6 Oct 2010

Cosmic Accidents

posted in: religion, science, space | 0

New Scientist magazine recently ran a long article called Cosmic Accidents: 10 Lucky Breaks for Humanity. It’s a timeline, starting with the Big Bang, of all the things that had to happen just so, for the universe to develop in a fashion that would allow us to be here.

 (Image: NASA/ESA/ESO/Wolfram Freudling et al. (STECF))

It starts with getting the density of the universe just right, and the balance of matter and antimatter just right, and goes all the way up through the dinosaur-killing asteroid making room for us little mammals, and the conditions that may have led to the evolution of language. The whole thing is online here.

But wait—aren’t there supposed to be “no accidents”? Hmm. If questions like that, in the context of issues like this, cause you to twitch one way or another, maybe you should read Beyond God and Atheism: Why I am a ‘Possibilian’ in the same issue of New Scientist. Alas, you must be a subscriber to read the whole article, but the title and opening paragraphs give you a pretty good idea of the content.

15 Sep 2010

The Short, Sweet Life of Pippa

posted in: animal friends, farewells, personal news, tributes | 0

We buried a 5-month-old puppy yesterday. Her name was Pippa, and she weighed less than ten pounds. She came to us from Puerto Rico with Allysen, where she had been rescued and made briefly part of Allysen’s parents’ household. She was adorable and sweet and alert, probably part border collie but tiny.  We decided that she was of the breed Foxbat, or Borinquen terrier, and she captured all of our hearts. She made friends with Hermione, our boxer, who doesn’t always like other dogs. Moonlight the cat was a slow adopter, but I was sure it was just a matter of time before they bonded, too.

Pippa never got that time. She was here for just four days before she started having seizures during the night. The seizures subsided for a short time after we started her on some meds from the vet, but soon they returned—frequent and severe. Monday night, late, we took her to the Mass Vet Referral Animal Hospital, where we got the grim news that the outlook was poor without major medical intervention, way beyond anything we could undertake—and even with the intervention, there would be a lot of uncertainties. And so we made the heartbreaking decision to let her go peacefully, which she did while we held her in our laps. We brought her body home, and the next day laid her to rest in the back yard. With her we put the ashes of Sam the beagle and Mattie our first boxer—ashes we’d kept on a shelf for years because we couldn’t bear to do anything about them at the time. It comforted us, thinking that Pippa was in good company.

Here’s Pippa, as I imagine her right now on the Rainbow Bridge. 

11 Sep 2010

On to Smashwords

posted in: ebooks, publishing, science fiction | 0

Neptune Crossing is now available on Smashwords, from which it will go out to the Sony ebookstore, Barnes & Noble, the Apple store, and others. $2.99, in a variety of formats.

I’ve tweaked the cover a little, because the red type just didn’t display well on the store pages. (Scroll down a couple of posts to see the original.) Wondering a little if I should hire a professional to make it look better—a couple of people have told me they didn’t care for it very much—but I’m not sure. What do you think?

Neptune Crossing — Smashwords edition

7 Sep 2010

Bidness Model, Shmidness Model

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing, writing | 0

The arrival of Neptune Crossing in the Kindle store is part of a grand experiment, begun with my free downloads and continuing into the indefinite future. The business model of how to make a living as a writer has been shifting on a daily basis, it seems. Just selling to a publisher and waiting (and waiting) for the check doesn’t work anymore for most of us. (It never worked that well to begin with. Most of us have always had to do other work to pay the rent, whether by teaching, speaking, doing another kind of writing, or serving venti lattes.) But self-promotion, networking, blogging, ebooks, self-publishing—and on and on—have become increasingly important jags and peaks on the tectonic upheaval that we call “the writing life.”

Back in the good old days, when men were real men, and little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were—no, wait, that’s Douglas Adams’s line. Back in the day, though, we used to be able to tell aspiring writers that self-publishing was for niche-marketers and losers, with the occasional “exception that proved the rule.” (Did that expression ever make sense?) That’s no longer so obviously true. Publishers Weekly has begun paying attention to self-published books, and if that isn’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what is. One thing that has become obviously true is that more than a few established writers are going to their backlists and getting their out-of-print books back into circulation on their own through places like Amazon and Smashwords, or through newer companies that exist for this very purpose. 

