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.)

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:

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.

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!

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.
 

Google Ebookstore Opens

Long promised, the Google Ebookstore opened its doors this week. Naturally, I went to take a look. Also naturally, the first thing I did when I got inside was to see if they had my books. To my surprise and delight, when I clicked on Science Fiction, I found Sunborn on the first page! Whoa, wasn't expecting that. Further examination found most of my other publisher-issued books. Unfortunately, they're not all on one page, because some of them are under Jeffrey A. Carver and some are under Carver, Jeffrey A. (The sort of thing that drives you crazy. But they're there, and we'll get it straightened out eventually.)

What's the big deal with Google Ebooks, besides their being one more bit of competition for Amazon? That's a little hard to parse out, because the information on the site isn't exactly crystal clear. I know this: you can buy books in PDF or Epub format, and you can read them while tied to the web, and you can read them on a wide variety of devices. There's a feature that will somehow enable you to patronize your favorite independent bookstore, while buying ebooks from Google. (How that works, I don't know yet.) There will be books from indie authors, and from backlist ebook types like me. But that's really murky at the moment. (First report I heard from an author who had tried was...waiting...waiting...for the system to respond. Still waiting...)

Bottom line, I'll probably get my self-reissued ebooks up there in time. But I'm going to wait for things to shake out a little bit first.
 

Busy Day Yesterday

My downloads page took on a whole new look yesterday. I spent the whole day pounding the keys, revamping and reordering the page to reflect the shift in emphasis from a whole bunch of free stuff...to some free stuff, plus purchase links for my new, low-cost ebook editions. Dreamweaver and the html got a workout, and so did Word as I created new sample PDFs of all the Chaos books, plus Eternity's End. I'm now giving out excerpts of the first 8-10 chapters, which I hope will let folks decide if they like the story enough to drop a few bucks on the whole story in their preferred format.

Eternity's End isn't quite ready for upload of its ebook yet, but it's close. I'm working with a cover designer on this one, and I've been working hard at trying to nail down the concept and the art pieces that will go into it. I hope to have the book up for sale in the next couple of weeks.

To celebrate all that work getting done, I took another crack at something I started a couple of weeks ago—writing a new afterword for the Sunborn ebook from Tor. They're fixing some typos for me, and letting me add some value to the for-sale edition of the book while I'm at it.

And finally...some work on a particularly thorny subplot in The Reefs of Time, which—fear not—I am still hard at work on.

If you haven't visited my downloads page in a while, I invite you to take a look.

Oh yes—I had a nice dinner with my family, too!

Free Downloads Ending. Wait—What?

It's true. Driven by my insatiable desire to keep a roof over my head, I'm cutting back on my free-download offerings. Starting this week, I'm shifting my website to samples and purchase links for the Chaos books, and the same with Eternity's End. I've already got my own Starstream Publications editions of the first three Chaos books—with new afterwords—for sale in all of the major stores for a very low price (Eternity's End coming soon). But even a very low price isn't competing well with free.

I've been running the free-downloads experiment for more than two years now. Here's my conclusion: The free downloads have significantly expanded my audience, and enabled me to meet some very nice people electronically. But they haven't done much in terms of pay. Yes, some people have been generous with Paypal donations, and some who liked the books have gone out and bought my other ebooks—and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. But the theory that free downloads drive sales of books, which apparently works for some writers, does not seem to have clicked for me. I don't regret offering the downloads—not a bit—but now it's time to try something new.

I'm asking all other sites that host my free downloads to remove all except Neptune Crossing. (I'll still let them offer that first hit for free, heh-heh.) I'll provide big enough samples of all the books for new readers to give them a good, fair try—not like those weenie samples you get at a lot of stores, where most of the sample is ^%$@ front-matter, not the actual book.

And I'll keep the prices low.

With the holidays coming, I'll be offering some specials. But one thing at a time. I'm posting this right now as last call for alcoh—errr, free books!

(Note: Short stories and Battlestar Galactica will remain free in some ebook formats.)

