13 Jul 2011

Cape Cod Writing Retreat

posted in: personal news, trains, work in progress, writing, writing retreats | 0

I’ve just come back from a four-day writing retreat on Cape Cod, in the town of Sandwich, just over the Cape Cod Canal which marks the boundary of the Cape from the mainland of Massachusetts. Allysen set me up at a great B&B in Sandwich (the 1830 Quince Tree House), and I reveled in having time to myself, time to spend near the water, time to write, time to rollerblade along the bike path that runs most of the length of the canal. It was fabulous! Even in such a short time, I started to get more traction on the book. 

Here are some pix I took with my cellphone camera, most of them shot from the bike path while I was skating.

Foot traffic on the path, near the beginning in Sandwich.
In the distance to the south, you can just see the Sagamore Bridge.

Having passed the Sagamore Bridge,
now looking back north toward it.
A little farther on, looking south toward the Bourne Bridge,
and the RR bridge in the distance

The bike path begins near a long jetty that extends into Massachusetts Bay from northern end of the canal. I could have spent a week just watching the boats go through the canal (though I never did catch any of the commercial ships that are supposed to account for half the traffic). Not far along the coast are the beaches, and the salt marshes just inland of the dunes.

 
Sandwich salt marsh

Another highlight was taking a scenic ride on the Cape Cod Central RR, along the canal and past the cranberry bogs. It was a foggy evening, but that just made the canal eerie and beautiful in a different way. (For more money and an advance reservation, you can have an elegant dinner or a family-style supper on the train. That’s definitely on my to-do list with Allysen.)

The Sagamore Bridge, in the evening fog.

The last evening I was there, I got it into my head to skate the length of the bike path (6.5 miles) and take a picture of the train going over the beautiful 1930’s lift bridge at the south end of the canal. I succeeded, though the picture didn’t come out very well, so here’s a shot of the train passing along the canal, right next to the bike path.  And another of the RR bridge against the setting sun. Once I saw the train cross the bridge, and the sun setting behind the bridge, I realized that I’d just watched the sun go down, and I had six and a half miles of skating between me and my car! Flank speed! I just made it before the light failed.

Cape Cod Central RR dinner train, rumbling along the canal. 
The RR bridge at sunset, in the lowered position. 

Finally, I got to enjoy my favorite beer, Cape Cod IPA—and (somewhat to excess) my favorite foods, fresh fish and chips, scallops, and shrimp.

I’m ready to go back!

29 Jun 2011

Captain Jack Carver

posted in: animal friends, personal news | 0

Meet the newest member of the Starrigger Ranch! Cap’n Jack is a border-collie/lab mix, probably with some other seasonings, as well, who joined our family just three days ago. Jack came to us from a shelter in Connecticut, courtesy of the rescue group http://www.helpsaveone.org/. Guesses vary on his age, but average out to about two years.We know that he came from West Virginia, and that he’d been hit by a car and lost or abandoned. But his leg injury is all healed up now.

Jack is a terrifically sweet guy, and has made himself right at home. Our cat Moonlight isn’t so sure yet. She was a bit alarmed, at first, but stood her ground. Now, she seems to regard him as a big oaf who is all too often between her and where she wants to go. They’re not yet to the point where she can just walk past him. But I was cheered yesterday to see Moonlight curled up on the sofa, and Jack crouched on the floor nearby, woofing an imploring “Please play!” Moonlight was unperturbed, and declined the invitation.

The only big problem so far is that Julia’s having some allergic reaction to his dander, so we’re swabbing him down with Allerpet/d to try to minimize it, and the Roombas are working twice as hard. And I keep calling him Hermione, which was the name of our boxer who died back in January. (Even though he really looks way more like our old dog Sam—not the beagle of recent years, but the border-collie/lab mix I had about twenty years ago. I don’t seem to have any of old Sam’s pictures scanned in; I really must dig through the photos piles and find some.)

This weekend, we’re going to meet another rescue dog named Igby—don’t ask!—and see if he might be a good brother to Jack. (I almost said Sam just then. I’ll get it straight eventually.)

