The new ebook boxset edition of Stories of the Puzzle Lands is now available, for the introductory price of just $2.99.

Or, if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you can read the ebook for free.

The boxset includes two gritty fantasy novels—The Dread Hammer and Hepen the Watcher—plus the short story, “A Moment Before It Struck,” originally published in Lightspeed Magazine.

These books are dark—and darkly humorous. I wrote them when I was returning to fiction after a long hiatus, and I had a lot of fun with them. They’re very different from anything else I’ve written. I do hope you’ll give them a try.

Here’s the blurb for the duology:

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.

Stories of the Puzzle Lands is available only at Amazon.

Get it now! The introductory price ends June 10, 2020.

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.

I was going to write a blog post on “Ten Years in Self-Publishing.” Then I looked up the dates and realized I’ve been at this for only nine years. So the post will have to wait.

In the meantime, I want to say that I’m utterly grateful to have the option of handling my own work. That wasn’t the case, in the ancient epoch when I started this writing gig. The only reason I’m still writing is because that option exists.

Eventually, I want to take another run at the traditional market, but if that doesn’t work out, I won’t be sad to publish the next novel under my own company’s imprint. Thank you to everyone who’s read the books and supported me through this venture. You’re awesome!

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.

My readers are terrific. SILVER (Inverted Frontier #2) has been out for only a week, but already several readers have posted positive Amazon reviews. Thank you so much! Those reviews really do matter for the success of any title (and more are always welcome) — but I’m also truly happy to know people have enjoyed the book!

Reviews at other vendors, at Goodreads, on Twitter or Facebook, or in-person word-of-mouth recommendations are also critical. It all adds up to “BUZZ.” So if you enjoyed SILVER, I hope you’ll post about it, or talk about it with like-minded readers. THANK YOU!

Today marks the release of Silver, book #2 in the far-future series, Inverted Frontier. Both print and ebook editions are now available.

Find Silver at:

☆ Amazon

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

☆ Kobo

You can also order the print edition from your favorite bookstore, or ask your local library to order a copy.

But maybe you’re not familiar with the story world of Inverted Frontier? Then please let me entice you…

This is a story world in which radically advanced nano- and bio-technologies have long since become an accepted part of everyday life. Indeterminate lifespans are taken for granted. Innate repair mechanisms clean up damage due to cosmic radiation. Materials can be grown at need or dissolved back into raw substrate. People can exist as physical or virtual beings. And over time, starships can evolve. People can too, though most are culturally inclined to hold on tightly to their humanity.

But molecular technologies cannot collapse the vast distances between stars or open mythical gates or wormholes to shorten the journey, and they cannot speed the flow of information, which remains limited by the speed of light.

Over the past millennia, human civilization spread from stellar system to stellar system — and then collapsed for reasons unknown to those few surviving settlements at the far reaches of the human frontier.

Inverted Frontier is the story of the recovery. It’s told through a ship’s company of explorers and scientists who leave the frontier, undertaking a voyage of re-discovery. They are the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration.

If you haven’t read book #1, Edges, start there! Silver completes the story arc that began with Edges.

There’s no need to wait for a third volume, because Inverted Frontier is not a trilogy. It’s an open-ended series that will continue if there is enough reader interest. I hope there will be! These books were a challenge to write, but there is so much left of the galaxy to explore.

If you’ve preordered Silver, THANK YOU!! If not, I hope you’ll get a chance to purchase it soon. Writers don’t exist without reader support. All of you have my continuing gratitude.

Amazon finally has the print edition of Silver available to order.

Here’s the link: https://amzn.to/3309Vdi

My apologies, again, for the lateness of the print book. I miscalculated the time it would take for me to receive a physical proof. But the proof has arrived and the book looks good! I hope you enjoy it.

The ebook releases tomorrow! (Or today if you’re in Australia… 🙂 )

You can now preorder a print copy of Silver from Barnes & Noble!

So if you’re in the USA, check it out here.

I’ll post again when print preorders go live at Amazon.