Free Thrillers and Beautiful Bookstores

Interesting links spanning the whole book world have come across my desk in the last twenty-four hours. 

Free ebooks!
Five popular mystery/thriller writers are giving away books like popcorn today and tomorrow (through Feb. 2). J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, J. Carson Black, Lee Goldberg, and Scott Nicholson have joined forces to give away a big selection of their ebooks, plus ten Kindle Fires and a bunch of gift cars. Oh, and a generous library donation! If you like thrillers or know someone who does, check out the details and click free links at Big Kindle Boogie.

What's the (book) world coming to?
The Authors Guild weighs in on some recent history of the publishing and book retail world. Is Amazon the innovator or the anti-Christ?* Is Barnes and Noble our last, best hope against crushing monopoly? Join the fray, or just read about it, at the Authors Guild blog. 

*For what it's worth, I think Amazon is a little of both. 

World's most beautiful bookstores
Let's not forget physical books. Take a tour of twenty of the most glorious physical bookstores in the world! You could walk these aisles for days!

Star Wars Dogs

This set Captain Jack howling! Dogs performing Darth Vader's Imperial March. It doesn't get much better than this. Call your dog over to listen before you press Play.

It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Thought we were done, were we? No such luck. Today [now yesterday] I was feeling a strange pain in my chest all afternoon -- not much of a pain, but enough to annoy me. In the evening it started to get a little more pronounced -- still not particularly bad, but enough to make me think about chest pains... men who ignore chest pains, and then drop dead. I sat and took my pulse. 96. Well, that's certainly a little high, isn't it? I went and took an aspirin, just to be on the safe side, and then checked it again, several times. Still 96. Damn. Why so high? The pain felt a little stronger, and it felt more like tightness or pressure than muscular ache, and it was right over my heart. I asked myself: Which is stupider -- to make a probably unnecessary trip to the hospital, or to ignore chest pain, when you know you have family history of heart disease? Allysen wasn't home yet, and Alexandra was making dinner. Take me back to the hospital? I asked her with a sigh.

Then I thought about how long it can take to be seen if you just walk in, and I thought, the EMTs can make a better evaluation of this than me, and the pain was still there, so... Deep breath. I called 911. They were there in three minutes flat, sirens wailing. And soon I was on my way back to the hospital.

Have you ever seen the Star Trek: Next Gen episode where the Enterprise is caught in a time loop, and each iteration is just a little different? (I recently saw part of a sitcom that took off on the same idea.) Well, that's what it feels like to sit in the ER, with someone new coming in every forty minutes or so. Sometimes the new guy is a fresh-faced doctor (or doctorish person) the age of Doogie Howser, and sometimes it's an Indian fellow, and sometimes it's a guy who looks like you might look if you were a doctor -- and each new person starts with, "So, can you tell me what brought you in here tonight?" I swear, it makes me want to record my story and just hit Playback each time.

As I type this, I'm sitting here in my ER room, waiting to be moved to a room upstairs. They're keeping me overnight, so they can repeat some enzyme tests every six hours, because it turns out that the tests that show heart damage become more accurate over time. The most likely scenario is that the pain was caused by inflammation from the pneumonia, and that my heart is fine. But the only way to be sure is to follow up with these blood tests.

I have a feeling I won't be getting much sleep tonight [I didn't]. Pray I don't catch some godawful bug while I'm here.

I'm glad I got some writing done this afternoon!

* * *

I wrote the above on my tablet while in the hospital. I'm home now. The blood work was fine; they woke me at 7:30 for a treadmill stress test, and that was fine. By about noon someone finally signed off on it, and I got to leave. Still with the chest pain, by the way, which is either a side effect from the pneumonia or a pulled muscle from coughing too exuberantly.

It was hard not to feel a little silly about it all. But as the lady who administered the stress test said to me, Would you rather have been like my neighbor, who refused to go to the hospital after his wife called 911, and later that evening dropped dead of a heart attack? I guess not, when you put it that way.

Bleah!

That's my comment for 2012, so far.

For New Year's holiday week, Allysen and I took a long-anticipated trip to LA to visit family. The visit was great. Getting sick, not so much. The first hints of scratchy throat came on New Year's Day, while we were all seeing The Adventures of Tin Tin (fun movie). By the next day, I was a regular plague ship. I began coughing through the night every night. Worst cold in years. I'm sure I was no treat to be near on the airplane home, either. Upon arriving back in Boston, I wondered why my eyes were stinging so much. Could the air pollution possibly be that bad?  No, I had conjunctivitis, probably brought on by the pressure changes pushing the virus through tear ducts.

I went to the docs. It was, of course, the usual "It's a virus; you'll get better." But my excellent nurse practitioner was concerned about the flying, and about the low level of my O2, so she sent me for some blood tests to ensure there was no pulmonary clot. Next day they called and said, "Oops, accident at the lab. We need to draw the blood again." Sigh. I went in again on Sunday, and Sunday night they called and said, "Your d-dimer's high. Go to the ER—now!—and get a CAT scan." I argued, but they argued harder. So I went, and killed hours of waiting time with my daughter Julia and my trusty Droid tablet, Tabula Rasa.

Long wait, with many conflicting advisories (Julia: "Doesn't anyone in this hospital ever talk to anyone else?"), but finally they did the scan. First off, I have to say there was a serious lack of flashing lights and gleaming control panels. Just a guy who could have been from the local auto body shop telling me where to put my hands on the well-worn machine. The dye injection felt strangely weird—a warm flush starting in the face and going straight down my body, with a big hit in the groin and then on to the toes. Good; we're done; we can go home now, yes? Please?

No. Now comes the long, watchful wait for the radiologist's report. Julia and I watch part of Iron Man on my tablet. She makes balloon critters from examination gloves. We play volleyball with the gloves. Time passes.

Well past midnight, the word comes: no blood clot, no embolism. Great! We can go home now, right? Right; just as soon as we figure out why your oxygen is low. (I feel my life starting to ebb away. In space no one can hear you scream.) Asthma-type lung treatments: not much difference, but another hour. The supervising doc is threatening to keep me if she can't figure it out. Finally...finally...they send us home.

Early morning, the phone wakes me. It's a hospital doc saying, the radiologist says you have a low-grade pneumonia. (Different radiologist? Radiologist who finally got some coffee?) I'm to see my doc today and get new meds. The next phone call that wakes me: my own doc's office. They're booked solid, but they'll order me the new meds, something called Avallux.  Great, I'll pick them up at Walgreens. Only when I get to Walgreens, Walgreens says, "We don't take Blue Cross anymore." You're kidding, right? No. They're not. Contract dispute. ("Oh right," Allysen says, when I tell her. They announced it at work, but I never got the word.)