Update: Igby was a charming little guy, but didn’t seem like the right fit.  So for now, at least, it’s Captain Jack and his cat-friend(?) Moonlight.

26 May 2011

The Graduate

posted in: personal news | 0

Doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was blogging about my daughter Alexandra’s adventures and exploits as a high school wrestler. Well, last weekend, I watched her graduate from college. Bard College, to be precise, with a degree in math and plans to go on to graduate school in mechanical engineering. Inconceivable!

I’ll put some pictures up as soon as I remember to get them off the camera.

30 Apr 2011

DRAGON SPACE Goes Live!

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

Yes, there are dragons in them stars. And now, for the first time ever, my two dragon novels—Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger—appear together in one volume, just out in ebook, Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus. Science fiction with a fantasy dimension! This new book appears under my own imprint, Starstream Publications, in cooperation with E-reads, which publishes the novels separately in ebook form.

Both books were published in paper by Tor, just before I got started with The Chaos Chronicles. The story—set chronologically in the Star Rigger universe sometime after Panglor but before Star Rigger’s Way and Eternity’s End—really started with a short story, “Though All the Mountains Lie Between,” that I wrote for an Orson Scott Card-edited anthology, Dragons of Darkness (though the story actually appeared first in newspaper format in the Science Fiction Times). You can read it here.

Dragons in the Stars, which includes the events of that story, recounts the journey of star rigger Jael LeBrae, whose life is changed by an encounter with dragons in the “mountain region” of the hyperspatial Flux that riggers navigate between the stars. With that meeting, Jael becomes caught up in an age-old prophecy claiming that “One from outside” will come and speak her name to a dragon, and in so doing bring upheaval and a new beginning in the dragon realm. Jael has a life to live as a star pilot, but she finds she is bound inextricably to Highwing, the dragon who befriended her and whose life she later holds in her hands.

In the sequel Dragon Rigger, we experience through the dragons’ eyes the war that is  tearing the realm apart. For there are more than just dragons here; there are false dragons, and ifflings and false ifflings, and the tormented spirit of a captured rigger. And seeking control of all, there is Tar-skel, the Nail of Strength—a being from beyond the realm who seeks to spin all of the magic of the dragons into a web of power and deceit—encompassing not just the dragon realm, but all of the Flux where the riggers fly, and all of the layers of normal-space that lie beyond. Into this war, Jael must return. If the prophecy is correct, only she can lead the realm out of the impending darkness. But if the prophecy is correct, the price of that victory is her own death.

In their original publication, Dragons in the Stars did very nicely. But Dragon Rigger—a personal favorite of mine!—suffered from a series of distribution and marketing snafus, and never really found its audience. Both have been out of print in paper for many years, but they returned as E-reads ebooks two years ago. This is their first publication in one, low-cost volume—complete with the map that graced the paper editions. I’ve been working on it for months, and I’m delighted to have a new cover design by Pat Ryan, based on the original work from artist Jael (no relation to the protagonist!).

Dragon Space is available right now in the Kindle store, in multiple formats at Smashwords, and is “processing” in the Nook store. Over the next few weeks, it should start showing up in the Apply, Sony, Kobo, and Diesel ebook stores.

Please give it a look, and tell all of your dragon-loving friends!

Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus:
At Kindle | Smashwords (all-format) | Nook  and others (coming)
Free excerpts here
26 Apr 2011

Times Marches On

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

What with one thing or another, I never got around to posting my Easter greetings to everyone. So, thinking in a time-travel fashion (ghoststream, as it is called in the still-nascent Reefs of Time), I will now wish all of you Happy Easter! And Happy Passover! And if you don’t celebrate Easter or Passover, and even if you’re allergic to chocolate bunnies, I hope you had a great weekend, anyway.

During the weekend, my Chaos omnibus got a nice featured mention on Spalding’s Racket, the indie-book-oriented blog of writer Nick Spalding. His blog is well worth perusing, if you’re interested in seeing work by some writers you might not know yet.

