For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
Here’s the gorgeous new cover for Crucible of Time, the second of the new books! Art by Chris Howard. I really should do a post on all the back and forthing we do to come up with an image that works for me. The man has the patience of… wait, who’s the dude with all the patience?
Coming September 10th! I’m proofing the print layout now!
Job, that’s the guy.
This photo and the following review landed in my inbox, from someone calling hirself “The Porg Apprentice” (or “Poppy Bunsen”). Seriously.
The meeting of the Porg Book Club is called to order!
Ingrid: “Today we are discussing The Reefs of Time, a new book by Jeffrey A. Carver. It is the story of friends who work together and make a good team. In previous episodes, I mean, books, they have saved the Earth and other planets from being wiped out by meteors and evil civilizations that try to reprogram people’s minds with nanotechnology. In this book, the friends are split up to fight the nanobots, which are trying to infect hyperspace. I liked it. I finished it in a weekend. What did you think?”
Sherie: “I liked the theme that friends can become found family. It reminded me of the Rebels and the Resistance who are a team that become family, and how sad they were when they were split up after Hoth and Crait. But they still had hope.”
George: “I thought it was funny that the people in the retro 1950s spaceship were somebody else’s UFO on a different planet!”
Lucky: “Because my friend Tag will ask, there are no porgs in this book.”
Snowy: “But there is a cat that exists in different dimensions! I wonder if Loth-cats and gokats can learn from each other?”
Sherie: “I liked that this book can stand alone, and I didn’t have to read the other books to understand this one. I missed the last book because I had a nest of porglets to take care of.”
Ingrid: “So I think we’re agreed, two wings up?”
Lucky: “Yes! Two wings up! You can find it on pretty much any bookseller, or ask your librarian nicely to order it from Ingram. They’ll know what that means.”
We have a launch! The Reefs of Time is riding a pillar of fire into the sky, shooting for the Moon! We are on our way!
You’ve been waiting for eleven years. I’ve been waiting for eleven years! This new chapter of The Chaos Chronicles, Part One of the “Out of Time Sequence,” is now available in all major ebook stores, and in print from Amazon and other booksellers*! Grab your copies while you can. The price is reduced for Launch Day. It will go up soon.
Please help me spread the word!
(Part Two, Crucible of Time, will launch on September 10.)
*Regarding print copies: On sale now are trade paperback copies (a nice, hefty-but-comfortable 5.5in by 8.5in trim size). Thanks to cover artist Chris Howard and cover designer Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, both talented writers themselves, it’s a great-looking book! Regarding availability in bookstores and libraries, it is available to all through the major distributor Ingram. But that doesn’t mean it will magically appear in your local bookstore. You might have to request it. I encourage you to do so! Ask them nicely if they would consider stocking it. If they want to know the ISBN, you can give them this: 978-1-61138-799-5.
I still plan to release a hardcover edition, and hope to have it ready in a few weeks. I’ll let you know.
Celebrate with me! Please let the far corners of your social media know, and let’s shoot for the Moon together!
I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again: These are the words I want on my gravestone:
I have been proofing and proofing and uploading and proofing, and correcting and uploading and proofing for the print edition of The Reefs of Time. I am heartily sick of the whole process! With thanks to my daughter Jayce for reminding me, I formally request that my gravestone, when the time comes, read: “The Typos Are Your Problem Now!” I can think of nothing that would better honor my life!
(Neepery warning) There are two widely-used channels for putting out self-published print-on-demand editions: Amazon (formerly CreateSpace) and Ingram Spark. Amazon is suddenly refusing to accept the cover file that they were just fine with on the last proof run, even though nothing has changed but the corrected interior file, with the exact same page count. And my cover designer just left for a two-week vacation.
Ingram squawked about the cover, but let me override. And their proof looks fine. Except… after a week of refining the print layout and getting rid of all widows and orphans, what do I see? Widows and orphans! Augh! I have just gone through and weeded them out. Again. And await Ingram’s processing once more.
