"The Clifford Spock Incident" by M.C. Aquila

Current Tags

ufos, aliens, cats, comedy, science fiction, satire, humor

Categories

Humor / Science Fiction

Affiliate Link

The Clifford Spock Incident

Author's Description

When Clifford, a 20-year-old mechanic and ardent believer in UFOs, is rejected by his long-time crush, he finally has a close encounter when a flying saucer nearly crashes into his truck. The two aliens onboard, Nigel and Phil, accept his offer to fix their ship and hide them from prying eyes. But in a small town where gossiping old ladies haunt every street corner, secrets are hard to keep. And when a reckless alien assassin appears on the scene, secrecy may be the least of Clifford's worries.

Why I Chose It

The writing is solid, and the characters are well-drawn. Things start moving in episode one, and there's gentle humor in the depiction of this small town in Texas. I'm guessing there will be plenty of absurdities coming up in future episodes.

[Other criteria: 24 episodes available so far, with 9 updates in the last 30 days, not currently featured by Amazon.]

Who Might Like This

If you enjoy humorous first contact stories, this could be just the thing! Better yet, the characters are likable -- I always love a character driven by spite, and there are two of them politely clashing in the first episode.

A Quick Rant

 Seriously, Amazon, does it have to be this difficult?

Depending on whether you type in your search terms at the top of the website or click on a key word, you can see a list with either

• the number of episodes published in the last 30 days

or

• the total number of episodes
• the number of thumbs up
• the keywords
• the first line and a half of the description

There's no way to sort on any of it.

What I want to see are 

• the total number of episodes
• how many have been published in the last 30 days (because there are a lot of abandoned 3-episode stories out there)
• the entire description (which isn't that long)
• and maybe the keywords.

I wonder how long it would take me to figure out how to scrape all the data... But that's probably against the TOS.

Welcome!

Who am I? 

Hi! I'm SF/F author T.M. Baumgartner. I also publish cozy mysteries as Tess Baytree. People who know me in real life call me Theresa.

As far as demographics go, I'm female, white, born in North America, and solidly in the Gen-X demographic. All this is to say, I'm not the target market of most serials found on Kindle Vella. Serial readers tend to skew much younger.

What is this blog for?

But I do think there are serials out there on Vella that I would enjoy. They're just hard to find. Amazon's search functionality in the current version is execrable. I know this because I've searched for my own serial (*Dragon Freehold -- hey, it's my blog, I can promote my own stuff, right?) and had a hard time finding it, even though I know what keywords I put it under.

So my goal here is to search for serial content that I might enjoy. Would you enjoy it, too? I don't know. But I'll try to describe the ones I review in such a way that people who are looking for something like that can find it.

What is this blog NOT for?

I'm not going to do some sort of numerical or star rating. There are too many variables that go into that, and my 5-star rating might be completely different from yours.

I'm also not going to read genres that don't interest me. Don't expect me to review reverse harem serials. If those are your jam, great! Write your own reviews! You don't want to take the word of someone who doesn't like them in the first place.

What format will this be?

That's a really good question. I expect it to evolve. Consider this a work in progress.

Now let's get started!

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*  Fair warning, I'm using affiliate links -- maybe I'll make enough off it to buy a cup of tea someday!