Family members have been coming and going here. Allysen was gone for two weeks and has returned. Alexandra was home for a week and has left again. Julia was gone for a week and has returned. Talula, our house guest, was here but just left on a trip. Me, I’ve just been settin’ here coughin’ on the pollen and wonderin’ why God or evolution invented allergies, anyway. (But grateful for the Roombas and Scooba.) And wondering, why does our attic smell like mildew? Please tell me we don’t need a new roof. (But I think we probably do.)

Here for your amusement are a few fun pages that appeared recently at Syfy.com:

19 Apr 2011

Ebook Special Prices!

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

I decided to hold a “Taxes Are Done, Done, Done!” sale and put a few of my books on special for a limited time. Thus, for a limited time, you can get:

Edit: That sale is now over. But everything below is still true.

Meanwhile, the prices are coming down on my other books sold through E-reads. It’s taking a while for the price drops to trickle down, but in the Kindle store, you can now get:

Maybe you can show them that lower prices are better! Those prices should appear in all the other stores eventually–I hope sooner rather than later.

Watch for an announcement soon about Dragon Space, my new omnibus of Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. I recently put the cool map created by Ellisa Mitchell on my website, here. It’s being incorporated into the new ebook, as well. I’m just waiting for the cover art to be finished. I’m very excited about it.

13 Apr 2011

And in Late-breaking News…

posted in: personal news | 0

Our older daughter Lexi just called to say…well, I could hardly make out what she was saying, because she was hysterical with joy or fear or something… and then I finally made out the words “…accepted… grad school…”  So it looks like she’s going to be at Northeastern next fall, studying engineering! (She was giddy with joy, after all—not hysterical with fear.) Way to go!

12 Apr 2011

Taxes Are Done, the Christmas Lights Are Down, and Allysen Landed a Job!

posted in: personal news | 0

Yes, I finished the taxes over the weekend! What a relief. And today it was so gorgeous out that I finally rousted myself to do what I couldn’t face all winter—I took the blue LED Christmas lights off the tall evergreen tree in front of our house. Yes, I got them down before Easter. (They were somewhat the worse for wear from the hard winter. Two of the six strings broke in the middle; the wires apparently just snapped and came apart.) I also went rollerblading and saw the sun go down over Spy Pond. It was beautiful.

That was after putting my wife Allysen on a plane to Ponce to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. Allysen’s just been hired as a technical editor at a company called ab initio, and is quite excited about it. This is kind of a last-chance-to-travel for a while; she’ll start after she gets back from Puerto Rico.

In other news, our daughter Julia decided to withdraw from high school and pursue other means to getting a degree-equivalent. She home-schooled for a number of years, so this isn’t completely out of the blue. She had entered the high school to try to deal with some special circumstances, but for a variety of reasons, that wasn’t working out for her. It was a bit of a jolt to us, but we support her in taking an alternate path, if that’s what it takes. She looks happier than I’ve seen her in long time.

31 Mar 2011

Interviewed Today at Kindle Author

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing, writing | 0

Moi is interviewed today at the Kindle Author blog, a spot that features a lot of authors who publish at Kindle and elsewhere, both indie and traditional. (Their main focus is indie, but these days the lines are really blurring. Many traditionally published folk, like yours truly, have a second—or maybe third—foot planted in the indie category, too.)

Anyway, I won’t repeat here what I said there, so why don’t you take a look at the interview? Here’s the permanent link, but if you go to the main page (at least today), you can read my interview and then scroll down and read some other interviews, as well. A fair number of my fellow Backlist Ebooks authors have been sighted there in recent days.

(In other news, tax time is still right around the corner, and I’m now immersed in the Quicken Sargasso, bringing a year’s worth of business records up to date. I’m a walking example of the assertion that some people never learn.)

13 Mar 2011

The Heart of Dog

posted in: animal friends, ebooks, personal news, writing | 0

One of my writing friends, Doranna Durgin, has a beagle named ConneryBeagle who’s sick and has expensive vet bills. Doranna put together an anthology of SF and fantasy dog stories, all proceeds to benefit Connery. She’s written a bunch of stories herself, but nine more reprints were contributed by her writing friends, including Julie Czerneda, Tanya Huff, John Mierau, Fiona Patton, Jennifer Roberson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Zakour, and me. Do check it out. It’s only $3.99 at Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

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