By Tracey Lampley
Alex Howerton has always created stories in his head. On track to becoming a Professor of Literature, Alex detoured and decided to go into business instead. So he wrote fiction on the side. One day he had a grand vision of humanity’s place in the cosmos, both in the past and the future, a discipline which has since come to be called “Big History.” So he sought ways to try to communicate that vision, and fiction was one of those avenues. He was about 27 when that epiphany struck him, and he became a genre-jumper, mixing science-fiction with mythology. Unfortunately, traditional publishers passed on the mixture of hard-to-categorize books. Thanks to Amazon, Alex is able to realize his vision and sell his books and express his “big history” ideas. So Alex reads what he writes. He says the best science fiction takes a technological change and explores its social and cultural ramifications. For him, the book, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and more recently the Divergent series, nail it for him.
I asked Alex to tell us about his novel, The Gravettian Goddess. Here is the blurb:
What if the Holy Grail were real? What if people could truly live forever? Gravettian Goddess will appeal to fans of both The Da Vinci Code and Clan of the Cave Bear. It is the story of Greg Janeszco, a self-made internet multi-millionaire with a penchant for archaeology. He discovers a mystery that reaches back into the dim mist of prehistory, when humans first migrated into Europe at least 40,000 years ago during the ice age and created the wondrous cave paintings found there. Can he solve the ancient riddle before the pursuing members of a shadowy international organization, who want to exploit the find for their own dark purposes?
Alex also told me about his other novel, The Wyrding Stone. Here is the blurb:
It is the story of two lovers bound to each other through time, brought together by the power of a mysterious magical stone that controls their fate. But the circumstances in which they find themselves in each lifetime, combined with the accumulated weight of their mutual karma, continually conspire against them. Yet they always find each other again, and keep trying to build lasting love through their many lives. Will they be able to fulfill their love and finally put their past to rest in the present?
When asked what he was currently working on, Alex Howerton says he’s working on the sequel to The Gravettian Goddess, which is called 13. It is an exploration of the 40,000-year history that results in The Gravettian Goddess and explains why 13 is the luckiest number ever. I asked Alex what he does when he’s not writing. Not only is he a loving husband and dad, but he works as an account manager for an internet services company. What he enjoys most about writing is exploring big ideas. His favorite author is David Mitchell, who wrote Cloud Atlas. “The beauty, the controlled complexity of that symphony of words is simply astonishing,” he says. Margaret Atwood runs a close second with her Madd Addam trilogy.