My books on their site are all either half price or free. Note that none of the books in Kindle Unlimited is available anywhere but Amazon,, but I still have these titles:
Sunday, March 7, 2021
My books are in the Smashwords sale!
Smashwords is an ebook vendor. Unlike Amazon or Barnes and Noble, they don't sell any ereaders and in fact, they sell ebooks in many different formats—Kindle, epub, and even PDF!
Tuesday, March 2, 2021
THE NAMELESS WORLD has launched!
My two-book story THE NAMELESS WORLD has launched! As of yesterday, both books were available in the Kindle story, and the first book, The North Edge of Nowhere, was also available n hardcover. The paperback covers for both books and the hardcover for books, Oaths and Promises, are still being tweaked bur they should follow soon.
This duology is difficult to categorize as it has elements of several genres. It's set in the far future on a colony world unknown to the rest of the galaxy, so it's definitely science fiction. Darius, the protagonist is 17 at the start of Book 1, so you could also call it YA, but the story progresses and by Book 2 Darius is 20, so you could also call it a coming of age story. And while the romance in Book 1 is confined to two important secondary characters, Daniel the Wanderer and Ramons, a physician, in the second book, Darius himself finds love, so you could also label this a romance.
In the excerpt from book 1, below, we see a scene between Daniel and Ramons. Both of them are outsiders to the culture in which they live, Daniel even more so than Ramona. And both of them have a secret. Daniel thinks he has guessed Ramona's secret; Ramona is quite certain she knows his.
Excerpt from Chapter Two of The North Edge of Nowhere:
Grateful for the chance to think things over, Daniel left the
main house before Lord Brian could change his mind. He walked outside and
looked up at the sky. The early morning sunshine had given way to gray clouds. This
would be Daniel’s third autumn at Castle Muir. He no longer found it depressing
to spend days without seeing the sun.
Daniel debated. He needed a workout. The martial arts skills
he had mastered years before had earned him a place here, and he needed
practice to keep those skills sharp.
But still, the events of the morning had disturbed him, and
he wanted some advice.
He walked to the square building with barred windows and a
single door, euphemistically referred to as the guest barracks, to see if
Ramona was still treating the wounded men. Ramona was an outsider here, too,
even if not quite so alien as he was, and he usually found her advice helpful. At
least, he told himself, needing her advice made a good excuse to see her.
The guard at the guest barracks shook his head in answer to Daniel’s question; Ramona had left a few minutes before. Daniel made his way to the back of the keep and knocked on her door for the second time that day.
When Ramona’s voice called out for him to enter, Daniel went
in. A teakettle simmered on the stove next to the pot of boiling broom herb,
and the flowery scent of fresh-brewed tea mingled with the woody herbs.
Ramona sat at her kitchen table sipping a cup of tea as if no
untoward event had occurred. She offered tea to Daniel, but he declined.
“Did you hear what happened in the great hall after you left?”
he asked.
Ramona rolled her eyes. “Who could avoid hearing it? It’s no
small matter to Castle Muir that its lord has found an heir.”
The certainty in her voice surprised Daniel and incited that
uneasy feeling he had had ever since he had dragged the red-haired boy
upstairs. “Is everyone so sure this boy is really Lord Brian’s son?”
Ramona shrugged. “He looks enough like Lord Brian that Lady
Helaina saw the resemblance easily.”
But Lady Helaina had had no supporters until after Ulf had
cut the boy’s hair. “Surely whether one person looks like another is, to some
extent, a matter of opinion.”
She glanced at him over her cup, rather an appraising glance.
“There’s the ring. Basco remembers Lord Brian getting whipped for coming back
from
Daniel blinked. No one had ever made any reference to space
travel in his hearing. Still concerned with the rightness of his own actions,
he let that subject drop. “That proves that Lord Brian gave the ring to the boy’s
mother. It doesn’t prove he’s the boy’s father.”
“The boy said the ring was his grandfather’s. His mother must
have told him that it was. Besides, he has red hair, just like the old Lord.”
It sounded convincing, but Daniel’s conscience still pricked
him. Lord Brian had made a decision from which there was no appeal, and no one
else seemed to feel a need to question it. “Lots of people have hair that
color.”
Curiosity ripened in Ramona’s expression. “Why should you
care?”
Daniel took his time in answering. He had no fear that she
would carry tales, but on the other hand, it was difficult to solidify his
unease into words. “I held the boy down,” he said at last. “I was doing my job,
but I was also helping take this boy away from his mother.”