It's now closer to end-of-day, but I finally get my meds from the HMO—but not the ones asked for, because Blue Cross doesn't cover that med. So this new super-antibiotic comes with a drug warning guide that looks like the Dead Sea Scrolls, only denser. They have a "Drugs for Dummies" version that's only a small wad of 8x10 pages. Here's the first thing they warn you about: burst tendons!  Burst tendons!  Who ever heard of an antibiotic causing burst tendons??  Apparently that's what I have to watch out for. Plus skin rashes. (Except I've already got skin rashes from the dye from the CAT scan.) And that's where I stand, or sit. But at least the cough is getting better. I wonder if I can still take my codeine cough syrup with this stuff. (Internet research, here I come.)

This all started with a low O2 level in the doctor's office, and my mentioning, between coughs, that I'd been flying the day before. The takeaway: Don't ever let them know you've been flying.

Update, 24 hours later: The skin rashes got worse, so they took me off the scary Terminator drug and put me on on azithromycin, which seems much more benign. I'm glad.  I'm also feeling a lot better, so things are working. I hope to be back to my bounding, energetic self very soon now.

Happy 2012!

It's not quite midnight here in California, where Allysen and I are visiting her brother and family, but we jointly decided to call it New Year at 9:00, when we knew the ball had dropped in Times Square. (Well, call it faith; we didn't actually check online to see if midnight had come to the Eastern time zone, but I'm pretty sure it did.) We're having a very nice visit, except that I'm fighting off a cold or something, and hoping I don't give it to anyone else.  We went to see TinTin today, and thoroughly enjoyed it in 3D, after an aborted effort to see it in Imax 3D. (The volume was earsplitting, and the theater people said they couldn't turn it down. We weren't the only ones asking for refunds on the Imax tickets.) Anyway, in regular 3D, and regular volume, it was a fun movie, even if it went on a little too long in the action sequences. 

Two of my good friends are taking the ebook plunge, and I thought this would be a good time to introduce them. First off is Richard Bowker, author of a bunch of novels ranging from straight SF (Forbidden Santuary) to supernatural fantasy (Marlborough Street) to techno-thriller (Replica) to SF-mystery (Dover Beach) to straight-up political mystery (Summit and Senator). He's been out of print for a while, and has just created a website and blog at www.richardbowker.com, where he'll post updates on the progress of converting and self-epublishing his previously published novels. Stop by and check on his progress. When his books go up for sale, I highly recommend them. 

Mary C. Aldridge works a completely different vein: African-folklore-inspired fantasy short stories. One of her stories was a Nebula finalist ("The Adinkra Cloth"), and one won her a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fiction Fellowship ("The Work Leader"). She has five short stories up at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/728grdn90, and I hope they'll also appear in the Kindle and Nook stores soon. (But you can buy the needed formats for both the Kindle [.mobi] and Nook [.epub] right now.)  Mary has a remarkable talent that has been expressed too infrequently. Why not give them a look?

And in the meantime...Happy New Year!

Holiday Book Sale!

To celebrate the holidays, I'm joining with other Backlist eBooks authors in a huge $.99 holiday sale on selected ebooks in the Kindle and Nook stores, from right now through January 8! I decided—about half an hour ago—which book to put on sale. I'm going with Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus, regularly $6.99 for two novels in one: Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. That's right; I've knocked the price back from $6.99 to $.99, from right now through the first week in January, plus a day. (Or, to put it another way, until two days after Three Kings Day.) If you like dragons, and if you like fantasy or science fiction, now's your chance. It's also easy now to give ebooks as gifts from both the Kindle and Nook stores. (This sale is limited to those two stores.) 

These books are actually personal favorites of mine. They've had some trouble finding their audience, so I thought I'd take a deep breath and help them along. And by the way, I'm pleased to report that sales of The Chaos Chronicles have picked up quite nicely in response to my making the first book, Neptune Crossing, free. I guess people are trying it, and liking it! I hope the same will happen with Dragon Space, which you can see here on the Backlist eBooks page.

By the way, in case I don't get another post out before Christmas, best wishes to everyone for the holidays: Hanukah, Christmas, Solstice, anything you may celebrate. Enjoy it with people you love!

Tales from the Backlist

If you like short stories and variety in your reading, give this book a try. It's a collection of short fiction by nineteen authors representing various genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, contemporary romance, regency romance, and probably a couple of others I've forgotten.

What these authors have in common is that they (we) are all members of Backlist eBooks, a collection of widely published authors in all genres who are bringing our previously published, out-of-print books back into circulation through self-published ebooks. The group includes bestselling authors and winners of many literary awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Rita awards. To help make ourselves better known, we've released Tales from the Backlist, filled with (appropriately enough) backlist short stories.

Tales is now on sale in the Kindle and Nook stores, and Smashwords, in DRM-free editions. Soon it will be in the Sony, Apple, Kobo, and Diesel stores. (No matter what kind of reader you have, or none at all, you can get a format that works for you from Smashwords.)

For a limited time only, the regular price of $3.99 has been knocked down to just $.99 at all stores.  Check it out at http://www.backlistebooks.com/2011/11/tales-from-the-backlist/, where you'll find purchase links for the store of your choice.

Funny, Thought-provoking C.G.P. Grey

I actually have no idea who CGP Grey is. But I've just discovered his fun, funny, and provocative videos, which explain everything from why the penny costs us money to why we love our natural-pesticide beverage (coffee). Great stuff! You can see the lineup on his blog page. But here are a few to get you started:

Death to the Penny

Coffee: Greatest Addiction Ever

There's lots more. I especially liked: 

Daylight Savings Time Explained

Copyright: Forever Less One Day

United Kingdom explained

Happy 11/11/11!

Allysen and I have been trying for a while to figure out how to celebrate 11/11/11. For about the last year, I've had a strange knack for glancing idly at a clock and discovering that the time was 11:11. (Again? This is weird.) I wasn't doing it intentionally at all, though after a while it became hard not to look at a clock and hope that it would be 11:11. Anyway, that gave me a special desire to celebrate November 11, 2011 (11/11/11), a truly cool date.

It turns out that where Allysen works, a lot of brainy, creative people had the same idea. She called me and said, "You have to come in and see it." I did. These people are amazing. They had decorative pillars arranged in pairs all over. They had placards spelling out 11.11.11 in a bunch of different languages, including binary and Morse code.

 11.11.11 in Korean

 

 11.11.11 in Urdu (I think)

  

11.11.11 in ???

They renamed all the floors.

Among the special elevenses in the world:

• There have been 11 Doctor Whos.
• There have been 11 Star Trek movies.
• The Apollo 11 mission landed the first men on the Moon.
• In M-theory, there are 11 spatial dimensions.
• The sunspot cycle is 11 years.
• There are 11 thumb keys on a bassoon. 
• The sports soccer, football, cricket, and field hockey all field 11 players to a team. 

We're going to settle in for a movie and fish and chips, and plan on popping open a bottle of something fun at 11:11 p.m.

Happy 11/11/11, everybody!

