My good pal Shauna Scheets has discounted all of her eBooks (including the Caillte Saíocht series and the Steampunk Serials) to 99¢ for the holidays!
You can pick them all up on Kindle and other eBook retailers, or you can even get them for free on Smashwords via name-your-price.
Here’s a great chance to check out her work if you haven’t yet!
Bene scribete.
To promote the upcoming release of the second volume in Shauna Scheets‘s series of steampunk shorts (say that five times fast!), the first – Watched Time – is free on Kindle today [9-27-14].
Give it a look! And if you feel so inclined, it’s follow-up – Gunpowder and Lights – is available for pre-order (99¢ on Kindle, due for release on October 15, 2014).
Bene scribete.
Just wanted to pass the word along that my good pal Shauna Scheets is offering the current Caillte Saíocht books (The Tower of Boran and its prequel, Ascha) and her short story “Mirrored Worlds” for free on Kindle today through Monday (6-16-14).
If you haven’t checked them out, yet, here’s the perfect chance!
Bene scribete.
Looking for a quick read for the little ones? Have a tablet? Shauna Scheets is offering the Kindle version of her first children’s book, Lappy the Rabbit Detective, for free this weekend. Click the link or cover to snag yourself a copy.
Bene scribete.
A wry but whimsical modern fairy tale, The Amber Ring follows a cynical twelve-year-old girl on her reluctant quest to save an enchanted land after its true heroine – her twin sister – unspectacularly drowns in the real world.
I’ve been pretty lax with promoting The Amber Ring lately, so in the spirit of the holidays, I thought I’d do a quick little giveaway.
I’ll make it simple – the first two interested residents of North America to comment on this post will receive a paperback copy of the book. All I ask is that, if you end up enjoying it, you might consider leaving a review and spreading the word.
Or, if eBooks are more up your alley, you can pick it up for free at your favorite retailer (Kindle | iBooks | Nook | Sony | Kobo) or direct download (ePUB | PDF).
Have a great December, everyone!
Bene scribete.
It’s been a good week for the world of eBooks, with not just one, but two separate announcements – one from someone big, one from someone small – on new ways we’ll soon have to get these things on our devices.
Amazon’s MatchBook service, launching next month, is just the sort of thing I’ve been waiting for – buy a physical copy of the book, and get the digital one for free. Sensible enough, right? Well, actually, it’s buy the book in print and get the eBook for $2.99 or less, but I’m optimistic that publishers will eventually gravitate toward electing the free option. The film industry has done this with movies for a while now (DVDs and Blu-rays all seem to come with free digital downloads these days), and Amazon itself gives away free MP3s with CD purchases. It seems a little odd that books – far more basic than these other media types – are once again last to the party (and not even fully committed to complimentary yet), but as they say, it’s better late than never.
Naturally, the service is limited to Kindle eBooks, but Kindle applications are ubiquitous, and Amazon does have the largest library. Plus, as is the norm with the industry, B&N and others will likely soon enough follow suit. So I’d call it a good thing all around, and a smart move on Amazon’s part that will simultaneously support both print and digital media, keeping readers and publishers happy. I was even excited about the prospect of The Amber Ring being be a free download with the purchase of its paperback, until I quickly remembered that the Kindle version is free anyway… (>^-‘)>
Oyster – a much-anticipated “Netflix for books”, as it were – made its initial launch yesterday as an invite-only iPhone application, with open enrollment and support for other devices to come over time. For $9.95 a month, Oyster offers unlimited reading of any and all books in its library (100,000 and growing). HarperCollins is the only big house they’ve got on board to start with, but if they can secure one, and the service takes off, it’s not too hard to imagine that they will score others. For the meantime, it looks like they’re also happy to work with smaller presses and independent authors.
Again, with services like Netflix and Spotify having existed for years, it’s strange to think that it’s taken this long for anyone to adopt such a model with books, but here’s to hoping that it does as well as its counterparts!
Bene scribete.
