realthog

I've been too head-down-nose-to-the-grindstone-working-my-leedle-socks-off on the ginormous film noir book recently to do much posting here, alas: aside from anything else, Denying Science has picked up some further friendly reviews that I want to crow about ("masterpiece" says one).

But here's an exception to my blogging sloth. Hot news from Keith Brooke of Infinity Plus Ebooks:

Just to let you know that the latest batch of infinity plus singles has now gone live:

Kit Reed: Pilots of the Purple Twilight
Garry Kilworth: Memories of the Flying Ball Bike Shop
John Grant: All the Little Gods We Are
Lisa Tuttle: Closet Dreams
David D Levine: Fear of Widths

Full details, including links to Amazon and Smashwords are here.

As ever, B&N, Apple, Sony, Kobo and others will lag a few weeks behind.

Meanwhile, I hear Dennis Kucinich has been effectively bounced out of Congress by corrupt Republican redistricting. What sorry anti-American bastards these frightwingers are.

Current Music: Bacewicz: String Quinter #6

The first five Infinity Plus Singles (novelette ebooks at 99¢ apiece, suitable for reading during your lunch break or whenever) have just been released, and my "Has Anyone Here Seen Kristie?" is among them. It has been described by Matthew Cheney of SF Site as "like a Ray Bradbury story for mature audiences" -- golly!

You can find details of all five here and the download details for just "Has Anyone Here Seen Kristie?" here (Amazon US), here (Amazon UK) and here (Smashwords).

The titles in the series are numbered. I am, naturally, paranoid that someone has decided the appropriate label for "Has Anyone Here Seen Kristie?" is #2 . . .

Current Music: vacuum cleaner

Keith Brooke, whose Infinity Plus Ebooks bought my Warm Words and Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews for publication (just last Monday!), has written some very kind words about the project -- and about how he went from "You must be nuts" to "What a great idea" -- on his blog, All Things Keith Brooke and Infinity Plus. So that's started my day in the way I hope it continues.

Current Music: Michael Haydn: Symphony #2

Quite a few years ago I published in the late, much lamented magazine The Third Alternative a fantasy novelette called "Has Anyone Here Seen Kristie?" Some of its readers loved it, some of them hated it (too erotic), a couple said it was "a great Edinburgh story" (which filled me with joy), and so on. I've always loved it, because it seemed to me a good portrayal of a man, filled with guilt that it might have been his own shallowness that caused the suicide of his first wife, finally learning how to absolve himself and carry on living.

You know, typical Grant angst. But with lots of rude bits.

Anyway, Keith Brooke at Infinity Plus Ebooks is starting up a line called Infinity Plus Singles, epublications of single longish stories designed to appeal to the emerging Lunchbreak Market -- i.e., readers who want to find something they can download for 99c to read in their lunchbreak. I'm lucky enough that he's asked for three of my stories to be in his launch package; other authors who've so far signed up include Kit Reed, Neil Williamson, Anna Tambour and Sarah Ash, so I feel (a) that I'm in heady company and (b) that should this venture fail it'll probably be because of the weak link in the chain -- i.e., moi.

Today Keith sent through a couple of cover roughs, and I'm thrilled as can be about them. Here's the one for "Kristie":

Natty, huh? It has a sort of Faber & Faber coolness to it. All of the Infinity Plus Singles are apparently to have this same basic design. I think this endeavour shows every possible promise.

Current Music: just the background noise of torrential rains, again

Infinity Plus Ebooks is to publish, probably before the end of the month (such is the speed of events in this mighty digital age, Jim), a 150,000-word collection of the book reviews I've written over the years. For the last several days I've been editing this compilation, correcting all my typos, toning down a lot of the pomposity, and stripping out at least 5% of the general adolescent snottiness.

Perhaps half the reviews (and some two-thirds of the wordage) were done originally for the webzine Infinity Plus; a further big chunk of the book comprises my reviews for the late, lamented genre-fiction webzine Crescent Blues. The various other magazines represented include Extrapolation, Samhain and SFX. There's also a handful of reviews which were obviously published somewhere but, y'know, er, how can a writer be expected to keep proper records, um . . .

There's lots of discussion about what the "digital revolution" means to book publishing. One of the aspects which I think is too often ignored is exemplified by Warm Words & Otherwise.

I have the touching belief that the book is worth publishing: some of the stuff I've been editing over the past few days is actually, in my modest opinion, worth preserving. Even so, however much I might rosify the tint of my spectacles, a conventionally printed or PoD edition would obviously be a complete disaster; if my mum were still alive it'd be a different story, but since her demise sales have plummeted. An ebook edition at perhaps $1.99, on the other hand, while hardly destined to burn its way up any New York Times bestseller list, has every chance of doing moderately well -- it might sell a few tens or hundreds of copies where a print version would likely sell zero. At best.

Later, when I feel less entangled by flu, I'll try to remember to post a contents list here.

Current Music: Bach JC - Piano Concerto in G (C60B)

Many will fondly recall the website Infinity Plus, which offered an astonishing array of free online fiction, plus reviews, interviews and suchlike stuff. (It's all still there as an archive, if you have a few months' reading time to spare.)

