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.

Whoops. I see it’s been nearly a month since I posted here, but that’s because I’ve been working hard…

Here’s a quick update on Silver:
I received the editorial letter on it at the start of the month, and I just finished my first pass through the edits. Only the hard stuff is left! 🙂 🤔🚀

September 5 Newsletter
My latest newsletter went out last Thursday. If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, please do! Use that form over there in the righthand column of this blog.

Here’s one of the items included in the newsletter:

A Ring-Shaped World

I’ll speak cautiously to avoid any significant spoiler, but towards the end of Edges there is mention of a ring-shaped world, planetary in scale. A few of my longtime readers have already made the connection. This world is the same world featured in my novel Memory.

When I wrote Memory, I thought of it as being apart from the Nanotech books – a separate story world. But as I worked on the new Inverted Frontier series, I realized these two story worlds could overlap in a very interesting way.

Silver is a direct sequel to Edges, but it also works as a sequel to Memory. You don’t need to read Memory to enjoy Silver, but if you like the idea of exploring in this evolving story world, you can drop by my website to learn more about this earlier novel.

Storybundles are themed collections of ebooks, sold together at discount, and available only for a very short period of time. They’ve been popular with readers, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to participate in one. The newest bundle — Women in Science Fiction — was put together by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Why do a bundle of women science fiction writers? Here’s what Kris had to say:

I received a huge shock late last year when some younger writers told me that women didn’t write science fiction. “Present company excepted,” they said to me.

“But…but…what about…” and I listed wonderful writer after wonderful writer, whom these young writers had never heard of. I did some research and realized that even though women have written sf since the beginning of sf (in fact, you could argue that a woman started the genre. Hats off to you and your Frankenstein monster, Mary Shelley!), women and their fiction never received the press that their male counterparts did. That’s why those young writers had no idea women have always written science fiction.

So I decided to do a bunch of projects to rectify the publicity problem, including this StoryBundle.

So here we are!

(more…)

The sale is done now. Thanks so much to all who participated and who helped to spread the word. If you enjoyed MEMORY and would like to see a sequel please let me know. And do sign up for my newsletter (“New Book Alerts” at the top of the right hand column)–it goes out only a few times a year.

“[A] kick ass big idea, hard SF novel…Yes, I’m raving. But I seriously love this book.” —Tobias Buckell

Many of my readers consider Memory to be their favorite among my novels, and I would love to write a sequel, but I’m going to need the support of a lot of readers to do it. This will probably mean doing a Kickstarter to make sure the interest is there. In the meantime, I’d like to persuade more of you to read Memory, so for a limited time I’m offering it for only $3. Thanks for considering it!

The reduced price is available at Amazon US and Amazon UK, so if you’re a regular Amazon customer (and you don’t live in a country where Amazon tacks on extra fees) please purchase there. This will help the novel’s rank and give it more visibility to other customers. The reduced price is also available at my Mythic Island Press webstore, to buyers worldwide.

If you’re a regular customer of Kobo Books, here’s the link to their website

With luck the lower price will also become available at Barnes & Noble, but they tend to be slower about updating their listings, so no guarantees.

For news of upcoming books (and possible Kickstarters!) PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY VERY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER.

And if you read Memory and enjoy it, please consider reviewing it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or otherwise spreading the word — because word of mouth is the best way to sell books, and I need all the help I can get! 😉

About a month ago, artist Emily Irwin finished work on a new cover for my novel Memory. I replaced the cover on the ebook immediately, and then set about finalizing the print book. I already had the interior layout done, and Emily had already assembled the final cover art on a template provided by Lightning Source, my print-on-demand company. So it should have been easy. Right?

