Locus Magazine is a long-time publication that covers the science fiction field. In the December issue, Russell Letson reviewed Pacific Storm, describing it as “a propulsive intrigue-thriller-disaster format, detailed and textured and specific enough that its progress can be mapped onto contemporary Honolulu, a real garden with imaginary monsters in it.”

That review is now online. Click here to read it in full.

By the way — Russell also selected Pacific Storm as his “Holiday Countdown Staff Pick.” 🙂

This post was originally published in my November 19th newsletter. It’s re-posted here with minor changes. 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.

Novelists sometimes talk about a “book of the heart,” by which they mean a novel they needed to write, one that’s especially close to their heart, one they keep returning to, even though the marketplace doesn’t care.

The Wild is my book of the heart. It’s a secondary-world, aka epic, fantasy that has nothing at all to do with my other work. It’s also “noble bright” (as opposed to my grimdark fantasy Stories of the Puzzle Lands).

I wrote the original version of The Wild in the early 2000s. It never sold to the traditional market, but I never forgot about it. Eventually I published it myself as an ebook available only from my website. But when I took down my website store, I also took The Wild off the market.

The book had issues. There were problems with the way it was written. Last summer, when I took a fresh look at the manuscript, those issues became clear to me–but I felt I now had the knowledge and experience that would let me address them. So while waiting for beta-reader and editorial comments on Pacific Storm, I commenced on what proved to be an extensive rewrite of The Wild.

After publishing Pacific Storm, I returned to The Wild, and in late November I finished what I hope will be my final pass through the manuscript. It’s in the hands of a proofreader now, and I think it’s a much better story.

Since it’s a long book, I’m going to divide it into a trilogy of short novels. You can see the original cover above. I love this illustration, but the feedback I’ve received indicates it doesn’t communicate that the book is epic fantasy. So I’ve commissioned a set of new book covers that will hopefully do a better job. Sign up for my newsletter, for a preview of the new artwork!

A brief update while we wait for final election results…

The Stories of the Puzzle Lands Duology is now available in a print edition. The duology includes two novels, The Dread Hammer and Hepen the Watcher, along with a prequel short story.

I just received my copy and I have to say it’s quite lovely (all praise to the cover artist!).

For reasons of cost and distribution, the book is only available at Amazon (affiliate link).

Visit my website for more information on Stories of the Puzzle Lands.

(poor photo, lovely cover)

The ebook edition of my newest novel Pacific Storm is out today. If you preordered, you should have it already. But if not, go get it!

Unfortunately, the print edition is suffering a pandemic delay, but if all goes well, print copies should be available to order by Monday. Fingers crossed! I’ll post here on the blog when it happens.

Belated update: The print edition is now available!

Update October 9, 6am HST:
The print edition is now available to order at Barnes & Noble.

9am: Amazon now has the print edition listed too. Find it here. (paid link)

Pacific Storm is a fast-paced, near-future thriller set in Honolulu. You can read more about it here, and also read the opening chapters. See what you think…

Or go ahead and grab a copy!

PACIFIC STORM
(click to see a large version of the cover image)

Politics, terrorism, and heavy weather collide over Honolulu in a vividly imagined near-future thriller from the author of The Last Good Man.

Ava Arnett is a Honolulu cop, captain of the night shift in the autonomous Waikiki District. Nine years ago a massive hurricane hit the island. Ava remains haunted by the mistakes she made and the lives she failed to save during that disaster. Since then, she relies on HADAFA, an AI designed to observe, analyze, and predict human behavior. HADAFA monitors her actions, and its assessments guide her decisions.

Now, another Category 5 hurricane is approaching Honolulu…

In the hectic hours before landfall, Ava stumbles into a terrorist conspiracy – and HADAFA begins to glitch. She can no longer rely on the AI. She must decide on her own whether or not to trust a mysterious federal agent named Lyric Jones — knowing the wrong choice could lead to greater devastation…and a war no one will win.

Pacific Storm is now available to preorder as an ebook. (The print edition will take a little longer.)

Pacific Storm will publish on October 8th.

READ THE OPENING CHAPTERS HERE

I’m going to be launching a new novel amid the political storms of October. It’s not a great time to bring out a book, but I don’t want to wait until next year. I hope you’ll subscribe to my newsletter, for info and a first look!⚡️🌴

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ve already seen the cover to the forthcoming edition of Stories of the Puzzle Lands — and if not? Well, here it is!

Artist is Agata Broncel of Bukovero.com

click to see it big

Stories of the Puzzle Lands is a boxset edition of one of my existing series. It includes the two novels The Dread Hammer and Hepen the Watcher, along with a prequel short story, “A Moment Before It Struck,” originally published in Lightspeed Magazine.

For at least the first three months, the new boxset will be available only at Amazon. If you’re a Kindle Unlimited reader, you’ll be able to pick it up through your subscription. If not, you can just buy the ebook.

The ebook is available now as a preorder at a 50%-off promotional price of just $2.99! The publication date is June 2.