I will have a print version available on launch day, come hell or high water. But the hardcover will be delayed until I can get the cover design expanded for the dust jacket. Not by long, I hope.
Augh. Augh. Augh!!
So, the last couple of weeks were pretty hard, with my brother’s passing—and thank you all for your kind thoughts and wishes. Now I’m trying once more to get up a head of steam. The Reefs of Time launches in just three weeks!
What I’m focusing on now is proofing and correcting the print edition of Reefs, and yes, this is getting close to the wire. (And any corrections I make that are not just formatting, such as bad hyphenation, uneven spacing of justified text, and so on—meaning word or punctuation or italicizing corrections—all those have to be copied into the ebook and the source file, as well. It’s an incredibly finicky business.)
Due to unavoidable scheduling conflict with my brother’s memorial service in August, I have canceled plans to attend Worldcon in Dublin. That hurts, because I picked the launch date specifically to have the book out in time to promote it at Worldcon. Well, family first, and no regrets about making that choice; I just wish it hadn’t happened. And I mean that in every possible sense.
Okay, this 460-page book isn’t going to proofread itself. See you later.
We are at 52 days and counting, for the launch of The Reefs of Time! You can tell by the countdown timer I’ve installed on the front page of my website. I’m taking this seriously! This is rocket science. Also, alien science, with a side of quantum entanglement, on a scale that no human scientist would know how to do. (But those alien scientists: They’re pretty smart. If you don’t believe me, take a ride in one of their n-space ships. Basically, 0 to 60 [parsecs] in three imaginary seconds.)
I decided I needed a name for this project. It’s not just a launch of Reefs, and not just a launch of Crucible. It’s also a relaunch of all the earlier books in the series—in print, not just in ebook. I got tired of calling it “my book launch mega-shoot-me-now-project,” or whatever phrase sprang to mind at any given time. As of today, it’s Operation Countdown! Our motto: Launch or Die!
Here’s where we are in the countdown:
Can I stop now? (That’s actually just the highlights. I could keep going, but you get the idea.) By the way, that image up there is the full wraparound cover for the print edition, gorgeous art by Chris Howard and smackdown type design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. Click on the image to see it bigger and clearer. It’s in CMYK format, which is for print. The colors are a bit exaggerated on a screen.
Launch at 52 days and counting. What’s that gokat doing on the launch gantry??
Click here for pre-order info.
I need your help! At one of the Nebula panels, a successful indie writer talked about mobilizing your “street team” to help get the word out for you. I don’t have a street team yet. Will you join my street team?
Specifically, are you attending any upcoming SF conventions? Do you circulate in places where books could be promoted? Are you part of an SF club? I have right here a stack of Reefs of Time flyers and Reefs of Time coasters. Would you be willing to take some with you to a con or similar venue, and distribute them for me? I would be immensely grateful.
In fact, besides the obvious that you’d get to keep a few coasters for yourself, I will joyfully send an eARC of both books to anyone who pitches in! (eARC = ebook Advanced Reading Copy) You can be first to read the new books! All I ask is that you help me with a bit of publicity.
If you’d like to join in on the fun, please email me from the contact form on this here website. Thanks in advance.
How can you resist these sad eyes???
![Drum roll, please! The End Times have arrived! The End Times! The End of waiting for me to finish The Reefs of Time. Yes, I have reached the end! The Reefs of Time is substantially DONE. That’s right—I’ve finished the major rewrite of the 268,000 word manuscript! Most of those words, I now believe, are the right words, and in the right order. That works out to about 1326 manuscript pages in Courier New, with two spaces after many periods, and one space after others, because habits die hard. Ten years in the works, this novel has been through the fermenter, the extractor, the refractors, the distillers, the boilers, the oven, and aged in camphor-wood in the cellar. Here’s what the manuscript looks like, with its tired but happy progenitor. [CUE “cheers” and more “cheers,” and maybe a few “huzzahs”!] “But wait!” you say. “Is that some kind of weasel wording, ‘substantially done’? What are you trying to pull here?” Trust me, I’m not trying to pull anything. Over the next week or so, I’ll be cleaning up some edits I’ve made notes to myself about, and responding to final suggestions from my stalwart (if annoyingly discerning) writing group. And then off it goes to the editor. The editor will edit, and I’ll do a polish pass over the whole thing as I respond to his editorial suggestions. And after that? Why, you get to read it! At last, at long last!](https://i0.wp.com/www.starrigger.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/JC-Reefs-final-ms-5-19-18-elbow-smile_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C375&ssl=1)
I’ve shown you pieces, I’ve shown you snippets, I’ve teased you. (Okay, if you’ve gone to the actual book page, or Amazon or something, I’ve shown you the cover. Look, I’m a novelist, not a publicist.) But now for the first time here, in glorious full size, is the cover for The Reefs of Time!
