Hey!

I have to tell you, I’m not entirely certain I like this week’s story. A shame to lead off with it, if it doesn’t work, though I did get a favorable beta-reader response. (Semi-spoiler: I was told it had a happy ending. Who knew? Not I. Maybe you’ll see what I mean…)

On the other hand, it’s very cool to be back in the story-writing swing. And it generally takes me a while to figure out what I do or don’t like in a story, or even what it’s about. I’m very glad to have written ’em all, to date, so I guess I’ll just put it out there and see.

Out where? Why, it’s right here. That URL will remain constant, because trying to track down the stories on the blog, and keep the rest of the site updated, every time I want to publish something is a pain in my ass. Um, I mean it’s a hassle, and I’d rather spend my time on other things. So, this way, there’ll only ever be a single page to update. And you can feel free to just check the page directly whenever you like. From time to time there will be new stuff.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the older stories as I take them down. They could end up being published elsewhere eventually, either directly by me (but I don’t know how to get short stories in front of many actual readers, except as freebies) or by someone else.

This story doesn’t have a cover image. Yet. Maybe it should? We’ll see. I’m trying to keep this simple, for now. I’ll probably figure something out as I go along.

For now, just come on by and read the thing? Let me know whether you like it. And there ought to be another one up next week.

Have fun out there!

Published by 47North, an Amazon imprint, this is a jewel of a book aimed squarely at the computer geeks among us. Well, and maybe those who are, for whatever reason, entertained by geeks. Maybe including my wife, for instance, but I don’t think she’s actually read this one yet, so I could be flat wrong about the whole notion. But the book sells quite well, and so do its sequels, so there’s something going on.

Quoting the Amazon description:

Martin Banks is just a normal guy who has made an abnormal discovery: he can manipulate reality, thanks to reality being nothing more than a computer program. With every use of this ability, though, Martin finds his little “tweaks” have not escaped notice. Rather than face prosecution, he decides instead to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and pose as a wizard.

What could possibly go wrong?

An American hacker in King Arthur’s court, Martin must now train to become a full-fledged master of his powers, discover the truth behind the ancient wizard Merlin…and not, y’know, die or anything.

See? It’s fun. That description is actually a little bit misleading, but it does mostly capture the tone of the novel, and I don’t want to inflict any spoilers on you folk. So let’s go with it.

I re-read this recently, and if anything it was more fun the second time ’round. I liked Meyer’s other books too. The humor is distributed well, by which I mean it’s not (always) heavy-handed and there’s an actual story involved. Is this my favorite book ever? Hell, no. But I’m glad I found it, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Give it a try, if you’re so inclined. I, obviously, recommend it.

Meanwhile, I’ve finished the first draft of Wednesday’s story. Should I tell you that sort of thing? Or preserve whatever mystery or illusion there might be? If I tell you, well, that’s okay because I’m kind of proud of the thing and I want to share that. On the other hand, what’s the point? You’ll see some version of it on Wednesday, and not before.

It’s currently titled The Room, but I may change that. The first sentence: “This time I wake up with Paul Newman sitting on my bed.”

What do you guys think? Better to tell you stuff like that, or not? It beats me. I’m also not sure it makes any difference either way!

So…regardless…have fun out there.

Yo!

I’ve been reading Susan Kaye Quinn’s books for a while now. I’ll tell you up front that I think she’d benefit from a copyeditor. Or maybe a second copyeditor, because I think she already pays one. Nothing too horrible, but there are occasional misused words that throw me off.

On the other hand, she tells great stories, and readers appear to love them. Me too!

This one is science fiction, but there’s not a lot of actual tech in it. If you switched the “singularity” stuff (this is the first of her Singularity series) and said it was about elves and magic? Not much in the plot would have to change.

Reading over that, it seems like more criticism. It’s not. Quinn pulls readers (or at least me) right in, and it’s hard not to care about her characters. I don’t even try. I just live in her worlds for a while, and think about them, and have a blast.

She’s also written a couple of books about indie publishing, which I encourage you to check out if you’re into that. It’s odd, but I don’t hear other people talking about how good they are. Thing is? I think they’re very possibly the best resource for indies out there.

Back to The Legacy Human. Here’s the description from Amazon:

What would you give to live forever? Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender—a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid—after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.

Sound good? Well, it truly is good. Want something different, in a YA SF semi-dystopian sort of vein? Here it is. Give it a try?

Note: the link goes directly to Amazon, as The Legacy Human is in Kindle Unlimited at present.