SF Festival at Brown Bookstore

If you happen to be near the Brown University campus today, specifically the Brown Bookstore, stop in and check out the SF Festival they're having this weekend. I'll be there in the afternoon, participating in a panel discussion at 3 p.m. Come say hello, and hear what we have to say! Other writers participating include Laird Barron, John Langan, Paul Trembley, Paul DiFilippo, and Daniel Pearlman. (I'm not sure who will be where, when, though. The bookstore website says the panel is at 4, but I was told it was at 3. Who knows?)

I'll be driving down to Providence in the early afternoon. Here's hoping the snowstorm doesn't whack the I-95 corridor too badly, or too early. Nor'easter snowstorm—in October! Aiee!

Facebook Doublespeak

You just gotta love those guys who run Facebook. They had a really nice feature where you could have your blog posts (like this one) automatically import into your Facebook page. It was especially good for people like me, who aren't about to write entries for the blog, and then go write another for Facebook. It was buggy—I had to keep goosing the thing to make it do the imports—but it was way better than the alternative.

No more. I was checking last night on why my latest posts hadn't appeared on my Facebook page, and I couldn't even find the place on Facebook where you set that. So I searched Help. Lo and behold, I discovered this little buried nugget:

"Importing a blog or RSS feed to your personal Facebook account is no longer available."

A little more digging yielded this (boldface mine):

"We want you to connect with your fans in the most effective ways possible. That's why as of September 30th you'll no longer be able to automatically import posts from your website to your Page notes. The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by adding personal comments and responding to feedback from fans. We're focused on creating even better tools for Pages. Look for announcements soon."

The service is free, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. But honestly, what a load of crap. Have I mentioned my suspicion that Facebook is the spawn of the devil? I think the realspeak translation is: "We never could get it to work right, and our software guys begged us to let them do something else."

I'll be trying one of those network share thingies.  But they ask for everything but the combination to your hall locker. If I disappear suddenly, you'll know why.

Floating Quantum Puck

Do you have a puck-sized disk of sapphire (coated, obviously, with yttrium barium copper oxide) gathering dust in the back of your junk drawer? If so, you're halfway to your own personal "quantum locked" maglev train. All you need is some liquid nitrogen and a magnetic track. Here's what your project will look like when you're done:



You can read about it at Discover Magazine, which also has links to some explanation of the physics.

Goodnight iPad!

If you know and love the book Goodnight Moon (and who doesn't?), you should enjoy this!



(Or view it on Youtube here.)

Neptune Crossing Makes the Top 100 Free Books at Kindle!

It's amazing what you have to go through to give a book away for free. I've been working at doing that on Neptune Crossing (first of the Chaos Chronicles), and I've now mostly succeeded. The thing is, you can't just do it—not in the Kindle store, or the Nook store. What you can do is make it free at Smashwords, then wait for the free price to migrate out to Sony, Apple, and so on—and then get your friends to visit the Kindle store and report a lower price elsewhere. If you're lucky, Amazon will pick up on it, and your book goes to free in the Kindle store, the most popular by far of all the ebook stores. (So far, the Nook store hasn't picked up on it; still $.99 there.)

Why go through this? Well, it's no secret. I'm offering it free in hopes people will like it, and will want to go on to read the rest of the series, and then perhaps some of my other books, for which they'll pay me. (Though they're all pretty inexpensive.) Neptune Crossing: gateway drug.

The other thing is, if a lot of people take your free book, it improves your ranking at, for example, Amazon. The reason that matters is that Amazon gives better exposure to books that have higher rankings—and by association, more exposure for all your others, too. So it can be really good for business to give away a lot of books. A few hours ago, I checked and Neptune Crossing was in the top 100 free books in the Kindle store! It was also #2 in free science fiction!

So if you haven't already downloaded Neptune Crossing from the Kindle store (or the Sony store, or Apple, or Smashwords), now's the time! You'll be helping me out by taking my free book! And send your friends!

Because, you know, I really don't want to have to carry all these ebooks home after the sale!

More International Ebook News

E-reads, publisher of  nine of my backlist novels, recently announced a huge joint venture with Gollancz of England to add many of their SF titles to the Gollancz ebook list—something like 400 titles. Gollancz has long been one of the premier publishers of SF in the British market, and this will further enrich their list even while it offers a new look and imprint to the E-reads books. The hope, of course, is that this will also boost UK sales for the books being added to the Gollancz list. 

Because my own E-reads books (From a Changeling Star [nice plug at E-reads], Down the Stream of Stars, The Rapture Effect, and six others) are a part of this deal, I'm also hoping that this will help those books find a new audience among the British readers. 

On another front, my own Starstream Publications edition of Sunborn finally has its finished cover, which you will see on the World Edition on sale in Kindle UK/DE/FR, in the iTunes store outside the U.S., and at Smashwords, where it's offered to non-U.S. readers. (Inside the U.S., the Tor edition is the one to look for, available pretty much everywhere else.)

Here's the cover Pat Ryan created for me:

And here are some links to help my friends outside the U.S. find it:

Kindle UK | Kindle DE | Kindle FR

Smashwords
iTunes: Canada | UK | Germany | France | Australia

(For some stupid reason it's not on my author pages in the international
iTunes stores. But those links will get you to it.)

If a Tree Falls on the Bike Path

Something happened today that made me think of the old question: If a tree falls in the forest...

I wasn't in a forest, exactly, but Captain Jack and I were walking on a wooded section of the Minuteman Bikeway, and we'd paused while Jack sniffed something. I heard a sudden, very loud CRACK-K-K-K! and turned to see a large, full-grown tree crash down across the path, about fifty feet from where we were standing. I just stood there with my mouth open, wondering, What the—? and feeling extremely grateful that I'd been standing here and not there. A woman on the other side of the tree no doubt felt the same way. From what I could see of the base of the trunk, it appeared that the roots had rotted or broken away or something, and the tree had just been waiting for the right moment to fall.

A minute later, a group of bicyclists rode up, saying to each other, "That wasn't there an hour ago!" I told them it wasn't there five minutes ago. I called the police to ask them to notify the town tree people, and then I took these pictures.

 

 
For the rest of the day, I mulled the event over, wondering what dreamlike or theological significance I should give to it. The only thing I'm sure of is, there was definitely a sound when this tree fell.

My New Galaxy Tab!

My birthday was over a month ago, but I'm reveling in a belated gift that's cool as hell: my new Android tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. I was offered a choice, and I spent a while looking at the iPad and various other Android devices, and this one rose to the top. Why this over the iPad, especially since I have quite a few friends who own and love their iPads? It was mostly the more open operating system. Apple designs great devices, no question; I just don't like their closed, control-freak approach to everything. The Android system is a little more like the Wild West of outer space—room to move, and plenty of expansion going on. Also, Angry Birds is free in the Android store.