Here are some examples:

  • Thriller writer J.A. Konrath, whose high-profile blog has described his success in self-publishing his early and o.p. novels, and now new work as well
  • Bookview Café, a consortium of SF and fantasy writers, including Vonda McIntyre and Ursula K. LeGuin, marketing their own previously published books and stories
  • Closed Circle, a collaborative run by CJ Cherryh, Lynn Abbey, and Jane Fancher to sell their o.p. SF and fantasy novels
  • Diane Duane, self-publishing some of her own o.p. fantasy novels and marketing directly from her website

Count me in. Trying, in my own way to pick a path through this chaos, I’ve now managed to get all my novels, past and present, into ebook format—and some into print-on-demand trade paperback. But which path to take? I’ve taken the broadband approach. As of now, I have ebooks available through the following channels:

  • Three ebooks from traditional publishers, with traditional royalties — priced at $6.99 – $9.99
  • Nine ebooks from E-reads, at a higher royalty (50% of net) — priced at $9.99, but discounted in some stores
  • Three ebooks released already or soon directly to Kindle (and eventually to other stores), at a 70% royalty — priced at $2.99
  • One ebook free for the download on my website — not available for sale, but with Paypal donations encouraged
  • Five of the books on sale are also available for free download in limited (2) or full (3) selection of ebook formats, Paypal donations encouraged

I haven’t made up my mind what to do about the free downloads. There’s no question they’ve increased my readership. There’s some question about whether they’re helping or hurting sales of the books that are for sale. The next six to twelve months, I hope, will be telling. What they tell, I’ll post here. (Not exact sales figures, probably, but trends.)

Wish me luck. And tell your friends!

  

7 Sep 2010

Neptune Crossing Goes Kindle

posted in: Amazon, ebooks, personal news, publishing, science fiction, Sunborn | 0

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.]

6 Sep 2010

Roger Zelazny’s Alien Speedway: Clypsis in Kindle Store!

posted in: Amazon, ebooks, personal news, publishing, science fiction, writing | 0

Back in the 1980s, I took on a lively and challenging project, which was to write a young adult novel based on a series outlined by one of my writing idols, Roger Zelazny. I’d never done anything like that before: sharecropping, they called it. Byron Preiss Visual Productions did a lot of that for a while. Big-name writer creates a world for newer writers to play in. Who could resist a world created by Roger Zelazny—especially when that world is a solar system dedicated to faster-than-light spaceship racing, and the protagonist is a young man whose desire to fly, and fly fast, I could feel burning in my own veins?

This turned out to be one of the best times I’ve ever had writing a book. I enjoyed the story, begun by Roger and sculpted by me, and I enjoyed the characters. It even gave me the chance to have someone believably say, “Eat dust, Earthman!” Clypsis was published by Byron Preiss through Bantam Spectra, and it got great response from readers. I got rave letters from strangers (this was before email). In the end, it was published just as an SF novel, not a YA novel. But the kid in me lived in the book.

 Clypsis cover art by Bob Eggleton

Then it went out of print. And so it remained, year after year. Byron Preiss (who owned the copyright) intended to reprint it in some fashion. Then Byron died tragically in an auto accident. His company went into bankruptcy. Eventually the literary assets were purchased by John Colby of Brick Tower Press. By this point, I had lost the trail; it took me years even to establish who owned the rights. Finally, we established contact, and I prepared the text of the book for ebook publication (with the assistance of Anne King, who had helped with several of my ebooks). And now…

It’s out! It’s in the Kindle store! The Sony store will be next. I’m not sure where else. I’m delighted to see this book return to life. And with this publication, every book I’ve written is now available in one form or another as an ebook!

Here’s a link. (If you buy it through this link, I’ll see a bit more return in the form of a referral fee. Thanks.)