Ramona stood up and reached for a long-handled spoon to stir
her boiling liquid. “You brood about things no one else cares about. If this
boy is Lord Brian’s son, then he has a right to him.”
Either on purpose or from inattention, she was missing the
point. “But what if he isn’t?”
Busy with her potion, she spoke over her shoulder. “Don’t let
it worry you. He is.”
“How can you know for certain?”
She turned her gaze back to him for a second. She glanced at
the floor, then shot him a look from under her brows. She hesitated a moment,
as if she were debating, and then she put down the spoon. She sat down again,
folded her hands around her teacup, and looked straight at Daniel as she spoke
in a low clear voice. “The way that you think I know.”
Daniel stood frozen and tried to gather his wits. He had
never thought she would speak so plainly. He met her look with his own steady
gaze, and they stared at each other for a few moments.
Finally, Ramona took a sip of her tea, staring into the dark
surface as if it held the answer to a mystery.
Daniel opted to go for broke. He put both hands on the table
and leaned over so that his face was close to hers. “If you know my thoughts,
then you know what I’m thinking now.”
Ramona put her cup down. “I know.”
“Well?”
She stood up. Daniel backed up, but she took a step closer to
him. She put her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him.
Relief flooded Daniel. He took her in his arms and kissed her
hungrily. After a few moments, Ramona pulled away.
Daniel’s relief evaporated. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a moment.” She stepped to the stove and moved the pot
of liquid off the fire, then came back to take his hand. “Not here. Someone
might come in.” She pulled him with her through the doorway into the small bed
chamber that was the only other room in her house. Before Daniel could say
anything, she had shut the door and slid the bolt into its socket.
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Amazon is adding hardcovers!
Amazon KDP is running a beta project of publishing in hardcover. I'm trying it out with my upcoming duology The Nameless World. I just got my proof copies! I think they look pretty good! See for yourself! The Kindle versions release March 1, and the paperback and hardback soon after.
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| The North Edge of Nowhere, standing on its own |
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| The front covers of both books |
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| The spines of both books |
As you can see from the photo of the spines, both The North Edge of Nowhere and Oaths and Promises are coming out under my Cracked Mirror Press imprint. I had to get the covers I had used for the paperback tweaked for the hardcover so I'm not sure if I will go back and do other books in hardcover. However, I'm glad it was available for this duology because it ad the Wakanreo books are my favorites.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Cover Reveal: The Nameless World duology!
My next two releases are really one story, so I'm releasing them at the same time. They will be available in the Kindle store on March 1 (already available for pre-order), and hopefully also in paperback at that time. I am also trying out Amazon's new hardback option, but I haven't seen the proof copies for that, so I'm not going to promise there will be hardbacks.
Likewise, I don't know for sure if I will launch on other ebook platforms. Participating in the Kindle Unlimited subscription service requires exclusivity to Kindle. Some of my books have done very well in Kindle Unlimited but those are all romances. The first Nameless World book has a romance between secondary characters, but love doesn't kick in the the main character until Book 2. So, I shall launch in Kindle Unlimited but if the books don't do well there then I shall not re-enroll after 90 days, and then launch in other ebook stores.
Here are the two books that make up the Nameless World duology:
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| Cover designs by Jeff Ward, http://www.stungeonstudios.com/ |
On the nameless world settled long ago by human colonists, humanity has spread out. Darius is seventeen and was born and lived all his life in a warm southern climate. Raised as a prince, he conceives the desire to a desire to see his maternal relations, who live in and rule a city-state a good distance north of his home. But when disaster strikes on the journey, Darius is forced to travel even farther north, where he discovers his very existence is a kind of riddle to which only a few people know the answer. As he struggles to cope with a new way of living, a man named Daniel the Wanderer befriends him, and a cousin he didn’t know he had teaches him that women are not always meek and well-behaved. All in all, life is very different in the North.
Twenty-year-old Darius is a man grown, but his childhood still haunts him. Raised as a prince in a distant southern city, he now lives in Castle Muir, a fiefdom in the far north of the nameless world. Having sworn an oath to remain in the fief and to obey the lord of it, his biological father, he still feels a sense of resentment at his circumstances. His friendship with Daniel the Wanderer remains strong, even when he finds out Daniel’s secret. When his cousin Bronwyn comes to live at Castle Muir, Darius’s oath of obedience is tested. Bronwyn is often rude to Darius, which makes it hard for him to treat her with the respect his father demands. But when his father speaks of Bronwyn becoming like a sister to Darius, he’s sure of one thing: When he looks at Bronwyn, he does not see his sister.