Neptune Crossing Goes Kindle

Now—for the first time in human history!—you can download my novel Neptune Crossing direct to your Kindle, and start reading in seconds, from anywhere in the solar system that you can get Whispernet!  All for a mere $2.99, DRM-free.

This won't seem earthshaking to those who have downloaded the book for free from my website. But for the Kindle shoppers who, until now, could browse their way wirelessly to my Kindle page and find Sunborn, but not the first three books of The Chaos Chronicles, I hope it'll make a difference. Strange Attractors and The Infinite Sea will follow. As will uploads to other stores.

Here's the new cover, designed by yours truly, with the help of Chaoscope. Hope you like it. [Edit: I've changed the type color. I liked the red, but it just didn't show up clearly enough online. Here's the old and the new.]

Buy at Kindle store

Writing Sitrep

Promises, promises. I swore I'd keep you informed how work was going on the new book, which in case you're forgotten is called The Reefs of Time, fifth volume in the Chaos Chronicles. The answer is: slowly, but steadily. Life continues to get in the way sometimes. Especially life with kids and a mortgage. But I'm solving problems with the book one by one (story problems, I mean), and it's getting there. This time I'm dealing with time travel—yes, in the Chaos universe, which is the same as the Starstream universe introduced in From a Changeling Star and Down the Stream of Stars. The starstream itself comes into play in this book, as well as the center of the galaxy, where the Survivors lurk. It's my first real foray into time travel, and I'm finding that possibilities and complications pop out of the woodwork every time you turn around.

The really good news is that I realized just this week that I was enjoying working on the book a lot more than I have for quite a while. That's the best news of all.

Meanwhile, to help pay the bills, I'm working with another author on a nonfiction project (as a paid consultant editor-writer, not as primary author). It's taking us into some interesting areas of the law—and, as it turns out, the BP oilspill. Eeesh, what a mess!

It's nice sometimes to retreat to my fictional pan-galactic world. 

Paperback Tailspin

I haven't quite known how to say this, so I guess I'll just say it: the paperback sales on Sunborn have been terrible. The worst I've ever seen. Distribution is awful—the book isn't even being stocked by many bookstores I would have expected to carry it, like Borders or my local Barnes and Noble superstore. Or if they carried it, they stocked one copy. Not six or eight, like in old days, but one. How can you launch a book like that?  And why is this happening?

The reasons are legion. And these are just the ones I know about.

For starters, there was a long interruption in my output, and the first three books of the Chaos Chronicles were long out of print. I tried to address this by offering free downloads—and that certainly helped stimulate interest, but clearly not enough. At the time the paperback was published, I was in a family crisis and slow off the mark in doing the usual promotion I would have done. Worse, promotion from the publisher was indifferent, and their declining to bring the first three books back into print spelled trouble.

These are the obvious reasons, but not the only ones.

According to my editor, slumping sales are bedeviling a lot of authors and a lot of mass-market paperback books. The biggest factor is that the distribution of paperbacks has gone to hell—not just in bookstores, but in places like newsstands and drugstores. There used to be hundreds of wholesalers, each knowing their own territories—the guys who drove the trucks and put books on the racks, and who knew from experience what kinds of books tended to sell where. Now it's all consolidated, with a few huge outfits covering most of the business. And they're doing it by computer from central locations, making decisions that literally make or break national distribution of a book. Books that once might have found a modest but respectable audience are now cut out of the loop; they simply are not carried by the wholesalers that would get them into points of sale outside the traditional bookstore. As a result, what was once a major avenue of sales—to the casual browser who came into a convenience store looking for soap or a candy bar and stopped to thumb books on a rack—is now limited to the guaranteed bestsellers. So, you can find a book like Sunborn easily enough online, but only if you're looking for it. Your bookstore can order it, but only if you know to ask for it. But many potential new readers will never see it. 

Did my posting of free downloads help or hurt? It definitely helped make a lot more people aware of the books. Did it sell books or prevent sales? Will ebook sales make up some of the difference in paperback sales? Without a parallel universe to use as a control, there's just no way to know. 