After carefully re-checking everything, I uploaded the files late on February 20th, and waited for my proof to arrive. There was a weekend in the way, and overnight to Maui is never overnight, so it wasn’t until the 26th that I had my proof, and it wasn’t good. The colors on the cover were much darker than they appeared onscreen and away from bright sunlight it was hard to make out what was going on, a situation that wasn’t helped by the matte finish I had ordered instead of the usual glossy finish. The light-colored text was actually hard to read. So after thinking it over for a couple of days, I contacted Emily and asked if she’d be willing to use a brighter color for the text, to lighten the image overall, and to place it on a glossy template.

Emily did all of this, sending me three new versions with different levels of brightness. I decided to use the brightest of all, resubmitted the file, and waited for my new proof. It arrived, and it was good! Quite lovely. But it still had a matte finish, instead of the glossy finish I thought I’d requested. I queried Lightning Source, and it turns out I’d misunderstood the process. The template does not determine the finish. That’s decided by the metadata.

By this point I was not feeling remotely competent. So instead of deciding for myself, I solicited opinions, and the unanimous decision was to keep the matte finish. So a couple days ago I approved the proof “as is”–and already Amazon has listed the print book as available to purchase. This surprised me, because the last time I did a print book through Lightning Source, Barnes & Noble had it up almost overnight while Amazon took two or three weeks–proving once again that in this business things change all the time.

Click here to see the print edition on Amazon.

Right now, if you click “See Inside the Book” you will not see the new edition. I still have to submit the file for that–one of the tasks on my list for today.

Emily Irwin has created a new cover for my novel Memory and I love it.

Click the image below to see a larger version in a new window:

Emily is a graphic artist currently working and living in Montreal, but she grew up here on Maui and went to high school with my kids. She first read Memory in high school and has read it several times since. My daughter knew I wanted a new cover, and suggested I connect with Emily–which I did.

Emily listened to my very vague cover ideas, and created a series of thumbnail sketches incorporating my ideas and some of her own, and then, as a whim, she added one more concept, much more abstract and fantastical than the others. That was the image both my daughter and I immediately gravitated toward, and the end result is the cover above. I’m very pleased, and I hope this cover will give new life to the book.

Emily’s cover will be going live on the ebook over the next few days, and will be featured on a new print edition of Memory, coming soon.

[A] kick ass big idea, hard SF novel…Yes, I’m raving. But I seriously love this book.
-–Tobias Buckell

The cover I designed for Memory didn’t seem to be too popular with y’all, so I asked artist Jenn Reese, a writer herself and owner of Tiger Bright Studios, to come up with something new, and here’s the beautiful result.

The new cover went live today on Amazon, and should show up at Barnes & Noble before too long. Find the ebook here:
Amazon.com USA
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

What sort of cover sells books? I don’t know, but I’m willing to keep experimenting.

Let me know what you think!

UPDATED July 14, 2013: I haven’t done a “Sample Sunday” for a while, so I thought I’d bring this back up to the front for a day.

MEMORY is “science fiction that feels like fantasy.” Click here to read a very flattering recent review by science fiction author and blogger Tobias Buckell. Click here for places to buy MEMORY.

CHAPTER 1

When I was ten I had a blanket that was smooth and dark, with no light of its own until I moved and then its folds would glitter with thousands of tiny stars in all the colors of the stars in the night sky. But the pale arch that appears at the zenith on clear nights and that we call the Bow of Heaven never would appear on my blanket–and for that I was glad. For if there was no Heaven, I reasoned, then the dead would always be reborn in this world and not the next, no matter how wise they became in life.

This was always a great concern for me, for my mother was the wisest person I knew and I feared for her. More than once I schemed to make her look foolish, just to be sure she would not get into Heaven when her time came. When my antics grew too much she would turn to my father. With a dark frown and her strong arms crossed over her chest she would say, “We have been so very fortunate to have such a wild and reckless daughter as Jubilee. Obviously, she was sent to teach us wisdom.” My father would laugh, but I would pout, knowing I had lost another round, and that I must try harder next time.

I seldom suffered a guilty conscience. I knew it was my role to be wild–even my mother agreed to that–but on the night my story begins I was troubled by the thought that perhaps this time I had gone too far. (more…)