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Attention avid readers! The Winter Games of reading & reviewing opens on Sunday!
There is a Facebook group called The Winter Games Readers ' Challenge and starting Sunday, February 14, they will be open for business. If you're a voracious reader who's on Facebook, you might want to check it out. There are 56 authors participating, in many different genres. You can check them out from inside the group.
To participate, you join the group (Click the Join button! ). Opening Ceremonies will happen on Feb 14 at 7 pm EST, and will last approximately 30- 45 minutes.Since there are so many authors, there are will also be "raves" every few days, through March 11, where seven or eight authors (announced ahead of time) are online and available to chat with readers through FB comments. My rave is scheduled for February 25, at 7 pm EST (all raves will be at 7 pm EST.)
Once you find a book and/or an author who looks likely, you can then request a free copy of the book the author is offering. The author will either gift the Kindle version book via Amazon, or send you a mobi file that you can read on almost any device. Of you don't have a tablet or a phone, you could also ask for a PDF and print it or read it on your PC. Note that some books are already free if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
Once you get the free book, you are then obligated to read and review the book on Amazon or BookBub or both. It doesn't have to be a long review. A few sentences is fine: no one expects an NYT or WaPo-style review. Just say what you liked about the book or even what you didn't like. As long as it's your own words and not just part of the book's blurb pasted into the review, it's okay. There are prizes for the readers who read the most books and those who post the most reviews. You can request a book from every author, if you like, but be prepared to read the books you ask for! Note that you have to alert the author if you get the book via Kindle Unlimited if you want to get credit for your review(s).
I'm offering ALIEN BONDS, the first book in my Wakanreo series. Here's the top review for this book:
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2020
Verified Purchase
I am very impressed with this story, not only because is very original (at least to me being fairly new to this genre) and because the love story is so intercepted by evolution, politics and the cultural differences of two humanoid and Alien species. A must read.
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Because the X-Ray feature is so useful in this particular book, I plan to gift the Kindle version via Amazon, to readers who request it. If that's not possible (say if the reader is in a foreign country) I can send the requester a file. Also note, if you happen to have read this book already, you can ask for a different one. See the My Books tab or my Amazon author page for a list. Note this offer is only open to folks participating in the winter Games Readers' Challenge.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me (see Contact tab above) or post a comment!
Friday, February 5, 2021
HIDDEN MAGIC is FREE through Monday!
HIDDEN MAGIC, my newest release, is free in the Kindle store now through Monday! Grab it while you can!
The valley of the River Wystan is isolated from the rest of the world. Many years before it had been united under the Lord of Cold Spring, who had suppressed the practice of magic. But when he died, his son wasn’t strong enough to hold the other lords’ loyalty. Now Lord Garrick, the new Lord of Cold Spring, means to resume his grandfather’s role of overlord for the whole valley. Young Richart Tallengen, newly minted Lord of Esterby, tries to fight off Lord Garrick’s men, but he’s captured and carried to Cold Spring Castle. When his sister Maura comes to Cold Spring to see her brother, she catches Lord Garrick’s eye. Lord Garrick is as attracted by her courage and her brains as much as by her looks, but he is very surprised to discover that there is more to Maura than meets the eye. She has magical abilities, even though she doesn’t know it.
Friday, January 29, 2021
A snippet from HIDDEN MAGIC
Snippet from the middle of Chapter One
Background: Garrick Willyun is the Lord of Cold Spring and is waging a war to unite all the manors of the valley of the River Wystan under his leadership because he is convinced the neighboring city-states intend to invade the valley. He recently defeated Richart Tallengen, the very young Lord of Esterby, in battle, and he holds him and some of his men prisoner at Cold Spring Castle. Richart's older sister Maura has come to Cold Spring to see her brother. The snippet begins a few hours after her arrival..
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GARRICK flinched as he buttoned his newest shirt. The stiff collar pinched. There came a knock at the door. “Come.”
The door opened to admit Osmund Radulf. The steward bowed. “You asked me to report to you, my lord, after the young lady had seen the prisoners.”
Garrick sat down to pull on his boots. “Yes, yes. Come tell me how it went.”
