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Hurry! The giveaway ends January 9th, 2015.

It’s been confirmed that Andy Serkis provides the narration for the trailer. That being the case, I’m going out on a limb (not a particularly treacherous one, granted) and theorizing that he’s playing a CGI character. No, not just because that’s his thing — I quite like his non-CGI presence and would love to see him as Andy Serkis in just about anything — but because that voice he’s doing does not sound like something that would go with his actual physiology. Obviously, it does, but it doesn’t seem natural, doesn’t? If we saw him doing that voice out of his normal self, even alien-ed up, it wouldn’t seem right. In order for that voice to sound natural, it almost has to be the voice of a character that doesn’t correspond to Andy Serkis’s human self.

This isn’t new information, of course, but it does seem to corroborate that he’s playing a CGI character.

Does that mean he’s playing an alien, an altered human, a cyborg, or something else? I have no idea. But it doesn’t sound like he’s playing a good guy, in any case. If he is playing a good guy, someone get the poor fellow a cough drop.

I’m actually very excited about the Star Wars trailer. It’s new and fresh, exciting and tense, all the things the prequels weren’t. There’s no Jar Jar, no fart jokes (I’m looking at you, Phantom Menace) — at least, not yet. JJ Abrams still has time to insert a few. But I don’t think he will. They wouldn’t fit the tone of this trailer. He’s doing his usual tense, highly watchable shtick, but applying it to Star Wars.

I have many reservations about him handling SW, but I have strangely high hopes, as well. He created and wrote the pilot for LOST, which is one of my favorite television shows of all time, if not the favorite, and that pilot was brilliant. As a director, he knows how to create tension and movement. I actually kind of hated his Star Trek movies — especially the second one — but that’s because they just didn’t feel like Star Trek. They’d lost their vibe, their soul. JJ doesn’t love Star Trek, though, and he loves Star Wars.

Here’s hoping he does an awesome job.

I’m very excited to unleash my new series on the world. I’ve been working on it for years, and I’m very proud of it. It’s called The Atomic Sea and I consider it my magnum opus. It’s an epic adventure in a strange world.

What’s it about?

The Atomic Sea: Part One

Imagine the epic fantasy adventure of The Lord of the Rings blended with the cosmic strangeness of China Mieville or Jeff Vandermeer, and you’ll have some idea of the wonders and delights awaiting you in The Atomic Sea.

A thousand years ago, the sea changed, becoming strange and unnatural, and in the process transforming the world. Now, with the Empire of Octung plunging the world into a terrible war, only one man — Dr. Francis Avery — and his rag-tag band have a hope of ending the chaos and, once and for a all, uncovering the mystery of the Atomic Sea.

 Dr. Avery is out on the sea serving as the doctor aboard a whaling ship when a most curious patient is brought to him — a beautiful woman fished out of the Atomic Se, who has survived the horrors and poisons of the water, and who carries a secret that could either save the world or damn it. At the same time, murders have been occurring aboard the ship — there’s a spy for Octung aboard. If Avery doesn’t save the woman from the killer and help her achieve her ends, the whole world will be plunged into nightmare.

 This is just the beginning of the incredible adventure waiting in The Atomic Sea. There will be five parts, and the first two are already available. To read an except of Part One, go here.

You can find The Atomic Sea: Part One (the whole novel) here.