For the nice long lazy Labor Day weekend I have just put The Scent of Metal on sale everywhere at $1.99. It may take a few hours to percolate through the system, but it will be there… but only for the weekend.
And check out some more authors also doing the Labor Day Sale!
As promised, I am doing a promotional discount of The Last Mage Guardian to encourage new readers (who will then hopefully want to read Dragonhunters).
Starting Sunday, July 20 and ending Tuesday, August 5, The Last Mage Guardian will be a mere $1.99 at all the usual locations. Even if you already have a copy, one way to earn points with your friends is to point them toward deals. If you think they would enjoy the book, spread the word!
(And Dragonhunters is being proofed right this very minute. Soon, my readers. Soon.)
1) Dragonhunters is finished and rewritten and waiting for the editor. Soon.
B) I will be attending Libertycon in Chattanooga, TN June 27-28 as both my scientific and authorial self.
iii) A review of The Long Way Home that made me cackle maniacally. If keeping people up late reading is a sin, I am beyond doomed because it seems to happen a lot (and yes, I do it on purpose!)
Also, the Clarion West Writeathon is starting up. I am taking part as always, to help new writers who will go on to write new stuff for us to read. This year, one of the students is a member of my critique group who writes very unique fiction, and I confidently expect Good Things to come from him.
As the release date for Dragonhunters is finalized I am planning some promotional goodies such as a Goodreads giveaway, temporary price discounts, etc. Stay tuned…
All the cool kids are doing it. Unlike some people, I do not have Vast Quantities of gaming figurines, but I made do. Quality has a quantity all its own. And Commanding Officer Jane Austen is most definitely Quality.
Those are NOT sloppy piles of books! It’s a glacis! Miss Austen clearly has studied her Vauban, and prefers trace italienne defenses for her (alas!) single cannon, fortunately crewed by a very strong (and deaf) Sandcreature. The Chinese golem is held in reserve.
I tried to come up with a compelling narrative for this vignette, but the beta readers complained that it was too much of a felis ex machina, so I trudge back to rewrite. Literary combat is hard.
Yeah, what’s my motivation, anyway? Nothing here tastes like chicken.
(The part of Giant Space Amoeba played by Senior Ranking Cat Opal, who would like to be fed now, thank you.)
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!
Many, many thanks to those who have already donated to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I have been writing furiously to hold up my end of the deal. Weekdays are never good–the pesky day-job intrudes–but I hope to make much progress this weekend. And check out the other writers that are taking part! A wild and wonderful group, some of whom are former students so you see, it works!
I’ve been involved for several years supporting Clarion West, a speculative fiction writer’s workshop based in Seattle. For six weeks, instructors and students take part in an intensive writing bootcamp focused on improving their craft. Not many people can afford seven weeks away from work and home, not to mention the tuition costs, so those of us who are supporters fundraise to help it all work. I am committing to finishing my work in progress, The Scent of Metal, during the course of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, which starts today. My goal is a measly hundred bucks. If I raise that much I will put two (2!) chapters of that book up on this site for all to read. Is that a deal or what?
How do you donate? Go to my Write-a-thon page here, or go to the general Write-a-thon page here. Each writer’s page has a PayPal button for donations, which goes straight to Clarion West. Every dollar helps.
Thanks!
The author of Julie of the Wolves and more than a hundred other books has passed away at the age of 92. A fighter to the end, Ms. George was party to a lawsuit to enforce her right to license ebooks of her own works, a right the paper publishers claim was theirs even though ebooks did not exist at the time the original contract was signed.
I loved Julie of the Wolves, and the thought that her last year on Earth was burdened with a lawsuit…well, Anubis pursues the evildoer, in this world and the next.