Here’s the cover copy:

Two gritty dark fantasy novels and a bonus short story:
His name is Smoke, though some know him as the Demon Dismay. He’s a charming, well-armed young murderer who is not altogether human. Smoke’s purpose in life is to mete out the stern justice of a vindictive goddess, and he is pleased to do it—that is, until he finds other things to live for. A woman, a child, a quiet home deep in the forest. He is so far from anywhere he can no longer hear the haunting prayers of those who would ask him to deliver them vengeance. But the quiet life is not Smoke’s fate.

Right now, there’s only an ebook edition, but a print edition will follow, possibly in late summer.

Follow this link to find it at Amazon.

Oh! And please subscribe to my newsletter if you don’t already. Sign-up form is over there -> in the right column.

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service offered by Amazon, in which readers pay a set fee each month to read as many “Kindle Unlimited” ebooks as they want. Last fall I enrolled two of my fantasy novels in the program. The results haven’t been spectacular, but there has been an uptick in interest.

A few days ago, I enrolled another novel, Skye-Object 3270a. This one is a far-future adventure written for a middle-grade/young-adult audience. It’s set in the Deception Well story world, but is otherwise unrelated to that book.

Here’s an excerpt of a review by Marianne Dyson at the National Space Society’s website:

Author Linda Nagata puts her degree in zoology, work experience with computers, and life experience growing up in exotic Hawaii to imaginative use throughout the story, creating fascinating new creatures on the planet and in space that are a mix of biology and technology in unique environments. The teens, fearful that adults will not listen to them or act quickly enough to save Skye, behave in a very believable way—taking risks for reasons that will make sense to most any young adult today.

The story has plenty of cool world-building, new tech, adventure, alien creature encounters, and a touch of romance (limited to kissing) that are sure to appeal to young readers, both girls and boys. Adult space enthusiasts may also appreciate this unique view of what family life may be like in a future society where people have faced extinction and yet live hundreds of years.

Skye-Object 3270a is ideal for advanced readers on the younger end of the teen spectrum. Follow this link to find it on Amazon. I hope you’ll check it out! It’s also available in a print edition.

With thoughts on the evolving science fiction ecosystem…

Best-of-the-year lists have started to appear across the Internet. Those lists are a lot of fun when your book appears on them. And when it doesn’t? It’s easy to shrug and sooth your ego with the certain knowledge that the list-makers never read or considered or even heard about your book. Anyway, that’s how I handle it! 😉

When I originally indie-published The Red: First Light back in 2013, the Internet’s science fiction eco-system was different than it is today. SF Signal was a thriving website, the author cooperative Book View Café had a new-ish online bookstore and freshly enthusiastic membership, there were a lot of excellent independent blogger/reviewers willing to have a look at vetted indie work, Twitter was more personal, and the potential end of the Republic was not a great weight on anyone’s mind.

Times have changed. I feel like it’s a lot harder to get the word out about a new book — and I don’t think I’m alone. The sheer number of excellent novels being published every year remains overwhelming. But we do what we can.

To that end, here is my annual post of my award-eligible work from 2019. “Award eligible” generally just means the work was published in the past year. If you’re able and interested in nominating for the annual science fiction awards, in particular the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards, I would appreciate your consideration.

In the short story category:

“Devil in the Dust” (amazon affiliate link)†
A short story set on Mars in the last days of a bitter war. Included in the anthology Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan. (July 2019)

In the novel category:

Edges (Inverted Frontier #1)
From the Edge of Apocalypse:
Deception Well is a world on the edge, a lone surviving outpost at the farthest reach of human expansion. Now a determined crew resolves to cross the light years to explore the fallen worlds of old and discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Silver (Inverted Frontier #2)
A Lost Ship — A New World:
A hardened adventurer, marooned on a surreal artificial world, must master the mysterious nanotech known as “silver” to defeat the entity who pursues him.

I like to think of Inverted Frontier as Sense-of-Wonder fiction — an exploration of the cosmos and of human potential, embedded in a far-future adventure.

If you’re not yet acquainted with the books and that description appeals to you, I hope you’ll click on over to my website where I’ve posted the opening chapters. You should be able to quickly tell if these books are for you.

If you have read the books and you consider them award worthy, I implore you to focus your attention on Edges. Can’t have them competing with each other after all!

Thanks for stopping by…

Do you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited?

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service offered by Amazon, in which readers pay a set fee each month to read as many “Kindle Unlimited” books as they want.

My impression is that the majority of indie writers make most of their income through KU, but despite this, I’ve long kept my books out of the program because it requires exclusivity. To participate in KU, the ebook edition of a title can only be sold through Amazon — and in the past, it’s been my preference to keep my books “wide,” offering them through several vendors so readers can choose.

But in November I decided to experiment with KU. Two of my books — The Dread Hammer and Hepen the Watcher (The Puzzle Lands fantasy duology) sell almost nothing outside of Amazon, so I pulled the ebook editions down from other vendors and enrolled both titles in KU. I didn’t advertise this at all and I haven’t updated the covers yet, which is something I want to do. Instead, I kept everything the same, except that the books are now available to KU subscribers.

The results? Well, they weren’t extraordinary, but they were intriguing. I suspect I made a few dollars more than I would have otherwise and I look forward to further experimentation.

If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, I encourage you to try the books. They are short, violent, darkly humorous fantasies — a variety of grim-dark, I suppose.

For those who prefer to avoid the Amazon ecosystem, the books are still available elsewhere in print editions.