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.

Just one week to go until the release of Silver!

Silver completes the immediate story that began with book #1, Edges. So please dive in now! Don’t wait! Because INVERTED FRONTIER is not a trilogy. It’s an open-ended series, whose future existence is up to the collective YOU. 🚀💫

But where is the print edition?!
It’s on the way. I promise!

When I was calculating whether or not I could publish Silver this year — or if I would have to wait until 2020 — I forgot to account for the time it takes for me, here in Hawaii, to receive a proof copy of a new book. I always like to see the physical proof before releasing a print edition for preorder/publication. The proof was supposed to arrive by overnight mail, but when a three-day weekend gets in the way, things really slow down. In theory I should have the proof tomorrow. That means there won’t be much of a preorder period for the print edition, but it should certainly be available by next Tuesday, when the ebook is scheduled to release.

Don’t forget, you can preorder the ebook now! Here are the vendor links:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

☆ Kobo

And if you want to get started early, you can read the opening chapters here.

Update:
A few hours after this post went up, I received the proofs from KDP Print (Amazon’s printing company). They look great! Tomorrow I’m supposed to receive the proof copy from Ingram. Once I have that in hand, I can authorize preorders.

I just remembered, today is my birthday. As you can probably deduce from that statement, we don’t tend to make a big deal out of birthdays around here. We’ll go out to dinner tonight to celebrate, but for me, it’s the everyday stuff that really matters in life.

That said, I am fifty-nine years old today–one year shy of sixty, a number that looms as a significant milestone to me. In the normal course of a career, I should be carefully calculating for retirement. Instead, I’m still in the hunt for my breakout book. Maybe the next one?

I’ve got a general idea of what the next book will be about. I’ve accumulated lots of notes as I’ve tried to develop the idea. And while I’ve always outlined new projects, this time I’m going to try to do a lot more pre-planning than I’ve managed in the past. Hopefully that will help the actual writing go faster and make it more enjoyable — but by the time the next book is out, I will be sixty. Or sixty-one?

The numbers have become more meaningful to me because I don’t feel as strong and active as I did even a few months ago.

I’ve been blessed with good health for most of my life and as recently as February I was still running three miles on the treadmill, lifting weights at the gym whenever possible, and doing a lot of physically demanding yard work. Since then, lack of time, along with joint issues, have led me to cut way back on physical activity. I need to change that trend and get back into both running and weight-lifting! This avatar is the only one I’ve got. I need to keep it in good shape — or I’m never going to write that breakout book. 😉

Starting this week, I’m going to be sending simple, text-only emails to people who are subscribed to my newsletter but who haven’t opened an issue in a very long time. I’ll simply be asking you if you want to remain as a subscriber.

Here’s why:
While I understand that some of those who never open the newsletter are simply not interested, I suspect that many are just not seeing the newsletters at all, probably because they’re ending up in a spam or a promotions folder. This is a problem, not just for a single recipient, but for all recipients. When copies of my newsletter emails get auto-classified by gmail as promotions, gmail is ever more likely to hide other recipients’ newsletters in the promotions folder, so that fewer and fewer people will actually receive it in their inboxes. I suspect the same process occurs with other email systems.

I don’t want to send newsletters to you if you’re not interested in my work (or if you’re just not into newsletters). So if my mail service tells me it’s been a long time since you opened a newsletter, I’m going to ask you to let me know if you want to continue to subscribe. If you do, awesome! If not…hey, you can always visit me here on the blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook (though keep in mind that the latter two are no guarantee that you’ll ever see my posts).

I’ll be sending out the text email in small batches.

If you think you might be one of the non-openers, you can help me by checking your promotions folder (gmail) or your spam folder. My last newsletter went out on October 17, with the subject line “Announcing: SILVER – Inverted Frontier #2”. If you find the newsletter and want to remain a subscriber, please OPEN IT, MOVE IT TO YOUR INBOX, AND WHITELIST ME in whatever way your email system allows.

If you no longer want to be a subscriber, simply click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

Among the non-openers, there are many names I recognize as long-time readers. I know you’re long-time readers because you’ve told me so! I want to stay in contact with all of you who have been, and continue to be, interested in my work, so I’m hoping the text email will have a better chance of getting through to people’s inboxes. If I send you a text email and I still don’t hear from you, I’ll sadly assume we have a broken connection. I’ll unsubscribe you on my end, but of course you can always sign up again later.

Thanks for your help! And thank you for subscribing! 🙂

And if this post nudges you to look for my elusive newsletter, please let me know in the comments. (I like to know what works! :))

Just a quick post to let you know that Kobo preorders of Silver (Inverted Frontier #2) are now available!

HERE’S THE KOBO LINK.

Silver is also available for preorder at:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

A print edition is on the way! The layout work is done. I’m just waiting to review proof copies.

For more information on Silver or to read the opening chapters, click here.

Introducing

Silver

Inverted Frontier #2

Click to see a larger image with all the beautiful details…

Here’s the cover copy:

A Lost Ship — A New World
Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet.

Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing silver that rises in the night like fog—a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming—and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

Many of you already own a copy of The Red: First Light. But if you’re new to my work or just haven’t picked it up yet – and you live in the United Kingdom or Australia – the ebook is on sale.

(I wish I could discount The Red for all of you, but I control pricing only in the United Kingdom and Australia.)

If you live in those places, The Red is just £1.99 (UK) or $1.99 (AU), but the sale will last only a few days, so get it now.

The Red: First Light is near-future military science fiction. It was a finalist for both the Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, and was a Publishers Weekly Best Book. Even if you don’t generally read military SF, I hope you’ll give it a look. You might like it!

We all have different definitions of what science fiction is and what we expect from the genre. Reading is a very personal pastime. Tastes vary widely, and as a writer, I recognize that not everyone is going to like my work.

For me, science fiction is about exploring new ideas and trying to take them in new directions, with adventures along the way. Writers in this genre have always been influenced by the work of others, and have built off that work. But exploring new paths is part of the genre too.

This idea of newness, of novelty, of exploring fresh settings and situations is to me, what science fiction is about. Of course, not all readers feel that way. They have expectations. Over the last six months since Edges was published, it’s garnered a few scathing reviews when it didn’t meet those expectations. Specifically, it didn’t include most of the expected tropes of space opera. Fair enough!

Edges is not about galactic empires, trade networks, fast-paced interstellar wars, planetary rebellions, or humanlike aliens. And it definitely does not include faster-than-light travel. That last idea — no FTL — is kind of the point of the series. The galaxy is big. Really, really big. That’s why the last Nanotech Succession novel is titled Vast.

On the front page of my website I have a quote from long-time reader Larry Clough. It’s a flattering quote, but honestly, I posted it there as a warning, so potential new readers know what they’re getting into.

“Linda Nagata presents a unique world-view. Every one of her books that I have read has been alien and disturbing. I love and identify with the characters, but the situations they inhabit stretch the mind. This is as true of Linda Nagata’s fantasy as her science fiction. Her work is really, really different. And that’s a good thing.”

I am so grateful for readers who can enjoy my weird end of the field, along with all their other favorite forms of science fiction! And thank you for taking the time to recommend my books to others, and for posting your positive reader reviews. Together, you keep me going, and you give me a reason to write the next book. Cheers! 🍻🚀

With some tips on revising a novel
September was an incredibly busy month, entirely focused on finishing the revisions to Silver. I addressed almost all of the comments made by my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, which I think has helped significantly to clarify the story. I rejected a few suggestions for various reasons.

For those of you who are writers, you don’t have to follow every bit of advice your editor gives you. It’s your story. You know what you’re trying to achieve, and it’s your name that goes on the work. So weigh the advice, but if it doesn’t feel right to you, move on. (And don’t argue with your editor about it. 🙂 )

Silver is a fairly complex story. There’s a lot of world-building, along with unusual concepts. It’s not a book you can pick up and understand, without having read Edges first. That said, “complex” should not also mean “confusing” or “redundant.” Part of the revision process involves working toward that goal.

So after finishing the suggested revisions, I began a “read through” aimed at looking at the story as a whole. Starting from page one, I read the entire novel out loud to myself, going through it as quickly as I could while still making corrections. The idea behind a quick read is that I’m more likely to perceive the inconsistencies, while reading aloud lets me hear awkward wording and repeated words. And yes, I found a number of inconsistencies and awkward passages, so that exercise was definitely worth it. I’ll read it at least one more time before calling it “final.”

Several times, when pondering how to deal with an awkward passage, I found the best solution was to shorten it — simply cut back on the explanation. Sometimes, less is more — or anyway, it’s less confusing. 😉

Other than my freelance editor, no one has read Silver. Judy described the novel as “an immersive and absorbing read,” which was wonderful to hear, but doubt is always near the surface for most writers. I needed more feedback. So I recruited three “proofreaders” and sent the manuscript off to them on October 2. I’m anxiously awaiting their thoughts. I don’t see myself doing major revisions at this point — the story is what it is — but if there are tweaks that will further improve the storytelling, I’d like to undertake them. Presuming the feedback is mostly positive, I want to try to publish Silver before the end of November. Wish me luck!

Oh, and sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. The signup form is over there in the right-hand column. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. (You won’t be subscribed until you confirm.) If you don’t receive that email, check your spam/promotion folder — and whitelist me!

My September 5 newsletter included a book giveaway. I put up three sets of the paperback edition of the Red trilogy, one set each to three lucky winners. To participate, newsletter subscribers only needed to email me at a special address, indicating their interest.

(I had to limit participants to USA addresses only, because of the cost of international postage.)

The giveaway is over now.
Fifty-one people participated. I used Google’s random number generator to pick the winners. Congratulations, John, Lori, and Paul!

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter but didn’t receive it, please check your spam and/or your promotions folder, and white list my email address.

If you’re not yet subscribed, I hope you’ll sign up. You can use the form in the righthand column of this blog. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Once you confirm, you’ll be signed up.

The next newsletter goes out on September 26.