For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
This Thursday, November 20, I’ll be signing copies of Sunborn at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, along with Joe Haldeman and Chris Howard, who will be signing their new books, as well. In addition to Sunborn, I expect to have some copies of other novels, also—including the earlier volumes of The Chaos Chronicles.
Hope to see you there!
Both book signings were terrific successes, with lots of hardcovers leaving in people’s hands—in many cases, the hands of people I did not know before the signings. (Always a good indicator.) And the folks at Menotomy Beer & Wine were fantastic, made me feel welcome and even sent me home with a bottle of wine! This continues my experience that the best place to do book signings is not necessarily at bookstores (though I’m happy to sign at bookstores, too!), but at places where something else is going on. Indoor water park, church fair, wine tasting—what’ll be next?
I’ve added a second book signing of Sunborn to the one previously announced:
Click for a full rewrite, with details and locations. Stop by! Have some lasagna and pie (Friday) and some wine (Saturday).
As an old-time fan of the comic strip Bloom County, I have followed the later incarnations of the strip (Outland and Opus) with decidedly mixed feelings. I love the old characters, but they were mostly gone. And Opus wasn’t quite what he once was, though he certainly had his moments.
It’s been clear for a while that the strip was coming to an end, and creator Berkely Breathed was taking what seemed to me a depressing route toward the conclusion, with Opus locked away in a dog pound. (I imagine it is hard to bring something like that to a close.) Last Sunday, the final strip ran in the paper, and it…told us we had to go online to see the last panel! It also gave the wrong web address.
But here it is, the final shot of Opus (at least for now). It’s too big to show here: take a look for yourself. It’s really quite touching, and redeemed all of the darkness of the leadup. Bye for now, Opus. And sweet dreams!
…is upon us again! (As reader Marco pointed out in a comment below.) This would be a hard one for me to miss, because my daughter is giving it a shot, along with several friends. Ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka… Different people have different feelings about this project, but my own feeling is, if it gets people writing and having fun writing, it’s a good thing! Check it out at NaNoWriMo.org.
“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.” —E.B. White
Our panel at Umass Lowell, as part of the Concord Festival of Authors, went very well. Panelist and new writer Chris Howard blogged about it, and said everything I would say, except that he gave a nice big plug to Sunborn while he was at it. Thanks, Chris!
Funny thing: I clicked on Chris’s Amazon link to Sunborn, and noted with my usual scowl that Amazon already listed used copies for sale, three days after the book’s release. Then, out of curiosity, I clicked to look at the actual listing—and saw, first of all, that most were actually new, not used, copies from Amazon Marketplace sellers. But here’s the funny part—some sellers listed used copies for over $40, or more than twice Amazon’s price for new books! Do you suppose anybody would actually buy one of those? It’s good work if you can get it.
Nobody’s emailed me yet to request a free ebook, but there have been over 4000 hits on the Sunborn PDF in just three days!
Sunborn is a book, available in fine stores everywhere! Yay! I even have copies myself! By a wonderful fluke, the case I ordered for the upcoming book signing at the Menotomy Beer and Wine store (see earlier post) arrived on my doorstep today. So I get to see it, too! (This may sound odd, but usually the writer is the last to get copies. Well, sometimes the editor is last, and the writer is second to last. Indeed, there’s no telling when my regular “author’s comp copies” will arrive.)
Order now from: If you’d like to read before you buy, here’s the deal on downloads. I’ve put up a regular PDF version for free download. This will look nice on your computer (but probably not so great on your small device). In addition, I’m offering anyone who buys the hardcover a free ebook in other ebook formats, straight from me! Buy the book from me or from any store—and just send me proof of purchase of any kind. Details are on my downloads page.
I don’t quite have the ebook ready at this moment. I’ve been untangling the formatting on Tor’s typesetting file, which required a somewhat messy Quark to Word conversion. That’s just about done, and very soon I’ll be able to start converting it into the formats that ebook readers prefer.
The long wait is over!
For those of you in eastern Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire, or…okay, for those of you in the continental U.S., or neighboring countries…
The evening of October 30 will find me moderating a panel at the University of Massachusetts Lowell campus, called “We May Be On to Something Here (Science Fiction in the 21st Century).” Part of the Concord Festival of Authors, the panel will also include Craig Shaw Gardner, new writer Chris Howard, Alexander Jablokov, and Matt Jarpe. We’ll kick off at 7:30 p.m., jawbone interestingly with each other and the audience for a while, then segue into a book signing hosted by the university bookstore. This will be my first opportunity to sign Sunborn—and in all likelihood the first time I will have set eyes on the actual book myself.
If you can’t make that—or even if you can—you’ll have another chance to say hello and pick up a signature on a shiny new hardcover (if that appeals to you, and why wouldn’t it?) on Saturday, November 8, from 4-7 p.m. The venue will be a little different this time; I’ll be signing at Arlington’s Menotomy Beer and Wine store, while a free wine-tasting swirls around me. The wine tastings are a popular event at the store, and it’s a great bunch of people, with some interesting wines. Stop by and say hi!
Another signing is tentatively planned for later in November, but more about that when details firm up.
And don’t forget: you can download the first three novels of the Chaos Chronicles for free in ebook form, so even if you haven’t read them yet, you can grab them now and be all up to speed for Sunborn. Go for it!
For the last couple of days, I’ve been laid up with a nasty cold, and haven’t been in shape to do much of anything. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t read, couldn’t work. But one thing I could do was close my eyes and listen to my iPod. And luckily, I had something new to listen to: some old radio drama from the Old Time Radio Show Catalog. I’d only just learned of this site, and had just downloaded some sample tracks. I was glad I had.
They’ve got all the great old science fiction shows: Dimension X, Beyond Tomorrow, Buck Rogers, Tom Corbett, Superman, Space Patrol, and more. They’ve also got mystery shows (Mercury Theater, CBS Radio Workshop, and tons more), westerns, war, comedy, British…the list is long. They sell CD collections (in mp3 format, so you get a lot on a disc) for only $5 per CD. I listened to dramatizations of Heinlein’s “Requiem,” and Bradbury’s “Marionettes, Inc.,” and if you have any taste at all for the classic old work, it’s great stuff. Take a listen. You can grab a free download, it would seem, from every CD—so sample before you buy.
Highly recommended!
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this earlier. I recently sold a short story—the first short piece I’ve written in years—to Diamonds in the Sky, an online anthology edited by Michael Brotherton and funded by NASA to promote astronomy education. It’s going to be available online realsoonnow, I understand. The anthology is intended as a free online resource for astronomy teachers and students, bringing together a group of science fiction stories each of which illustrates a particular astronomical concept. The hope is that the stories will be a fun way to learn science, and might even make some difficult concepts clearer than a straight expository approach. It’s to be kept “in print” indefinitely, so that teachers—and their students!—can always go back to it.
In a way, it’s a throwback to the Golden Days of Science Fiction, when men were Real Men, and the science in science fiction was Real Science. (Sometimes, anyway.) It should be interesting.
Oh—the title of my story is “Dog Star.” It’s about a boy and his dog and asteroids and dark energy.