Book five must be about the coming clash between China and the Western world. They aren’t the Middle Kingdom for no reason.
Finally, we’ve been asked if we could do something funny (as in ha-ha, we already do strange). Book six may achieve that (although strange has its appeal).
We do not intend to do vampires, sleaze, or a self-publishing how-to. In this last vein (excuse the pun), the next post will recount what we remember of our experience producing Tiānmìng – Mandate of Heaven. Only the names have been changed to protect the participants.
Nomi Smith Finishes Novella
A status update from Adolphus Writer – Ms Smith finished the first draft of Tiānmìng, Mandate of Heaven, a memoir of our once and future Republic. We are on track for a late spring or early summer publication. The novella chronicles the rise of the United States after befalling a “natural” cataclysm. Ms. Smith takes a tough look at us as Americans and us as citizens of the world. She asks us to look at ourselves through the lens of the story and ponder what we would do in these circumstances. Through it, we are asked to consider what we are doing right now and whether it makes a difference for good. I urge you to take her message to heart, especially during this crucial election season. The liberty and wellbeing of our posterity is at stake.
An excerpt from Tiānmìng, Mandate of Heaven – the future President of the United States, Moses Orestes, says in his famous speech:
“…Our scientists aver that we face a geologic crisis of calamitous proportions. I say that we, as a nation, have felt the ground shifting beneath our feet for too many decades. We have sold our birthright for mean porridge and left nothing but the empty bowl for our posterity to clean after us. That will stop today. We will face our moral and spiritual crisis as we combat the physical one. We establish plans today that will secure those promised blessings of liberty for our posterity. We dedicate ourselves today to return to the attitudes and actions of our forefathers who established this Republic.”
National Novel Writing Month
NaNoWriMo was harder than I expected. My author, Nomi Tareen Smith, has 22,000 words of a historical fiction novel framed as a ‘memoir of the Republic’ set in the near future. The title is Tiānmìng, Mandate of Heaven. It chronicles the fall and rise of the United States of America. The novel structure is conventional but the presentation consists of materials from fictional transcripts, interviews and personal recollections of the participants with lead ins by Ms. Smith.
The novel’s major sections are Portents, Run Up for Protection, Run Up for Conquest, Crisis, War and Aftermath. The general synopsis is: Subordinates play roles on the world stage leading to a new order not yet revealed to them or us. These have to grapple with what obligations they have to themselves, to others (past, present and future) and to Heaven. Some will succeed and some will fail. The outcome is left to the reader to decide.
Ms. Smith will finish the novel by early January (we hope). My editorial staff will review and revise the novel with Ms. Smith’s consultation and consent. Then, we will publish to Amazon and Barnes and Noble directly using their tools.
Order
The avatar for this blog is a symbol formed from a stylized chinese character for ‘order’ (i.e., mìng) superimposed on a water background.
The character, mìng, when affixed to another character, Tiān, (translated as heaven) represents the concept for ‘mandate of heaven‘. The water background symbolizes the people of the earth, past, present and future. Our intent, upon which we may sorely fail, is to influence people’s perception of heaven’s mandate, not just for our rulers (but certainly that), but also for ourselves.
This blog serves as a creative outlet for musings that may find their way into press. If these musings are interesting to you, please stop back periodically.
Mandated Memoranda 