1 Aug 2012

On the Web Radio!

posted in: appearances, ebooks, personal news, radio, science fiction, writing | 0

That’s where you’ll find me, this Thursday evening August 2, from 9:20 to 10:00 Eastern time! The show is called The Author’s Corner, with host Elaine Raco Chase, at www.trianglevarietyradio.com. It’s a call-in show, and I’ll be talking about my writing and books, and pretty much whatever she asks me. So if you’d like to chat with actual spoken words—almost as if we were talking in person—check it out! Go to www.trianglevarietyradio.com, then click on blog talk radio (a silver bar, halfway down the page). You’ll find a phone number for calling in. Listen to the whole show, from 8 to 1030 p.m., Eastern time! (Forget the boring Olympics—they’ll be on your DVR.)

If you must watch adorable and athletic divers and gymnasts instead of listening to our scintillating conversation, podcasts will be available after the show. (But really, you aren’t going to watch the Olympics Sunday night instead of the Mars landing, are you? I didn’t think so. This is similar.)

Edit: You can listen to the interview as a podcast, by clicking this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/trianglevariety/2012/08/03/authors-corner-review-with-host-elaine-raco-chase

Several other authors precede me in the interview. My own section starts at around 78:30.

2 Jul 2012

“Book of the Day” at Flurries of Words!

posted in: blogging, ebooks, publishing | 0

Oops—one more note. I just got word that Neptune Crossing is today’s “Book of the Day” at the Flurries of Words blog, a UK-based blog of book reviews and book-related announcements. Looks like a good blog for readers to check out. It doesn’t say so, but in fact Neptune Crossing is free in both the U.S. and England (and pretty much all around the world), as an introduction to The Chaos Chronicles. 

As a side note, my sales in England have been picking up these last few months, at least in the Kindle UK store, which is the one place that gives me ready access to sales figures. It appears that a fair number of people who download Neptune Crossing for free go on to want to read the rest of the series. Which is certainly an affirming feeling for me.

1 Jul 2012

Reality and Other Fictions Goes Broadband

posted in: ebooks, publishing, short stories | 0

My new short story collection, Reality and other Fictions, is now available in the Kindle store and at Smashwords, as well as at the Book View Cafe, and will be in the Nook store as soon as it makes its way through their system. (I was happy to see that a copy sold at Smashwords about two hours after it went up, long before I’d done any sort of promotion.)

Tell your friends!  And while you’re at it, tell them that the Smashwords July sale has begun, and lots of books by thousands of authors will be on sale there for part or all of July. I’ve joined in by putting Eternity’s End, Dragon Space, and Reality and other Fictions on sale for 50% off, for at least the first two weeks of July. Use coupon code SSW50 at checkout to get the discount.

I’m getting ready to travel to my home state of Ohio for a little family vacation, so it might be another week or two before I check in here again. Hope you’re all enjoying your summer! (Or winter, if your nearest pole is the South Pole.)

19 Jun 2012

Reality and Other Fictions

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

All these years, I’ve been telling you wonderful people about my novels, with scarcely a mention of my short stories. That’s because my short stories have been few and far between. Nevertheless, I’ve published eleven shorter pieces over the years, in publications as varied as Science Fiction Age, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the Boston Sunday Herald. And now I’ve collected them.

The first of two collections is Reality and Other Fictions, now on sale at Book View Café, for the low, low price of $2.99! Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s the blurb:

Explore an Earth being devoured by entropy, in the ultimate runaway environmental crisis. Dive the depths of the sea to prevent the mother of all oil spills. Rocket into space as a tourist. Mine the asteroids with your enhanced border collie, in the can-do spirit of classic science fiction. They include Carver’s first published short fiction, and his most recent. With new introductions, all from the author of The Chaos Chronicles and Eternity’s End.

If you’ve been following my blog recently, you’ll have seen my mention of some new stories going up for sale as singles. Some of those are in this collection. Here’s the contents page:

  • Reality School: In the Entropy Zone
  • Of No Return
  • Seastate Zero
  • Rocket Ride
  • Dog Star

“Seastate Zero” is available only in this collection, as are the insightful introductions I’ve lovingly written for each story and for the book as a whole. At least, I hope you’ll find them insightful, or at least interesting. I do share some memories I’ve never written down before about how these stories came to be, and how they fit into my career.