It took me a while to figure out the ropes, but now that I've settled on some good apps and learned some of the quirks, I can say that it's great for all these things:

• Ebook reader, with a variety of ebook apps (so far I like Aldiko best, ahead of FBReader and Kindle app)
• Portable way to read the Boston Globe (which recently introduced a new online edition)
• Web browsing, especially in the Dolphin browser, which is speedier and easier than either Firefox or the included "Browser"
• Movie player (I look forward to enjoying this little reward on my next writing retreat. I've been converting a bunch of my DVDs for future watching.)

It's okay for checking email and syncing contacts and calendar with my laptop. I haven't messed with that enough yet to give it a proper evaluation.

I suspect I'll like it for typing quick notes to myself, etc. I haven't really tried writing on it. Hard to see how that would work too well without a separate keyboard. But I could see using it to review and proof and do light editing.

Sadly, I can't watch Netflix movies—not because the device can't do it, but because my Netflix plan (2/mo.) is too cheapo to allow it. That's all about to be history anyway, I guess; I'm sure not going to subscribe separately for DVD service and streaming movies at 3-4 times what I'm paying now. The one place where the Android, sadly, is behind iPad is Hulu streaming. That hasn't arrived yet. I'm sure it will.

This whole field is really taking off, with all the Androids and especially the new Kindle Fire. (Too small for much of what I described above, but I'll bet it's going to be a really fine reading device.)

Now, if only ebook sales would take off with all the new hardware to view them on!

On Writing Retreat Again

This week I'm in beautiful Gloucester, Mass., for a few days to get away from it all and try to wrap my head about this elusive book. Allysen set me up with a B&B overlooking the harbor. Here's the view from my window:

Not bad, huh? The waterfront is actually a lot closer than it looks in the picture. It's about a five minute walk. The Cape Ann Brewery and Pub is a ten minute walk. (Their fish & chips are good; their beer is excellent.) My next seafood foray will probably be Gloucester House Restaurant, tonight.

When I drove in yesterday, there was an enormous honking cruise ship anchored in the harbor. Here's a fuzzy picture of it (I really should set my cell phone camera to a better resolution, if I'm going to keep using it for these things):



When I got back to my room, I hopped online to marinetraffic.com, where you can identify just about any ship anywhere in the world at any given moment. You just zoom in on the map, click the icons, and learn—for example—that this cruise ship is called the Eurodam, and it was anchored, but ultimately en route to Bar Harbor, Maine. Indeed, shortly after I took this photo, it moved out of the harbor and headed north.

Writing-wise, it's taking longer than usual to settle in. My mind is still all over the place; but slowly, slowly, some important issues about the story are starting to ooze back into focus. Here's hoping it all comes back soon.

25 Years and Going Strong!

A few days ago, Allysen and I celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary! She took a half day off work, and we went to Massage Envy on our moped/scooters and got hour-and-a-half full body massages. What a great way to relax! That evening we took a couple of gift cards Allysen's brother and sister-in-law had given her a while back, and visited a very classy restaurant in downtown Boston, called McCormick & Schmick's Seafood. Fabulous food and great service. (We also mutually agreed not to step on the scales the next day.)

In a stroke of genius, as we were walking back to our car past historic Faneuil Hall, I asked a woman who was taking a picture of the hall to snap an anniversary photo of us, using  my cell phone camera. Then, in a stroke of idiocy, I forgot that on this stupid Motorola phone you have to press a couple of buttons to tell it to save the picture. So... fffft... no picture to commemorate the event.

Nevertheless, we had a wonderful celebration, and we're looking forward to the next twenty-five years. Here's looking at you, kid!

Sunborn World Edition (epub) — At Last!

This has really been a long time coming. If you're outside the U.S., you can now get a legit ebook of Sunborn, the fourth book in The Chaos Chronicles, in epub format. I got the Kindle version up in the Kindle UK | Kindle DE | Kindle FR stores a few weeks ago, but the epub version (for Nook, Sony, Stanza, iBooks, and a plethora of other platforms) has finally hit the stores. It's been approved in the Apple iTunes stores in Canada, Australia, the UK, France, and Germany, in DRM-free editions. You can also get it from Smashwords, though I'm contractually obligated to say: If you're in the U.S., you should buy the Tor edition instead, available from the usual outlets.

Edit: Here are links to Sunborn in the iTunes international stores: 

Canada | UK | Germany | France | Australia

Edit: the above cover was the placeholder until the final cover was done.  Here's the new cover:

Irene Passes

Here outside Boston, we were all prepped for Hurricane Irene. Batteries on hand, everything secured outside, lots of jugs of frozen water in the freezer against a possible loss of electricity, gas in the car, and—most importantly for our state of mind—a large pitcher of margaritas in the freezer. Oh, and Captain Jack the energetic border collie heavily exercised the day before, in the pouring rain.

(I'm aware, of course, that if we lived in a more vulnerable location, we would have been taking way more serious precautions. I have a relative in the military, and I understand they had to do some fast work to secure their ship, which happens to be undergoing refit in a drydock in the path of the storm. I hope they stayed dry. And my sympathies to those who actually got hurt by this storm.)

For us, not too much happened as the tropical storm formerly known as Hurricane Irene passed to our west. Wind, rain, some fallen trees around town. We were lucky. Reports from friends and relatives who caught more of it indicate everyone came through in good shape. For that we are grateful.

The margaritas were excellent, by the way.

The Way Science Really Works

Here's another a bit of art to entertain you if you have a little to much time on your hands: How People in Science See Each Other, created by @biomatushiq.

See it bigger. 

It's hilarious, and undoubtedly accurate. 

Where’s WALL-E?

Here's a fun way to while away some valuable work time: See how many classic SF robots you can identify in "Where's WALL-E?" by artist Richard Sargent.

See it bigger.

And read how you can win a poster of it, here. 

Neptune Crossing Highlighted at Ereader News Today

I got a nice plug from a site called Ereader News Today, which highlights books in the Kindle store. Looks like another good place to keep an eye on ebook deals.

Anyone who'd like to help give me a boost could go there and "like" it, or whatever. (This Facebook "like" business makes me shake my head like some old-timer going, "What are these crazy kids up to now?" I have to admit. But it does seem to help generate a buzz. So if you're inclined to do that, I'd appreciate the "buzz.") Thanks!

http://ereadernewstoday.com/bargain-kindle-book-neptune-crossing/677273/

Sunborn World Edition in Kindle UK/DE!

International readers! You can now buy Sunborn (The Chaos Chronicles #4) in Kindle format outside the U.S.! This has been a long time coming, and it's mostly my fault, because I didn't realize for a long time that Tor only had U.S. ebook rights. Anyway, I've put a lot of time into trying to make sure everything is right in this ebook version. (If you find any typos, please let me know.)

You can get it now in the Amazon UK store and in the Amazon Germany store.

(Hmm. I just discovered that Tor has a Kindle edition in the German store. That's a mistake and should be coming down soon, as Tor doesn't have rights in that geographical area. You should buy the Tor edition in the U.S. and the Starstream version outside the U.S.)

This cover is temporary, by the way, until my crack designer can get to doing a more polished version.

