A wonderful Mystique day to all and welcome Christopher Meeks and his book Love at Absolute Zero.
Christopher Meeks is giving away
2 prize packages tour wide.
Open to US Shipping.
There is the short fiction
package, which includes two short story collections and Christopher's produced
play "Who Lives?"
The prize pack also contains: a
heart coffee mug, deck of cards, nail file, small photo frame, unfinished heart
wooden photo frame, and journal.
Package two is the "novel
package" which contains 2 signed copies of Christopher's books including
Love at Absolute Zero.
The prize pack also contains: a
heart coffee mug, deck of cards, nail file, small photo frame, unfinished heart
wooden photo frame, and journal.
__________________________
Thank you, Mila, for having me visit and for launching me on
this tour. You’re the first stop. While I write for the Huffington Post, I thought I’d write about something I hadn’t
written there: how I came to write my novel, Love At Absolute Zero.
In my fiction, I’ve always been compelled to write what’s
important to me. Because relationships can be so enveloping, confusing,
energizing and depressing, I love to explore them in story. I’ve never thought
of my short stories or novels as “romance” but as “reality.” We do crazy things for love.
One truth I’ve seen is that all types of people fall in
love. Secretaries and CEOs, plumbers and politicians, lawyers and electricians
all fall in love. My wife, Ann, a librarian—a lovely soul who swept me off my
feet—happened to work in the astrophysics library at Caltech for a few years. I
met many brilliant scientists while she was there. All of them were so
incredibly smart at their science yet some seemed so amazingly blind to reading
body language that I thought it’d be interesting and funny to write about a
scientist in love. I’d never read such a contemporary story with a scientist
looking for a soul mate.
As I started thinking about writing such a novel, I knew a
few things. First, my protagonist would be male because men are so much more
confused at love than most women I know, and confusion can be funny. So can
someone so brilliant in one thing and blind in another.
Thus, I knew this was going to be a story with humor. I knew
it’d take place in the Midwest because that’s where I grew up, and a story
about the heart should take place in the heartland.
I knew the story would end up in Denmark because I lived
there my junior year abroad, and I love the country. To this day, I still keep
in touch with the Danish family that I had lived with. Also, Americans tend to
think of Denmark as free-spirited and free love. Free always has a price.
I wanted my protagonist from a Scandinavian heritage, yet
he’d know nothing of Scandinavia. I gave him the name of Gunnar Gunderson,
which is a nod to my high school science teacher, Daniel Danielson. Gunnar is
highly likeable, not because he’s smart but because he’s so earnest and
vulnerable.
I would also make Gunnar untraveled as well. He’s always been
perfectly happy in Wisconsin, and going to Denmark would make him a fish out of
water. What would get him to Denmark? Ah. Love.
I added a time element. After he gets a promotion, he
realizes he wants and needs a wife. Yet he’s in a race in his research. He
figures with his lab down for three days, he and his two colleagues will use
the time to find the love of his life. To do so, they’ll use the scientific
method. Science has never disappointed him. Ha! Chaos erupts.
Last came the science. As I researched, I learned Denmark is
known for its physics. It has the Niels Bohr Institute, and Danes pour a lot of
research money into physics—1.8% of Denmark’s gross domestic product. I didn’t
know a lot about physics, but I was willing to learn. With Gunnar a physicist,
he could also get an academic job there if I needed that.
I had a lot of fun writing the book, and the science part is
only there as background. You don’t need to know any science; what is in the
book slides down easily as honey.
What I didn’t know when I started was how many laws of
physics relate to the laws of romance. For instance, Newton’s first law of
motion is that a body continues in a constant state of velocity unless
something acts on it. The moon, for example, will keep circling the earth
unless something shoves it off course. And aren’t people the same? They’ll keep
going along in their path unless, ah ha, the force of love enters their life.
It changes everything.
As Sam Sattler said in his review in Book Chase, “It is impossible not to like
Gunnar Gunderson. As he progresses from one disaster or near miss to the next, one views him with a
mixture of compassion and laughter, but he is such a good-hearted young man
that it is impossible not to root for him.”
Love at Absolute Zero
came out in September, and three weeks later came a review from Virginia
Campbell, who heard about the book on Goodreads. Her review was on a romance
website, which threw me. “A romance?” I thought. “This isn’t a romance.” Yet
Virginia said, “With some books, you
can sense in advance that you are in for a reader's treat, that you will be
taken outside your normal reading zone and sent on an involving and entertaining
journey through words. Love at Absolute
Zero, by Christopher Meeks, is just such a book.”
“Hey,” I thought. “It’s a romance!” May you enjoy reading
this unusual one.
