The science fiction series Waters of the Moon begins with a traditional theme, the story of a child growing up under unusual circumstances. Like Tarzan of the Apes and Clan of the Cave Bear, the novels seek to probe the most basic elements of the human character. Just as the Neanderthals sought to mold Ayla to their culture, Grey Waters is faced with a group of manipulative computers determined to create a new governor capable of fulfilling their strategic goals. Will he develop into a soulless tool of the computers, or struggle to overcome the most adverse circumstances? Just like C.S. Forester's sea-going tales of Captain Horatio Hornblower, each book in the Waters of the Moon Series is an independent journey. In book five, we find him striving to rebuild the struggling rebel republic following a failed invasion by the Northern Alliance. But Grey soon discovers he has enemies closer to home than planet Earth. Confronted by enormous new challenges, Grey must make the most fateful decisions of his life - with the future of a world at stake.
After a brief career in yellow journalism for a political machine, I started writing science fiction. I've always enjoyed the old-time writers from science fiction's golden age, though most of my current reading is confined to history and biography. The premise of a child raised under unusual circumstances seemed especially interesting, for it examines what makes us what we are. Kipling did this in Jungle Book, as Edgar Rice Burroughs did in Tarzan and Jean Auel in Clan of the Cave Bear. The Waters of the Moon series, (aka the Tranquility books), seeks to discover how a child raised by comupters against the back-drop of war might struggle to achieve a normal life.
The 9th and final Tranquility book is being released in 2010, called Tranquility's Last Stand. Two new books, Slave of Akrona and Magistrate of the Dark Land, will be available to Kindle readers this summer and can be found in print by the end of the year. More information can be found at watersofthemoon.com
I was born in the Yankee-occupied San Fernando Valley in tbe once-great State of California. My father, Roy Urbach, worked as a film editor at Warner Brothers, and he helped give me a strong sense of story-telling. I attended school at California State University Northridge but learned creative writing at Los Angeles Valley College several years later. I am married to the paper doll artist Kwei-lin Lum.
