It’s been a long time coming, I know. But the fourth and penultimate Inverted Frontier novel is almost here. Its publication date is:

It’ll be available on that date in both print and ebook editions. (There may ultimately be an audiobook, though I don’t know yet.)

So without further ado, please allow me to introduce you to…

The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet’s telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship’s company is eager to go on—but should they?

From his post on Dragon’s high bridge, Urban looks ahead to the smaller starship, Griffin, now far, far in front of the fleet. The mind that pilots that ship—a stern and colder version of his lover, Clemantine—has gone silent. The implication chills him. Like Dragon, Griffin was an alien warship, designed to destroy without mercy all living worlds, and it still has a mind of its own. The question that haunts Urban: Has that alien mind somehow reclaimed control of Griffin?

It’s a question he must answer, and soon. Every wonder that lies ahead—and every ambition hidden within his heart—is at risk while Griffin’s true nature remains unknown.

Are you a Kobo reader? If so, I want to let you know that the ebook will be available at Kobo, though I won’t be able to set up the preorder there until I have a final version of the manuscript, probably in late February. I’ll let you know!

Do you prefer the print edition? Once the manuscript has been proofread and corrected, I’ll be able to set up a preorder for the print edition. I’ll let you know as soon as that’s ready.

About the Art
Sarah Anne Langton did a knock-out job with the first two book covers in the Inverted Frontier series. It was only after I finished those first two books that I decided to continue the series. At that point, I put together ideas for three more books, and I commissioned Sarah to create the covers for them long before they were written, and even before I had more than a seed of an idea for the last two. Sarah did an amazing job, and I’m so happy to finally be able to reveal her beautiful artwork for Blade. There’s only one more cover left to reveal—and I’m eager to write the book for it.

You can check out more of Sarah’s work at her website: SecretArcticBase.com.(Sarah has the coolest domain name.)

This news first appeared in my June 9th newsletter. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch. Sign up here.

Did you know that my novel Memory is a companion novel to the Inverted Frontier series?

Memory is not on the main sequence, but if you’ve read Silver, you’ve met Jubilee. Memory tells her story in the time before she encountered Urban.

In my April newsletter, I held a simple survey asking reader opinions on Memory‘s then-current cover art. Results were mixed, but I did receive a brilliant suggestion: Why not commission a new cover in the style of the Inverted Frontier series, making it clear that Memory is a tie-in novel?

Why not indeed! I immediately acted on the suggestion, and here is the result, courtesy of artist Sarah Anne Langton, who also designed the covers for all the Inverted Frontier books — whether published, underway, or still vaporware. 🙂

I like the expansiveness expressed in this cover, and the way the stone arch echoes the curve of the world as seen in the cover art of Silver. As well, the swirls and the lighting give it that “out there,” science fiction feel. I hope you like it too.

Visit my website to learn more about Memory.

The publication of Edges has inspired many readers to check out the earlier Nanotech Succession novels, and this in turn inspired me to pull together an updated edition of The Nanotech Succession Omnibus Edition.

The omnibus has been available in ebook form since 2012, but now I’ve put a new cover on it, refreshed the back-matter, and added a clarifying subtitle: 4 Classic Novels in a Box Set

“Omnibus” used to be the standard term describing a series of novels collected into one volume. In the modern world of ebook publishing, “omnibus” has generally been replaced by the term “box set.” Personally, “box set” makes my grammatical brain twitch, given that there is no box, and if there was, it should be “boxed set.” But the culture has moved past me, and to please the search engines, I’ve conformed.

The omnibus includes the novels Tech-Heaven, The Bohr Maker, Deception Well, and Vast.

Previously, the omnibus was available only at very limited outlets. It’s still not at Amazon due to their pricing model, but you can find it at Apple Books, Kobo Books, Barnes & Noble, and Book View Café.

If you know anyone new to my work, who might enjoy the full Nanotech Succession ride, I hope you’ll suggest this “box set.”

The detail page is here.

Thank you!

Introducing

Edges

Inverted Frontier, book 1

Edges cover for Linda Nagata’s Inverted Frontier Book 1 by artist Sarah Anne Langton

Here’s the cover copy:

From the Edge of Apocalypse:
Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.

Click here to read the opening chapters on my website.

Release date: April 2, 2019.

The ebook is now available for preorder at:
Amazon US — Amazon UK — Amazon AU — Amazon DE

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Print preorders to follow, probably sometime in midMarch.