22 Aug 2010

New Ultimate SF Workshop!

posted in: science fiction, teaching, writing | 0

[This is an old posting, for historical interest. The workshop is currently on indefinite hiatus.]

Ultimate SF, the annual writing workshop that I lead with Craig Shaw Gardner, will be starting again in October! This is a workshop for serious aspiring SF/F/Horror writers, meeting once a week for ten weeks. For obvious reasons, this is primarily of interest to people in the Boston area. This year, we’ll be moving from our old venue at the Pandemonium bookstore in Cambridge to a location, still to be finalized, in Arlington, one town out on the bus line from Harvard Square. (Pandemonium has become too successful as a gaming center to provide space anymore.)

Get your red-hot info online now at: https://www.starrigger.net/workshop.htm. [Used to be there. Probably in the Wayback Machine, if you care.]

This is an adult-level course, not suited for younger writers. However, young writers looking for guidance can check out my free online course at: https://www.writesf.com.

Come stretch your writing aspirations with us!

21 Aug 2010

Life Sitrep

posted in: personal news | 0

The reason I’ve been silent for a while is that life has been pretty chaotic here, not entirely in a good way—but not all bad, either.  In the last few weeks, life in the Carver household has included:

  • A serious crisis for one of our daughters, which I can’t say much about for privacy reasons, but it involved numerous health-care professionals, many difficult hours, and serious rethinking of educational plans.
  • Hospitalization for a third heart attack for my father-in-law—and much soul-searching over what’s best for this 87-year-old guy whom everyone loves, and who was once full of energy and activity and life. My wife’s in Puerto Rico with him now. I may be heading there soon. Except for:
  • Extensive and risky surgery for a good friend, who had his abdomen opened up and his aorta replaced with a Dacron tube. He lives alone and doesn’t have much of a support system: grown kids who live far away, and a sister who’s here for him, but has some physical disability of her own. That puts me on point for a lot of it. One step at a time, right now trying to get him into a decent rehab place that will take his minimal state-funded health insurance.
  • Less dramatic hospital visits for two other friends, just to keep up the medical theme of the month.
  • The arrival home of our other daughter from North Carolina, in a car that was threatening to kack on her at any moment. She celebrated her return home with a root canal, then almost immediately headed off for the Utah desert with four friends in two other cars of questionable reliability. (“Don’t worry, Dad! We’re packing a spare clutch for each car!”) Thank God one of the chief park rangers out there is my cousin-in-law. (“Please don’t get arrested for drunkenness in the national park. Please.” Not that I thought she would.)
  • The passing of Calvin, my brother’s beloved dog, the world’s one and only shag terrier. We miss you, Calvin!

I’ve probably forgotten a few things. But you get the idea. I’m a little tired. I haven’t been getting a lot of other work done.

For some reason, I really like this quote:

“Microbes are a lot like teenagers. They work on their own time, at their own scale. They do what they want when they want.” —scientist Christopher Reddy, on oil-eating bacteria somewhere in the BP oil plume, who don’t seem to be doing their job

22 Jul 2010

My Library of the Future

posted in: ebooks, quirky, science fiction, technology | 0

I sometimes ponder what I would like my personal library to look like, in my future dream house. Lots of books, of course, and a few easy chairs. Nice woodwork. But a growing part of my library is ebooks, and how do you put ebooks where you can browse the spines, or pull books out at random to look at their covers? One of the things I like to do in my SF collection is to once in a while just look at the covers, and build a kind of gestalt feeling of all those wonderful stories gathered in one place.

So here’s my plan. Along with all those paper books, I’ll have a digital frame displaying a slideshow of the covers for all my ebooks. Understand, that’s a stopgap measure, until the technology catches up with what I really want—a holographic display of the book images, arrayed sort of the way iTunes displays album covers when you’re running a playlist. You’d be able to flip through the display with your fingertips, and if you find one you want to read right then, just pull it out of the holo. Sort of like this display at coverpop.com, only in full-sized full-holo. That action will cause the book to download, if necessary, into whatever magnificent reading device is current then, and open for reading. Sans dust mites.

The best of both worlds.

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