15 Mar 2014

E-Reads to Become a Part of Open Road Media

posted in: ebooks, my books, publishing | 0
Nine of my backlist books are currently published by E-Reads, founded in 1999 by my agent, Richard Curtis. E-Reads was a pioneering enterprise in the ebooks business, putting books up for sale when hardly anyone knew what an ebook was.
E-Reads is about to become a part of Open Road Media, and in the coming months my E-reads titles will become Open Road titles. Beyond a long-time acquaintance with Open Road editor Betsy Mitchell, who got her start in publishing at Dell at around the same time I was getting my start at Dell, I don’t know too much about the company. I guess I’m about to learn, though!
Here’s the detailed announcement from Open Road, and a summary by Publishers Weekly.
The times they are a’changing.
28 Feb 2014

Happy Birthday, Bookbub!

posted in: ebooks, my books, personal news | 0

No, wait, I got that wrong. It’s Happy Birthday, Allysen! (It’s my loving wife’s forty-two-plus-somethingth birthday today. Yay!)

It’s also the day of my first Bookbub promotion! Eternity’s End is on sale for $.99, for one week only. At Kindle! At Nook! At Smashwords! This is the one that was a finalist for the Nebula Award: a big, sprawling star-rigger story, complete with space pirates, amphibious aliens, cyber-enhanced love, and cosmic wonders. Get it for less than a buck, for one week only. Heck, for that price, buy six and give it to your friends!

If you like the book, I sure would appreciate your posting a review to your favorite store or review site. Believe it or not, reviews matter!

After March 7, the price goes up.

And did I remember to say: Happy Birthday, Allysen!

27 Jan 2014

Another Audiobook You Should Listen To

posted in: audiobooks, my books, The Chaos Chronicles, The Reefs of Time | 0

From a Changeling Star, by me. Okay, I guess that sounds like the usual author self-promotion, and on one level, I suppose it is. But I actually just finished listening to it, and I really liked it!

The reason I just listened to it is that I’ve started going through all my books that come before The Reefs of Time, to refresh my memory of what happened, in hopes of avoiding continuity blunders. Also, in hopes of picking up inspiration from some of the things I cleverly put into the story, but have since forgotten. Fortunately, I can listen to several of them in audio, so I can be working while I walk the dog. Two of them, From a Changeling Star and Down the Stream of Stars, are not formally part of The Chaos Chronicles, but they’re about the creation and use of the starstream, which provides the backdrop for Reefs. Plus, the robot Jeaves first appears in those stories.

Listening to someone else read your work can be pretty difficult. Wrong pronunciations, wonky intonations, “character voices” that don’t sound right to your inner ear. Things probably only you the author will notice. Sometimes you just flat-out don’t like the sound of the narrator’s voice for your book. This one isn’t entirely free of those problems, but it’s way better than some others I’ve listened to, and on the whole I thought narrator MacLeod Andrews did a fine job. Next for me, Down the Stream of Stars.

26 Jan 2014

The Untangling of Plot Threads

posted in: books, my books, writing | 0

In his latest blog post, Richard Bowker describes how a serene evening beside the fire with the writing group leads to unexpected plot complications. It’s all true; I was there. In fact, I might have been the person whose little comment led to the problem. (Oops.)

The same thing happens to me all the time. In my previous post, I showed you what the manuscript of my new first draft looks like. Picture about a third of the way into that stack of pages. That’s where an important plot event happens. Will have happened, after I rewrite it. The problem is, I was about three quarters of the way through the book before I realized that little detail. (Oops.) That’s going to change a few things, isn’t it?

Yah. Sorry ’bout that (I say to myself). Sometimes I think it’s a wonder these books ever get finished.

26 Dec 2013

Half-Price Ebook Sale at Book View Café

posted in: ebooks, my books, personal news, specials | 0

My friends at Book View Café and I are having a big Boxing Day Week sale on a huge number of books. All of my books there are half-price for a limited time, and there are a ton of other great half-price books by my fellow BVC authors. The list includes many familiar names from the science fiction and fantasy world, including Ursula LeGuin, Vonda McIntyre, Pati Nagle, Linda Nagata, Judith Tarr, David Levine, Chris Dolley, and many others in a variety of genres. This is an excellent chance to stock up on some terrific books for half price, and maybe discover some new favorite authors along the way. Here’s where to look:

The books are all DRM-free in both Kindle and Epub format, so you can read them on pretty much any reading device you like. It doesn’t get much better than that, in the ebookosphere.
24 Dec 2013

The Reefs of Time—a Complete First Draft!

posted in: my books, personal news, The Chaos Chronicles, The Reefs of Time, writing | 11