"How can I help?" I hear you saying. (Maybe I'm imagining. But let's assume I'm hearing it.) One thing you can do, of course, is to head to your local bookshop if you haven't already and pick up a copy—if not for yourself, then for a friend or relative. Another is simply to encourage your local bookstore to carry the book. If you special-order it, that's one sale. If you can get them to stock a few copies, that could be several sales and a ping on their radar. And tell people. Word of mouth is the most effective single way to promote a book. And only you can do that.

I don't intend to sit around doing nothing but complain. I'm in the process of rethinking and retooling promotion for the future. More and more these days, that job is left solely to the author (unless you're already a bestseller and don't actually need the help.) I have a bunch of ideas, and I'll be writing about them from time to time and will definitely be interested in your feedback.

"The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the "curiosity" level." —from the rejection slip for Diary of Anne Frank

Sunborn: a Tor ebook. Finally!

At last, Sunborn has appeared in most of the major ebook stores as an official Tor ebook. It's in the Kindle store, the Sony store, Barnes and Noble, and BooksonBoard. Probably others stores, as well.  I don't mean to snub anyone; I just haven't done a complete survey.  It's not available at Fictionwise, at least not yet. Nor at Webscription.

[EDIT: As of today, it is on Fictionwise, with a rebate.  That seems to be the  best price at the moment.]

[EDIT OF EDIT: It disappeared from Fictionwise, along with a few thousand other books, on the day of the pricing switch to the so-called Agency Model.  No word on when, or if, these books will return to FW.] 

Prices range from $7.99 at Kindle to $9.99 at Barnes & Noble, $11.90 at BooksonBoard, and $12.60 at Sony. I hope to see those prices come down to no higher than the paperback price--and they should, according to pricing statements from Macmillan USA's CEO (Tor is owned by Macmillan).  But I have no direct control over that.  

[EDIT OF PRICE INFO: Macmillan did indeed lower the price to equal the paperback price.  It is now $7.99 everywhere.  Everywhere that it's sold, anyway--Fictionwise is still out of the game.] 

Sorry about the DRM, by the way. I was assured before that efforts were being made to get DRM-free Tor books up--but now I'm told that it was too hard, with all of the distributors geared for DRM. I don't have the complete story on that yet. If you buy it and strip the DRM for your own personal use, such as to put it on your favored reading device, you'll get no argument from me.  (It might be slightly illegal, though, under the DMCA.  I would never encourage anyone to violate even such a stupid law. Let that be on the record.) 

BTW, for some reason B&N is currently selling my other ebooks for $3.21 each, which is the best deal I've seen. I don't know for how long, so if that's a format you use, it's a good time to grab the books.

Interview Here, Appearance There

ScifiBookshelf.com has just posted an interview with me.

I'll be appearing at a fundraiser at my town library, Robbins Library of Arlington, Mass., tomorrow evening from 6 - 9. They've got a bunch of local authors coming, all bringing books to sign. Should be a fun event.

I'll also be at Boskone, the annual convention sponsored by the New England Science Fiction Association, on Feb. 12 -13 (but not on Sunday).

Amazon Continues to Hit Authors in the Wallet

Although Amazon staff publicly stated they were conceding to Macmillan in the big battle over ebook pricing, they still have not restored Macmillan/Tor titles to their listings. Is this a continued tantrum against Macmillan, to punish them for their negotiating position? Does Amazon care how many authors they're harming? (I think we know the answer to that one.) I am a longtime Amazon customer and Amazon Associate, but I don't plan to send them any more of my dollars as long as they continue this senseless war.

Since Amazon is no longer selling new copies of Sunborn, let me post some purchase links here to stores that will sell it to you. (Betterworldbooks.com is a retailer I only just became aware of. Part of their mission is to actively support literacy programs around the world. Worth checking out.)

And let me join John Scalzi in urging you to support other Macmillan authors by buying their books from other outlets!  

[Edit] Here's a new message from Macmillan CEO John Sargent, who seems to feel that the situation may be nearing resolution. (I'm not sure I agree with his reasoning on the changes coming to publishing, but there you have it.)  Meanwhile...