More recently, Keith Brooke -- the Infinity Plus supremo -- has founded Infinity Plus Ebooks, which has been publishing with some success since just before the start of the year . . . even though two of the books concerned are by moi.

Now the first Infinity Plus Ebooks sampler is available. Called Infinities, it has a contents list as follows:

Keith Brooke: "The Man Who Built Heaven" (short story)
Eric Brown: "Venus Macabre" (short story)
Eric Brown: extract from novel A Writer's Life
John Grant: "Wooden Horse" (novelette)
Garry Kilworth: "Phoenix Man" (short story)
Kaitlin Queen: extract from novel One More Unfortunate
Iain Rowan: "One Step Closer" (short story)

Anna Tambour: extract from novel Spotted Lily
Linda Nagata: extract from novel Memory
Scott Nicholson: extract from novel The Red Church
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: extract from novel The Disappeared
Steven Savile: extract from novel The Immortal

Infinities is available for FREEEEE download in .mobi (Kindle) and .epub formats at the Infinity Plus Ebooks site and in these and some other formats from Smashwords.

Just to repeat in case of misunderstanding, it's

!!!FREEEEE!!!

(Classy, eh?)

Current Music: CPE Bach: Oboe Concerto

I've done a guest blog about my short novel Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi for All Things Keith Brooke and Infinity Plus. I chat about the circumstances under which the book was written (over a weekend at the first of the Groucho Club's One-Day Novel Contests), what the various bits and pieces of it meant and mean to me, and so on.

My piece is called "Of Spatting Gods, Extraordinarily Heavy Laptops, Flights, Quests, Contests, Archetypes, Stuff Like That" and can be read here.

Current Music: Bax: From Dusk Till Dawn

The ebook of my Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi is now available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, and jolly pleased I am about this!

The e-edition is incredibly cheap -- I'm cutting me own throat even telling yer about it, I am -- so hurry along and buy, BUY, BUY!!!

(If you would be interested in reviewing the book, please lemme know either in a comment or, if you have my e-address, by email.)

In other ebook news, PS Publishing is planning (no date as yet) to issue an e-edition of the novella of mine they published in 2008, The City in These Pages; the "value added" bonus feature is, I think, going to be my novelette "Always More Than You Know", which first appeared in the same year in Des Lewis's anthology Cone Zero.

There are also moves afoot to create ebook versions of my nonfiction books Discarded Science, Corrupted Science and Bogus Science. Exactly how this will be effected is not yet certain -- by the books' original publisher (AAPPL) either solo or in some sort of collaboration. I should know a bit more after the London International Book Fair.

Hm. It seems that I'm finally extracting a digital . . .

As I mentioned earlier, things move quickly in the e-publishing world! The reissue of my Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi should be in your handy neighborhood online store early next week. In the meantime, a mere day after I'd signed the contract, the "cover" design turned up:

I don't know where they found the illustrator, but I think he's done a great job . . .

Fingers crossed the book follows in the (moderately) successful path of the e-edition of Take No Prisoners.

Current Music: Turina - Danses Fantastiques

I've just signed the contract with Infinity Plus Ebooks for the reissue in ebook format of my short novel Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi, which was first published in 2002 as half of a "double" (the other half being Colin Wilson's The Tomb of the Old Ones) although written some years before that.

As an added bonus, the ebook will contain also my novella "The Beach of the Drowned", which was first published a couple of years ago in Dave Hutchinson's bumper anthology Under the Rose.

Things move quickly in the ebook world! I gather publication in the first format, Kindle, should be achieved by next week, possibly even sooner. The "cover" is already being finalized; I'll post a copy here when I can -- plus a link, you betcha.

Meanwhile, it seems the Infinity Plus edition of my collection Take No Prisoners is continuing to do well.

I'm hoping to have some more ebook news shortly . . .

Current Music: Trio Mediaeval: A Worcester Ladymass

I seem to have scored a first:

I thought this might have happened sooner, but John Grant's collection Take No Prisoners is the first eBook only release I've listed in this column during the decade or so I've been doing it. It won't be the last. And I have to say that this is a development I applaud.

Thanks to the kindly folks at SF Revu!

I've been told by Infinity Plus Books supremo Keith Brooke that I may distribute PDFs to people who'd like to review the book, whether in orthodox venues or on their blogs. Just gimme a yell.

Current Music: Stenhammar: Symphony #2

I've been up to my eyes trying to get Denying Science finished, and therefore not posting here much -- not doing anything much, really, except batter away at the keyboard and panic.

One thing I haven't reported is that my 2004 story collection Take No Prisoners has been reissued for Kindle by Infinity Plus Ebooks. I'll put the Product Description below the fold for them as might be interested.

This morning I had a note from Infinity Plus supremo Keith Brooke to say Take No Prisoners was at #6 on the Amazon bestseller list in the Fantasy Anthologies category. Astonishingly, this proved actually to be true . . . although when I checked the link just now I discovered it had slipped to #7; someone must have returned their copy in disgust, or something.

