Writer's Digest Award
A Universe Less Traveled was awarded the Honorable Mention in the science fiction category in the Writer's Digest 2022 competition for self-published e-books.
Here's what their reviewer said:
The tone and world-building are delightful. You bring HD STL to life and make it clear why someone would want to cross over to it regularly and perhaps even want to live there permanently. The writing is suitably complex without being confusing. You handle the large cast of characters and the jumps back and forth in time with aplomb and the reader is never confused. The ways the two universes diverge are very interesting, and that drove me to want to keep reading, to explore this fascinating thought experiment of a place.
Your characters all come alive as unique people with legible motivations. Billy is a fun guide to this universe, and Hines' reaction to finding himself in HD STL is an interesting counterpoint. I believed that Billy (and later, Meredith) fell in love with this less crowded, car-centric, and more peaceful universe. The antagonists all had equally legible motivations even if they were less agreeable. Well done!
The back-and-forth between time periods was handled well, and allowed for a lot of graceful world-building, as aspects of HD St. Louis could be explored in the past and thus be clear to the reader when Billy and family encounter them in the 'present'. The drawing-in of the characters was handled gracefully as well, with everyone coming naturally into the adventure. I also very much liked the mechanics of moving between the universes - having a natural limitation added tension, as did the 'enemy' having an easier method.
Your writing style is clear and often beautiful.
See a New side of St. Louis
" If you know St. Louis, love science fiction, or love alternate universe stories, "A Universe Less Traveled" is the book for you. If you love all of those things, you will love the book even more!"
"I didn’t just want to visit his alternate St. Louis, I wanted to live there myself."
"A St. Louis I wish I could visit. A post on Reddit led me to pre-order this wonderful alternate reality tale. HD St. Louis was so vividly described I felt I was there, and I'm sorry to leave it. I highly recommend this book as a delightful and optimistic escape."
"The book can also be a traveler's guide to St. Louis and the near by Cahokia Mounds. If you are familiar with the city you'll never see it quite in the same way. It will forever become like a children's storybook with those clear overlay pages that change the picture from one reality to another. If you are visiting St. Louis for the first time you may well notice the city scenes before you take on a different landscape as you see von Schrader's alternative city superimposed on what lays before you."
"The story is grounded in the author's familiarity with St. Louis and it's his admiration for the City -its residents, history, and geography-- that is purely contagious. "