Have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: 523. Okay, not wonderfully high. I do like where the new story is going, though…)

J.A. Konrath, aka Joe Conrath, aka Jack Kilborn, is a heck of a guy. An “indie” superstar, he’s gone out of his way–many times–to help other writers. On top of that? He writes good books.

Most of his fiction is in the mystery/thriller range. But my favorites are his two Timecaster novels. Which probably says something or other about me, because these novels are campy, full of gratuitous and often weird sex, completely ridiculous, and…well, fun. Konrath describes them as “ecopunk,” which I think is almost irrelevant to their appeal. But maybe that’s your thing?

It may help if I tell you I’m also a fan of B-movies. Science fiction, horror, whatever. These books are just like ’em. Except that I actually prefer books to movies…

Quoting the description:

Talon Alalon is a timecaster—one of a select few peace officers who can operate a TEV, the Tachyon Emission Visualizer, which records events (most specifically, crimes) that have already happened.

With crime at an all-time low, Talon has little to do except give lectures to schoolkids—and obsess on his wife’s profession as a licensed sex partner.

Then one of her clients asks Talon to investigate a possible murder. When Talon uses the TEV to view the crime, the identity of the killer is unmistakable—it’s him, Talon Avalon.

Enough said? Probably. But I’ll also point out that Konrath has collaborated in the past with Jeff Strand, whose book I reviewed yesterday.

I’m linking to a page on Konrath’s site instead of to Amazon, because he sells autographed copies in both print and digital formats. And besides, I should probably link to authors’ sites rather than retailers anyway. I’m still figuring this “book review” thing out. But–here’s my only spoiler–Timecaster is also available via Kindle Unlimited.

Try it! I’ll bet you’ll be glad you did. I mean…in these books, I swear, if Konrath were talking about a tube of toothpaste, and if it were a completely standard tube of toothpaste indistinguishable from any other, he’d probably call it hyper-toothpaste just for fun. What’s not to love?

Have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: zero. I got involved with a different project last night, and will probably be busy with it tonight too. It’s not good for the writing to let it get derailed like this, but sometimes life happens.)

I was an early adopter of ebooks. Sometime I’ll have to tell you the story of the night I tried to con my wife into skinny-dipping with me in what would have been a public place except it was dark. Also there were javelinas, and deer, and strange noises, and she says I danced on an armadillo but the critter’s species wasn’t actually clear to me. It seemed scarier than that, and she’s only saying “armadillo” to embarrass me.

These thoughts are too related. See, that night the only illumination we had–and no, we weren’t lost, though Herself tells the story differently–was my little handheld computing device running Windows CE. On that device, among other things, were some books by Jeff Strand.

See?

Anyway, I’m a fan. His fiction is clever, often disgusting, frequently disturbing, and sometimes even a bit scary. Strictly speaking, I guess this particular book may not count as “indie published.” But I strongly suspect, after my Google-Fu came up short, that it was at least published by a small press. And however this book came to be? I’m glad it happened.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

A man who finds a severed nose on a plate on his dining room table. A bell that can summon Satan (maybe). Casual Fridays at work that get out of control. A cheery outlook on the post-apocalyptic landscape. The final thoughts of a doomed skydiver. A girl punished by having to share a bed with her grandmother’s corpse. Revenge via baking a tarantula into a cake. A romance between two carnivorous genetically enhanced plants. And the lost tale of Fangboy.

These are only a few of the demented stories in DEAD CLOWN BARBECUE, a collection of twenty-nine gleefully macabre tales, seven of which were written just for this collection. There’s even a brand new one about a ventriloquist dummy. Those things creep you out, right? You’ll laugh. You’ll scream. Okay…you probably won’t actually scream, unless you already had issues before you started reading, but you might cringe and get a little spooked.

I’m not going to try to describe the stories, because it’s clearly pointless. I’m not even going to say this is the author’s best work, because my opinion on that varies. Sometimes with the lunar cycles, but sometimes according to…uh…well, something that varies in an eldritch way. There are things like that. Or there should be.

So, if the above sounds cool to you? Go buy a copy. Or buy something else of his. Which suddenly reminded me of another book, and another author, and I have an idea for my next review. Which, right now? Doesn’t help you.

Jeff Strand is damn good at what he does. Also, nobody else does that. Enjoy.

And have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: 2305. Project I is getting interesting.)

The full title, for those who can’t see the cover image: Marvin Plotnik and the Sandy Rivers Hilltop Ranch for Wayward Youth, Juveniles, and Young Adults.

You can probably see what you’re getting into, just from that.

