A Peek At My Week! #104

ChristinaEngela

1 year ago

Hello, friends and fans!

Welcome to another “Peek At My Week”! Here’s a look at some of my latest news: June 05, 2023! Here are some things that happened this past week.

News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things

Let’s take a look at the current status quo on various ongoing issues affecting my writing or publishing:

Writing: This past week I spent more time working on the next volume of the Panic! Horror In Space series. I have three sections of the story finished so far, subtitled “Hunger”, “Nine Tenths Of The Law” and “Memento Mori”. I’m currently working on the fourth: “Sandor Station”.
It’s been an interesting time working out what to put Captain Flane and his unlucky crew through next – after all, there’s really only so much that fits the trope of “horror”, not so? Hmmm. Not so, as it turns out!

You see, horror doesn’t all need to be supernatural or paranormal – there’s a lot of things that engender horror, from people’s phobias and fears, to horrific circumstances, and ultimately fears of the paranormal and supernatural – so for a while, it seems that Flane and the starship Mercury will be kept somewhat busy!
Recently Published: Having published the three new titles in the Quantum Series: “Underground Movement“, book 7, Book 8, “Xanadu” and “The Last Hurrah” (book 9) on the 6th of May, I’m really looking forward to finding out what my readers think of the three new books!
What Readers Say: I’m not sure, I know I can’t please everybody (so I’m not trying to!) – drop me a line and let me know how you think I’m doing? Underground Movement received the following great review on the first of June:
The Quantum series returns and with it the resistance grows

“It has been a while since I last read a book in the Quantum series and I’m glad to see Christina Engela is on form yet again to deliver an immersive brand of sci-fi. With the usual humour and occasional stab at the forces who chose not to embrace inclusivity there’s a relevant and meaningful social commentary here. Much like most of Engela’s stories they contain heroes of all backgrounds – a positive and modern choice while also being quite enjoyable.

‘On Deanna, a seed had been planted, a sinister, malevolent seed…’

These heroes are spread around the planet of Deanna which has been taken over by a totalitarian regime who have suppressed the diverse inhabitants. This story lays out their movements in creating a force for resistance and they’ll do everything they can to fight back from this suppressive regime. From dealing with local mobsters to gain equipment to even meddling with the concept of the time space continuum – time travel in this series is a focal point and a vessel that will hopefully guide Deanna to freedom. There are even vampires so all of the cool story bases are covered here.

Underground Movement is an appropriate title for a book which recaps the series so far with some returning faces like ‘Fred the Arborian’ and ‘Gary Beck the Badfeller’ plus many more while also paving a way for what is to come. Enjoyable and immersive.

4 Stars” – Lee Hall, UK writer & reviewer, review of Underground Movement, June 1, 2023.

Other Stuff:

Here’s a few of the other things that happened this past week:

Tuning Out

For the sake of my sanity and stress levels, this past week I stepped back from social media and also unfollowed or blocked a lot of people and pages sharing news or stories that stress me out! Instead, I just use social media to share marketing and promotional material and also to engage with people who actually want to talk to me about my writing! This, after all, is why I still have social media accounts at all! I’m happy to say since I did that, I’ve been a lot less stressed.

There’s no point in me thinking I can save the world when obviously I can’t, so why take all that stress and angst onto myself? The world is a dystopian shithole filled with Nazis and hateful, greedy, stupid people, I already know that – so why should I keep on rubbing my own nose in it? It only hurts me in the end, and achieves nothing. From now on I’ll only be getting upset about or involved in issues that affect me directly.

My writing is my activist voice in any case, and I’ll still be doing that regardless – and it’s a lot easier to do if I’m in the right mindset to write!

That’s all for this week!

As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments. And remember:

In spite of some of my books having been on Amazon since 2005, not one of them has yet reached 50 reader reviews yet! I would really appreciate your help on this! Come on, leave a review – it’s free!