This Starstream edition is DRM-free, and readers of other formats are welcome to convert it to suit their needs. (Calibre is an excellent free program for converting formats and much more.)

An ePub version is coming soon to the Apple store, and that will also be DRM-free.

Award!

A woman named Deirdra Eden Coppel likes my blog and has awarded it her Best of Sci/Fi Award! Here’s the very pretty award picture that came along with it. Thanks, Deirdra!

More than that I don't know, but here's Deirdra's blog, A Storybook World.

Cool Things in Space

We might not have the space shuttle anymore, but there's a lot to be psyched about in space. Here are a few, in case you haven't heard about them.

Antimatter Orbiting the Earth?
Sounds crazy, but it could be for real. Scientists working with the Pamela spacecraft (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, in case you were wondering about the name) report that they have found antiprotons in orbit around the Earth, apparently gathered into bands similar to the Van Allen radiation belts. While not in large enough concentrations to cause passing spacecraft to go boom, the researchers note that they could be a source of fuel for future spacecraft.

Water Flowing on Mars?
Could be. New studies of images from Mars orbit sure look a lot like seasonal flows of water. If it's the real deal, this could mean liquid water close to the surface, and that could mean a greater likelihood of life on Mars. Now, not a million years ago.

Beer in Space!
Now we're talking. Yeah, people—including NASA types—are really looking into the possibility of beer in weightlessness. Very serious stuff! They've already done parabolic flight testing!

Star Trek Theme Park in Jordan?
Okay, this isn't real space, but damn. King Abdullah II of Jordan is the main investor in a proposed Star Trek theme park, which has secured $1.5 billion in funding. Plans are to build it in Aqaba, Jordan. King Abdullah, you see, is a Trekfan, and even got himself a cameo appearance, back before he was king, in Star Trek: Voyager. You've gotta love it. But I haven't even made it to Universal Studios yet!

By the way, one reason I haven't posted in a while is that I've been really busy writing. I've also finished the proofing of text for the World Edition of Sunborn (crazy problems with Word losing styles, which I've finally gotten under control). Look for an announcement soon on that!

Cape Cod Writing Retreat

I've just come back from a four-day writing retreat on Cape Cod, in the town of Sandwich, just over the Cape Cod Canal which marks the boundary of the Cape from the mainland of Massachusetts. Allysen set me up at a great B&B in Sandwich (the 1830 Quince Tree House), and I reveled in having time to myself, time to spend near the water, time to write, time to rollerblade along the bike path that runs most of the length of the canal. It was fabulous! Even in such a short time, I started to get more traction on the book. 

Here are some pix I took with my cellphone camera, most of them shot from the bike path while I was skating.

Foot traffic on the path, near the beginning in Sandwich.
In the distance to the south, you can just see the Sagamore Bridge.

Having passed the Sagamore Bridge,
now looking back north toward it.

 

A little farther on, looking south toward the Bourne Bridge,
and the RR bridge in the distance

The bike path begins near a long jetty that extends into Massachusetts Bay from northern end of the canal. I could have spent a week just watching the boats go through the canal (though I never did catch any of the commercial ships that are supposed to account for half the traffic). Not far along the coast are the beaches, and the salt marshes just inland of the dunes.

 

Sandwich salt marsh

Another highlight was taking a scenic ride on the Cape Cod Central RR, along the canal and past the cranberry bogs. It was a foggy evening, but that just made the canal eerie and beautiful in a different way. (For more money and an advance reservation, you can have an elegant dinner or a family-style supper on the train. That's definitely on my to-do list with Allysen.)

The Sagamore Bridge, in the evening fog.

The last evening I was there, I got it into my head to skate the length of the bike path (6.5 miles) and take a picture of the train going over the beautiful 1930's lift bridge at the south end of the canal. I succeeded, though the picture didn't come out very well, so here's a shot of the train passing along the canal, right next to the bike path.  And another of the RR bridge against the setting sun. Once I saw the train cross the bridge, and the sun setting behind the bridge, I realized that I'd just watched the sun go down, and I had six and a half miles of skating between me and my car! Flank speed! I just made it before the light failed.

Cape Cod Central RR dinner train, rumbling along the canal. 

The RR bridge at sunset, in the lowered position. 

Finally, I got to enjoy my favorite beer, Cape Cod IPA—and (somewhat to excess) my favorite foods, fresh fish and chips, scallops, and shrimp.

I'm ready to go back!

July Star Rigger Sale

Let the fireworks begin! It's July 4th, so I'm taking one-fourth off the price of Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus, and its fellow star rigger novel, Eternity's End! The following coupons will get you the discounted prices at Smashwords, where you can download multiple formats, including .mobi for the Kindle and .epub for just about every other reader, including the Nook and Sony. The coupons are good at Smashwords for all of July. You paste them in at checkout.

Dragon Space

25% off code: GL94N

Eternity's End

25% off code: LR24X

Many of my fellow Backlist Ebooks authors are also advertising books at great prices. Edit: You can see a list of some of them by clicking Comments under the Smashwords thread here.

Captain Jack Carver

Meet the newest member of the Starrigger Ranch! Cap'n Jack is a border-collie/lab mix, probably with some other seasonings, as well, who joined our family just three days ago. Jack came to us from a shelter in Connecticut, courtesy of the rescue group http://www.helpsaveone.org/. Guesses vary on his age, but average out to about two years.We know that he came from West Virginia, and that he'd been hit by a car and lost or abandoned. But his leg injury is all healed up now.

Jack is a terrifically sweet guy, and has made himself right at home. Our cat Moonlight isn't so sure yet. She was a bit alarmed, at first, but stood her ground. Now, she seems to regard him as a big oaf who is all too often between her and where she wants to go. They're not yet to the point where she can just walk past him. But I was cheered yesterday to see Moonlight curled up on the sofa, and Jack crouched on the floor nearby, woofing an imploring "Please play!" Moonlight was unperturbed, and declined the invitation.

The only big problem so far is that Julia's having some allergic reaction to his dander, so we're swabbing him down with Allerpet/d to try to minimize it, and the Roombas are working twice as hard. And I keep calling him Hermione, which was the name of our boxer who died back in January. (Even though he really looks way more like our old dog Sam—not the beagle of recent years, but the border-collie/lab mix I had about twenty years ago. I don't seem to have any of old Sam's pictures scanned in; I really must dig through the photos piles and find some.)

This weekend, we're going to meet another rescue dog named Igby—don't ask!—and see if he might be a good brother to Jack. (I almost said Sam just then. I'll get it straight eventually.)

Update: Igby was a charming little guy, but didn't seem like the right fit.  So for now, at least, it's Captain Jack and his cat-friend(?) Moonlight.