Preorders at Kobo should be available around midMarch. Email me at linda at mythicisland dot com if you’d like me to email you when Kobo preorders are ready.

~~~

Sarah Anne Langton is the artist who created this beautiful cover. The cover was ready long before the book. The framed print of it I have on my desk served as an important source of inspiration during the long rewrite. Thank you, Sarah!

I also have to mention that Sarah has the COOLEST domain name. 🙂

Artist Philippe McNally posted this photo showing some of the preliminary work preceding the final design for the cover of The Last Good Man. I repost it here with permission. (click the image to see a larger version)

Philippe was a pleasure to work with. Here’s a post on the cover design process.

Contact him if you’re looking for book-cover art.

This website is in danger of turning into a ghost town, so I thought I’d post a brief progress report.

I’d like to say that I’ve been writing, but it isn’t true. Since at least the beginning of the year my efforts have focused on getting my forthcoming novel, The Last Good Man, ready for publication while working on promotional strategies for all of my books.

So what’s the status of The Last Good Man? The pre-copyedit draft is done. I coded the manuscript to create ebooks for advance readers and I’ve begun to send out review copies. I also did a quick and dirty print layout to determine the likely page count and price of the print edition. And cover art is on the way! We’ve agreed on the rough design, and now await the finished illustration.

Promotion continues, as you’ve probably noticed from the events I’ve been participating in. I’m working on connecting with more new-to-me readers by encouraging people to sign up for my email newsletter.

By the way, if you already subscribe to my newsletter, do be sure to check your spam folders and if you find one of my newsletters there, please whitelist it. I’ll have a new story out in an anthology next month, I have several promotions coming up, and of course The Last Good Man will be released in June, so there will be a lot of news!

One thing I’ve learned is that book promotion really is a full-time job — and most of that work falls on the author, regardless of whether the novel is traditionally published or indie published. So, onward!

Back in June, I collected your opinions on potential new book cover designs for Limit of Vision, using part of the existing cover art, created by Sarah Adams.

After deciding on a direction, I then sent the project to graphic designer Emily Irwin to “professionalize” the concept. I’m very pleased with the result, which you can see here:

A new version of the ebook, featuring the new cover, should be available shortly at most ebook vendors. Find links and more information here.

I’m hoping to do a print-on-demand version this fall.

…original post is here

Update: added a third version, as suggested by Sharon in the comments.

Madness has struck and I am messing around with cover layouts. Generally, this is a profoundly time-wasting practice, but since I’ve come this far, let me know what you think of these concepts…

Layout 1:
The first one is a mockup. It’s an attempt to position elements to suggest the final cover layout, which would have to be completely re-done by someone with actual art/graphics skills. The small scene at the bottom would need to be repainted. It could be either a very similar painterly scene which fades into flat color, or else an entirely graphics sort of scene. The tumbling debris is meant to link the spider to the dissolving castle structure — and of course the color scheme would need to be adjusted to make a better match between the two elements.

If this was to be principally a print book viewed on a shelf, I would go for even smaller title fonts to suggest that “limit of the visible” idea, but it will be viewed almost exclusively online, so… maybe the font is too small?

Layout 2:
The second one is even simpler, and I don’t think requires further comment from me except to say that it would be handed off to a graphics artist for final font selection, placement, and rendering. Please let me know what you think!

Layout 3:
Suggested by Sharon in the comments…

Back in 2011 I set out to develop a new cover for my stand-alone novel, Limit of Vision. I put together a rather laughable mockup of a cover concept. Artist Sarah Adams went on to turn it into a beautiful digital painting. I then added some clumsy title graphics, and the result is the cover you see at right.

There is so much that I really love about this cover art: the rendition of the landscape, the color scheme, the plummeting space debris, the foreground artifacts, and the spidery entity which is rendered so much better here than in the original Tor Books cover. And yet — though this layout is exactly what I asked for — I’ve never been really comfortable with it. Now I’m starting to think of doing a print or audio edition of this book, so I’m reconsidering the cover.

If you’re not familiar with Limit of Vision, this is a near-future, high-tech story set mostly in Vietnam. The two primary characters are an American scientist who instigates an incident of runaway biotechnology, and a Southeast Asian journalist who finds her life overtaken by that. It’s an adult novel, meaning that it’s not young adult.

We all like to think that the right cover will sell a book, and sometimes it’s true. So a general question for those willing to offer an opinion: is this the right cover? My own concerns go to the foreground figure. The portrait is meticulously painted, but is it too large? too dominating? Is it too suggestive of a young-adult novel?

Here’s a look at the cover painting without my amateur graphics:

And here’s what it looks like without the foreground figure:

Here are some options I’m looking at:

(1) Have a graphics designer fix up the fonts and it’ll be fine

(2) Eliminate the foreground figure, but keep the background — and get a graphics designer to fix the fonts.

(3) Start over.

I’d appreciate opinions — and opinions need not be limited to these options. Thank you!

Science Fiction World is the primary publisher of Chinese-language short science fiction. I’ve been told they are the largest-circulation SF magazine in the world. A few years ago they translated and published my novella “Goddesses,” but I never saw that edition.

Now they’ve translated and published my story “The Way Home.” It appeared in the June issue. I just received my copies, so I thought I’d share them here. Of course I can’t read the issue, but check out the cover art below.

“The Way Home” was originally published last March in the anthology Operation Arcana. It was republished at Lightspeed Magazine, where it’s available to read (in English) online.