Back in January, I posted a list of writing goals for 2016. One of those goals was to publish a second short story collection — and here it is: Light And Shadow: eight short stories.

The collection includes all my short fiction published since 2012, with the exception of the two “Zeke Choy” stories from the Nanotech Succession story world.

Here’s the list of included stories:

Through Your Eyes (Asimov’s 2013)
Halfway Home (Nightmare Magazine 2013)
Codename: Delphi (Lightspeed Magazine 2014)
Attitude (Reach For Infinity 2014)
A Moment Before It Struck (Lightspeed Magazine 2012)
Light and Shadow (War Stories 2014)
Nightside On Callisto (Lightspeed Magazine 2012)
The Way Home (Operation Arcana 2015)

It’s likely that those of you who regularly visit this blog have already read most of these stories, and if you haven’t, I want to let you know that most of them are available to read online. If you’d rather approach them that way, visit my website for links.

On the other hand, an ebook is vastly more convenient, this one contains short introductory notes with each story, and sales of this ebook could give a small but meaningful boost to my rather paltry career.

Further persuasion: I’ll add that half of these stories have appeared in various best-of-the-year anthologies.

So…buy an ebook! And tell your friends! I don’t expect this collection to be a big seller, but I’m hoping it can serve as an introduction to my work, for those vast numbers of readers who have never encountered my stories or novels before.

Here are some vendor links. The first link is to my webstore, which uses PayPal to checkout:

Mythic Island Press LLC
Amazon.com USA
Amazon.com UK
Kobo Books (International)
Barnes & Noble

Okay, back to writing.

Cover art for “Through Your Eyes” by
Dallas Nagata White (click image to view large version)

Update: July 19, 2013
This promotion has ended, but the ebook is presently available for purchase at Mythic Island Press LLC for $1.25.

My short story “Through Your Eyes” was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction‘s April/May 2013 issue. It’s never been generally available — until now.

“Through Your Eyes” is a prequel story to my newest novel, The Red: First Light. Right now, I’m offering an ebook copy to everyone who subscribes to my newsletter.***

To get your copy, just fill in your email address and a name in the “New Book Alerts” form at the top of the righthand column, or if you’re using a feed that doesn’t show the column you can go here to fill in the form.

After you submit the form, you’ll get an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Once you do that, you’ll get a thank-you email that includes the web address where you can download both EPUB and MOBI (Kindle) versions of the “Through Your Eyes” ebook, which also includes an excerpt from The Red: First Light Note that it usually takes ten or fifteen minutes for this email to arrive.

My newsletter doesn’t go out very often. Generally I send it when I have new publications to announce, so you won’t be spammed. I hope you’ll sign up. It’s the best way I’ve found to stay in touch with readers.

*** The download is also available to current subscribers. An email has been sent explaining how to get it. If you’re a subscriber and didn’t get the email, please check your spam folder.

Here’s what Locus says about “Nahiku West”:
“A complex mystery, with an intricate plot… Well conceived and well executed. RECOMMENDED.”

“Nahiku West” is a 9,000-word novelette. Find it at Book View Café Use coupon code NW1012 for $1 off through October 30, 2012.

Those of you who’ve been around for a while will remember Amazing Stories as one of the primary digest magazines publishing science fiction and fantasy short stories. Launched in 1926, Amazing passed through various owners, continuing to publish until 2005.

I never sold a story to Amazing when it was a regular magazine, though I did try a lot in the early years, and I think I got close a time or two. I did finally place my shortest published fiction ever in an Amazing Stories anthology edited by Kim Mohan.

So…in case you haven’t already heard, Amazing Stories is on it’s way back! Steve Davidson has taken over the helm and the “Relaunch Prelaunch Issue” is going up online throughout the month of July.

Book View Café has the honor of participating in the first new issue, in the form of a roundtable discussion on questions relating to science fiction and the new world of publishing. You can find the first issue here, along with links to the questions and responses. See “Chain Mail: Amazing Stories Interviews 13 Authors From the Book View Cafe.”

To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, here are the first questions in the Chain Mail interview:

Part 1 – Is Science Fiction Definable?

Part 2 – Is Science Fiction Dying?

Part 3 – Is There A Divide Between Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction?

Part 4 – Is Fantasy Eclipsing Science Fiction?