Sunborn — World Edition Ebook

I've known for a while that folks outside the U.S. have been unable to buy the Sunborn ebook, at least in the Kindle store. All this time, I thought it was a glitch at Tor. Turns out it was a glitch here at the Starrigger Ranch. It seems Tor only holds U.S. ebook rights. This discovery has caused yet another flurry of consternation and ebook production here at Starrigger Central, as I gear up to publish an international edition, for readers in the rest of the world.

This involves several steps:

1. Preparing the actual ebook. (I can't just put up the Tor-designed ebook, and I've learned a lot about formatting since I put up the free edition, a couple of years ago. So there's work involved.)
2. Preparing a cover. My designer, Pat, is booked up until mid-August. I don't want to wait that long to release the world edition, so we'll have a temporary cover until then.
3. Figuring out where to publish it. There's Amazon.UK and Amazon.DE for the Kindle editions. But the ePub version is trickier, especially if I have to block sales in the U.S. I'm exploring some options right now.

That said, I hope to have it up in a couple of weeks. So if you're outside the U.S., and you've read the first three Chaos books and have been wondering why the hell you can't buy the fourth, please be patient just a little longer!

Starrigger HQ out.
 

Spaceship Two Does the Wobble Dance

Here's a video of a recent test flight of Spaceship Two, which by this time next year could be offering rides into space to the public. (Got $200,00 I could borrow? I'm good for it. I promise.) The amazing thing about this video isn't the test flight per se; it's the mode of reentry. Watch it, and you'll see the spaceship raising its tail feathers and bobbing like a badminton shuttlecock—intentionally!



I'm going to try to tweak this so that it'll fit on my page here. But if you want to read it with some explanation, view it here, again courtesy of the Bad Astronomy blog.

Stunning Time-Lapse Video of the Milky Way

Treat yourself to a few minutes of gorgeous meditative video and watch this time-lapse sequence of the Milky Way from South Dakota, by Randy Halverson. You must pop this up to full-screen to get the full effect.


Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Thanks to Phil Plaitt's Bad Astronomy blog for this one. Here are more links to similarly amazing vistas.

Well, like this one.

Excerpt of Eternity's End at Marsha Canham's Blog

Speaking of Eternity's End, I'm about three days late in noting here that I, or rather Eternity's End, am part of Marsha Canham's Sunday Sampler, with an excerpt from EE. Marsha wanted an excerpt not found elsewhere online, one that would convey a sense of the book in a fairly short sample. After much cogitation, I decided on the scene that leads into a hot romantic encounter between star rigger Legroeder and the sexy but dangerous lady pirate, Tracy-Ace/Alfa. Complete with cyber-implants. Read it here.

Eternity's End — Corrected Edition

If you bought a copy of the ebook of Eternity's End prior to May 25 or so, you may want to download a fresh copy from wherever you bought it. I discovered, belatedly, that some of the text formatting had gotten lost in the final preparation for this newest ebook edition. Mostly, this consisted of italics that were lost. But there was a lot of it, erratically sprinkled through the book. And because this is a Star Rigger book and communication between riggers is denoted by italics, these was an egregious error that brought quite a tongue-lashing, by me, down on the hapless production people (also me), who then went through the whole blasted book again, comparing the e-text to the printed edition. The production department has promised not to let this happen again. Also, we're sorry. 

I think most stores will allow a fresh download without hassle. But if you have trouble, please drop me a line and tell me where you bought it and in what format, and I'll get a corrected copy to you right away.  You can always reach me at jeff at-thingy starrigger point net. 

(If you downloaded the book during the free period prior to this year, your copy shouldn't have this problem. It was during the reformatting for Smashwords, Kindle, and Nook that the devious little gremlin crept in unnoticed, as gremlins are wont to do.)

The Graduate (2)

I still haven't gotten the still photos of Lexi's graduation off the camera, but here's a 20-second video of her receiving her diploma from Bard College. For Facebook readers, this will be a repeat. Like watching Star Trek in syndication, sort of.




http://youtu.be/rpddLRurGCM

The Graduate

Doesn't seem like that long ago that I was blogging about my daughter Alexandra's adventures and exploits as a high school wrestler. Well, last weekend, I watched her graduate from college. Bard College, to be precise, with a degree in math and plans to go on to graduate school in mechanical engineering. Inconceivable!

I'll put some pictures up as soon as I remember to get them off the camera.

Technology Keeps Truckin'

I'm always saving links to cool stories, and sometimes I even remember to mention them while they're still fresh and cool. (If you wonder why I seem a little scattered at times, it may be related to the fact that Allysen just started a new, full-time job, I'm still writing a new book and trying to shift to a schedule compatible with Allysen's, we're still recording the audiobook, still getting all the wrinkles out of the ebooks, daughter Alexandra is about to graduate from college, and...well, that's a partial list, but you get the picture.)

News about our light bulbs
Starting next year, 100-watt incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available in the U.S. The reason, of course, is that they're hideously inefficient in their use of electricity, and if we're to get serious about our national energy problem, we need to get serious about using more efficient technologies. Compact fluorescents are far more efficient, but aren't perfect, either. Now, it looks like LED replacement lights will be coming along just in time. But according to this Washington Post article, the best long-term solution will be new panel fixtures that spread the light-source over a wider area, thus allowing for heat dispersal. (Yes, even cool LED lamps have heat-dispersal problems when you cram too many together.)

Jetman flies the Grand Canyon!
If you're like me, you're still wishing for a personal jet-pack. Well, this guy actually has jet engines strapped to his personal flying suit. And he used it to fly over the Grand Canyon! Pictures are better than words:

Full story (and video if you have trouble seeing it here).

Now, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Sale at Backlist Ebooks!

My friends at Backlist eBooks have organized another big ebook sale, this time with 50-plus authors participating, and nearly 200 titles discounted—this week only. Genres include Mystery & Suspense, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, SF/Fantasy, and more. These are all books from traditionally published authors who have self-republished their backlists as ebooks. Most of their books are low-priced to begin with, but this week, they'll be even lower. Even though I just had my own special a few weeks ago, I'm participating as well. Go to the Backlist eBooks specials page to see the complete list and get the coupon codes to buy the books at Smashwords. (In most cases, you'll need to copy and paste the codes from there into the Smashwords shopping cart.)

Edit: An extension of the sale to the Sony store, previously reported here, fell through for complicated reasons. Maybe next time.

I'm sorely tempted myself, even though my e-to-read pile is already causing my virtual shelves to sag.

DRAGON SPACE Goes Live!

Yes, there are dragons in them stars. And now, for the first time ever, my two dragon novels—Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger—appear together in one volume, just out in ebook, Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus. Science fiction with a fantasy dimension! This new book appears under my own imprint, Starstream Publications, in cooperation with E-reads, which publishes the novels separately in ebook form.

Both books were published in paper by Tor, just before I got started with The Chaos Chronicles. The story—set chronologically in the Star Rigger universe sometime after Panglor but before Star Rigger's Way and Eternity's End—really started with a short story, "Though All the Mountains Lie Between," that I wrote for an Orson Scott Card-edited anthology, Dragons of Darkness (though the story actually appeared first in newspaper format in the Science Fiction Times). You can read it here.