I must make sure all my future book covers bear the words AMAZON BESTSELLING AUTHOR. Big. In gold foil lettering. And embossed.

( Read all about it! )

Current Music: too early in the day

Here's a press release I received today, and it has a morsel of exciting news (more later) about

MOI

embedded within it:

Announcing the new infinity plus ebook imprint

www.infinityplus.co.uk/books

December 2010:

The infinity plus ebook imprint launches with six titles:

The Angels of Life and Death by Eric Brown, a new collection of short fiction
the collected short fiction of Keith Brooke, in five volumes (Liberty Spin, Embrace, Faking It, Segue and Memesis), with two original stories and specially written afterwords for each story

Each book is available in the Kindle ebook format, priced $3.44 / £2.18. Covers for the first six books are by Dominic Harman and Debbie Nicholson. Soon to follow the launch titles will be books from Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Molly Brown, Garry Kilworth and others.

Founder of infinity plus, Keith Brooke, says: "We settled on the Kindle format because it has emerged as a market leader and we want to test the market. If the infinity plus ebook imprint proves to be viable we'll move into other ebook formats and possibly even good old-fashioned hard copy publishing. We'll also be putting out work by other authors who have been associated with infinity plus over the years, publishing new books and making older titles available again."

Last Christmas the Kindle was the number one bestselling item at amazon.com, and sales are set to be far greater this Christmas. Kindle ebooks can also be read on PCs, Macs, smart phones and other devices.

About infinity plus:

infinity plus is a science fiction, fantasy and horror showcase that ran from 1997 to 2007 and remains online as an archive
the site holds more than 2.1 million words of fiction, 1000 book reviews and 100 interviews
authors featured on the site include Stephen Baxter, Mary Gentle, Peter F Hamilton, Gwyneth Jones, Vonda N McIntyre, Michael Moorcock, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepard, Michael Swanwick, Jack Vance, Connie Willis and Gene Wolfe
there have been three infinity plus print anthologies
Praise for infinity plus:

"looks great. And it's good to find quality fiction on the web" (Ellen Datlow)
"one of the Internet's most valuable resources for intelligent science fiction of high literary quality" (Gardner Dozois)
"the best place for genre fiction on the web" (SFX)
"first-rate" (Locus Online)

Further information:

www.infinityplus.co.uk/books
for any further information, interviews, review copies, etc, contact Keith Brooke: keith@keithbrooke.co.uk

Current Music: Poulenc miscellany

My friend and fellow-author Dave Hutchinson (http://hutch0.livejournal.com/) has told me that I should start myself a Live Journal and thereby get with it, join the smart set, look cool, be a babe magnet, etc. So here I am testing the system to see if I can master the technology ...

Who am I? Ignoring centuries of philosophy, perhaps the simplest way to answer would be to paste in (assuming I can find a copy) the latest-ish version of my standard biographical blurb, as supplied to luckless publishers and readers:

=====

JOHN GRANT (real name Paul Barnett) is the author of about 70 books. His The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters, currently in its third edition, is regarded as the standard work in its field. As co-editor with John Clute of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy he received the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award and several other international awards. As managing editor of the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction he shared a rare British Science Fiction Association Special Award, the first to be given in 17 years. He received a second Hugo in 2004 for The Chesley Awards: A Retrospective (done with Elizabeth Humphrey and Pamela D. Scoville).

Under his own name he was until 2003 Commissioning Editor of Paper Tiger, the world's leading publisher of fantasy art books; he received the 2002 Chesley Award for his work with Paper Tiger. He was until recently the US Reviews Editor of Infinity Plus and is a Consultant Editor to AAPPL (Artists' & Photographers' Press Ltd).

Recently published major books, all as John Grant, include Masters of Animation, the "book-length fictions" Dragonhenge (illustrated by Bob Eggleton and shortlisted for a 2003 Hugo Award) and its "sequel" The Stardragons, the novel The Far-Enough Window, the story collection Take No Prisoners, the children's book Life-Size Dragons (illustrated by Fred Gambino), the anthology New Writings in the Fantastic, and two books on the history of science, Discarded Science and Corrupted Science. He has just finished (1) a wildly experimental mosaic novel eviscerating the Bush Administration and (2) a cute children's book, and is currently at work on a book about film noir and, with his other hand, a further history-of-science book.

=====

That seems to be more than enough to put into this first experimental foray ...

Current Mood: nervous
Current Location: home
Current Music: Melanie

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more Infinity Plus singles
infinity plus singles
warm words
has anyone here seen Kristie?
Sold: *Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews*
Infinity Plus is desperate to give you a FREEEEE book!
new guest blog
see - Qin!
cover
sold: Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi
excuse me while I boldly go
bestsellerdom beckons?
new ebook imprint
so how do I get this danged thing to work ...?

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Entries tagged with infinity plus

more Infinity Plus singles

infinity plus singles

warm words

has anyone here seen Kristie?

Sold: Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews

Infinity Plus is desperate to give you a FREEEEE book!

new guest blog

see - Qin!

cover

sold: Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi

excuse me while I boldly go

bestsellerdom beckons?

new ebook imprint

so how do I get this danged thing to work ...?