26 Oct 2010

Exclusive New Afterwords for My Chaos Ebooks!

posted in: Uncategorized | 0

 I’ve just finished incorporating  all-new Afterwords in the ebook versions of Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea. I set down some reflections on the Chaos series as a whole, what it was like to write those first three books, and some of the thought processes and creative impulses that went into shaping each of the stories.

The new Afterwords are exclusive to my new ebook editions, available in the Kindle store and from Smashwords, and slowly migrating into other ebookstores. (If you’re a new visitor here, the original print versions of these books were from Tor Books; these new ebook releases are from my own Starstream Publications. That’s just me, but I thought new editions ought to come from an imprint, not just some guy.)

These three books were free on my website for two years. There are still free editions out there—but the Afterwords are an extra value for folks who buy the books in the stores. (Just $2.99 each!)

Edit: The new Kindle versions are live now. If you bought the Kindle books before the Afterwords were added, contact me via my website, and I’ll see that you get the updated versions. (Amazon apparently has no provision for redownloading updated editions of books.) I’m not sure how it works with editions from Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc. via the Smashwords distributions. If you have trouble, let me know.

26 Oct 2010

Halloween Sale at Backlist Ebooks

posted in: ebooks, publishing | 0

A bunch of authors, yours truly included, are offering books from their backlists for 25% off at Smashwords, as part of the October sale at Backlist Ebooks. To see the list of participating authors and get the coupon codes you’ll need, head over to http://www.facebook.com/BacklistEbooks and click on Sale at the top. (Or, if you prefer not to go to Facebook, you can go to http://backlistebooks.com/.) Take a look! There’s mystery, SF and fantasy, romance, and I don’t know what all. The sale runs through Halloween.

19 Oct 2010

The Infinite Sea at Kindle and Smashwords

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

I’ve just released a new ebook edition of The Infinite Sea, the third book of The Chaos Chronicles, to the Amazon Kindle store—and to Smashwords (from which it will migrate to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobobooks, and the Apple store). With this release, all of the Chaos Chronicles are now available for instant download in the Kindle store. Come to think of it, with this release, all of my novels are available in the Kindle store. Most of them are available in other ebook stores as well. For a complete list, see: http://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm.

I’ve been fiddling with the covers to make them display better at thumbnail size. (I may revisit them later, but for the moment, I think I’m done fiddling.) Here’s The Infinite Sea:

Halloween Special!
From now through October 31, you can get the first three Chaos books for 25% off at Smashwords, in your choice of formats. Just use these coupon codes:

19 Oct 2010

Authors Together — Backlistebooks.com

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

I recently joined a band of authors from a variety of genres to jointly promote our backlist books that we’re putting back into circulation as ebooks. The group is called Backlist Ebooks, and it includes SF and fantasy writers (such as CJ Cherryh, Vonda McIntyre, and Doranna Durgin), mystery writers, romance writers, and others. Many of the authors are award-winners, and all the books being promoted were originally published by traditional publishing, but have since either gone out of print, or were otherwise unavailable as ebooks. This is a new effort, but the list is growing steadily as more writers hear about it. Check it out!

There’s a web site: http://backlistebooks.com/ and a Facebook page, where you might pick up some interesting news from the authors. Starting Saturday, many of the group will be sponsoring a 25% off Halloween promotion on their Smashwords titles. That includes my three Chaos Chronicles books at Smashwords! 

6 Oct 2010

Star Trek Stars in Westerns / Rowling Interview

posted in: quirky, science fiction | 0

Here are two fascinating collections of video clips. First, courtesy of SyFy/Blastr, we have gathered together short clips of Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, and James Doohan—all acting in grade-B westerns in the years prior to the original Star Trek. It’s pretty mind…er, bending stuff.

Also courtesy of Blastr, we have an up-close-and-personal Oprah interview with Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. It’s pretty interesting. But don’t be taken in by the sensationalistic headline (the sort of thing Blastr is inordinately fond of). Rowling says she could write several more Harry Potter books—what a surprise, eh?—but doesn’t say she actually will. Still, good stuff. It comes in several parts.

6 Oct 2010

Human-Powered Ornithopter

posted in: Flying, quirky, technology | 0

Flap those wings! On some airline flights, I’ve felt that it might be necessary to help by doing that. So does Pearls Before Swine:

Pearls Before Swine

But here’s something real.  A team of University of Toronto students kept a human-powered ornithopter (wing-flapping aircraft) aloft for a short flight after being towed up to takeoff speed by a car.  Just a first step, but a beautiful first step!



http://www.youtube.com/user/OrnithopterProject

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

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