Dragons in the Stars, which includes the events of that story, recounts the journey of star rigger Jael LeBrae, whose life is changed by an encounter with dragons in the "mountain region" of the hyperspatial Flux that riggers navigate between the stars. With that meeting, Jael becomes caught up in an age-old prophecy claiming that "One from outside" will come and speak her name to a dragon, and in so doing bring upheaval and a new beginning in the dragon realm. Jael has a life to live as a star pilot, but she finds she is bound inextricably to Highwing, the dragon who befriended her and whose life she later holds in her hands.

In the sequel Dragon Rigger, we experience through the dragons' eyes the war that is  tearing the realm apart. For there are more than just dragons here; there are false dragons, and ifflings and false ifflings, and the tormented spirit of a captured rigger. And seeking control of all, there is Tar-skel, the Nail of Strength—a being from beyond the realm who seeks to spin all of the magic of the dragons into a web of power and deceit—encompassing not just the dragon realm, but all of the Flux where the riggers fly, and all of the layers of normal-space that lie beyond. Into this war, Jael must return. If the prophecy is correct, only she can lead the realm out of the impending darkness. But if the prophecy is correct, the price of that victory is her own death.

In their original publication, Dragons in the Stars did very nicely. But Dragon Rigger—a personal favorite of mine!—suffered from a series of distribution and marketing snafus, and never really found its audience. Both have been out of print in paper for many years, but they returned as E-reads ebooks two years ago. This is their first publication in one, low-cost volume—complete with the map that graced the paper editions. I've been working on it for months, and I'm delighted to have a new cover design by Pat Ryan, based on the original work from artist Jael (no relation to the protagonist!).

Dragon Space is available right now in the Kindle store, in multiple formats at Smashwords, and is "processing" in the Nook store. Over the next few weeks, it should start showing up in the Apply, Sony, Kobo, and Diesel ebook stores.

Please give it a look, and tell all of your dragon-loving friends!

Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus:

At Kindle | Smashwords (all-format) | Nook  and others (coming)
Free excerpts here

Times Marches On

What with one thing or another, I never got around to posting my Easter greetings to everyone. So, thinking in a time-travel fashion (ghoststream, as it is called in the still-nascent Reefs of Time), I will now wish all of you Happy Easter! And Happy Passover! And if you don't celebrate Easter or Passover, and even if you're allergic to chocolate bunnies, I hope you had a great weekend, anyway.

During the weekend, my Chaos omnibus got a nice featured mention on Spalding's Racket, the indie-book-oriented blog of writer Nick Spalding. His blog is well worth perusing, if you're interested in seeing work by some writers you might not know yet.

Family members have been coming and going here. Allysen was gone for two weeks and has returned. Alexandra was home for a week and has left again. Julia was gone for a week and has returned. Talula, our house guest, was here but just left on a trip. Me, I've just been settin' here coughin' on the pollen and wonderin' why God or evolution invented allergies, anyway. (But grateful for the Roombas and Scooba.) And wondering, why does our attic smell like mildew? Please tell me we don't need a new roof. (But I think we probably do.)

Here for your amusement are a few fun pages that appeared recently at Syfy.com:

• 17 animals you'd swear were aliens
• Howl's Moving Castle done in paper
• Science fiction film stars who got their start in soap operas

Ebook Special Prices!

I decided to hold a "Taxes Are Done, Done, Done!" sale and put a few of my books on special for a limited time. Thus, for a limited time, you can get:

• Neptune Crossing for $.99 - Kindle | Nook | Smashwords
• The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 Omnibus for $5.99 - Kindle | Nook | Smashwords
• Eternity's End for $2.99- Kindle | Nook | Smashwords

Edit: That sale is now over. But everything below is still true.

Meanwhile, the prices are coming down on my other books sold through E-reads. It's taking a while for the price drops to trickle down, but in the Kindle store, you can now get:

• From a Changeling Star for $4.99 (formerly listing at $9.99)
• Down the Stream of Stars for $4.99 (ditto) -
• Star Rigger's Way for $4.99
• Seas of Ernathe for $4.99
• The Infinity Link for $4.99
• The Rapture Effect for $4.99
• Dragon Rigger for $4.99

Maybe you can show them that lower prices are better! Those prices should appear in all the other stores eventually--I hope sooner rather than later.

Watch for an announcement soon about Dragon Space, my new omnibus of Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. I recently put the cool map created by Ellisa Mitchell on my website, here. It's being incorporated into the new ebook, as well. I'm just waiting for the cover art to be finished. I'm very excited about it.

Progress on the Audiobook

We're really rolling now on the production of our home-brew full-cast audiobook of Neptune Crossing. Our narrator Bob Kuhn has recorded through Chapter 12, and the dialogue cast has done quite a bit of recording, bouncing around through a number of chapters—sort of movie-shoot style, so as to consolidate reading sessions for the characters who are in fewer scenes. It is remarkably difficult to do good voice acting for an audiobook.  Bruce Coville told us he actually had stage actors at his Full Cast Audio studio who said, this is too hard—too different—can't do it. Not stopping us, though!  We're on a steep learning curve, but we haven't been flung off into space quite yet. 

While Allysen's away, we're taking a pause in recording, and hoping to get some of the editing done, so that we can start to hear what a fully assembled production will sound like.

I hope to get a bit of a teaser up online soon.

Interview at Two Ends of the Pen

Today I'm the interview subject (Don't hurt me!) at a blog called Two Ends of the Pen, which is worth looking at if writing interests you at all. (I mean the blog is worth looking at, though I would hope you find my interview interesting, too.) My host at Two Ends is Debra L. Martin, who it turns out is just a stone's throw down the road from me, at MIT. This one focuses on writing, and also some of the differences between publishing the traditional way, and the indie way. For a look, go to  http://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/. (Here's the permanent link.)

Speaking of MIT, my friend and SF colleague Joe Haldeman is scheduled to be interviewed this Thursday on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan from 3PM to 3:40PM. According to his wife Gay, he'll be talking about the effect his experience in the Army (and presumably in Vietnam) has had on the rest of his life. Definitely should be worth a listen.

And in Late-breaking News...

Our older daughter Lexi just called to say...well, I could hardly make out what she was saying, because she was hysterical with joy or fear or something... and then I finally made out the words "...accepted... grad school..."  So it looks like she's going to be at Northeastern next fall, studying engineering! (She was giddy with joy, after all—not hysterical with fear.) Way to go!

Taxes Are Done, the Christmas Lights Are Down, and Allysen Landed a Job!

Yes, I finished the taxes over the weekend! What a relief. And today it was so gorgeous out that I finally rousted myself to do what I couldn't face all winter—I took the blue LED Christmas lights off the tall evergreen tree in front of our house. Yes, I got them down before Easter. (They were somewhat the worse for wear from the hard winter. Two of the six strings broke in the middle; the wires apparently just snapped and came apart.) I also went rollerblading and saw the sun go down over Spy Pond. It was beautiful.