My second collection, Going Alien, is scheduled for late August. It pulls together all of my short work that involves… can you guess? Aliens.

For both of these books, I am indebted to Gretchen, the high school student (now graduated, and valedictorian!) who typed and formatted a good number of them from old paper copies, while helping me as an intern. And equally to Anna King, who provided extraordinary help in wrestling the final formatting into line. Not to mention Allysen, for catching some embarrassing typos and wordos at the eleventh hour. And finally, Vonda McIntyre, author and BVC founding member, who has been tirelessly helpful in getting this stuff up.

Available exclusively at BVC until July. After that, I’ll release it to the usual suspects.

I hope you’ll give it a try! (Vote for me!)

19 Jun 2012

My Book View Café Launch!

posted in: authors, ebooks, personal news, publishing, science fiction, short stories, writing | 0

Book View Café (BVC) is an authors collective of established writers who have joined forces to help each other publish their own backlists as ebooks. Names you might recognize include Ursula K. LeGuin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Katherine Kerr, Linda Nagata—and many more. As of June 19, I’m part of that list, and honored to be so. Here’s my page at BVC.

To celebrate my launch on BVC, I’m releasing my first-ever short story collection, Reality and Other Fictions. It’s on sale as I type this! For the rest of June, it’s going to be a BVC exclusive. Why? Because BVC is a great store filled with great authors, and it deserves enthusiastic support. If you buy a book from a favorite author at BVC, the author gets the highest percent of the money of any bookstore that’s not actually on an author’s website. Because people help each other so much in the whole process—everyone pitches in with their own particular skills—the production values are high. And the books are, of course, DRM-free, meaning no annoying copy protection to keep you from moving it from one device to another, regardless of type. If you want to convert your book to a different format, do so with our blessing.

Can you use these books on a Kindle or a Nook or a Kobo Reader or a Sony Reader?  Absolutely. (Just make sure you download the right format for your reader.)

By the way, BVC is not the same thing as Backlist eBooks, about which I’ve written in the past. The two groups have similar goals, and somewhat overlapping memberships. But Backlist eBooks primarily gathers writers together under one site for mutual help with marketing and promotion. Book View Café is more like a cooperative ebook small press, with its own store. It’s even beginning to distribute to libraries!

My next post, which I am going to start writing as soon as I’m done with this one, will tell you all about Reality and Other Fictions.

11 Jun 2012

The Industrious Richard Bowker

posted in: authors, ebooks, publishing | 0

My friend Richard Bowker certainly is a busy fellow. He’s released two more of his novels, a thriller called Replica and a murder mystery called Senator, in the Kindle and Nook stores. I’ve read them both, and recommend them unreservedly. In fact, both went through the rigorous vetting and improvement process imposed by our writing group. Both are previously published. You can read some sample passages on Rich’s blog.

Replica 
(originally published by Bantam)

Senator 
(originally published by William Morrow)

While you’re looking, you might want to pick up his original-to-ebook novel Pontiff, currently on sale for $.99. I give this the same thumbs-up. Don’t be put off by its lack of a print edition. That was simply a dumb oversight on the part of the publishing industry. It’s good.

Pontiff $.99
Ebook original

1 Jun 2012

Book View Café Grand Reopening

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing | 0

I’ve just joined Book View Café, which is an authors’ cooperative filled with great authors helping each other to republish their backlists and get excellent books back into print, via ebook. Members include Ursula K. LeGuin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Linda Nagata, Judith Tarr, Pati Nagle, Patricia Rice, and lots more. It’s a little like Backlist eBooks, which I also belong to, but is a lot more hands-on with the actual publishing, with its own bookstore and members actually volunteering cooperative-style, to help build the books, design covers, etc. My own books will start appearing there over the coming months, with my official “launch” on June 19 to feature the first of my forthcoming short story collections.

These hard-working people have just completely redesigned the bookstore, and today marks the official grand opening. Complete with a contest to give away some free books! Here’s the announcement…

Book View Café is celebrating the opening of our new, completely-redesigned bookstore by giving our readers a chance to win the book of their choice free. Just take a look around the store anytime up until midnight, June 8, and choose the book you’d like—all the books that are eligible for the giveaway are marked with a gold star. Then come back here and leave a comment with the name and author of the book and why you want it (we may use that comment for publicity purposes). You can also leave comments on any of the author blogs listed on the promotions page. When the promotion ends, winners will be chosen, and free books passed out! Check out the celebration here!

