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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Notes from the Shadow City

 

I recently finished reading Notes from the Shadow City, a poetry chapbook collaboration between two widely recognized speculative poets, Gary William Crawford and Bruce Boston. The book is scheduled to be out on September 18 from Dark Regions Press, but I was able to score an advanced copy! I’m a big fan of both poets and have quite a shelf full of their books in my office. The “Shadow City” is a powerfully macabre creation of Crawford’s, and Bruce Boston plays beautifully in that imagined urban landscape.

My first exposure to the Shadow City concept came in Crawford’s 2005 chapbook from Naked Snake Press, simply called The Shadow City. It was nominated for the Bram Stoker award from the Horror Writers Association. I’ll be surprised if the new, and much expanded collection, Notes from the Shadow City, doesn’t get nominated as well. As a member of HWA, I’ll nominate it myself.

The language in “Notes,” from both poets, is simple and stark, which accentuates the horror described in such poems as “A Night Storm in the Shadow City,” and “The River Magnus Winds Through the Shadow City.” There are no pastels in this world, no light hearts, no thoughts that are not twisted in ways both subtle and profound. Image builds upon image; weight builds upon weight.  Not to numb the mind but to scour it free of layers of complacency and rust. I highly recommend such a scrubbing for everyone.

You can find out more about Gary William Crawford at the Gothic Press site, which Crawford founded. For information on Bruce Boston, check out his website.

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NOT SO GLORY DAYS

Here will be my last football post for the moment. I said in my last post that if you’ve played high school football you’ve had some glory days.  Well, you’ve also probably had some that were not so glorious. I had one such night against a team whose name I can’t remember now. You might think I’ve repressed the name because of the humiliation, but, if so, then why do I remember every detail of the actual humiliation?

Much like Huntsville had their Sasquatch halfback, this team had a Goliath. His position was wide receiver. You may remember that I often played cornerback, and I was playing it again this night. As luck—or the Devil—would have it, Goliath was on my side of the field and I was assigned to cover him. I was about five feet, eight inches at the time. He was at least a foot taller.  Do you have any idea how much a “foot” is when you’re talking about receivers versus cornerbacks in football?  I do.

The other team’s quarterback didn’t even have to be accurate. He just heaved the ball up in the air and let me and Goliath go up for it. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Goliath beat me out for the ball most of the night. He scored four touchdowns right over me. He caught other passes in between the TDs.

By the time Goliath was working on touchdown number three, I’d given up playing him legally. I was climbing all over him with every pass, and, let me tell you, it was a climb. I pulled his jersey, even tried tripping him. Nothing worked.

The referees must have felt bad for me. They didn’t even call any penalties on me, though I earned a few.  Or maybe, in the reflected light of all Goliath’s awesomeness, they just didn’t notice me hanging around his waist like a monkey straight out of the barrel.

The only consolation was that Goliath lined up one time on the other side of the field from me. The cornerback there was a friend, but I’m ashamed to say that I felt a little relief when he didn’t do any better than I did. They only threw one pass to him on that side—Goliath’s fifth touchdown of the night.

I remember coming off the field after Goliath’s fourth TD pass. He caught it one handed because I was attached like a long, skinny leech to his other arm. There were tears of frustration in my eyes. None of my teammates would look at or talk to me.  I understood.

But Coach Tadlock came over to me. He didn’t yell.  He didn’t get in my face. He slapped me on the shoulder pads. “Keep doing the best you can,” he said. That was one thing about Coach Tadlock. He knew when you were giving it your all, and if that’s what you were doing and were still unsuccessful, then he didn’t blame you for it. I’ll always remember that about him.

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