I think it’s pretty cool, and I hope you do, too. The artist, Chris Howard, was once a student in a writing workshop Craig Gardner and I ran, and now he’s not only an accomplished writer, but an accomplished artist, also. He did the covers for The Infinite Sea and Seas of Ernathe, as well. Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff has done the type for the majority of my ebooks.
(Hey Jeff! C’mon, these blogs posts don’t write themselves, you know. Tell the people! You’ve got a book on special!)
(Right. Here goes…)
_____________________________
Leader: Hey, all—have I got a special for you!
People: How big a special? What’s a special?
Leader: Really big! A special is when I take a really big book—say, f’r’example, an omnibus edition of Three Really Big Novels, All In One—and I set the price way down, for a limited time only. That’s a special. I’ve got one of those.
People: Ooh. We like specials. Tell us more!
Leader: Ask, and you will receive. I’ve got the first half of The Chaos Chronicles, aka The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3, marked down to just $1.99!
People: Is that cheap?
Leader: Is it ever! That’s the cost of… of… well, a chocolate chip cookie, in some places. Or a kiddie-sized espresso shared among three people, in others. Yes, it’s cheap.
People: Why would you do that? Hey! Are you trying to sell us something else? Is this a LOSS LEADER? Are you trying to get everyone HOOKED on this series, so they’ll go on and buy the next book, Sunborn (which you just happen to have just released in your own edition)? And then they’ll go on to scoop up the rest of your books, and maybe even PREORDER your new, forthcoming, long-awaited chapter, THE REEFS OF TIME? Is that what you’re trying to do? Come clean!
Leader: Um. Yeh.
_________________________
So, yeah. Here it is, and if you don’t already own it, I hope you’ll get it. And if you do already own it, I really hope you’ll recommend it to a friend, or several. Or even write a review!
This is a Bookbub special, and it will be repromoted on a number of other sites in the coming days. Yes, I’m really trying to make people want to buy the new book, as you can see! And I sure could use your help!
By the way, my first newsletter will be going out on Monday! It’s not too late to sign up!
You can do that here. http://bit.ly/CarverNews
Or here:
Like a runaway freight train. I haven’t posted in a while, and that’s because I’ve been busier than a one-armed steam-locomotive engineer without a fireman, boosting this project toward launch date!
The editing is all done, and both books are out with a colleague for proofreading. The cover for Reefs is done. Preorder buttons are starting to appear. The website is updated (for Reefs, not yet for Crucible.) A newsletter announcement with an excerpt from the beginning of the book is in prep (going out soon!). I’ve submitted advance ebook copies (eARCs) to Publishers Weekly and other review sites, and queried some more. I have not yet seen Avengers: Endgame. This thing is really happening!
Here’s the long and the short of it:
The Reefs of Time (Part 1 of the “Out of Time” sequence) is scheduled for launch on July 23, 2019. Simultaneous ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover. Prices TBD, except that during the preorder period, the ebook is discounted to $6.99.
Crucible of Time (Part 2 of the “Out of Time” sequence) is scheduled for launch on September 10, 2019. Pricing similar. Not yet out for preorder. (The cover is still being developed.)
More news to come. I’m excited! I hope you are, too!