I read this book a few years ago, after the author said hello on Twitter (@D_S_Thornton) after I’d posted Marvin The Magnificent on my blog. She seemed to like my story. Whether she’d actually read it was of course not something I could verify…but I got curious, and added her book to my “maybe someday” list. I’m not sure how long it took me to get around to buying and reading the thing–months, at least–but I’m very glad I did. I still think about this one, from time to time, and chuckle.

Okay, here’s the thing. I liked Marvin. He reminded me, a bit, of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan character. Actively engaged with his environment, you know? Clever, creative, pushy, and fun to follow. And the plot was okay. I’ll admit that if you summarized the plot in a few sentences, it might seem sort of trite. But the main thing? The best part of this book? The footnotes!

I’ve never seen anyone else pull this off so well. This is a work of light, humorous fiction. How in the world did I start looking forward to the footnotes? The hundreds and hundreds of footnotes? Well, let me put it this way. Other reviewers (this book has a total of 5 reviews on Amazon US) have compared the author to Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. The author seems to be okay with that, as it says something similar under “Editorial Reviews” on the book’s Amazon page. My opinion: it’s better than either of those.

Sound ridiculous? How can I say a book currently ranked “#2,229,542 Paid in Kindle Store” is better than anything by Pratchett and Adams? Because I’ve read it. I don’t think many people have, and it’s a damn shame. Maybe this one will always have a small audience. Maybe it takes a certain sort of mind to enjoy the thing. But for chrissake. It’s hilarious!

Incidentally, I tried posting a review on Amazon a while back…and the ‘Zon deleted it. I guess because I’m a competitor, or something. Some sort of cold, alien, wildly inefficient but nevertheless smug machine intelligence decided to help protect the world from my review. You guys feel safer now, right?

I’m going to post this review on Goodreads. Originally I didn’t plan to post my reviews anywhere but my blog, but that two-million-plus ranking pisses me off, and I want to do whatever I can to help people find and read this one. So okay, I’ll go post my previous reviews over there too. So far that site (though owned by Amazon) doesn’t seem to delete reviews by authors.

I see Ms. Thornton has another book out. The ebook version is set at the unfortunate price of $10.99, and it’s not linked to Marvin Plotnik via her Amazon author page. I assume there’s some sort of story behind that. The newer book is a middle-grade book with a few reviews, and is sitting at the one-million-plus level of Amazon rankings. I have stories in that same range, and it means nobody’s bought them for months. A shame.

Anyway, do yourself a favor and go read about Marvin Plotnik. He’s a good kid.

And have fun out there!

Fiction total for the day: 1258 words on Project I. I had an unrelated project, but still made progress. Hoping to do better as I go along, but we’ll see how it goes.

Just so you know, this post is fairly ridiculous. I’m reviewing a book that was published in 1984. It is now quite thoroughly out of print. Quaint, yes? And as far as I know, there is no (official) ebook version. But this novel affected me strongly when I read it way back when…so much so that I’ve never read the sequel. I’m saving it, you know? For the end times, or something.

Which…well, it’s a post-apocalyptic YA SF sort of book, so that might happen. Right?

This one, like Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, has just stuck with me. I’ve wanted to try my hand at creating a plucky, brave, smart, but vulnerable hero-child for quite a while. Which is where I’m going with Destiny’s Dance, by the way. It’s expanding…to at least a novel. Maybe a trilogy.

So, what happens in Emergence? Lots. This novel predates the USSR breakup, which might make it a bit difficult for younger readers. But anyway, most people die. Candidia Smith-Foster and her parrot Terry don’t. For reasons that (I swear!) seem believable, they happen to be in a bomb shelter as hostilities break out. Missiles fly. Stuff happens.

At least they don’t die at first, right? No spoilers here. Candy, it turns out, is a special sort of person, a probably-improved sort of human. She’s not vulnerable to the disease that’s killed off most of humanity. She doesn’t know any of this, so when she finds out…well, where are the others like her? Did they survive? If so, where? How come nobody ever told her anything?

Being a plucky adventurella, she sets out to Make Things Right.

This is one of the few paper-type books, out of thousands, that I still own. If that means anything to you. I read it again recently, to inspire myself to write something of my own.

So far I think it’s going well. A very different heroine, a very different dystopia. But the stories are tied together in my mind…if nowhere else.

Interested? Go buy a copy. And if you happen to know David R. Palmer, who for all I know is still out in the world somewhere, tell him to get off his ass and write more books. Please?

Also! The new-fiction count for today, all on PROJECT II (about which you know little, in theory), was 2782. Not bad. I’m hoping for better.

So. Have fun out there?