Chloe Johansson and the God Particle by Toby Tate 

By Andrew Zack

I’ve written about a variety of different authors for the BIG THRILL, but was really intrigued to chat with Toby Tate, author of GOD PARTICLE: A CHLOE JOHANSSON THRILLER (CrossRoads).

We all know about traditional publishing and we all know about self-publishing, and even the hybrid, managed self-publishing that I provide via Author Coach and Endpapers Press. But Mr. Tate was the first to tell me about what I’m going to call publishing “by invitation only.”

Whereas traditional publishers look at a book as a business opportunity, CrossRoad Press, run by David Niall Wilson, operates more on an author-to-author, invite-only basis, Mr. Tate told me. I wonder if the term “co-op” might apply, as their website mentions, “We have a small army of folks working for us proofing and copy-editing, mostly for the love of books, or for free reading of the rest of our library.” I wonder if Mr. Tate has to copy-edit a book in exchange for someone copy-editing his.  Then it really would be a co-op, I think.

Tate is without an agent and yet has found success publishing through small publishers. Perhaps the appropriate comparison is an indie filmmaker who has yet to find a major distributor? GOD PARTICLE is his third book and he told me he had tried about eighty-five agents on his first book and probably more on his second. He found his way to CrossRoad because it published the eBook of his first novel, which was published by Nightbird, but which did not publish eBooks.

GOD PARTICLE is a Young-Adult thriller inspired by Tate’s daughter, who was adopted from China. Sixteen-year-old Chloe Johansson is about to take finals after her first year at MIT when she learns that her father, Dr. Simon Johansson, is missing from the CERN facility in Geneva. But before he disappeared, Simon invented a machine that allows the human brain to make contact with the newly discovered Higgs boson, also known as the God Particle.

In a desperate search for her father, Chloe embarks on a journey that changes everything she knows about love and friendship, our universe, and even about the nature of reality itself.

With each terrifying turn of events the young prodigy is thrust deeper into a world beyond her own, where she is confronted by dark forces that will stop at nothing to gain control of the awesome power of the God Particle.

Sounds like a page-turner. And if it’s anything like Mr. Tate’s adventures in getting published, I’m sure it’s a compelling read.

*****

Toby is the author of two adult supernatural thrillers. CHLOE JOHANSSON AND THE GOD PARTICLE is his first foray into the young adult world. He was a newspaper reporter for five years and is also a songwriter, musician and studio engineer. Toby lives with his family near the Dismal Swamp in northeastern North Carolina.

To learn more about Toby, please visit his website.