_______________
Love at Absolute Zero
By Christopher Meeks
Publisher: White Whisker Books
Date: September 17, 2011
Genre: Literary Fiction with a Romantic Twist from a male POV
Format: Paper & Kindle, 311 Pages
Love At Absolute Zero is the story of Gunnar Gunderson, a 32-year-old physicist at the University of Wisconsin. The moment he's given tenure at the university, he can only think of one thing: finding a wife. This causes his research to falter. With his two partners, Gunnar is in a race against MIT to create new forms of matter called Bose-Einstein condensates, which exist only near absolute zero. To meet his soul mate within three days--that's what he wants and all time he can carve out--he and his team are using the scientific method, to riotous results.
Date: September 17, 2011
Genre: Literary Fiction with a Romantic Twist from a male POV
Format: Paper & Kindle, 311 Pages
Love At Absolute Zero is the story of Gunnar Gunderson, a 32-year-old physicist at the University of Wisconsin. The moment he's given tenure at the university, he can only think of one thing: finding a wife. This causes his research to falter. With his two partners, Gunnar is in a race against MIT to create new forms of matter called Bose-Einstein condensates, which exist only near absolute zero. To meet his soul mate within three days--that's what he wants and all time he can carve out--he and his team are using the scientific method, to riotous results.
Available at: Amazon
Kindle Amazon
Paperback Smashwords BN
Nook
LOVE AT ABSOLUTE ZERO is listed as a Best Romance on Red
Adept Reviews: http://redadeptreviews.com/2011-red-adept-reviews-indie-awards-romance/
It also won a Noble (not Nobel) Award on MyShelf.com at http://www.myshelf.com/backtoliterature/column.htm
And was selected for Top Ten Fiction 2011 at Book Chase at http://bookchase.blogspot.com/2011/12/best-of-2011-final-list.html
Praise for Love at Absolute Zero
"Love at Absolute Zero" is about a physicist who
tries to apply the tools of science to finding a soul mate. Specifically,
Gunnar Gunderson, a 32-year-old physicist at the University of Wisconsin, gets
a promotion, and all he can think of now is finding a wife, causing his
research to falter. To meet his soul mate within three days—that’s what he
wants and all time he can carve out—he and his team are using the scientific
method, to riotous results.
“It is impossible not to like Gunnar Gunderson," says
critic Sam Sattler of Book Chase. "As Gunnar progresses from one disaster
or near miss to the next, one views him with a mixture of compassion and
laughter, but he is such a good-hearted young man that it is impossible not to
root for him."
"The magical thing," says reviewer Grady Harp (Top
Ten on Amazon) "is that Meeks makes us really care about this strange
bright naïve nerd."
"As engaging as it is amusing, Love at Absolute Zero
is, ultimately, a heartfelt study of the tension between the head and heart,
science and emotion, calculation and chance." - Marc Schuster, Small Press
Reviews
"The author hit a home run. It’s a very good story,
very well told." - Jim Chambers, Red Adept Reviews
“As if Einstein didn’t struggle hard enough failing at a
unified field theory,” says Philip Persinger, author of Do The Math, “Meeks ups
the ante by tossing philosophy, anthropology, hashish and love (with a capital
L) into the mix. And while we’re so sorry, Uncle Albert, in Love At Absolute
Zero, Meeks succeeds absolutely.”
“I've read both of Meeks's short story collections and The
Brightest Moon of the Century. I roared through Love at Absolute Zero in a day
and a half. Meeks's prose is carefully crafted, his characters compelling and
entertaining. I love everything he writes, and I recommend Love at Absolute
Zero without reservation." -- author Kevin Gerard (Conor and the
Crossworlds)
About the Author:
Christopher Meeks writes short fiction and novels. His book
of short stories, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea earned great reviews including
the Los Angeles Times ("poignant and wise") and a blurb in Entertainment
Weekly that said, "A collection so stunning that I could not help but move
onto the next story." His second collection of short stories, Months and
Seasons was published in 2009, and his first novel, The Brightest Moon of the
Century appeared in 2009. He has published short fiction in a number of
literary journals, including Rosebud, The Clackamas Literary Review, The
Southern California Anthology, The Santa Barbara Review, Midday Moon, and
Writers' Forum. He now focuses mainly on writing novels.
He teaches English and children's literature at Santa Monica
College, children's literature at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena,
and fiction writing at UCLA Extension.
Web site: http://www.chrismeeks.com
Publisher site: http://WhiteWhiskerBooks.com
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2 comments:
wow that sounds awesome! Im def going to check this out!
tirnanog77@gmail.com
Thank you for dropping by Christopher!
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