Sunborn is available from:

Barnes & Noble • Betterworldbooks • BooksaMillion

Borders • Powell's • Indie Bookstore • SF Specialty Store

Autographed Copy from Me

Amazon Blinks First

The war, or at least the battle, between Amazon.com and Macmillan publishers (corporate parent of my publisher, Tor Books) ended Sunday night when Amazon conceded that it would have to accept the new terms for selling ebooks.  Last I checked, my own book still wasn't back up for direct sale, but I trust it will be soon.

One of the best (short) commentaries on the matter is on E-reads.com, by Richard Curtis, literary agent and ebook publisher.  (He happens to be my agent and ebook publisher, but that's not why I'm recommending his column.)  He's been in this business for a long time, and has a pretty reliable nose for what's happening.

Author Tobias Buckell outlines the situation pretty well from the author's point of view. That's a long post, but if you're interested in learning more about how this crazy business works, it's a good one.

And another excellent author's view from Scott Westerfeld.

Me, I'm still annoyed at Amazon for using bombs as a negotiating ploy, especially when I'm close to one of the targets.  Actually, I'm annoyed with Amazon on several counts, including their continued failure to get my books into the Kindle store.  The hell of it is, though--I actually agree with them that cheaper ebooks will make more money for everyone, or at least for most of us.

It'll be interesting to watch what happens when Apple truly enters the ebook business, and then there will be two gorillas in the ring. 

Amazon Pulls Sunborn...

...and a few thousand other books that happen to be published by Macmillan (of which Tor is an imprint). That's right, if you click one of my many links to Sunborn's page at Amazon.com, you now will see it for sale only from Amazon partners, not from Amazon itself.

According to this article from the New York Times online, Amazon has pulled Macmillan titles as the next escalation in their dispute with publishers over ebook prices and timing. (Ironically, I am more or less on Amazon's side in that argument. But for them to do this, which they have to know is hurting authors at least as much as it hurts the publisher, seems like an act of callous arrogance.)

I'd been bugging my editor to find out when the Sunborn ebook was going to become a reality (you can still download my own ebook edition from my website), but it's looking like the Kindle store isn't going to be a place to buy my books anytime soon. (A side note: Amazon has been apparently unable or unwilling to process my E-reads ebooks into the Kindle store, the better part of a year after their release.)

All of which just makes me, for the moment, throw up my hands.

I do hope you'll all encourage your friends to buy Sunborn from outlets that actually carry it on their shelves. For which I thank you.

Sunborn in Paperback

Sunborn is now available in mass market paperback, from Tor Books—everywhere fine, cosmic, headbanging, epic, sensawunda, character-driven hard-SF is sold.  (And if you don't find it in your local emporium, please ask for it!  You'll be helping enormously.) 

For the first time in my life, I was so preoccupied by other things that I totally failed to mark the day my new book went on sale.  How bad is that?  It's been officially available since December 29, and it only just hit me last night that it was actually out.  I did receive my author copies a few days before the publication date—in itself a first, I think.  Then I went on with life and blanked on the whole thing.  Don't do what I did!  It's not too late to give it as a gift!

Now, I must hit the web to see if I can find a good image of the cover.  Ah, here we go, from the Tor-Forge store:

Wouldn't you like to own a copy today?

Autographed Books Make Fine Gifts

I feel compelled to mention this every December, but usually I forget until it's too late to do anyone any good. (I'd say it's borderline, this year.) Anyway, if you'd like to buy a signed, personalized copy of one or more of my books for that special someone on your Christmas, Hanukah, Solstice, or New Year gift list...well, have I got a deal for you! The deal is, I'll sell them to you! No extra charge for the autograph! I'm not like those Hollywood stars who sock you $20 for an autograph. Nope, I sock you $20 for a whole book. (Fine print disclaimer: most books are actually some price other than $20.)

Check it out at http://www.starrigger.net/order.htm. Just click on the Price List for the, you know, price list. I take checks, Paypal, and credit cards (via Paypal).

And...just in time not to arrive for Christmas, the paperback edition of Sunborn is due to be published December 29! But if you observe the Twelve Days of Christmas, you could still get a copy in time for that all-important 12th day. (You'll have to buy from a bookstore, though. I doubt I'll have copies in time to fill orders that soon.) If you like, you can look at the cover, read the blurbs, and even preorder on Amazon:

And if ebooks are more your style, check out my selection, with links to a variety of outlets, including options for multiformat, DRM-free editions.

