No Mongoose in the Mimosa

The Campbell Award for a new writer has a wonderful aid this year. M. David Blake with the support of Bruce Bethke at Stupefying Stories has a compiled a FREE anthology of stories written by new authors eligible for the Campbell Awards. As editor of  Astounding Science Fiction   (renamed  Analog Science Fiction and Fact ) from 1937 until his death in 1971,  John W. Campbell, Jr.   helped shape the "Golden Age" of science fiction. His influence launched the careers of dozens of famous writers including Lester del Rey and A.E. van  Vogt. The  John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer  is presented annually at WorldCon to an outstanding author whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the previous two years. In the words of M. David Blake: Now, for the first time in the award's 40-year history, the  2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology  provides a much-needed and long-overdue guide to t...

Do you like to get free ebooks for your Kindle? Those without a Kindle can read these free ebooks on a computer or android device. For your computer, you can use the free Kindle emulator from Amazon or Calibre . If you have an android device, you can download the Amazon Android App . I've reread a number of classic novels that are available free at Amazon. I've also read newer novels offered in free promotions by other authors for a limited time on Amazon. Next weekend, I'm giving away promotional copies too. Why am I doing this? Publicity. Particularly, to see whether I can drum up some traffic for my latest offering Tunnel at the End of the Dark . No, I'm not offering Tunnel at the End of the Dark for free in this promotion, but the novel is a sequel to a story I am offering for free: The Princess, the Knight & the Knave . Tunnel at the End of the Dark continues the adventures of fifteen-year-old stage illusionist Matt Collins in a medieval world of knig...

Ideas for short stories come in bursts and pieces. Some incubate for years. Some are too compelling to let go until you get them written. Sometimes the plot or characters don't do justice to the concept. Sometimes the plot is better than the idea. Sometimes nobody likes the characters. Sometimes you have to come back much later and use the concept in a completely different way. Good or bad, these short stories have one thing in common. Outside of your critique group, no one gets to read them until they are published. These days it's easy enough to publish on your own. Simply select from the stories you've churned out, make a collection, wrap them in an electronic bundle, and publish them on your web site, or blog, or Amazon, or Kobo, or B&N, or Smashwords, or ... well, you get the idea. But that's still no guarantee that anyone other than your friends--and you're not entirely sure of them--will bother to read. The best way to get a shot at an audience for a sh...

I've been putting the finishing touches on Tunnel at the End of the Dark , but I've had some distractions. Tunnel at the End of the Dark is the Book 2 sequel to The Princess, the Knight & the Knave in the Possible Magic series. Although I tried to get some early reader inputon the first draft by offering copies of Book 1, I got no takers. I don't think I'll try that again. I realized there would be difficulty, the title of Book 1 is not very exciting because I adapted from computer science problem. Also, I am terrible at publicity. So, I went ahead with my gut feeling on the plot direction. Naturally, the hero, young stage illusionist Matt Collins, gets drawn back to Kotimaa when the wicked, but not quite evil, wizard Crius swaps bodies with him again. The evil wizard Sobieslaw sends his beastman army against the Kotimaa frontier, and the outcast knave, Harold allies with Sobieslaw in the batttle. Meanwhile, King Ilbert has been given a magical poison, and hi...

I went on a short story writing binge in December. I published six short stories earlier this year, most of them in SFWA pro magazines. Currently, I have three more stories pending publication. I hope the ones I'm writing now can find a good home in 2013. I hadn't written any new short stories for a while, because I spent most of my time working on two novels: Rogue Knight and Tunnel at the End of the Dark . Most of my finished novels have been for young adults. I would not be uncomfortable with thirteen-year-olds reading any of these novels. If they were movies their ratings would likely be PG with just a suggestion of the low-end of PG13 . Even the curses tend to be mild and suitable for tender ears. Sometimes the subject matter is more mature, but probably not as explicit as an after 7:00 TV show. On the other hand, my novel-in-progress,  Rogue Knight, is at the upper end of young adult. If it were a movie, I would rate it a solid PG13 , with tendencies towards an R ....

Wobbling Star is free for Kindle October 12  and October 13 of 2012. I realize that this doesn't affect everyone, but I'm not sure why Amazon allows the following kind of nonsense. As an example, I just went to Kindle<Kindle eBooks<Fiction<Fantasy, and the first page is Showing 1 - 12 of 38,307 results.  That's a lot of titles to browse on any bookshelf. I've complained about the classification system before, particularly that Kindle Digital Publishing doesn't use the same classification system for books as Amazon.com. In response to this complaint, KDP said The categories in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account don't always match the Kindle store categories. Books published via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) can fall under two different types of categories - KDP uses BISAC codes to categorize books, while the Amazon website uses a broader classification. Therefore, when you add a category path in the KDP Bookshelf, it will automati...

Mistress of Vision  by R. D. Ferguson , the first book in my Young Adult  New Vision series, is up this morning (October 11, 2012) on Amazon.com . (Edited: this is a new cover designed by Pat R. Steiner) I like Kailin and her adventures. I hope readers do too. The sequel is tentatively titled, Vision Quest . I hope to start writing it early next year. For a variety of reasons, I'm experimenting with an initial for my first name on the cover of Mistress. . . . Although I've run no publicity, Junak Silverhand continues to sell at a steady rate. I don't know why. Must be the title because the cover isn't all that great. I've also noted that the number of hits on this blog have increased with the release of Junak. . . . Related? Friday, October 12, 2012 through Saturday, October 13, 2012, I'm running free copies of Wobbling Star on Amazon. Wobbling Star has been available exclusively on Amazon under the KDP Select program. I'm withdrawing Wobb...