Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Richard H. Hardy - The Infinity Program - Author Interview & Giveaway



About the Book

Jon Graeme and Harry Sale are unlikely friends. Harry is a world-class programmer, but his abrasive personality alienates co-workers. In contrast, Jon is a handsome and easy-going technical writer, the low man on the IT totem pole.

Sharing a love of nature, the men set out together, planning to go their separate ways--Jon on a hike and Harry, fly fishing. Three days later, Jon arrives at the rendezvous point, but his friend is nowhere in sight. When Jon finds Harry unconscious on the floor of a cave, Harry claims to have been lying there the entire time. But he is neither cold nor hungry. What Jon doesn't know is that Harry fell into an underground cavern, where he came into contact with an alien quantum computer.

Back at work, Harry jettisons his regular tasks and concentrates exclusively on inventing new operating language to access the alien system. In the process he crashes his office's Super Computer and is fired. Jon convinces the company to give Harry a second chance, arguing that the system he has invented will make them millions.

Jon has no idea what havoc Harry is about to unleash.


Author Interview

1. Who is the plot based around?
Harry Sale, a world class systems programmer is the main character in the book. He is an irascible, difficult, but good-hearted person. His contact with an alien information system changes him forever and sends the rest of the world into turmoil.

2. What is the main idea of the plot?
Like so many stories in the Science Fiction genre, the basic plot hinges on “What if?” What if a programming genius discovered a tremendously advanced alien computer? Some people would use such a discovery to accumulate wealth or power. But Harry Sale is a different kind of guy. The story revolves about the choices he makes when the alien information system gives him the power to do anything he can imagine.

3. When does the plot take place?
Basically it is a fairly contemporary setting, circa 2010.

4. Where does the plot take place?
Most of the book takes place at a High Tech company called HTPS Industries. Harry Sale, a systems programmer, works on a 100 million dollar Hyper-Computer. The book takes an inside look at the quirky, Dilbertesque side of corporate culture in an IT environment.

5. Why did the plot develop the way it did?
I wish I could say I was some kind of genius and that the plot came to me all at once. But the reality is that idea was built on idea as the book progressed. I had a very broad notion of where I wanted to take the book, but I had to work out many details as I went along.

6. How did you come up with the idea for the plot?
The germ idea is: someone finds an alien computer that allows anything to be accomplished using nanotechnology. It took me a while to realize that I needed something else to make the idea work. The missing component was Harry Sale, the genius-level programmer who brings the alien information system back to life.

***

The Infinity Program can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords
iBooks
Kobo

Prices/Formats: $5.95 ebook, $13.95 paperback
Pages: 250
Genre: Science Fiction, Romance
Release: April 1, 2014
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603819336
Click to add to your Goodreads list.


About the Author

Richard H. Hardy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, during a week of relentless bombing raids just before the close of World War II. The day he was born an incendiary bomb fell on the church across the street from where he lived, so he is fond of saying that he entered the world with a big adrenaline rush.

His family later moved to England and then on to America.

After college Richard bounced through a series of temporary jobs as he traveled around the country, wanting nothing more than to write fiction. A job driving a library van allowed him free time to write several short stories and work on a novel.

He and his wife moved to New Hampshire, where he took an entry level job at a software company. He was soon promoted to the technical writing department and ended up producing over 500,000 words of online documentation. After a few years he was promoted to the programming department and ended up as the Senior EDI Programmer, creating EDI maps and writing UNIX scripts and troubleshooting on AIX systems throughout the U.S. and Canada.

After he retired, he started writing fiction again. The Infinity Program is his first published novel.

Links to connect with Richard:
Web Site
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog Tour Site


Read an Excerpt:



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1 comment:

  1. Thanks for inviting Richard by to talk about how he came up with the idea for his plot! :)

    ReplyDelete