Darlene's Book Nook: Guest Post and Giveaway with Gordon Gumpertz, author of Red Hot Sky

Friday, February 17, 2012

Guest Post and Giveaway with Gordon Gumpertz, author of Red Hot Sky

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in Gordon Gumpertz's Red Hot Sky Virtual Book Publicity Tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book.

About Gordon:

Gordon Gumpertz brings fiction readers another exciting action/adventure experience in his new novel RED HOT SKY. This is the author’s second book, following his highly acclaimed novel TSUNAMI.

In addition to writing novels, Gordon has won gold and silver awards in national and regional short story competitions. He is a member of the Authors Guild, the Palm Springs Writers Guild, a UCLA graduate, and an instrument-rated private pilot. He keeps his website current by blogging on natural disasters and natural phenomena.

Gordon and his wife Jenny live not far from the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific Plate thrusts into the North American Plate, building increasingly high levels of faultline stress which, the seismologists say, may soon produce the Big One.

CONNECT WITH GORDON ONLINE:

Website | Amazon | Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords

Welcome to Darlene's Book Nook, Gordon!

Gordon has written a guest post, so I will now turn the floor over to him.

Where Do Ideas Come From?
By Gordon Gumpertz, author of Red Hot Sky

As an author, I'm often asked where my ideas come from. I usually make a joke and say something like, "Who knows?" or "Thin air." When I start thinking about it, however, ideas and themes for my books come from many different sources.

The idea for my first adventure novel, Tsunami, came while I was walking on the beach near my home in Marina del Rey, California, where I lived at the time. It was a sunny day, but the waves were 15-foot monsters that broke with a deafening boom and washed high up on the beach. I could feel the power of the waves vibrating under my bare feet. A storm far out in the Pacific was driving these huge rollers across a thousand miles of ocean to crash against a calm and sunny shore.

I began wondering if a tsunami spawned by some far-away earthquake or volcano could send a wave ten times that size to wipe out everything within a mile of the shoreline. I got busy doing research on tsunamis, oceanography, seismology, and volcano science and gradually built the plot and characters for the novel Tsunami.

My new novel, Red Hot Sky, came about when I read a report on the rapid increase in CO2 concentration in earth's atmosphere. I wondered what would happen if the CO2 in the air got so high it reached a tipping point and kicked earth into some kind of new and dangerous climate. Could man survive? Would there be a race to save the planet? I built my plot line and cast of characters around that premise.

My books are all on disaster themes, and all speculative. But I'm careful to do my scientific research in depth to make the plot and the characters as authentic and believable as possible. I always like to build in a love story, and an antagonist who tries to take advantage of the dire situation for his or her own devious ends.

In my case, ideas come from personal experience, like walking on the beach, or from reading a disturbing news report, as in the case of Red Hot Sky, or when someone I'm talking to makes a remark or asks a question that starts me thinking. I guess ideas can come from anywhere. Except thin air.

Thanks so much for joining us today, Gordon!

Giveaway:

One lucky winner will win a paperback copy of Red Hot Sky.

This giveaway is open to entrants from Canada and the United States only at the author's request.

SYNOPSIS:

CO2 buildup in earth’s atmosphere reaches a tipping point. Global weather destabilizes, turns chaotic. Ice storms, dust storms, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes pummel the earth nonstop. A secret computer model reveals that the frantic weather will peak out, and transform world climate into an alien environment devastating to human survival.

Scientists Ben Mason, Claudine Manet, and Bertrand Short are developers of the computer model. Ben and Claudine are lovers as well as lab partners. While they work frantically to head off the approaching catastrophe, a disgraced Russian general hacks into their model and sees earth’s bleak future as his opportunity for ultimate world power.

Ben, who had left the CIA to develop the computer model at the national lab, is reactivated by the Agency and sent on a perilous mission to block the rogue general’s plot. Claudine, not realizing that Ben is on a secret mission, misunderstands his absence, putting their relationship on thin ice.

Claudine is placed in charge of a massive NASA project that, if completed on time, could stop the approaching doomsday climate change. But her project is stalled by bureaucracy. Ben is on the run in hostile territory. The climate change calamity steadily approaches.

To enter the giveaway, please fill out the Rafflecopter entry form below.

This giveaway is open to entrants from Canada and the United States only until 12:01 AM EST on February 24, 2012.

a Rafflecopter giveaway