Royce Sears-Sci-Fi/Fantasy Author

For some strange reason, I've decided to join the #PitchWars festivities- complete with a #PimpMyBio. Why? It sounds like fun!  Born in the heart of West Virginia, Royce dreamed of becoming a writer throughout his younger years and was always an avid reader. Starting out with an old and often temperamental typewriter, he wrote poems and stories that helped develop his young imagination. A kind-hearted teacher in Junior High School took his first "manuscript" home for the summer and painstakingly read through pages and pages of violent, poorly written L. Sprague de Camp-esque combat scenes. She returned it the following school year with the classic red ink - a plethora of suggestions and encouragement that fueled his desire to write. A word processor, a gift from his grandparents, became the source of many tall tales which unfortunately never left the realm of the 3.5-inch floppy disks. Those tales, and the disks they were stored upon, faded into the digital oblivion ...

What about Teddy? By Royce Sears Billowing clouds. Blackened soot. Embers, ashes Rises to the dawn. Pictures and memories Writhe among flames. Tears falling. Silent sobs Among a fire engine’s roar. Splashes of water Dousing dreams. Hopes, carried on streams Toward the drain. Clutching her doll. Watching the flames. “What about Teddy?” Mom shakes her head. “We’ll get a new Teddy, baby.” 

Sharing the most recent reviews of my debut novel, "Prophecies of the New World." Available on Amazon Kindle Format: $1.99 Paperback:$11.99 A cross By: dabj  on April 8, 2017 Format: Kindle Edition A great story that blends the old days and the new with a hope for the future. Anxiously awaiting the next book. Captivating! By: Amazon Customer on April 7, 2017 Format: Paperback This was a thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish. The kind of book you'll find impossible to put down. Get swept away by the rich scenery, absorbed in the vivid characters and their fantastic struggles. You'll find yourself tingling on the edge of your seat. This story has the perfect amount of ebb and flow, allowing fast paced action and quiet periods of reflection. With likable, compelling characters, larger than life creatures and intriguing, detestable villains you'll be dying to see come to life on the pages. Thought provoking without bein...

We dread query letters, synopses, and trying to get the pacing of the novel to flow ...just right. Here are some of my thoughts and what I've accumulated so far.  These three words have been my entire existence for a few months now! Pulling my hair out? What hair? It's gone already. Queries: What have I learned? I've learned a great deal, actually. Keep it short! When we begin this process, many of us start with the common phrase, "Query letter? What's that?" So we Google it...ah, Google my good friend... and our wise GoogleBot Guru tells us that a Query letter is a one-page letter wherein we pitch our book to an agent.- No sweat- One page. I can do that. Umm.. not as easy as it looks.  Upon further research- and after a few rejections- we find that one-page stuff is nonsense. An agent doesn't want to read a whole page about your book. They want your book in a nutshell--an easily crackable nutshell with the meat of the nut in a ready to eat ...

Thanks to my very good friend, Linda Greer, for helping me with some really good photos yesterday. We met at the Unitarian Fellowship in Huntington, WV and then proceeded to Huntington's Ritter Park. Thanks to her efforts, I was able to get my Media Kit put together. Below are just a few examples of her hard work to make me look even somewhat professional. :)

I remember watching the Challenger Tragedy unfold thirty-one years ago while sitting in class at Ivydale Elementary School. We visited the Challenger Memorial while on a school trip to Washington, D.C. It was the first large-scale tragedy I remember witnessing, and it had a profound effect on the younger me. The novel I recently completed, entitled "Humanity First," is set in the year 2125 and features an asteroid mining ship named Challenger. Her Captain, Owen Hudson, is a descendant of one of the Challenger astr onauts. Without realizing the date, I sent query letters to a few literary agents yesterday and early this morning. The dedication reads: This book is dedicated to all of humanity, to every man, woman, and child who rises above the challenges of life on a daily basis. Specifically, this book is meant to be a celebration of the men and women of NASA. It is their courage and commitment to the advancement of the human race that has taken us this far, though t...

Artificial Intelligence: The Apex Technology of the Information Age Sharing this in relation to my work in progress; working title "Humanity First."  Heath Terry, shown in the attached video, is lead analyst for the Internet sector in  Global Investment Research and is deputy business unit leader of the Technology, Media and Telecom business unit in Americas Equity Research. "People are giving machines problems and the machines learn how to solve them on their own," Terry says in the video. This is a path we are already on thanks to our fascination with data. (No, not the android on Star Trek: The Next Generation--sorry @Brentspiner ) Data and data mining drive corporate business decisions on a global scale and this will only continue to increase as more and more computing processing power is directed at finding ways to put this data mining to use. As Artificial Intelligence grows beyond Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or any of the other AI facsimiles avail...