Happy first week of December, everyone!

Sunborn Video

A while back I wrote that I'd been working on a video piece for a theatrical arts festival called Lydia Fair, sponsored by the Greater Boston Vineyard of Cambridge. Now you can see my video on YouTube!

It is what I would call a video narration, or maybe an audio visualization—or maybe one of you can suggest a more elegant name—of the prologue to Sunborn. I recorded the narration and blocked out the basic image storyboard. Then a talented fellow named Adam Guzewicz worked video and sound wizardry on it, animating parts of it from still images (which I gleaned from various NASA websites), and adapting other animation (ditto on the source). I'm lucky, I guess—that I wrote a prologue that actually could be set to astronomical images.

If you'd like to view it in a wide-screen version, go directly to the YouTube page or to my website. (Wide images on this page seem to cause problems for some viewers, so I try to keep them small.)

For best effect, set the viewer to full-screen and high-quality mode, and turn up the sound a bit. Enjoy!

Odyssey Interview

Workshops R Us. A week and a half ago, the advanced novel-writing workshop that I run with Craig Gardner came to an end for this year. It was a seriously good ending, as every one of the six participants is working on material with definite publication potential—some closer to being ready than others, but all good. It was a terrifically encouraging workshop, and I'm especially cheered that the group is going off and continuing to meet and support each other on their own now.

With that done, I'm leaving shortly for a brief stint as instructor-for-a-day at the Odyssey Workshop in New Hampshire, another seriously good program, a much denser and more immersive workshop. I'm going to be working with the participants there on issues of story structure and how plot, conflict, and characterization all play into it.

Odyssey did an online interview with me a while back, and I thought it would be appropriate to reproduce it here, just before I leave. Herewith, the Odyssey interview:

Once you started writing seriously, how long did it take you to sell your first piece? What were you doing wrong in your writing in those early days?

I guess I would call my writing in college the point at which I was writing seriously—by which I mean, trying to produce real stories that someone might want to read, or even publish. I'd had encouragement at that point from family and teachers, including a college writing teacher who told me he thought my work was publishable. It wasn't. I didn't know that yet, but the encouragement helped keep me going as I ever so slowly learned the craft of storytelling. It would be another six years and a file full of rejections before I sold my first short story (to Fiction magazine, in Boston).

If I had realized sooner what I was doing wrong, I might have shortened that learning period considerably. The problem was, I wasn't telling complete stories. I was going with what people told me were my strengths—description and characterization—and missing the need to tell an interesting story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I didn't understand about story structure. I was writing mood pieces, story fragments. My teachers weren't really versed in SF, or even in anything resembling conventional storytelling standards, and they weren't able to give me the direction I needed. I had no workshop to turn to, and was really writing on my own, with occasional feedback from editors like Terry Carr and Robert Silverberg, who liked my work well enough to at least hint at what they didn't like, as they returned my stories. It wasn't until years later that I found a source of good, regular criticism, when I met Craig Gardner and he invited me to join the writing group he was a part of. He and I are still members of that group-thirty years later! And Craig and I now run our own writing workshops in the Boston area.

Why do you think your work began to sell?

I'd learned just enough about putting a story together, and the craft of writing narrative prose, to make it over the bar to become publishable. Little did I know at that point how much more I had to learn—and am still learning! But I think the turning point was realizing, somewhere deep in the subconscious, that I had to bring an interesting character through a conflict and to a resolution of that conflict. I think I had to find a balance between the ambiguity that was interesting to me and the kind of resolution that was satisfying to a reader.

As a science fiction writer, I would imagine you devote a certain amount of time to actual research in order to enhance your stories and their believability. When, in your writing process, do you start researching, and how long does it take? Do you have any tips on making the research process more simple? Any favorite websites you frequent?

