Interlude: Shameless Promotion

Leap Year Magic promotion: On Wednesday February 29, the Kindle version of The Princess, the Knight, & the Knave will be available at Amazon.com for free. Instead of $2.99 to download this 61,000 word (about 220 paperback pages) young adult fantasy novel, the price on Feb 29 will be $0.00 for one day only--and worth every cent. Yes, $0.00, that's almost as good as free. Put it on your calendar. Download a copy. Give as gifts to your friends. Give it to people you don't like: that'll show them.

Here are some other sites that feature my short fiction for free reading:

Words and Music
His Brother was an Only Child
Hire Education (Just Up for March Issue)
The Unicorn Dilemma should be available in March at New Myths.
Perchance to Bleam coming soon to Futures:Nature.

or you can pony up to buy one the following Kindle ezines:
Heir Apparent Anthology (read the reviews)
June 2011 Daily Science Fiction
OG's Speculative Fiction

And finally, the Kindle version of my science fiction adventure novel Wobbling Star is available at Amazon.com.

Next time, back to Episodes....

Comments

2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest

I was just notified (March 14, 2013) that my 7700 word short story " Intent to Occupy " placed second in The 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest administered by William Ledbetter. Mr. Ledbetter just posted the results on his Facebook page , so I assume the results are now official: The winners of the 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest are: GRAND PRIZE "The Lamplighter Legacy" by Patrick O'Sullivan 2nd Place "Intent to Occupy" by Ronald D. Ferguson 3rd Place "Improvising at Branson Six" by Sean Monaghan The annual contest is sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society in memory of the founder of Baen Books , Jim Baen. The judges consisted of Baen Books editors Hank Davis, Jim Minz, Tony Daniel and best selling Baen author David Drake. I'm very honored to have such illustrious judges select my story. My first reaction to the email from Bill Ledbetter telling me that I won second place was "Well, I

My first alternate history novel was Rogue Knight: Marked by Thor . Rogue Knight takes place early in the ninth century shortly after the death of Charlemagne. The View from the M öbius Window is my new kindle novel available on Amazon.com . The novel is my second venture into alternate history: In 1914, fifty years after a forgotten cabal of wizards stalemated the Civil War and overthrew the incompetent Confederacy to establish the Southern Alliance monarchy, twenty-two year-old Lieutenant Maximillian Bontemps saves the newly crowned, teenaged King John from a sniper in Asheville by knocking the boy onto his royal ass. Angry that Max dared touch Him, the King dismisses Max from His Royal Guard. Dejected, Max returns home to New Orleans to start a private Security Service. New Orleans is the last bastion of wizardry in the south, and there Max discovers he has a rare talent: he is immune to magic. For Max's first security job, a young woman hires him to protect

As You Know Bob, and other critiquing tropes.

Writing is not a team sport. Like other sins, its practitioner often insists on lonely surroundings secure from distraction. Yet we write to be read, never sure what the reader will bring to the table, never sure how the words will trip from their tongue, never sure if the story actually works. So before we release a literary beast into the unsuspecting market wilderness, we impose upon our writer friends to be first readers and advise us--in other words to critique--but seldom do we ask our non-writer friends for such advice because they usually offer meaningless praise to make us feel good, but seldom give worthwhile suggestions to doctor a sick story. For background, a literary trope is a figure of speech or figurative language in which words assume a different sense than their literal meaning. Writers usually warn other writers that reusing old tropes is bad practice likely to be labeled as cliche, yet they often use critiquing tropes to identify problems in others' manuscri

No Mongoose in the Mimosa

Search This Blog