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Showing posts from May, 2009

Spireclaw - An easier way to get the free audiobook

One of the "quirks" of my website is that, because it runs in Flash, I was having problems making the MP3 files of the Spireclaw audiobook downloadable. They seemed to only want to run in Quicktime in a browser, and were not right-clickable (to enable people to save it to their computer). This hasn't been much help because I want people to put the chapters onto their iPods and listen on the beach or in the garden. Anyway, I stumbled across a solution. Go here to see all the files listed directly. Here you can happily right-click and Save As to your heart's content. I hope you enjoy Spireclaw , and I look forward to hearing what you think of the ending (but please don't post spoilers here!)

Web Fiction Guide

The Web Fiction Guide is a really nicely presented site that lists and reviews online fiction of all types. They approached me through Twitter and I have now received news that my novels "The Daedalus Transfer" and "Spireclaw" are listed with them. Fingers crossed for some extra traffic to my stories. The Web Fiction Guide can be found here .

Now Available - New Schaefer's Integrity Book Cover

Yes it's true. After much waiting, Blackwell Bookshop is selling copies of my novel Schaefer's Integrity with the new cover for the great price of £6.99. To mark this memorable occasion, I have posted an article on my website that looks at the creative process behind Marvin Herbring's fab illustration, complete with a short interview with the artist, and some interesting and cool preliminary sketches that he put together prior to delivering the final version. You can read the article here . I always wanted Schaefer's Integrity to be a science fiction novel for people who have never read science fiction. Many non genre readers who have read the story say that it achieves that admirably. So, will this be the book that gets you into sci-fi? I hope so.

3 Arthur C Clarke novels I wish were movies

So science fiction is cool again. Thank God for that. But it's been a few years coming. I think there are a couple of reasons for its resurgence. The primary one being Mr JJ Abrams and his Star Trek reboot, and a very fine reboot it is too. Add to this James Cameron's upcoming Avatar, Peter Jackson dabbling with District 9, Sam Rockwell on the Moon, and Terminator Salvation, and we've got a busy and exciting horizon in the genre. When Arthur C Clarke passed away last year I was surprised that there wasn't a clamour in Hollywood to greenlight what could potentially be the next "2001" in memory of the visionary author (and I don't mean "2061"). So here's my tuppence-worth. The three Arthur C Clarke books I think should be made into films. Rendezvous with Rama: Being the first of 4 books, this has scope for a franchise. The story centres around a strange cylindrical spaceship some 40km across that drifts into our solar system. A team is sent to

Kindle-format my eBook for a signed copy of Schaefer's Integrity

The heading rather says it all. But here's the scoop. I would like to reformat my two online eBooks, "Spireclaw" and "The Daedalus Transfer" for the Amazon Kindle but my skills at HTML are pretty limited. So I thought I'd put it out to the wider world. Do you reformat ebooks for Kindle all the time? If not do you know someone who does? If you're up for the task please get in touch via the Contact Me page on my website and I will send you a Word version of either "Spireclaw" or "The Daedalus Transfer". The first successful reformatter of each eBook will receive a signed copy of my sci-fi novel "Schaefer's Integrity" with the new cover art by Marvin Herbring, sent to them anywhere in the world.

New Schaefer's Integrity cover imminent

After much work, redesigns and repositionings, I am reliably informed by YouWriteOn, publishers of my novel Schaefer's Integrity, that the new cover will be on the book in about 7 days. I am hoping the image will change on the online bookseller's websites but that remains to be seen. I may end up making those amendments myself if I can. Anyway. I know a number of you have been holding back on your purchase until the new cover appears, so it looks like the wait will soon be over. I will post here if anything changes, or indeed if I get any specific indication that the cover has actually changed. In the meantime, please head over to my Facebook group for the book and join up, if you happen to be a Facebooky kind of person.

Another review of The Darken Loop

Rich Horton over at SFSite has reviewed Jupiter SF 23 , and says of my piece The Darken Loop that "... As with many time travel stories, paradoxes are a bit of a problem, not too badly navigated here. Interesting work, on the whole." Far be it for me to review a review, but here it seems the use of negative words to describe my story positively should still be viewed as a good write up, so I'm grateful for that. I think I fared well compared to some of the other stories in the magazine. Hmm, I'm beginning to wonder what he'll make of my upcoming Axiom Few story The Voidant Lance (Jupiter SF January 2010)