Reader: Daughter of Time, Book 1

From the Author

READER is the first book of the DAUGHTER OF TIME Trilogy.

When I began this series (then only conceived as a single novel), I wanted to write a "superheroine" book for my (then) middle school-aged daughters--the story of a "girl that saves the universe". Inspired by the starlight over the Aegean, I began to write the novel one summer visiting Greece. By the time I had made much progress on the manuscript (which took a back seat to my first thriller), my daughters were in high school and the tone and maturity of the novel wasn't right for them (as their initial devastating critiques revealed!). I then rewrote it from scratch for older readers. So it has some remainder of the YA flavor of the initial drafts, especially in the beginning, but it quickly turns darker. Books 2 and 3 have left the initial universe of that gestation far behind.

With these books, I was also interested in exploring certain themes and ideas from a variety of science fiction authors and modern cosmology, trying to find my own "mythology" to harmonize some of the disparate conceptions of reality. Ideas of the subjectivity and limitations of human perception and understanding played important roles, as did ideas of causality, time, superstructure, divinity, and infinity.

Finally, I always wanted to write a book that not only "broke the fourth wall", but obliterated it, mocked it, transformed it, and turned it into a house of mirrors for the reader. There has been a decidedly mixed reaction as to how well that worked in READER, but it was a lot of fun in the making.

About the Author
Erec Stebbins is a biomedical researcher who writes novels in a variety of genres, focusing on thrillers and science fiction. His work has consistently been praised for its action and thrills alongside a deeper, often philosophical angle. 

His novels have been called "unique" and "pulse-pounding" (THE RAGNARÖK CONSPIRACY), "altogether profound, reminiscent of Bradbury and Dan Simmons' Hyperion" (DAUGHTER OF TIME TRILOGY), and "startlingly dark" (EXTRAORDINARY RETRIBUTION) with five star ratings in Foreword Reviews, San Francisco Book Reviews, Portland Book Review, and others.