A little while back, I had the distinct pleasure of serving as editor for Kirk Watson’s fantasy adventure, The Woodlander. Watson himself pitched the novel as “The Most Dangerous Game” meets Fantastic Mr. Fox, and after jumping at that hook, I found it to be a pretty apt encapsulation!
An animal tale for an older audience (teens and up), the story focuses on a downtrodden squirrel named John Grey – a reporter whose cynical disposition and snarky quips are reminiscent of a hardboiled detective of ’30s pulp, and an immediately likeable protagonist for it. Six months after a terrible tragedy divested John of his will to write, a strange encounter outside a tavern prompts the squirrel to pull himself together for one more assignment, but when his investigation takes him to the less savory parts of town, he quickly finds himself a part of the story he meant to report.
Well-written with plenty of action, humor, and heart, this is a book I would gladly recommend even if I had nothing to do with it. (>^-‘)>
The Woodlander is the first volume of The Grey Tales series, and is currently available for 99¢ on Kindle – a tough deal to beat for a full-length novel of this caliber, so take advantage of it while you can!
And don’t forget to check out the author at http://thegreytales.com/
Bene scribete.
When the twelve-year-old Heroine of the Fairwoods dies, her morose twin sister reluctantly joins her trusty gryphon sidekick on a quest to save the enchanted land in her stead.
The Amber Ring (my cynical fairytale novella) is now free to download on Amazon’s Kindle! At least in the U.S. – other territories are hopefully soon to follow.
So go snag yourself a copy! You won’t regret it. Unless you hate it. In which case…you’ll probably regret it.
Bene scribete.
Or rectangles, anyway
I don’t often talk about the strictly visual, but as an occasional graphic artist, there’s something that’s been grating on my sensibilities.
Is it just me, or is the general design aesthetic of software interfaces aggressively trending back toward blocky, bulky, high-contrast solid-color sterility? Microsoft’s stuff is heading that way, so is Google’s, and even the Kindle update I got a few days ago turned everything big and square.
Things looked like this in the ’80s and ’90s because of low resolutions, simpler processors, and the fact that having any GUI at all was initially impressive, but have we not grown past this phase?
Did Photoshop disappear when I wasn’t looking, forcing designers to resort to MS Paint?
Does everything have to look like a social networking website?
But on the other end of the scale we have those that are pushing for cheesy skeuomorphism, which just adds a needless layer of nonsense between the user and the task. I guess there’s no winning, is there?
I thought we had a nice middle ground of rounded corners, subtle gradients, and smooth translucencies.
So I wonder – who is this rectangular regression look appealing to? It is ‘cleaner’, I’ll give you that, but so is plain text if that’s the only concern. I suppose there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but the unavoidable contrast with the elegant designs of yesterday and resemblance to the restricted designs of yestercentury just make it scream “unpolished” to my subconscious.
Any thoughts? Or am I just being persnickety?
Bene scribete.
At the age of ten, Sofia Corona saved the Fairwoods from the malevolent grasp of the Cedar Witch and her goblin army.
Two years later, she drowned unceremoniously in the lake behind her Oregon home.
In the months following the Heroine’s death, when the Fairwoods face a resurgence of goblin attacks, they are forced to turn to Sofia’s cynical twin sister, Maya, for help. Although she wants nothing more to do with her sister’s fanciful adventures, Maya comes to realize that this one last favor could give her the closure she needs to put Sofia’s memory to rest and move on with her life.
With her twin’s magic ring and faithful gryphon companion, Maya embarks on a reluctant journey of whimsical antics and unwitting self-discovery in this stark but humorous fairy tale.
My novella, The Amber Ring, came out last week. If you’re interested, you can get it in good ol’ print direct, or on Amazon (US | UK).
Of course, it’s also available in digital form. Amazon wants a dollar for the Kindle version, but you can download the book for free here – PDF | ePUB
Seriously, free. So snag yourself a copy; what have you got to lose? (>^-‘)>
For those who prefer Nook or iBooks, I understand it is soon to be released on those platforms as well. In any case, if you give it a try, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Bene scribete.
Writin' Fish 