“She was happy to see them all, my lord,” Osmund said, coming farther into the room. “There was one young man in particular—I believe he was the son of the older woman who accompanied her—that she embraced very heartily.”
The thought that the woman of his choice might already have made a choice of her own annoyed Garrick considerably. “How old is he?”
Osmund coughed discretely. “I should say that he was about your own age, my lord—a very striking man, with black hair and blue eyes.”
Garrick couldn’t hold back a frown as annoyance grew to anger. If she were truly attached to this man, it could be an obstacle.
Osmund cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Garrick said.
“If I heard correctly, my lord, the man asked his mother to convey his regards to his wife and children.”
Relief set in. “And there was no other she favored?”
Osmund held out his hands expressively. “Not that I could observe, my lord. She was concerned with each of them—she made note of messages for wives and parents and other loved ones—but she herself didn’t seem unduly attached to any of them.”
His way stood clear, then. “Excellent! And she’ll be at the supper table?”
“Yes, my lord.” Osmund flinched just slightly. “Provided you don’t object to the presence of her companion. She was quite firm that she would go nowhere without the other woman.”
Garrick reached for his waistcoat. “I have no objection.”
Osmund’s shoulders sagged with relief at this acquiescence. He bowed again and left Garrick to finish dressing.
A few minutes later, after one last glance at his own reflection, Garrick left his room. He met his mother on the stairs and offered his arm.
She cast a skeptical eye over him as she took it. “Why are you taking all this trouble for a captive lord’s sister? Are you hoping to use her to win her brother over?”
Garrick smiled and cast a glance over his shoulder to be sure no one was in earshot. “Not at all. In fact, I mean to marry Maura Tallengen.”
His mother’s arm went rigid under his hand. “What?”
“I mean to marry her.” Garrick patted her arm. “It’s time I found a wife, and she has everything I need in a consort—brains, strength of will, and courage.”
Lady Quilla blinked and shook her head. He had never seen her so stunned, not even when his father died. One hand went to her mouth as she struggled to compose herself. “You’d do better to find someone else. You have too much of a handicap with this woman.”
“Perhaps,” Garrick said as they descended the stairs. “But I don’t think so. Once she understands my goals, she’ll come around.”
“You’re assuming,” Lady Quilla said, her dry tone sounding more like herself, “that she’d be willing to devote her life to the same cause you espouse. You’re not offering her employment, you’re proposing marriage.”
“That’s why I don’t intend to say anything to her yet.”
His mother’s eyebrows lifted in a skeptical frown. “And how will you court a woman who lives almost at the other end of the valley? Even in high summer you can’t get to Esterby in less than a day of hard riding.”
Garrick had already thought this out. “I’ll have to be certain I make a good impression on her before she leaves here. And I’ll have to win over her brother. Once he’s my liegeman, it should be easier to control the logistics of the situation.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Are you quite certain, Garrick, that it’s her brains you admire so much?”
Garrick laughed as they went down the last steps. “Now, Mother, you taught me yourself that the best goals are those that satisfy more than one ambition.”
Thursday, January 28, 2021
HIDDEN MAGIC has launched!
My new fantasy romance Hidden Magic has launched on Amazon! The paperback version will be available other places soon but the ebook version will only be on Kindle, at least for a while, so that it can participate in Kindle Unlimited.
Don't you just love the cover!
The valley of the River Wystan is isolated from the rest of
the world. Many years before it had been
united under the Lord of Cold Spring, who had suppressed the practice of magic.
But when he died, his son wasn’t strong enough to hold the other lords’
loyalty. Now Lord Garrick, the new Lord of Cold Spring, means to resume his
grandfather’s role of overlord for the whole valley. Young Richart Tallengen, newly minted Lord of
Esterby, tries to fight off Lord Garrick’s men, but he’s captured and carried
to Cold Spring Castle
When his sister Maura comes to Cold Spring to see her
brother, she catches Lord Garrick’s eye.
Lord Garrick is as attracted by her courage and her brains as much as by
her looks, but he is very surprised to discover that there is more to Maura
than meets the eye. She has magical abilities, even though she doesn’t know it.
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Writing in a series, and finding a good surprise
Writing in a series has at least one basic difference from writing a standalone:starting with book 2, you have to allow for the reader not having read book 1 in a while, or even never having read book 1 at all. Therefore, you may need to explain things from time to time. The tricky part is, you don't want to bore the reader who has read book 1 recently (or who read it a while ago, but has an excellent memory). If a story keeps telling the reader things he already knows, he will get bored with it. It's basically a balancing act between the need to move the story forward and the need to make the reader understand what's happening and why.
