A Little Push to Start the Year

Someone new came to our writing group yesterday, although she is someone I’ve known for a number of years. She brought along a copy of Write With Fire, my book on writing, and asked me to sign it. I was surprised, flattered, and probably a little bit flustered since that doesn’t happen to me often. I had actually been thinking about Write With Fire for a while and trying to think of some way to give it a push since sales have pretty much flat-lined for it.

I decided last year to write a few “tip” articles and put them up for the Kindle as a way of promoting Write With Fire. I completed the formatting for these and did the covers over Christmas and they are now up at Amazon. There are three of them, each with more than 4,000 words of material, and I’m calling them the “Fiction Techniques” series.

The series includes:

Fiction Techniques #1: Creating Suspense

Fiction Techniques #2: Characters Wanted

Fiction Techniques #3: The Twist Ending

The first two, “Creating Suspense,” and “Characters Wanted,” are substantial expansions on material that actually appeared in Write With Fire. The “Twist Ending” piece is brand new. If they do what they are supposed to do, I’ll probably write more for the series. I enjoy doing this kind of thing and it really helps me clarify my own thinking and understanding about the writing process.

If you’re not a writer, these are almost certainly not of interest to you. I will make both #1 and #2 free for a few days at some point in the next week or so. (I’ll announce it here and on facebook.) That’s why they are published exclusively on Kindle for now.  So if you’re a writer and want to get them you don’t need to buy them. (I would appreciate some “likes,” though.)  I probably won’t make the third one free since it’s brand new.

As for the covers, I thought to do something to reflect our modern world of “Direct to electronic” publications and the ebook revolution. They’re basically screen shots of the works in progress. (I kind of thought it was inventive.) You can see the covers below, although not very well. If you click on the links, without having to buy the piece, you can see the images much better, and can use the "look inside" feature to get a flavor for the works.

Have a good un!

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Recent EReads and Acquisitions

I went through a couple of weeks of heavy school work with very little time to read, but finally turned on my Kindle yesterday and began reading some of the shorter stuff I’ve downloaded, as well as finishing up one book I started previously. Here’s my report on said stuff.

First up, I bought Blood and Tacos #3 several weeks ago but finally got around to reading the story I bought it for, “Blood & Sweetgrass: This Rez is Mine,” by Chris La Tray. I love the characters in this, and the high intensity action. I really am looking forward to seeing more about these characters. I will be reading the rest of this magazine as time permits.  This looks to be a very fine magazine and I’ve been remiss in not reading it until now.

Next, I picked up Savage Blood, a western novella from James Reasoner, featuring a one-armed gunfighter named Brodie. Brodie has been drifting since he came home from the war to find that his wife had left him for another man. But now she’s calling for his help, and Brodie responds, to find that she’s in a dirty fight against powerful foes. Soon, they’ll learn that hell hath no fury like a warrior scorned.

Like in all of Reasoner’s tales, you find an excellent mix of characters and action that pull you straight through the story until the end.

I also picked up a very strange item free from Smashwords called Skull Face Revealed, by Roberta E. Howard, which is billed as a “gender switch adventure.” I have heard of this writer before but have no idea who they really are. There is a picture of her at Smashwords, but I don’t know if this is the real author or not. I picked this up because it was free and I was curious.  Ms. Howard apparently writes tales that use Robert E. Howard’s  basic plots, settings and titles but reverses the gender of the hero. Some titles include “Red Nails, Polished,” and “Queen of the Black Coast, Recrowned.” I have started reading the one I have and will say the writing is certainly decent. I don’t really know what to make of this whole thing, though.

I picked up The Unexplained, a collection of terror tales from Christopher Fulbright, and The Fantastical Acquisition of the Sword of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna by Angeline Hawkes.  Fulbright and Hawkes are both writers whose work I have enjoyed before. Haven’t started reading either book yet, but they look intriguing.

I got a copy of “Fuckin’ Lie Down Already” by Tom Piccirilli. I’ve read a couple of Tom’s books and stories and enjoyed them, and Tom has recently been going through some serious medical issues related to brain tumors. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt his mood to find his books climbing the charts, and no doubt the royalty money would come in handy as well. At Amazon, his author page is http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Piccirilli/e/B001ILM8YQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1351439567&sr=1-2-ent>here>.

I also got Hard Case, by Bernard DeLeo. Looking forward to reading it since I’ve really liked some of the other books by him I’ve read, such as The Defenders and Cold Blooded.

There are a lot more I could talk about but wow this blog post is starting to get pretty long so I’ll cut it off there. 

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Ember Star Ebook

Under the Ember Star is out now in Kindle format for Amazon. It hasn’t shown up on Barnes and Noble for the Nook yet, although the print version is certainly available there.

Although in print it was published as a Wildside Double, with The Battle for Eden by Mark E. Burgess on the other side, the ebooks for the two have come out separately. I imagine it would have been a real pain to try to keep the “double format” in ebook.  Here’s a widget for Mark’s book in Kindle format if you’d like to check it out.

The advantage to the ebooks is price, of course. By separating the two and putting them in electronic format, the price has dropped to $2.99 a book as opposed to the $15.99 for the combined books in print format. Folks are talking about how ebooks are outselling print books. Well, I gotta believe a lot of that is simply about the price. I love print books and I’d certainly like to sell many copies of the works together in print, but $15.99 is pretty steep, I’ve got to admit.

As for “Ember Star,” I have to send a shout out to Shauna Roberts in relationship to the book. Shauna read and reviewed my Talera series, and interviewed me about them, and when I was working on the fourth one (which will eventually see the light of day) she made a comment about hoping to see a really strong female warrior-type character in that book. There is one in that work, but her comment also got me thinking that I wanted to try a strong female hero in something else as well.  Ginn Hollis, the main character from “Ember Star,” grew out of that thinking.  So thanks, Shauna, for the inspiration. Just below I’ve included a link to a fine SF adventure novel by Shauna called, The Hunt.

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