That was after putting my wife Allysen on a plane to Ponce to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. Allysen's just been hired as a technical editor at a company called ab initio, and is quite excited about it. This is kind of a last-chance-to-travel for a while; she'll start after she gets back from Puerto Rico.

In other news, our daughter Julia decided to withdraw from high school and pursue other means to getting a degree-equivalent. She home-schooled for a number of years, so this isn't completely out of the blue. She had entered the high school to try to deal with some special circumstances, but for a variety of reasons, that wasn't working out for her. It was a bit of a jolt to us, but we support her in taking an alternate path, if that's what it takes. She looks happier than I've seen her in long time.

Interviewed Today at Kindle Author

Moi is interviewed today at the Kindle Author blog, a spot that features a lot of authors who publish at Kindle and elsewhere, both indie and traditional. (Their main focus is indie, but these days the lines are really blurring. Many traditionally published folk, like yours truly, have a second—or maybe third—foot planted in the indie category, too.)

Anyway, I won't repeat here what I said there, so why don't you take a look at the interview? Here's the permanent link, but if you go to the main page (at least today), you can read my interview and then scroll down and read some other interviews, as well. A fair number of my fellow Backlist Ebooks authors have been sighted there in recent days.

(In other news, tax time is still right around the corner, and I'm now immersed in the Quicken Sargasso, bringing a year's worth of business records up to date. I'm a walking example of the assertion that some people never learn.)

New Book Projects

I got an email from a reader not too long ago, asking if I was ever going to write a sequel to my star rigger novel Eternity's End. That got me thinking that I haven't posted an update lately on what I'm doing in terms of new book projects. So here you go, a writing sitrep.

First of all, the answer to the question is yes, I plan to write a sequel to Eternity's End. I started jotting down notes for it before that book was finished. The question is, when—because I first have to finish The Chaos Chronicles. So, yes, but don't start asking at the bookstore quite yet.

Right now, I'm dividing my time among three projects:

The Reefs of Time
The next Chaos book is still coming—still a lot more slowly than I'd like. For the benefit of people who haven't heard me say this before, part of the reason for this is some serious challenges in my family's life in the last year, and part of it is that it's a complex story. We're going back with Li-Jared to his homeworld of Karellia, along with Bandicut. In related events, other members of the company are journeying back in time, way back in time, and to the center of the galaxy to boot. And there's always that question, are Julie and Bandicut ever going to meet up again? And what's this about Dakota? And a fracturing of authority among the Shipworld Masters? Ai caramba. Don’t worry, we'll get there.

Neptune Crossing Audiobook
Have I mentioned this before? My wife Allysen and I have undertaken as a little "side project" to produce a full-cast audio production of Neptune Crossing. She started the ball rolling as a birthday and Christmas present, and we're now in the early stages of production. The voices include both of us (Bandicut and Julie), our daughter Julia (Napoleon and possibly Copernicus), and a number of folks from around town with drama or reading talent. I probably shouldn't name names at this point, but we have an experienced reader with a fabulous voice doing the narration for us, and we're still trying to figure who of our other volunteers are best for some of the other parts. I think this is best characterized, at this point, as a semi-professional production. We hope to get a salable audiobook out of it, and certainly serialized podcasts, but we're under no illusions about the work ahead of us. Our model of how this is done is the wonderful productions by our friend Bruce Coville's Full Cast Audio, and Bruce has generously offered us advice from his own experience.

Dragon Space—a dragons omnibus ebook
My omnibus ebook of the first three Chaos Chronicles volumes has been so successful, I'm now preparing a combined ebook of Dragons in the Stars and its sequel Dragon Rigger. Those two books are already out in individual E-reads editions, but E-reads has generously allowed me the rights to do my own omnibus under my Starstream Publications imprint. I'm close to finishing the formatting of the book files—it's astounding how long that can take, even when you start with files you think are in good shape (partly because I keep learning tricks that help make well-formatted ebooks)—and my favorite cover designer is working to fit me into a busy schedule.

And every once in a while, it hits me—Oh frak!—tax time is right around the corner!

(If you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know why.)

The Heart of Dog

One of my writing friends, Doranna Durgin, has a beagle named ConneryBeagle who's sick and has expensive vet bills. Doranna put together an anthology of SF and fantasy dog stories, all proceeds to benefit Connery. She's written a bunch of stories herself, but nine more reprints were contributed by her writing friends, including Julie Czerneda, Tanya Huff, John Mierau, Fiona Patton, Jennifer Roberson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Zakour, and me. Do check it out. It's only $3.99 at Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

With a Little Help from My Friends!

I wonder if you folks would be willing to help me out a little. Many of you have been remarkably supportive, and have even gone so far as to buy my books. (Thanks!) What I'm asking now is not that you buy my books, but that you help other people buy my books.

Common wisdom has it that word of mouth is the best way to sell. I always love it if you tell your friends and relatives and near-relatives about my work. Now I'd love it even more if you'd help tell some strangers. Here's how: by posting reviews, and by tagging.

I'm going to talk now of Amazon, but I'm sure there are variations of this in a hundred places. If you know them—please, by all means. Anyway, here's Amazon, and here's what I'd love you to do: go to my Amazon Kindle page. From there, you can click each of my ebook titles, which will take you to the product pages.

Once you're on each book's page, you have the option of posting a review. Please don't do anything that you're uncomfortable with, or that isn't honest. But if you've read the book in question, and you liked it, and feel moved to post even a very brief review, that would be wonderful. Still, reviews are just one way to help.

Amazon has a tagging feature for each book. Those tags help select books shown to browsing customers. There's no value judgment. The tags simply characterize the books: this one's about alien contact, or artificial intelligence, or rutabagas in Spain—whatever's appropriate. My books already have these tags. What I'd like you to do is agree with them. The more people agree with tags, the more weight the tags carry in searches. Here’s how:

When you get to the page, type "tt" quickly—just the letter T twice. (Edit: Click on the page first. You can also just scroll down, but you have to scroll quite a ways.) That'll take you right to the tags, and open up a little dialogue with the existing tags. (You might have to be logged in as a customer.) If you just check all those tags, or copy and paste them into the little box, then click Save, you'll register another vote for the tags. It might offer you a chance to Agree with them, or to See All the tags. That's a good thing to do, too. If a lot of you do that for me, it should bring my books to more people's attention. You don't have to say it's a great book, or lie about how you stayed up all night reading it, or anything like that. Just agree that I know what the books are about. Add more tags, if you like. (Edit: If you feel comfortable clicking the "Like" button, that's helpful, too.  You can also do this in the Nook store.)

This is a big favor to ask. But if you have a little spare time and would be willing to do it, I'd be eternally grateful. You might not be literally saving my life, but you sure could help me push this writing business one step closer to actually earning a living! Big thanks!