Another big difference is, in a series you can follow one character for years, if you can keep coming up with interesting things for them to do. That's a real plus if you have a character you want to grow and change with time.
Readers who fall in love with one or more characters tend to love reading a whole series about them. This can be a problem for the writer, who wants to move on. Personally, I've never sat down to write a book that hadn't already sprung to life in my head. My first published work is 2-book series set on the panet Haven , I have another 2-book series (not yet published but coming soon) called the Nameless World series. They are very different in the way there were written. I thought of the Haven books as two stories while I was writing them; there is a nine year gap between the two books, for one thing, and characters who were secondary in book 1 come front and center in book 2 for another. Ergo, I ended book 1 before I moved on to write book 2.
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| The Haven Series |
The Nameless World books were written as one story but it was so damn long (240,000 words!) that I eventually decided I had to cut it into two books. I found a place where a few months elapsed, and added a little additional text to give the book some resolution, I made that the end of book 1. I also had to add some text to the start of book 2, and I had to edit the rest of the m.s. carefully to allow for the non-reader of book 1 (see first para in this post).
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| Cover at for Nameless World, Books 1 and 2 |
My three-book series set on the planet Wakanreo was kind of an amalgam of the other two series. I saw it as two books, one about the relationship between a human woman and a Wakanrean man, and another one about their children. However, on writing it, the "second book" turned into books 2 and 3.
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| The Wakanreo series |
I usually end a series because I have no more story in my head for that setting and those characters. That's not a problem until readers express a desire for more books in that series. This has happened more than once with the Wakanreo books in particular. I remembered starting a fourth book, but as I recalled, it was only a few chapters, more of a short story than a novel. I published Alien Bonds in 2018, but I wrote the first draft more than 20 years ago, using a DOS-based software called XyWrite. I went looking for those few chapters and discovered to my surprise that the file was actually 56,000 words, nine and a half chapters! Luckily, I had transferred it into MS Word so I could read it.
Now I have to decide if I want to return to Wakanreo with a book 4. But first I have to remember how I planned for the book to end!
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Amazon and Self-publishing: Start to Finish, Good and Bad
Some people would argue otherwise, but I say that the self publishing revolution started with the introduction of the Kindle in 2007. Amazon was selling their own line of hardware, and they needed a plentiful supply of inexpensive ebooks to make buying a $400 device seem reasonable. Publishers were alarmed when Amazon priced the Kindle version of their books mostly at $9.99 and they revolted and now control the Kindle price which is usually at least as much if not more than the paperback. One side effect is, this made more reasonably priced self-published books more attractive to Kindle owners.
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| Kindle 1 |
The Kindle price came down, and the Kindle line expanded from one basic model with 3G connectivity and an e-ink screen to several different models with different features, including wifi and front lighting. The Fire tablet was added to provide color and multi-use functions, but the e-ink versions are still sold. Lots of people read on tablets or even smart phones now. I refer e-ink, but to each his own.
In 2008, my son was in the hospital for a week or so, and while I sat by his bedside, I read books on my Kindle 1. No one knew what it was back then. It's a new world now, and ereaders are everywhere. Also, self-publishing has benefited from ereaders and tablets. It's difficult to compete on price in print publishing, but it's easy to do with ebooks. Amazon still dominates ebook sales, as every self-published author knows. The Kindle Unlimited (KU) problem requires that authors a) only have that ebook for sale on Amazon and b) be paid by pages read rather than per title. A lot of authors, me included, often make more on KU than on sales. This and the smaller number of non-Amazon sales make KU attractive, for certain genres. especially romance.
In 2008, my son was in the hospital for a week or so, and while I sat by his bedside, I read books on my Kindle 1. No one knew what it was back then. It's a new world now, and ereaders are everywhere. Also, self-publishing has benefited from ereaders and tablets. It's difficult to compete on price in print publishing, but it's easy to do with ebooks. Amazon still dominates ebook sales, as every self-published author knows. The Kindle Unlimited (KU) problem requires that authors a) only have that ebook for sale on Amazon and b) be paid by pages read rather than per title. A lot of authors, me included, often make more on KU than on sales. This and the smaller number of non-Amazon sales make KU attractive, for certain genres. especially romance.
Amazon may be a soulless giant corporation bent on dominating the market, but they made self-publishing possible.
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