the great ebook experiment

So, what’s all this about?

Well, following the post by Susanna O’Leary, and well-documented posts by Writers of the Future judges and professional authors Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch, and the previously mentioned jump by Australian horror author Shane Jiraiya Cummings, I have come to the conclusion that bringing out one’s works as ebooks is no longer considered the death of your writing career. I actually doubt it ever was, or at least not to the extent doomsayers would have it.

To cut a long story short, I’m making some works available electronically.

My aims are as follows:
1. It’s intended to be a library, a long-term project.
2. I will eventually put on all my sold work, and some new work as well.
3. It’s just one part of my marketing strategy, and won’t stop me selling work in other ways.
4. Ultimately, the aim is to get me to write more and agonise less.

At the moment, I have two things up:
His Name In Lights

A novelette originally published in the Universe Annex of the Grantville Gazette, of a future where people live in the outer reaches of the solar system, of the ultimate in skywriting and lives in danger as a result of a misunderstanding.

Stripped bare – a lighthearted guide to getting the most out of writers’ critique groups

Features material posted here, and more, collated into a beginner how-to guide to critique group etiquette with a difference. The message is: when you join a critique group, you’ll learn most from human interaction and how it is affected by the power of words on the page (in a critique).

Coming up:

The Far Horizon

Of all the things Cory Wilson expects to do when he moves to Midway Space Station, saving aliens from humans isn’t one. An important conference is about to start at the station, not usually the sort of thing kids care about, not even when the conference is between humans and aliens, and half your family is alien. However, when bullies tease Cory, he ends up in a prohibited area where he overhears some men planning to plant a bomb at the conference. Because the terrorists hide their messages in computer games, no one believes Cory, not even his father, the station director. Kids at school think he’s crazy, some even think aliens should be bombed. The conference starts, the aliens have brought a very important person, and Cory’s teacher, one of the terrorists, locks Cory in the classroom. Can he get out in time? If he does, will anyone listen?

A novel aimed at late primary school-early high school readers.