Check it out and please let me know what you think!

Thumbing back through my Kindle to review what I’ve been reading, or contemplating reading, lately reveals an odd mix. I’ve been interested in shorter work, so I’ve enjoyed Lawrence Block’s collection The Night and the Music, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Retrieval Artist, some of Book View Café’s anthology Beyond Grimm, and some online stories, especially at Lightspeed Magazine (check out Tim Pratt’s Cup and Table).

I’ve sampled several novels, and have a lot more lined up. I was really intrigued by Brian Evenson’s Immobility, and I went to buy it, but was put off by the price, which I think was $13 at the time. It’s not that I think an ebook can’t be worth $13, but I charge only five or six dollars for my own books. So in one of those twisted psychological moves, it feels like I’m implying my books are rubbish if I’m willing to pay more than twice their cost for a book I know little about, by an author unfamiliar to me. I think this leaves Richard Kadrey’s Aloha From Hell as the most expensive e-novel I’ve ever bought, at eleven or twelve dollars—but that was the third book in a series that I’ve really enjoyed.

The two novels I’ve finished most recently are Greg Egan’s Incandescence, and Alastair Reynolds’ House of Suns, both of which engaged in galaxy-spanning cultures, and technologies existing across vast spans of time. Both are fascinating, and recommended.

Do you have a book to recommend? I’d love to hear about it. All genres welcome.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I stopped writing short fiction at the end of the last century, but last fall I took it up again. The second story I wrote, “Nightside on Callisto,” has now become my first original short fiction to reach publication since my 2000 Nebula-award winner.

This feels like a very significant milestone for me.

Look for “Nightside on Callisto” in the May issue of Lightspeed magazine, now available here as an ebook. Lightspeed is an innovative short fiction market. Please support them by purchasing a copy of the magazine!

The short story I talked about a few days ago has undergone some revision. It’s crept up in length (of course) and is now 5,900 words. I would have liked it shorter, but I’m not going to complain too much. It’s “done” to the extent that if I don’t rustle up a good beta reader in the next day or two, I’ll probably give in to the temptation to just send it off un-vetted.

The protagonist of this story is proving rather troublesome. He’s in my head, lobbying for his own novel now that I’ve messed up his nice life — and I have to admit I’m tempted, despite all the other projects I’m supposed to be working on.

In The Tide is an older story of mine, and the first short that I put out in ebook form. The idea was to sell it for the minimum price allowed at Amazon: 99-cents, which would earn me 35%, or 35-cents on every sale. I note that John Locke managed to get rich on that same margin! Unfortunately, I can’t yet say the same.

I would have priced the story at “free” if it were an easy thing to do. It’s not. Various backdoor machinations are required to accomplish it, and I don’t want to play. So I’ve taken the story down from Amazon and am now offering it free on my website, in both epub and mobi versions. The package includes a five-chapter sample from my novel The Bohr Maker. So if you’ve never read a short story of mine, or want an easy, no-commitment way to sample The Bohr Maker, please snag a copy. And if you know anyone else who might be interested, I urge you, please, PLEASE send them over to MythicIsland.com.

Find the link to the free story in the upper right of the landing page, in that box that says “Free Fiction” 😉

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve made another short story sale, my second since I started writing short fiction again last fall. This one, titled Nightside on Callisto, has gone to Lightspeed Magazine, and is tentatively scheduled for the May issue.

This sale was a completely new experience for me. I’m used to waiting weeks for a response on a story, but this round took roughly 22 hours from submission to acceptance, thanks to editor John Joseph Adams’ policy of acting fast on all submissions. That’s a policy I could easily get used to!

The first short fiction I’ve written in years has sold to Analog Science Fiction & Fact! (Yes, there is a big grin on my face.)

I wrote the story last September. This was a milestone for me, because the last original story of less-than-novel length that I ever wrote was published in 2000–so it had been a while.

The new story was a little bit too long to be called a short story–at 8,900 words it’s technically a novelette, but fortunately, Analog is okay with that length, and Analog was also the home of my first four pro sales, way back when, so I decided to send it there first. Just after New Year’s the very welcome news arrived that editor Stanley Schmidt is buying the story.

No publication date yet, but I’ll post when I know.

If you’d like to read more about the story and the process of writing it, check out this blog post.