The Journeymen is on Countdown offer

My second novel, The Journeymen, is on countdown offer at Amazon for a few days (until the 26th April).  This novel should ring a few bells with those of you who believe you've been unfairly passed over by inferior colleagues or that some people seem to have a disproportionate amount of good luck.  In fact, it is a conspiracy theorists book of choice.

Unlike most conspiracy theories this doesn't just make unsubstantiated links between what we see and hear and draw conclusions that many think are outrageous - it provides an entirely fabricated backstory to hand the lot off.

OK, bit of background might help you here.  We're not the only planet that has created civilisations, or indeed created the means to destroy itself many times over. Part of the focus in this book is one such planet approximately 9 light years away that has been there, done that, destroyed the Tee shirt.  In the book it is going through a renaissance following a period, a long time ago, when war nearly destroyed the planet and everything on it.  Critically the human stock, who are genetically very similar to us guys and gals, has depleted its genetic diversity to the point that the race is slowly dying out.  

Before the terrible wars that created this situation the planet had developed technology that allowed easy space travel over immense distances and had populated a planet nine light years away (coincidence? I don't think so).  They don't have the technology they had so embark on an intergenerational journey to what we call home, only to find things have changed a bit.  These guys, by the way, are the Journeymen.  A subset of them are a group that becomes sworn enemies, they are known as the Sons of Arlgon, nowadays referred to as the Sons.

The main problem when they got here, apart from the total loss of the technology they were hoping to harness to return with suitable DNA samples is that the original Journeymen have embedded (and bedded) the original humanoids on our home planet.  Luckily for the project, but arguably not for most us, many had kept to their own kind, but many had also bred with the indigenous population.  This resulted in the people discovered on arrival as the Colonists (AKA original Journeymen) and Interbreds (AKA IBs, also known as you and me, in the main).  

The Journeymen resolve to protect the Colonists, who generally had managed to secure positions of power and authority, by forming the second tier of authority - the Civil Servants and captains of industry, defending, protecting and directing the Colonists through the generations while the technology necessary to capture DNA and send it through space is developed from an extremely poor starting position.  And you thought HS2 was challenging.

The book starts, though, in the present day when a space vehicle engineer, Tom Roberts, presents a novel invention to help make long term space travel possible.  He is attacked, possibly by Sons who will do anything to thwart their sworn enemies, and rescued by a pair of Journeymen who happen to have their own agenda.  Tom is effectively imprisoned and ultimately framed for the murder of an ex colleague.  He escapes and through a series of adventures helped by a former lover and a reluctant senior Son seeks to secure his freedom.  The book interleaves Tom's story with the original Journeymen story, so aspects and subtleties of the history are revealed throughout the novel.

Back to my original statement about being passed over by less capable colleagues - and I bet you have - they were almost certainly either Journeymen being propelled to a position of power to better protect the Colonists in theoretical power.  Don't take it personally and don't try to stop it - none of us have that much power.

Obviously, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then this book and its sequel, Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning, are free.  Otherwise, if this sounds like your kind of lockdown reading then why not grab a copy while it is price reduced?