Want a whole bunch of good stuff to read, but don’t have much free cash? Check back here Thursday, August 1, for a very useful announcement! I and some fellow writers will be discounting books for a WHOLE WEEK! Some are even free!
And your humble scribe will be guest posting at the inimitable J. A. Konrath’s blog on that day! (Yes, money changed hands but it was for a good cause.)
It’s done! And for sale! (Still waiting for the print proof approval, but…soon). At all the usual outlets, for the low, low introductory price of $1.99 (Good until August 8). Five silly stories of bureaucratic adventure, dimensional hijinks, and the importance of proper filing. One story, “The Correct Way to Fill Out Form PCR-103-u” has been previously published as a standalone short, but the rest are brand new!
And of course, available at my online store (points helpfully to right sidebar…)
UPDATE: print version now available!
As the Write-a-thon chugs along, I have already met my original goal. The collection of short stories is complete and final edits are underway. It should be online very shortly!
Er, so I need another goal, right?
Fine. I am now working on Dragonhunters, the sequel to The Last Mage Guardian. I will attempt to write two new chapters in the remaining four weeks of the Write-a-thon. So there!
Submitted for your consideration …
The sad truth is it will take a while for me to get my full publication list in audiobook format. The cost of doing what I consider to be a decent job is…significant. The royalties (so far) on my one audiobook have not been large. I know some people really love audiobooks, however, so I wanted to alert my readers to a possible alternative.
For the Kindle Fire, at any rate, CoolReader is apparently a decent substitute for a real human reading the text. I have not tried it myself, but there is a video review of the app in action at the link, and it was brought to my attention by one of my readers who claims a) to have read all of my books (making her intelligent and a good judge of literature) and b) that all of my books work well with this app (apparently DRM or other code hijinks in a book can give it hiccups. But not mine!)
from reader Naomi,
The reading voice does take some adjusting to, I originally described it as “Like GLaDOS but without the warmth and personality.”, but now find it to be pretty reasonable.
The Clarion West Write-a-thon is upon us! My page is here. All funds raised go to provide scholarships for Clarion West, a six-week intensive writing workshop. Professional writers and editors, well-known in their fields, teach week-long segments to aspiring speculative fiction writers.
Times are hard for a lot of people, I know, but if you can invest just a little in the future of some writer who may later knock your socks off with a kick-ass story, please do. It all adds up. And we all need good stories…
Thanks!
In a recent blog conversation, the topic of old favorite books came up. Someone mentioned Andrea Alton’s Demon of Undoing. I was surprised because I had thought the book long out of print and pretty hard to come by even when I found it years ago in a used bookstore. Well, it’s baaack! Demon of Undoing
Another old favorite, Sorcery & Cecelia
I’ve been busy doing Good Things like writing more and finally getting this website cleaned up a little. Note the new little widget off to the right–that’s where I will keep my writing status updated on projects and state of completion. Of course those on my mailing list (hint hint) will get advanced notice of actual publication, sales I have planned (yes, I have plans) and other cool stuff.
In other news, I’ve been updating and changing my CreateSpace print books. Found some irritating formatting issues (thank you so much, Word, I’ll have to do the same for you some day…) and now was a good time to do it, because the Big News in indie circles is Baker&Taylor and Ingrams now allow POD books to mingle with the elite in their catalog. This means a bookstore can ORDER MY BOOKS and as long as I look professional, they won’t be able to tell I’m not operating out of 1 Worlds Away Press Plaza. (Unless you tell them.)
The downside to this is I had to raise the prices on the print books. Ebooks are staying where they are, don’t worry. Distributors, on the other hand, need to be able to offer bookstores a discount, and I need to price it high enough that I don’t owe the distributor money after that discount. (Actually CreateSpace won’t let you set a price that puts you in the red, but you know what I mean.) I didn’t like doing this, but given how few print copies sold even at the old price I am hoping this does not annoy too many of my fans. Someday it will be possible to do POD for mass market paperbacks and the books will be even cheaper…but not now. Anyway, just wanted to explain what was going on and that I wasn’t just trying to get readers to pay for my second yacht. (I don’t even have an inflatable kayak, OK?)
Now, back to writing…
I have discovered a new genre. Funny hard science fiction.The Martian, by Andy Weir, is the story of an astronaut engineer with a warped sense of humor who is accidentally (no, really!) abandoned on Mars when the rest of his team has to do an emergency exit back to Earth. LOTS of cool science as he tries to stay alive using his chemical and engineering knowhow to kludge together the things he needs to survive. His will to survive, on the other hand, is nearly mortally wounded when he discovers the only music left behind is the mission leader’s extensive collection of ’70s pop tunes.
THRILL to the importance of bacteria! MARVEL at using old Mars probes to send x-rated ASCII art! BOGGLE at the humble potato! (It becomes clear in the book, trust me).
And you can’t beat the price, currently a mere 99 cents!
UPDATE: link now works. Thanks Anachronda!
David Farland, writer and teacher of writers, has had a lot of sudden, bad juju land on his family in a medical way. A number of his friends and former students organized a book bomb on Wednesday, a coordinated book buying campaign to a) earn him money, and b) raise his Amazon rankings. They have succeeded wildly with b) at any rate, and the need for a) is still ongoing. This link will take you to one of his indie works, and if you subsequently buy any other little items on your Amazon list, Dave’s Associate account gets a cut. I purchased Million Dollar Outlines and have been reading it ever since.
The book bomb may be over, but we can still keep his Amazon rank high. Spread the word!
Wow, that was fast. I uploaded the file late last night, and not only is it live I’ve had one sale!
I’ll be updating the online store this evening, with luck, for those readers who like to get their ebooks fresh from the writer. Thanks for your patience, everyone, and enjoy!