Great news! I’ve met my do-or-die goal of having the first draft of The Reefs of Time finished before Christmas Eve! Last night at around 3 a.m., I typed the fateful words:

To be continued in Book Six of The Chaos Chronicles

and heaved an enormous sigh of relief. Because that, of course, is another way of saying, The End! What a feeling. I’ve been working on this thing for a little over five years, and it’s just about caused me to lose all my remaining hair. But I feel really good about what I’ve got now (as a first draft!), and eagerly look forward to starting the rewrite in the new year. It’s a sprawling, complicated story, and I know there are pieces missing, and a lot of other sections that will be mercilessly cut, and a lot to be completely reworked. But that’s all stuff I know how to do. It was getting the basic story down that threatened to send me around the bend. For those who are counting, it’s just over 900 pages in manuscript, or somewhere around 220,000 words. (I think my writing group had a poll going on the final length, but I don’t know if anyone remembers who bet what.)

I hope my agent and publisher will be glad to hear this, as well! They’ve been incredibly patient, and all I can say is, If I could have done it faster, I would have.

Even a crashed car isn’t going to take this good feeling away.

Thank you, God, and thank you, everyone who has been waiting and periodically nudging.I think I’m going to enjoy a really good beer tonight, and focus on getting ready for Christmas.

27 Nov 2013

Comet ISON: John Bandicut?

posted in: astronomy, ebooks, free ebooks, my books | 0

It took a loyal reader to point it out to me: The coming close encounter of Comet ISON with the sun is kind of reminiscent of a fateful ride taken by John Bandicut in my novel Neptune Crossing. (Tip of the space helmet to Kyle Michael Jeynes for noting it on my Facebook page.) Of course, in Bandicut’s case, he and the quarx Charlie were chasing the comet.

If you haven’t read Neptune Crossing, you should. I need the sales! No, actually it’s free, pretty much everywhere fine ebooks are to be found. Or, you could take the plunge and buy it in a high quality omnibus with the next two books in the series. Only $6.99 for three complete novels! A steal, even if you can get the first one by itself for free!

Seriously, though, ebook sales have been down something fierce the last few months. It’s been true for me, and I’m hearing it from a lot of other writers, too. Maybe it’s the economy, combined with organized governmental dysfunction. Even our local beer and wine store reports a recent sales slump. If people aren’t buying likker, you know there’s a problem!

So, support your favorite author and buy a book today. Or, maybe even better, recommend your favorite author to someone who hasn’t had the pleasure yet. Your favorite author will thank you.

25 Jun 2013

Damned Typos! (And Other Myths of Easy Ebook Corrections)

posted in: ebooks, my books, publishing | 0

I was barely home from my trip when I got an email from Amazon Kindle support, telling me that a reader had contacted them about two typos they had found in the (free) ebook edition of Neptune Crossing. Would I please correct them? Hell’s bells, I thought. There goes my day. And I was right.

There’s this widespread misconception that because ebooks are digital, mistakes can be corrected in a jiffy and the revised edition put up before your coffee has time to cool. Sounds good. And oh, how I wish it were true. Let’s see how it plays out in real life.

First, I checked the ebook, which exists in multiple formats, to see if there really were typos. Sometimes people mistake colloquialisms, or sounds, or alien words, or made-up words, or unusual usage for typos. Alas, the typos were real. They were mistakes, and they had to be fixed.

The first challenge was that I maintain multiple “master source” documents—Word docs that have all the latest corrections and styles and so forth. Docs from which new ebooks, or print-on-demand paper books, can be created. The reason there are several is that there’s different front and end material, depending on the store. For example, “Buy the next book in the series from the Kindle store,” with a link. Or from the Nook store. Each store allows links only back to itself, or to the author website. So when something needs to be corrected, it has to be corrected in all the master documents.

After the source docs are corrected, it’s time to correct the ebooks. In the case of epub books (Nook, iBooks, everything but Kindle), the easiest way to fix something simple like a misspelled word is to open the ebook in a program called Sigil, which lets you edit the underlying text and code. Do a search, fix it, rerun validation checks, and close it up again. Then test it in a few viewers to make sure you didn’t screw something else up while fixing the little thing. (You might be surprised how often this happens.) For a Kindle file, you can’t use Sigil, so it’s easiest to recreate the ebook from the source file in Calibre, another essential program. Then test, retest, etc.

Done? Time to upload the new versions. Easy, right? Maybe. About half the stores have changed the requirements for cover illustration size since the last upload, so you have to go back to your master cover images and hope you have a big enough one to meet the upgraded requirements. Oops, now you need to run the book through Calibre again to incorporate the larger cover image in the book. Then test again.

