17 Apr 2014

The BookBub Promotion Went Great

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing, science fiction, specials, The Chaos Chronicles | 0

If you were reading here last week, you know I marked down my omnibus ebook of The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 for a week, in conjunction with a promotion on Bookbub.com. The sale went amazingly, gratifyingly well. Better than I expected or dreamed. In fact, there are more than 2500 people out there with shiny new copies of my omnibus on their Kindles, Nooks, iPads, whatever. More than 1500 people grabbed it on the first day alone. We broke into the top 100 sellers of all books in the Kindle store, and briefly lingered at #65 among all Kindle ebooks. More importantly, I’ve already heard from one new reader who discovered my work through the sale and has already ripped through it happily and gone on to download Sunborn.

That’s the most gratifying thing about it, is the new readers. The extra income is nice, too, of course.

If you’re one of those readers, I hope you enjoy the book! And if you do, I’d be eternally grateful if you’d take a moment to post a review wherever you bought it, or at Goodreads, or anywhere, really. Word of mouth means everything. And thanks!

16 Apr 2014

An Electric Bill Even a Miser Would Like

posted in: personal news, solar power | 0

It finally happened. Our latest electric bill:

    $-35, due on or before April 28 

Yes! The electric company owes us money! This has been our best month so far, generating electricity from the solar panels on our roof. Here’s how it looks so far in April:

Typically I think we use ~22 kWh per day. There were some days this month we generated almost double that amount, and fed the extra to the grid, and only a few days where we fell short. Solar rocks.

16 Apr 2014

Snow! On April 16!

posted in: quirky | 0

Yeesh, wasn’t it just yesterday I was driving in the truck, a little overly warm what with the Spring weather we’ve been having? Well, I was up later last night than I should have been, worrying over some stuff that should be simple in this chapter. And when I finally stumbled downstairs at 4 a.m.to take Captain Jack out for his last visit to the tree before bed, what do I find but snow on the ground, and still coming down!

This had got to be the weirdest weather year I can remember.

8 Apr 2014

Bookbub Promotion on The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1–3!

posted in: books, ebooks, my books, Neptune Crossing, specials, The Chaos Chronicles | 0

Starting today, and for one week, The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1–3 (an ebook omnibus edition) will be steeply discounted, down to $1.99! That’s for three complete books—and would be a great price for just one book! Here’s another exclamation mark, for good measure! This is my second promotion through Bookbub, and I’m hoping it does as well as the first.

These three novels are enough to get you well into the Chaos story, starting with Neptune Crossing, and continuing with Strange Attractors and The Infinite Sea. I hate blowing my own horn, so can I let some others do it for me? Here are some honest-to-God quotes from other people:

  • Neptune Crossing – Called one of the best SF novels of the year by Science Fiction Chronicle 
  • Strange Attractors – “An irresistibly readable story line reinforced by fascinating speculative science.” —Booklist 
  • The Infinite Sea – “Another splendid adventure, with intriguing puzzles, first-rate problem-solving, and an impressive array of alien characters, motives, and methods.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Chaos Chronicles — click to biggify

It’s available at Nook, Amazon, Smashwords, and iTunes. It’s now also marked down at Book View Café. And at Kobobooks.

If you haven’t already added this set to your ebook collection, what are you waiting for?

7 Apr 2014

Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

posted in: books, writing | 0

Are you hoping to write, but don’t know quite how to get started? Meant to do NaNoWriMo, but the month was gone before you could decide what to write about? Need a little encouragement, or maybe a kick in the butt? Here’s a book that might help. It’s called Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, and is edited by Laurie Lamson.

The reason I know about it is that a copy landed in my mailbox a week or two ago. And the reason that happened is that I contributed a piece to the book and then more or less forgot about it. Well, I’m glad my contributor’s copy came along to jog my memory, because it’s a fascinating book. It’s a collection of exercises that various writers and teachers have found helpful, along with little essays about the exercises, and pointers that might help you along the way. That might sound boring, but it isn’t—not at all. I found myself thumbing through it, and wishing I had a few hours to spend right then and there reading it.

There are about fifty or sixty writers represented, including big names like Harlan Ellison and Piers Anthony, and plenty of seriously notable writers whose names are not as widely known. A few of my fellow Book View Café members are in there (Vonda N. McIntyre, Lois Gresh). One of the alums of my own workshop is in there (Chris Howard). The general topics include Story Development and Plotting; Building Worlds; Heroes, Villains, and Monsters; Communication and Relationships; and much more. I will definitely be using this book as a resource the next time I run a workshop.

If writing is in your bucket list, you might want to check it out. It’s available in both paper and electrons:

and doubtless in many of your local bookstores.

