Category: The Allston Variant

I just received an email from my publisher, Moonshine Cove Publishing.  Royalties for print and e-book sales of The Allston Variant in 2019 earned me a whopping $14.87. Huzzah! 😉

I’ll have copies of The Allston Variant as well as some of my other novels on hand.

BC Bookmarks (“literary news from the Boston College community”) features a review today on my new book, The Allston Variant.

The Allston Variant is on Gloria Mindock’s reading list. 

Here’s a great photo of my “co-author” and spouse, Barb Ariel Cohen, at the Allston Variant book launch. I say “co-author” in quotes because Ariel didn’t want to be listed as such even though she contributed extensively to the scientific portion of the plot.  (Photo courtesy Ken Porter.)

From my good friend, Rick Sanger, who attended Saturday’s book launch at New England Mobile Book Fair:

“Satisfied customer” Leslie Douglas is shown reading her copy of The Allston Variant.

The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, AND… at The Allston Variant book launch party on Saturday, May 11 @ 2 PM at the New England Mobile Book Fair, 241 Needham Street, Newton Upper Falls, MA 02464.

Recently I obtained some publicity for The Allston Variant from an unexpected source: one of the Boston-area ham radio clubs, the Wellesley Amateur Radio Society, ran this item in their May, 2019 newsletter, The Spark Gap:

The Allston Variant just appeared on Amazon.com!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945181575

My publisher has convinced me to go with the dark version of the cover art.  I had been leaning with a white background, however the green text stands out better against the black I think. 

It won’t be long now.  Estimated book publication date is April 21–eleven days from now.

I received two additional blurbs for the cover of my upcoming scientific mystery-thriller “The Allston Variant.” Many thanks to Greg and Luke for their kind words:

“The Allston Variant, Phil Temples’ frighteningly plausible new novel, enthralls with its breathtaking pace and complex heroine, scientist/undercover agent Carrie Bloomfield, while elucidating the latest advances in biotechnology. A smart, steamy thriller!  —Gregory Wolos, author of Women of Consequence and Turnpike

“Thrillers are my guilty pleasure, and The Allston Variant is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.  Temples not only spins an excellent yarn, he can write!” —Luke Salisbury, author of The Answer Is Baseball and No Common War

I couldn’t resist reposting this. There’s a scene in The Allston Variant where the two main protagonists visit Sullivan’s on Castle Island.  https://www.wcvb.com/article/sullivans-castle-island-in-south-boston-opening-for-season-on-friday/26539709#

I’m excited to announce the official book launch for “The Allston Variant”, the second in the Carrie Bloomfield Novel series, will happen on Saturday, May 11, 2019 from 2-4 PM at New England Mobile Book Fair, 241 Needham St, Newton Upper Falls, MA. Light refreshments will be served. 

I have some amazing artwork that I hope will become the cover design for my upcoming scientific-murder mystery novel, “The Allston Variant.” It’s slated to be published in mid-April, 2019.

I’m also making arrangements for a book launch at one of the local Boston-area book stores.

Stay tuned!

WCVB carried this interesting story today entitled, “High-security Boston lab begins growing Ebola virus for experiments“.

It’s similar to the BSL-4 high security lab I describe in The Allston Variant. However, in the novel I go into far greater detail about the BSL-4 safety features in the fictional Allston lab. 

From Gene Robinson from Moonshine Cove Publishing:

…We have placed your manuscript on our publication calendar in the next available slot and have assigned it the ISBN 9781945181573. As things stand now, it looks like publication will be near April 21, 2019. We should begin work on the manuscript about a month before that. In the meantime, as you suggest, it’s not too early to start thinking about what you’d like for a cover. We’d be pleased to hear your ideas and if you come across any interesting images, let us know.

It seems unbearably far in the future, but I’ve waited longer for some of my books to be published.

Huzzah! I just signed a contract with a small publishing house, Moonshine Cove Publishing LLC., to produce the second installment of my Carrie Bloomfield Novel series called “The Allston Variant.” (The first in the series is “The Winship Affair”). I’m hoping the novel may be available for purchase on Amazon and elsewhere before year’s end.

Here’s a synopsis:

When scientists recover a deadly bacterium from the partially thawed permafrost of Alaska’s Northern Slope, the ancient pathogen kills the team members and decimates a small native village before mutating into a harmless version of itself. The U.S. Army moves in to collect samples for further study; the case is marked ‘Top Secret’ and closed. Eighteen years later, Cumulus Industries, a Boston biotechnology company, is tasked with developing a cure for the dangerous bacterium but the U.S. intelligence community soon suspects the company’s executive management of secretly engineering a biological weapon based on the bacterium. It plans to sell the weapon to a shadowy Middle East terrorist organization.

Suspicions are heightened when a Cumulus employee who is an undercover FBI informant mysteriously goes missing. The Bureau decides it must have another informant on the inside. It recruits the brilliant Boston scientist and entrepreneur Carrie Bloomfield who masquerades as Janice Silberman, a newly-hired researcher from Toronto. Silberman is befriended by an exotic and attractive fellow researcher, Argie Khorui. The two become best friends and lovers. But Khouri isn’t who she appears to be.

Bloomfield struggles to remain true to her mission while facing a daunting scientific challenge—the bioweapon is accidentally unleashed upon an unsuspecting Boston populace and Bloomfield must find a cure.

I finished the manuscript for the Winship Affair sequel entitled, “The Allston Variant” and am receiving feedback from readers. I’m now actively seeking a publisher for the book. For the very first time, I’m also shopping around for an agent to help me attract the attention of the top-tier publishers. But I’m not holding my breath.

I’m a little over 20k words on a manuscript for my sequel to “The Winship Affair: a Carrie Bloomfield Novel” a scientific murder-mystery published in 2014 by Blue Mustang Press. This one will be the same genre, I’m calling it “The Allston Variant: a Carrie Bloomfield Novel.”