Time to upload (again). Kindle first, because more books sell there than anywhere else. Also, they also have the most sophisticated checking system. It now presents you with a list of possible typos. See the above list of things that are often mistaken for typos. Most the flagged words are just that. But you need to look at them anyway, to see. Okay, good, upload done. One store out of the way, now on to the next. Oops, Smashwords accepts epub uploads now, but gives a bizarre error from Firefox. Better try again, using Chrome. That works—but with about six other annoying little glitches that cause the upload to take an hour instead of a minute. The Nook store should go faster, right? Maybe, except they’ve changed catalog description requirements, so you have to fix those bits. Finally, Book View Café, which is a simple FTP upload. Yay!

Oops—wait. If the typos were in Neptune Crossing, then they’re probably also in The Chaos Chronicles Omnibus volume, which contains the first three books. Better check. Yes, blast it, they are. Repeat steps 1-60 above, with the omnibus. Go to upload.

The Kindle spell-checker flags something like 200 words, most of them as noted above. But wouldn’t you know it? It finds a real typo in Strange Attractors (Book 2), and two in The Infinite Sea (Book 3). Augghh! These books have been checked over so many times, how can that be? Nevertheless, there they are.

Go through it all again, fixing the typos in the omnibus, and then again in each edition of the individual novels. Check the results. What’s this? Why is the first line of Chapter 19 of Strange Attractors indented, while all the others are flush left? Wrong style applied to that paragraph. Frakkin’, frakkin’, frak. Go fix it. In all the versions. Be sure and get them all. Oh wait—I need a bigger cover image for this book now, too.

Repeat as needed. Try not to go mad.

Those two typos took an entire day, and I still haven’t finished with The Infinite Sea. When that’s done, there’s a typo a friend pointed out in Dragon Space. Aaaeeiii. 

Tell you what. The next time you find a typo or two in a book, please consider cutting the author (or publisher) a little slack. It’s harder than it looks to get rid of those things! (If you find more than a few, that’s just carelessness. Go ahead and give the publisher hell.)

12 Dec 2012

The Next Big Thing — Work in Progress

posted in: authors, blogging, my books, science fiction, work in progress, writing | 0

Today I’m diving into an author meme that’s circulating around the net this month. It’s called a Blog Hop. The idea is to post some tantalizing information about your work in progress, to get folks (that’s you) psyched about what’s coming down the pike—and then to link to some of your writer friends and colleagues, and encourage the same folk (you, again) to go check out what they’re doing.

Here goes. First question, please:

1) What is the title of your next work?

The Reefs of Time.

It’s Volume Five of The Chaos Chronicles. Or, to put it another way, it’s the long-awaited sequel to Sunborn. It’s also still very much a work in progress, and I don’t have a publication date for you, unfortunately. Some of you have been waiting a long time for this book, and I very much appreciate your patience.

2) Where did the idea come from?

It continues a story inspired by chaos theory, which began years ago with Neptune Crossing, the opening volume of The Chaos Chronicles. The series chronicles the adventures of one John Bandicut from Earth, a survey pilot out on Triton (moon of Neptune), whose journey starts with a search for relics of life from outside the solar system. He finds it, in the form of a quarx—a noncorporeal alien who takes up residence in his head—and the translator, a powerful machine or being of equally alien origin. A lot happens after that—four books’ worth, in fact. Worlds in danger, starting with Earth. Reluctant heroes. New friendships and loves where least expected.

In The Reefs of Time, we are hundreds of years further into the future, out at the edge of our galaxy. There’s a calamity in the making, of truly galactic proportions. Li-Jared’s homeworld is involved. The starstream is involved (see From a Changeling Star and Down the Stream of Stars). The Mindaru are involved (see Sunborn). The inspiration for this volume came not just from chaos theory, but time theory, as well. The human element was inspired by… well, I’m not really sure, to be honest. My own feelings of awe in the face of a seemingly chaotic universe, perhaps.

Each of the books is a story complete, while building a much larger story arc.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Sounds sort of like science fiction, doesn’t it?

4) What actors should play your characters in the movie?

I’d never thought about that until now. Well, okay, this sounds nutty, but actually Tom Cruise, toned down, might not be bad as John Bandicut. Chris Pike could be good, too. Or Jeremy Renner, or Mark Ruffalo. He has to be smart and capable, but also a little crazy. He’s got actual, alien voices in his head, and he’s loyal to those he loves, and when pushed, he’s willing to take some enormous risks.

