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Fiction By Timothy Geigner, Now Available At The Techdirt Insider Shop

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Wed, Dec 5th 2012 3:49pm — Leigh Beadon

As some of you may know, in addition to posts and comments for Techdirt, Tim Geigner aka Dark Helmet also writes novels. Today we're happy to announce that all three of his "conspiracy fiction" titles are now available as PDF ebooks in the Techdirt Insider Shop. These new editions feature brand new cover art and are all available on a pay-what-you-want basis, so head on over and download these three novels today:

Digilife »
David Barker is a child psychologist. A United States defense software contractor commissions him to help with one of their programs, the first true digital consciousness. The program has taken hostages in the company’s underground lab and the company sends David into the lab with a handpicked team of specialists: a mathematician, a computer engineer, a cultural anthropologist, and representatives from the military. Their task is to regain control over this new being and convince her to let her hostages go. But from the moment they set foot in the underground lab, David realizes that the company’s claims of control over this digital being have been flights of fancy and their mission to reason with the first digital consciousness becomes a struggle to survive.

Echelon »
Payton "Doc" Connor is an investigator at the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, a real-life private agency that investigates the paranormal. He has a reputation for dissecting reports the agency receives and proving them to be hoaxes. Shortly before the agency sends him on a routine investigation to New Mexico, the Agency assigns him as mentor to a new investigator, Chanel Falasco. During the trip to the desert, they are contacted by a contemporary "Deep Throat", who confesses his part in a national conspiracy that includes Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and a cult born of Nazis that escaped the Nuremburg Trials with the help of wealthy industrialists. The confessor wants to use them and CUFOS to expose the group he works for before their ultimate goals are realized through an illegal surveillance network referred to only as Echelon.

Midwasteland »
It is the near future in a post-apocalyptic Chicago and Anton Donovan is an anomaly. That is, though he appears to be human in every respect, he is actually a mutated version of a human. There are several differences between anomalies and humans, but the most compelling of these is the anomaly’s ability to manipulate radiation that has been left behind by a long ago waged nuclear war. The humans fear this power and they have instituted a testing process to find and euthanize anomaly children in their cities. The result of this is that anomalies only live in freedom outside of human civilization. Because of a series of personal tragedies suffered at the hands of one of these anomaly enclaves, Anton joins the human military. They think that he is going to help them hunt down his own kind, but instead he is going to use his unique situation to push both sides towards a peace, even as both humans and enclaves alike prepare to wage a worldwide war.

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Filed Under: ebooks, fiction, insider shop

34 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

“

Midwasteland Support

Awhile back, Tim sent me a copy of Midwasteland and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Soon as school ends here I will be buying a copy of the other two books (or just all three) to show some support. For anyone interested, I would definitely suggest buying Midwasteland. It is well written and a great story that keeps one intrigued. By the time I was 2/3 through I really didn't want to put it down to break.

I look forward to reading the other works of Mr. Geigner.

—Killer_Tofu

”

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sehlat (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 4:13pm

ePub?
PDFs are OK for technical books (sort of), but fiction should be stuffable into everything from a phone to a desktop, and PDFs are not suitable for the former.

Thank you.
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btr1701 (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 4:22pm

Re: ePub?
PDFs work fine for me in iBooks.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 4:24pm

Re: ePub?
We're going to try to make ePub versions available soon!
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sehlat (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 4:43pm

Re: Re: ePub?
Thank you. OK if I buy 'em now and pick up the ePubs later?
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scothony (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:06pm

Dark Helmet novels
Happy to support Monsieur Helmet...can't wait to get a glimpse of one of his other sides.
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Colin, 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:09pm

Congrats, DH! I'll be in for all three whenever the ePubs are available.
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:22pm

Re: Re: ePub?
Can I get mine signed?
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:22pm

Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Of course! We'll let people know once they're up and we can send them to you if you like, or you can just buy them again at $0 (or possibly we can set it up so your existing download link accesses them)
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:28pm

"Fiction by Timothy Geigner". What? No trolls have picked up on that headline?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:31pm

Re:
Yeah, techdirt needs some good debate but all we get are the assholes and morons to argue for the other side usually.

