DON'T BUY THIS EBOOK!

What? Has he gone crazy? You may well be wondering....

I figure I've already told you why you should buy my story, so let me play devil's advocate for a few lines here and try to talk you into buying by showing you why someone else should not. (Did I lose you? Stick around, it will become clear enough.)

1. You don't really like fantasy adventure stories.

Good enough for me - what are you doing here anyway?

Oh, heck, I can't give up that easily. Have you ever read a fantasy adventure story? A classic myth? A fairy tale? If you have and you didn't hate it, give Return a shot. Ebooks are not that expensive, and you can read them on your computer, your laptop, your netbook, your ebook reader, or you can do it the hard way: print it out and read the hard copy. (Okay, that pun was not intended, but it's there, I'm not deleting it!) Now, if you have an inkjet printer, this could take some time. Even my laser printer takes a while to print the whole book. "But it's 232 pages!" you protest. Yes, it is. It's also a PDF, so you can print it out in multiple pages per sheet, though I wouldn't recommend anything smaller that 2 pages side by side unless you also have high quality magnifying lenses....

2. You don't like ebooks.

It's available in print, too. Come and visit and follow the link! I should warn you, though, it's a lot more than the ebook (I have no control over the publisher's price). If you want to wait another month or two, it will be available from Amazon.com, probably at a discount. I'll announce that here and elsewhere when it is (big time!). If you don't mind a wait, I'll be collecting orders for discounted sales in a few days - visit the web site and check occasionally.

3. You don't like game-based books.

Frankly, I don't blame you. In the more usual case, you're entering a fantasy world created by one or more other people, then reading someone else's filtered view of that world. It's like reading a story that takes place in Middle Earth, not written by J.R.R. Tolkien, or a Narnia story written by someone other than C.S. Lewis. Sometimes this works, but....

Fear NOT! This is different. I wrote the game, and only about a dozen people have ever played it! Not only that, it isn't published, so the only point of view you are stuck with is mine. In fact, the game has little to no impact on the story - you don't need to know anything about the game to enjoy the book. I could just as easily have written the story without the game, it just so happened I wrote the game first.

4. You don't like series stories.

Me either. "Oh, right! You always write things you don't like!" you say. Let me ask you this - do you think that The Lord of the Rings is a series story?

The Zentek Ascendant series is really one, long story broken into five reasonably sized, conveniently separated volumes, and you don't even need to read all five (although it is best as a whole). You could buy Return and stop there. You could start with Minx and stop there. I'll admit that the last three really do depend on each of their predecessors, more than the first two, but, if you don't mind starting or landing in the middle of a long story, they're all good on their own. In my (not so) humble opinion, of course!

5. "So, you think you're as good as Tolkien, or Lewis?"

You tell me - buy the book, or the whole story (all five books), and tell me. I wouldn't undertake such a comparison - I've been told that my writing is good, but that's from a fairly small, pretty friendly and sympathetic select non-group of readers, and a lot of it is NOT about these books at all. I could tell you that my books are the best you'll ever read, and they might be, but I have no illusions on that score. Again, you tell me. Please. :-)

6. Why should you feed my ego?

Not one good reason comes to mind. I didn't write the books to get an ego boost. I wrote them because I couldn't NOT write them. There was a story inside me, bursting to get out, and I had to write it down. I enjoyed it so much, I wanted others (like you) to have the same experience, or better. For all I know, your imagination will take your experience of the book way beyond where it took me.

You could also hate it - not all fantasy is for everyone, and I may just not be your cup of fantasy-tea. The nice thing about books is that, if you don't like one, you can pass it on to someone else (maybe with a little compensation for your initial expense in buying it). You might not like it, but you have a friend or two who might.

So, to sum up, don't buy this book.

Really.

Buy the whole story! Share it with your friends!

Most important of all, enjoy yourself.