The Holidays are approaching fast , this is the thought I woke up with this morning as I tried to go back to sleep, despite the eighty-pound dog taking up most of my leg room. What does a thought like that really mean to someone like me? I'm former Navy, and I think I remember one or two Holiday seasons where I wasn't on duty. I am now a Registered Nurse, and my thirteen-year-old son lives 400 miles away, with his Mother. The Holidays do not carry the same meaning for him anymore, not at this age. I volunteer to work during the Holidays so my co-workers, young mothers with young children, can spend the Holidays with their children. I think that's only fair. Their children are only young once. They should get to spend the Holidays with their children, and I'll gladly work over the Holidays for them so their kids get to have Mommy at home. I mean, what kid wants to spend Christmas Day waiting for Mom to get home from work so they can open their presents? And la...

Dr. Paul Levinson , acclaimed science fiction author and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York City, had some high praise for "Prophecies of the New World." This is especially encouraging for me as a new author because Paul is not only a fellow science fiction author, but he also served as President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America from 1998 to 2001. In reviews posted on Amazon, Goodreads, and shared on his personal Twitter account, Paul had this to say about the novel: "Rich, compelling, intellectual treat of a novel, told in detail so vivid that you can hear the rustle and feel the breeze on your face. The science in this science fiction tale is anthropology, writ large from Native Americans to aliens, from canines to CNN. The frontispieces of each chapter are themselves worth the price of admission, deftly harvested from poets and philosophers in all eras of humanity. Highly recommended!" Avail...

It is absolutely thrilling to read and hear what people think of "Prophecies of the New World!" Thank you for your reviews! Thank you for reading! And most of all, thank you for such high praise..for my work to even be mentioned in the same sentence, much less compared to Harry Potter, is a huge and amazing honor. Find it on Amazon!          Watch the Trailer       Visit Royce on the Web 5.0 out of 5 stars FANTASTIC, UNIQUE DYSTOPIAN WORK By  Amazon Customer   on July 22, 2016 Format: Paperback You can't put down this book once you start reading it! This book is so unique but manages to cover so many topics I love reading about: viruses, Native Americans, religion, aliens, dystopian society, and more! The more you read, the more you are intwined into the characters stories. I compare this book to Harry Potter... Not the writing, but the story line and the potential. Everyone can find something inside this book. It's truly a gr...

It's "Little Moments Like These," as Brad Paisley - another West Virginian - says, that make all the effort and work of organizing one's thoughts and imagination into a work of fiction worth it. I just received this email from a reader who found "Prophecies of the New World" on the free promotional at www.smashwords.com. "Subject: Just Wow Hi! I finished reading the Prophecies of the new world. As I started reading it, I didn't even realize it was book 1. It was just something I picked up from Smashwords for free during lunchbreak. But wow! It was so captivating and mesmerizing! Loved to read it and craving for more! I hate it if a writer leaves the reader with a cliffhanger size of Scandinavia and have to wait ages for a sequel. This ending was just right for me , 'cos it left me hungry for more but not driving me crazy. Please tell me you're already working on the second book?" These are the moments that a writer lives...

Prophecies of the New World

Prophecies of the New World By Royce Sears Book One  of The Elegance of Nature Series Chapter 3 Faith “Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened” -           T.S. Eliot Jadyn ’ s thoughts began to drift as he waited. Thoughts of his Family, of the happiness his success would bring, of the shared food, and of the approval that he might win from Tayana. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate on the important things as thoughts of both Tayana and Merina occupied his mind more. He fought to keep his mind on the hunt but it drifted into thoughts of Tayana as he waited, recalling the way her hips swayed as she walked. She was a few years older than him and had more experience — of that he was sure. She enticed him with her long black hair, fluttering eyelashes, and curvy body that she accentuated with clothing selected to enhance her cur...

Prophecies of the New World By Royce Sears Book One  of The Elegance of Nature Series Chapter 2 Visions “Sing your Death Song and die like a hero going home.” — Chief Aupumut (1725) The darkness was complete. “ Where am I, ” Otaktay wondered aloud. He surveyed his surroundings, but there was only darkness. He was lying on his back, and his body ached. He shifted, something soft beneath him, straw maybe, or grass, he couldn ’ t be sure. The sweet, rich smell of freshly excavated earth was thick on the dank, cool air of the strange place. He became aware of a rhythmic beat, a rhythm he felt rumbling within the earth as much as the air. Initially, he thought it was the rhythm of his own heartbeat, until the singing, and a long, low chant, rising in pitch and volume, reached his ears. “ Am I dead? Is this the Spirit World? ” he asked. He was naked, not that it mattered, but his clothing would have been a small comfort in such strange surroundings. T...