Mothing but ad homs and proveably false statements from out_of_the_bob's_joe :/
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Digitari, 5 Dec 2012 @ 6:18pm

Re: Series
Tim, My spouse is so deeply in love with you, her B-day is next week (12/12/12 I kid you not) Just say hi to her on here that day, and write a series, single books are so short :)
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2012 @ 7:34pm

Re:
Ugh, don't encourage them. Trounce their talking points when they do but for goodness' sake don't encourage them to ad hom.
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Just John (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 8:54pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Leigh, you should just convert to other formats on Calibre. Then you would want to ensure formatting issues are correct, but that is how I turn my PDFs into other formats, and they have many formats available (Without the watermarking of some other format converters).
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Just John (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 8:58pm

Re:
Colin,

I mentioned to Leigh above you can just download Calibre and do the conversions yourself with non-DRM protected content.
Trust me, it is a wonderful program, and is one of the best open source ebook systems out there.
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Just John (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 8:59pm

Re:
Yes, but where is my isohunt torrent or piratebay magnet?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2012 @ 9:10pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
I like PDFs, I get confused the the dozen or so reader formats. I still can't find a non-bloated, free software program that could read any of them.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 9:26pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Interesting -- I use calibre for all my laptop ebook reading but I never tried out its conversion tools, assuming (apparently falsely) that they would be minimal. I will give that a shot!

For future ebook projects I am working on moving everything over to Scrivener which is a fantastic writing suite that also has really robust multi-format export tools
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 10:15pm

Congratulations, Original Tim.

One day I hope to write a book as well. I'm not sure what the subject will be. They say "write what you know," and as far as I can tell, there's not a very large market for books dealing with music that ranges from "noisy" to "noisier" featuring so-called music criticism filled with personal anecdotes, one-man in-jokes and hideously malformed metaphors.

One thing is for sure, though. The book I write will feature pages that can be turned and will have enough pages that it can be used to prop up children bored to death by the lack of narrative cohesiveness and jaded past the point of being easily shocked by the f-word being used like a comma. Or the letter "e."

But. When that day comes, I'll put that book into the TD shoppe and sit back and watch the zeroes add up, basting (?) in the reflected glory of the authors beside me on the virtual bookshelf. (After reconsidering the context and consulting the OED, it appears the correct word is "baking.")
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Just John (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 12:30am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Just remember when you try, you have the easy to use, convert as Calibre dictates, or you can get into the custom setting to help alter look and feel. It has some pretty advanced features, but you may need to play with it to find an optimal setting. I use it primarily to take the different formats and convert to mobi for kindle reading, since mobi allows you to alter font, while PDF does not on kindle (Or am I thinking .doc?).

Of course, if you have not yet published, it won't matter since it seems you have an authoring tool to export to proper format, but I was mentioning this mostly for already published, non DRM books.

As for AC's comment, Calibre is not actually that bulky, and has been able to read pretty much any format I have thrown at it as of now. If you are trying with DRM though, that is a different issue. It is also free for us freetards out there.
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PaulT (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 12:59am

Re:
This might actually be the first time that Techdirt has promoted some content where a troll hasn't come in to directly attack the author/artist - and I'm talking the typical content written about here, not just creators with some direct relation to the site. Give them time, I suppose...

Well done, Tim, good luck to you!
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Dark Helmet (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 3:52am

Re: Re: Series
I can't tell if this is serious or not, but I'm always willing to write love notes / happy birthday notes to another man's significant other....
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Dark Helmet (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 3:54am

Re: Re:
BTW, anyone wanting to put these up as a torrent and make me more famous certainly wouldn't be facing any lawsuits from me....
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Dec 2012 @ 5:14am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
calibre is really an easy way to convert to ePub.
ePub is also, for the most part, HTML 3.2. so if there are issues with the file, in calibre you can expand it to the components, fix the problems in a text editor, and recollect them.

it is really cool.
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Colin, 6 Dec 2012 @ 6:21am