It’s a great bookstore, so do stop by and browse. All ebooks in the store are DRM-free and available in multiple formats for Kindle, Nook, and pretty much all other ebook devices.

27 May 2012

When Mining Asteroids, Don’t Forget Your Trusty Dog

posted in: astronomy, ebooks, publishing, short stories, space | 0

The recent arrival of the privately designed-and-built Dragon space capsule at the International Space Station dovetails nicely with another recent event: the announcement of a privately funded initiative called Planetary Resources, Inc., to seek out and mine near-Earth asteroids.

Both dovetail nicely with my own initiative: the release of my short story “Dog Star” as a standalone ebook. The dovetailing has to do with the fact that “Dog Star” is about a young asteroid miner who finds himself grounded on just such as asteroid, just him and his disabled ship… and his trusty “smartmutt,” an enhanced border collie named Sam. Dogs who can discuss astrophysics with you while thinking about digging on an asteroid aren’t a dime a dozen even in this future. Sam has to prove his mettle while helping his human dig his way out of this life-threatening jam.

This is a reprint of a story that first appeared as part of an online science-oriented anthology of stories called Diamonds in the Sky, which was funded by the National Science Foundation to help further the cause of science education, particularly in astronomy. (This new release has a couple of minor corrections from the text as it was released in the anthology.)

Gretchen, the student who has been working with me, helped get “Dog Star” up for sale on the last day of her interning stint. (Thanks, Gretchen!) It’s now free at Smashwords, and you can also get it in the Kindle and Nook stores.

Kindle | Nook | Smashwords (free!)

“Dog Star” will also appear in my forthcoming short story collection, Reality and Other Fictions, which is rapidly moving toward completion. I hope to make an announcement about that in the next few weeks. It will contain about half my published stories, including a couple not released as standalone ebooks. The other half will follow in Going Alien, soon after.

23 May 2012

The Dragons Return!

posted in: ebooks, science fiction, short stories | 0

My short story “Though All the Mountains Lie Between” was the spark that led to two novels, Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. Those books have been back in ebook form for a while now, and I even gathered them into a low-cost set, Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus. But the short story—originally published in The Science Fiction Times and the anthology Dragons of Darkness, edited by Orson Scott Card—has been out of circulation for many years. With Gretchen’s help, I’ve now amended that situation. Give it up for “Though All the Mountains Lie Between” the ebook!

It’s available in the usual suspect places, and will eventually migrate to even more stores. Just $.99 at Kindle and Nook, and free at Smashwords! It includes a preview chapter of Dragon Space.

21 May 2012

Guest Post: Gretchen on Interning

posted in: blogging, ebooks, guest posts, personal news, publishing | 0

I invited Gretchen, who’s been helping me as an intern for the last two weeks, to write up a post about what it’s been like for her. Gretchen is a high school student with an interest in publishing. Working for me, she’s gotten a look at a side of publishing she probably never knew existed. Take it, Gretchen…

When I began my internship with Jeff, I didn’t really know what to expect. Completing a three-week internship is a requirement to graduate at my high school, and I just jumped straight from my exam week to my internship without wondering too much what it would be like. I soon found out. The first thing I learned—of which I was very appreciative—was that I didn’t have to get up at way-too-early-o’clock in the morning every day to begin work; I got to start at a much more reasonable hour in the afternoon, unlike most of my classmates.

The next thing I learned was that publishing eBooks really isn’t at all like I thought it was going to be. There is much more of a focus on little, seemingly insignificant formatting details than I had thought there would be (of course, those “tiny details” end up more like “huge problems” if you ignore them). Conversely, the actual conversion of documents into eBook formats and the process of putting them up for sale online seemed much easier than I thought it would be.

Even though some things haven’t been what I’d imagined, working with Jeff and learning more about publishing in general has been extremely interesting. I have a clearer idea of what publishing is about now—which will be helpful for me if I decide to go into the publishing business—but even beyond that, I’ve just had a lot of fun learning from Jeff and reading his stories.

And with Gretchen’s help, I’ve gotten three stories into ebook form (the third going up today), and several more in the pipeline! 
 

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