The amount of research I need to do varies wildly from one story to the next. Sometimes I do none; sometimes I do a lot. When I say none, of course, I'm sort of lying; all of life is research for my writing. All my human interactions, all my experiences as a kid and as a parent, as a loner and as a husband, come to bear on my characters. All my reading, much of it in areas of science and public affairs, influences my stories. Though I didn't major in science, I've always been a science junkie, and my general knowledge of science has been important to my ability to tell stories with scientific plausibility. For particular stories, I've done targeted research: nanotechnology, cosmic strings, and supernovas for From a Changeling Star; chaos theory and the Voyager spacecraft findings about Neptune and Triton for Neptune Crossing; tachyons for The Infinity Link; stellar nurseries and stellar evolution for Sunborn. For The Infinite Sea, I drew heavily on my experience as a scuba diver and the knowledge I'd gained from that, years before.

I do the research when I realize I need to. That sometimes happens early, sometimes late in the process. My biggest "Oops!" in research was waiting to do some of the supernova research for From a Changeling Star until I was nearly finished. (Stupid, stupid.) I had consulted with an astronomer friend, but hadn't taken his advice to check with his friend, who was a supernova specialist. When I finally did, I learned that I'd gotten some important things wrong. So while my editor was tapping her foot impatiently, waiting for the manuscript, I was busily rebuilding certain key points in the book, getting it right. (I knew that not one reader in a thousand would know the difference. But now that I knew the difference, I had to fix it.) It didn't help that it was an amnesia story as well, and some of these key points were being revealed gradually through the story, so I had to change not just one place, but many places. My advice: Don't do that.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the NASA-sponsored Launchpad Astronomy Workshop in Wyoming. This is an annual, week-long intensive astronomy course tailored for writers, and covers everything from the basics up through cutting-edge research. A great experience, and one I highly recommend for pro or near-pro writers.

The website I most frequent is Google. Okay, I guess that's not very helpful. I do check Astronomy Picture of the Day every day. And I get the New Scientist and Discover e-newsletters, which send me down some interesting paths. (I also subscribe to those magazines, as well as to Astronomy, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker.) Mostly, though, I just follow my nose when something looks interesting. I also sometimes, when I need to know something about a subject, find an expert and ask. Very helpful, that.

What's the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

Finding time and concentration to write, the same as (I'll bet) for many of your students. It hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Being a parent and needing to earn income in other ways have, at times, had to take priority over the writing. That's just life, and I'm not as good at time-sharing my mental and creative work as some people are. How do I cope? I keep at it, and don't give up (even when I want to). In the actual creative process, I seem to keep taking on story ideas that are more and more ambitious, and more difficult to pull off. This is probably a good thing artistically, and always feels rewarding in the end. But it doesn't always feel good when I'm in the middle of it!

For me, the hardest part is getting a first draft down. Once I have the clay in my hands, so to speak, I find it much easier to work at reshaping it.

Your 2008 release, SUNBORN, is the fourth book of your CHAOS CHRONICLES series. The first book of this series, NEPTUNE CROSSING, came out in 1995 and is unfortunately out of print. Can you talk about what it's like to write a series that spans such a great length of time, in publishing terms?

In publishing and marketing terms, what I did with the Chaos books was sheer idiocy. The long gap between the first three books and Sunborn resulted from my taking time out to write Eternity's End, set in my Star Rigger universe. That book proved really hard to write and took something like six years to finish. It was well received, and got me a Nebula nomination; but the problem coming out of it was that the Chaos trail had grown cold by the time I got back to book four. My outlines no longer made much sense to me, and it took a long time to rebuild momentum. In addition, with Sunborn, I was tackling what turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult narrative challenge: telling a story of cosmic-scale events, but keeping it personal and immediate on the human level. I hope I succeeded, but not without heading down many a wrong path in the process. Still, once I had the initial draft done, I felt for the first time that I knew what I was doing, and I could tackle the rewrite with a clearer sense of the story.

By pure coincidence, the day after I finished the first draft of Sunborn, my editor called and asked me if I'd like to write a novelization of Battlestar Galactica (the miniseries). That was something I was required to do fast, but it was fun and a welcome change of pace. I was retelling someone else's story, so I was able to use other parts of my brain to focus purely on the craft. It was just what the doctor ordered.