Most of the characters in this book are aliens, and that’s a tough casting challenge. Willem Dafoe was great as Tar Tarkas, and he might be a pretty good Ik (an alien). Lynn Collins (Deja Thoris in John Carter) could be the beautiful, four-breasted humanoid, Antares. Or Lena Heady. For Julie Stone, human… not sure. Someone smart, competent, cute, reminiscent of Allison Mack (Chloe in Smallville); but I’m not sure she’s quite right. Someone similar, though. Summer Glau? Too exotic. Piper Perabo? Too adorable. I think this part is still open. Li-Jared and the robots, I really have no idea.

5) Give us a one-sentence synopsis. (Go ahead, try!)

When a time distortion opens a channel from the center of the galaxy in the deep past, to the outer galaxy of now, it also opens a path for a malevolent group of cyber-entities to come forward in time, threatening thousands of civilized worlds. It falls to John Bandicut and his alien companions to find a way to close the timestream. And if Bandicut survives, he might just learn that Julie Stone has made it to Shipworld, out at the edge of the galaxy, and that she has played a part in the mission.

Okay, I made it in three sentences. But it’s a whole lot more complicated than that, really.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It is slated to be published by Tor Books, who have been waiting patiently for the long-overdue manuscript.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft?

Ouch. Five years or more in, I’m nearly finished with the massive first draft. I expect the rewrite to go a lot faster, though it will be a huge job, involving a lot of weaving and a lot of cutting and tightening. 

8) What other books would you compare this story to?

That’s a hard one. It has some of the epic proportions of Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky. Maybe some kinship with Gregory Benford’s galactic core books. Or Jack McDevitt’s The Engines of God. Or Samuel R. Delany’s Nova. Or Niven’s Ringworld. A bit of Heinlein, a bit of Clarke. It’s character driven, but probably comes in somewhere between hard science fiction and galactic space opera.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

James Gleick’s book, Chaos. An article in The Planetary Report about chaos in the solar system. An image of a man, a pilot, driven a little mad by the loss of his cybernetic implants, as the first human to encounter an alien.

10) What else might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a great, sprawling adventure with characters I find very interesting (humans, aliens, robots), a complex plot spanning half the galaxy, and—oh yes—time travel! I can’t wait to read it. And I really can’t wait to finish writing it. The Reefs of Time. When it’s done, the readers of this blog will be the first to know.

All six books that connect to it, by the way, are readily available as ebooks. (That includes four books of The Chaos Chronicles, plus the two Starstream novels mentioned above. Paper books are also available, though you might have to go to the used market for some of them.)

If there are no more questions, why don’t you check out what some of my fellow authors have to say about their works in progress? (Some might be posting over the course of the day, so if you don’t see anything, check back.)

Richard Bowker http://richardbowker.com/
Ann Tonsor Zeddies http://pointoforigin.livejournal.com/
Lois Gresh http://loisgresh.blogspot.com

The next bunch of writers are all colleagues of mine at Book View Café:

Patricia Burroughs http://planetpooks.com/the-blog/
Katharine Eliska “Cat” Kimbriel http://alfreda89.livejournal.com/
Pati Nagle http://patinagle.livejournal.com/
Steven Harper Piziks http://spiziks.livejournal.com
Deborah J. Ross http://www.deborahjross.blogspot.com/

Others will be posting on December 19. I’ll try to get some more links for you then.

If you’re a writer and have posted your own “Next Big Thing” (or want to do so right now), please go ahead and post your link under Comments!

3 Dec 2012

Holiday Specials!

posted in: ebooks, my books, personal news, specials | 0

Before this gets away from me and I forget to promote it (What good are specials if you keep them to yourself?), I have a few book specials lined up for the holiday season.

Ebooks first. At Book View Café, you can pick up my two short story collections, Going Alien and Reality and Other Fictions, for just $1.99 each through December 31. (That’s a dollar off the regular low, low price of $2.99!) Epub or mobi (Kindle) format, your choice, DRM-free.

In the Kindle store, the price of my spaceship-racing thriller, Clypsis (Book One of the Roger Zelazny’s Alien Speedway trilogy) has been marked down by the publisher, at my request, from $9.99 to $5.97. That’s a 40% markdown! Gentlebeings, start your engines! A rousing collaboration with the late, great Roger Zelazny, for young adults of all ages! (Plus, when you compare the ebook price to $89.56 for a new, vintage paperback, it’s a no-brainer. Never mind the $.01 used paperbacks. I’m sure they’re not as good.)



Finally, for lovers of tree-books, I remind you all that personalized, autographed paper books make fine gifts for the discerning gift giver.  Why not visit my virtual bookstore at http://www.starrigger.net/order.htm? Take 10% off the book total (not off the postage, please) for any order you send me in the month of December. This sale is not listed on the website. Just take the discount and mention you read it on my blog or Facebook page.

The book is dead? I don’t think so. Long live the book!

   

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