6 Apr 2014

A New Look for Neptune Crossing—and First in a Series at Itunes!

posted in: books, ebooks, my books, Neptune Crossing, specials, The Chaos Chronicles | 0

A lot’s been going on since I last wrote. One exciting thing is that I’ve put a new cover on Neptune Crossing, which will join my list at Book View Café next Tuesday. It’s still free everywhere, both as a thank-you to my readers and as a way for new readers to discover my work.

In addition, Neptune Crossing has been selected as part of an iBooks promotion called “Free First in a Series at iTunes.” This is via my Smashwords edition which distributes to the Apple store, so a big thanks to Mark Coker of Smashwords for that. To see all the books being promoted as free first books in a series, go to the iTunes store, click on Books, and browse the front-page banner until you come to it.

Here’s the new cover, designed for me by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, fellow BVC author. In her spare time, she’s now working on a new cover for Strange Attractors.

Neptune Crossing cover

I have to get back to doing my taxes now, but look for another book-related announcement in a few days.

20 Mar 2014

Writing as an Act of Faith

posted in: audiobooks, faith issues, my books, The Reefs of Time, work in progress, writing, writing retreats | 0

As I said in my last two posts, I’m on a writing retreat to work on The Reefs of Time. There’s an interesting faith component to this retreat. While the act of writing is almost by definition a leap of faith (Will this book I’m spending years writing actually turn into something good?) there’s a little more to it this time. As part of my church’s annual Leap of Faith experiment during Lent, I have been praying for a creative breakthrough, and also in particular that my writing wouldn’t just sell, but would touch readers in meaningful and uplifting ways. I mean, really, if it doesn’t do that, is it worth all the work and mental anguish? (Yes, aspiring writers, sometimes it definitely feels like anguish.)

Well, on my first night I settled into a comfortable chair with my laptop, in front of a crackling fire (I have a really nice room at this B&B), to begin writing new material. Not moving stuff around, not taking notes, but doing the hard thing: new stuff. No sooner was I settled in than an email came in. Really, I should have been ignoring emails at that point, but I caught out of the corner of my eye, in the little notification window, something about The Infinity Link. Now, The Infinity Link was one of my early novels, not much noticed nowadays, but in my writing career it was a breakthrough novel in many ways. (Not the least of the ways was that it started small, grew large, and took me bloody forever to write—not unlike the book I’m writing now.)

So I read the email. It was from a reader new to my work. He’d found The Infinity Link in a used bookstore a while back, and read it. He’d just read it again, this time via the Audible audiobook. And he was writing to tell me how profoundly the story and some of its images had touched him—and he just wanted to let me know, and to thank me for writing the book!

Before answering the email, I sat there for a few moments, dumbfounded. I don’t know how you would take it, but that sure felt like an answer to prayer to me.

The writing came easier for the rest of that night.

20 Mar 2014

Two Views of My Novel

posted in: nature, The Reefs of Time, work in progress, writing, writing retreats | 0

I found this rock on the first beach walk of my retreat, a sea-scoured nugget of quartz. It seemed to me a perfect metaphor for my first draft: a gem (or crystal, anyway) in the rough, all of its facets and inner beauty temporarily concealed. I probably won’t polish the crystal, but I will polish the novel. (In fact, I’ve made good progress on a couple of thorny problems while down here.) So, here are two different views of my work in progress:

And while I ponder the book, here’s the Landshark scanning the sea for signs of its marine brethren:

19 Mar 2014

First Writing Retreat of 2014

posted in: nature, The Chaos Chronicles, The Reefs of Time, work in progress, writing, writing retreats | 0

I’m on Cape Cod for a few days, to clear my head and try to get some traction in the rewrite of The Reefs of Time. I’ve got the whole book loaded into Scrivener now, with notes all over the place, and Scrivener has already proved its usefulness in letting me move the chapters of different subplots around like chess pieces. I think I’ve got them lined up the way I want them, though of course I might feel differently as the rewriting proceeds.

Part of what I love about coming to the Cape is a chance to walk along the beach and the dunes, and refresh my brain with ocean air. Whenever I do that, I seem to see patterns in nature that somehow connect with what I’m writing. The tide coming in over the sand, for example, creates little ephemeral rivers that remind me of the starstream, a cosmic structure of my own imaginary design which figures prominently in the new book. (See From a Changeling Star and Down the Stream of Stars for more about the starstream, which was born of a supernova and a long cosmic hyperstring.)

I’m not sure what these vistas of sand dunes remind me of, but I felt strongly that they symbolize something in the story I’m writing. I guess I’ll find out what, later.

In case you think I just stole these pictures off the internet, here’s one of me standing where the dunes give way to the beach and the water. (Would you trust this guy with your daughter? Hmm.)

How about this guy? (He claimed to be rollerblading. But it was way too cold to be rollerblading. What was he really doing?)

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.
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