Once Sunborn was done, another year or two down the road, the book was scheduled for publication—and then delayed yet another year for reasons internal to the publishing process. That was pretty frakking hard to take, but it did give me an opportunity to revise some sections after having some months away from the book.

So, there I was, with Book 4 of an out-of-print series scheduled for publication. Tricky, from a marketing viewpoint. (I try to avoid the word "suicidal.") I knew I needed to do something to renew audience interest in the series—and to try to bring new readers to it. Creating a national scandal might have been a good choice—but I'm not a very scandalous person. So I went with Plan B, which was to release all the earlier books in ebook format, for free download from my website. (You can download them right now, in fact, at http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm.) The results were immensely gratifying. I got many emails from readers who said this was the first they'd heard of me, and now they were looking for my other books, as well. So it definitely increased interest in the series. Did it boost sales of the hardcover book? Damned it I know. (Well, I'm sure it did, but I haven't a clue as to how much.)

Do you write each installment to be read as a stand-alone, or is each book in the series interconnected, so knowledge of previous volumes is necessary to understand the current one? Do you have any advice for writers working on multiple-book series of their own, and would you handle your own series any differently now than when you first started?

The story is a continuing arc, but each volume is a self-contained story that comes to a conclusion—and sets the stage for the next. I worked hard to build enough recap into the early parts of the stories that someone could pick up any book and enjoy it. But no question, the best way to read the series is from the beginning.

Advice to others? Don't do what I did! (That's my advice for investing in the stock market, too. Watch what I do. Then do something different.) I'm only partly serious, of course, but that part is sincere. I think where I went wrong was thinking that I could write a series of short, snappy novels that cumulatively would form a long, complex story. (This, you see, is what I always seem to do—write long, complex stories. I was trying to find a way to do it in a more sustainable way.) Then each Chaos book turned out a little longer than the one before, and soon I was writing a series of long, complex stories. People seem to like them. I'm proud of having written them. But making me independently wealthy, they're not. :)

Your work is known for strong characterization and internal conflict. How do you use that internal conflict to create a character arc for the whole novel? Do you plan it out in advance, or do you discover it as you write? And how do you tie your characters' internal conflict with the external conflict of the larger story?

Well, geez, if I tell you that now, what am I going to talk about when I get to the workshop?! I'll tell you this much: I always have some vision for the overall story and character arc before I start writing. But much of it, I discover as I write. I seem to require the tension of being in the middle of the story to draw the full understanding of the character conflict out of my subconscious. I'm a very intuitive writer. Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing until I've done it. There are people who can do all of that before setting down a word of the story. I hates them! (Preciousss...)

As a guest lecturer at this summer's Odyssey Workshop, you'll be lecturing, workshopping, and meeting individually with students. What do you think is the most important advice you can give to developing writers?

To quote the captain in the movie Galaxy Quest: "Never surrender! Never give up!" Or was it the other way around? Anyway, that's the approach you have to take in writing. It can be terribly frustrating and discouraging when you can't seem to get it right, or you think you've gotten it right and then a reader tells you, no, it's actually still just warmed over beetle-dung, and you want to throw it all in the river. That's when you have to remember those words. Not to shout in defense of what you've written, but to take a deep breath and keep at it until you do, finally, get it right.

Oh, and try to write something you would want to read yourself.

What's next on the writing-related horizon? Are you starting any new projects?

I am currently doing battle with the first draft of the fifth book of The Chaos Chronicles, tentatively titled, The Reefs of Time. Damn if I didn't once more set myself some challenges that I don't yet know the solution to. Why do I keep doing this?

I'm also working on getting all of my backlist into "print" as ebooks.

And I'm just finishing a short video piece for an arts festival sponsored by a local church: an audio visualization—for lack of a better term—of the fairly cosmic prologue to Sunborn. I hope to have that up for online viewing in a few weeks. I'll put a link on my downloads page once it's available. It's 3 minutes long, and I think it's pretty cool. Stop by and check it out! [Update: I'm still waiting for a few final changes by the guy who did much of the video editing. Soon.]

"If you wish to be a writer, write." —Epictetus