Re: Re:
Oh, I've definitely used Calibre, I'd just rather not do it myself. ;) I'm in the middle of a few books anyway so I don't need to be getting anymore at the time being, I'll probably wait for the ePubs for more reason than one.
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 6:30am

Re: Re: Re:
But Dark Helmet, you really want the torrent sites to be making millions from advertising on pages that feature your books?!?!?! Think of all that money you are leaving on the table!!
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 6:43am

Midwasteland Support
Awhile back, Tim sent me a copy of Midwasteland and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Soon as school ends here I will be buying a copy of the other two books (or just all three) to show some support. For anyone interested, I would definitely suggest buying Midwasteland. It is well written and a great story that keeps one intrigued. By the time I was 2/3 through I really didn't want to put it down to break.

I look forward to reading the other works of Mr. Geigner.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 7:11am

Re:
I think the word you're actually looking for is 'basking' - unless you're an item of food.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 7:24am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
I'm going to try it out today. I have my doubts about how perfect the conversion will be (text formatting originates from Word and is.... semantically crappy) but fingers crossed!
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Dreddsnik, 6 Dec 2012 @ 7:26am

Re: Re: Series
I find it sort of refreshing to see an author not limiting his writing to one single long drawn out series. The 'series' thing always appeared to me to be more publisher decision than an author decision, a leftover from the 'Dead-Tree' era. ( books too big, takes up too much shelf space, not to mention the publishing houses mistaken thought that the public doesn't have the attention span for long books ). Instead of a series, now an author has the freedom to make a book as long as they damn well please, so they can just make the book longer. Just my opinion.
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John Fenderson (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 9:11am

Re: Re: ePub?
They also work in all Kindles (even the Kindle reader on my desktop and smartphone), not to mention the cast majority of other ebook options.
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egghead (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 9:15am

Re: Re:
Basting would be the correct word if the juices of the other authors are applied to him while baking next to their glory; supposedly to keep him moist. Certainly, one 'could' bask in such a situation.
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 10:11am

Re: Re:
I'm expecting the reflected glory to be much too warm to actually "bask." (RE: post-hyphen: only when among the cannibals.)
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Just John (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 9:46pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Leigh,

I actually just tried doing a conversion of Mike's book "Approaching Infinity" to epub and Tim's book "Digilife" into mobi, and what I see is the following:

Mike's book had a few conversion issues. I notice that letters dropped off of a few of the words, and since, unless you change how it converts, it uses the first page as the book cover by converting it to an image file, it caused the book title to display oddly.

Tim's book I found almost no issues aside from one.

Both books will also convert the page numbers listed in the PDFs to numbers in the book in their relative position.
Since the page numbers display at the bottom of the page, this means you will see it in the middle of paragraphs or the end of words.

An example is in Tim's Digilife, if you go from page 2 to 3, you should get:
�Hey!� she shouted.
�Oh come on. I just turned it on so it�ll be ready.�

Instead what you see is:
�Hey!� she shouted.
2
�Oh come on. I just turned it on so it�ll be ready.�

Another example is:
Should see:
�I�m not sure.� He felt lightheaded, unable to think clearly, though that was probably just the heat. He looked in every direction. There was very little else out here. If anyone needed an aggressive advertising technique, it would be this place.

What you actually see:
�I�m not sure.� He felt lightheaded, unable to think clearly, though that was probably just the heat. He looked in every direction. There was very little else out here. If anyone needed an aggressive advertising 3
technique, it would be this place.

Keep in mind, this was converted without modifying any of the standard settings, so it was formatted by the default. You can have the page numbers removed (Or better, if you can recreate the original PDF without page numbers, it will not matter), but you will probably need to review how to do text replacement and some other advanced techniques to create the exact look and feel of the end book you want.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 8 Dec 2012 @ 8:37pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ePub?
Cool -- sounds like it should go pretty smoothly. I can easily drop the page numbers. Thanks for trying that out!

As for Approaching Infinity, that one's older and I don't have the original source files on hand, but I'm going to look into fixing it up after the novels.
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