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Huge giveaway of signed science fiction paperbacks

I’m involved with this incredibly massive signed paperback giveaway over at Sci-Fi Bridge. They’ve got such an amazing deal going on right now I can hardly believe it myself, and it just seems a crime not to share it.

The giveaways SFB does are particularly special because everyone is a winner. Those who sign up will get these 6 ebooks straight away, no strings attached (and you can unsubscribe from the list whenever you please, although I don’t know why you would).

A little bit about each of the free books currently being offered, with links to Amazon* and author pages if you’re curious to find out more about a particular one.

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Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson – If you loved Ender’s Game, Starship Troopers, and Old Man’s War, you’ll love Earthrise, a new military science fiction series. From a USA Today bestselling author.

Dark Space by Jasper T. Scott – Ten years ago the Sythians invaded the galaxy with one goal: to wipe out the human race. Now the survivors are hiding in the last human sector of the galaxy: Dark Space–once a place of exile for criminals, now the last refuge of mankind.

Ambassador 1 by Patty Jansen – “A Matt Damon political thriller meets Total Recall action with Avatar otherworldliness.” –Ditmar Award winning author Zena Shapter

The Future Chronicles – This Future Chronicles Special Edition volume is a compendium of stories selected from the Chronicles’ standalone titles, and includes five new stories, never before published, from some of today’s best writers in speculative fiction.

The Galapagos Incident by Felix R. Savage – The Galapagos Incident is the first book of the Sol System Renegades series, an action-packed near-future space opera series perfect for fans of The Expanse, the science fiction of Neal Stephenson, and character-centric hard sci-fi.

Earth-Last Sanctuary by Christian Kallias – When the evil Obsidian Empire delivers a deathblow against the Star Alliance, fighter pilot Lieutenant Chase Athanatos leads a band of scattered survivors to the farthest reaches of the known universe, to a little planet called Earth.

As for the winners

As for the actual signed paperback prizes, of which my novel The Auriga Project is one, six lucky winners will receive these gifts…

  • 1 Winner will receive 25+ Signed Space Opera/Exploration/First Contact Books.
  • 1 Winner will receive 25+ Signed Dystopian/Post Apolcayptic/Time-Travel Books
  • 1 Winner will receive 15+ Signed Military Sci-fi/Space Marine Books
  • 1 Winner will receive a Brand New Kindle Fire 7
  • 2 Winners will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card

This will be live until the end of October, but it won’t last forever. Good luck!

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* Links to books are affiliate links, which means if you do decide to buy a copy I get a few pennies as a referral fee. That money goes to supporting my writing, so I thank you kindly.

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Copyedits in for The Alien Element

Yesterday afternoon, my editor got back in touch with copyedits for The Alien Element. Right on schedule!

I hustled to get them all entered today. This is a simple but slow process where I take the changes back in to Scrivener, which I’ll use to produce the ebook version.

It was after dinner, nearly 11pm before I was done. Then I went out for a long walk to stretch my stiff back and legs.

A solid day. Tiring, but productive. Good to know I can do copyedits (and some minor revisions) for a full length novel in a day.

Tomorrow I’ll format the ebook and get it out to ARC readers. If you’re on my ARC list, look for an email in the next day or so! If you want to read this book early in exchange for an honest review, get in touch with me by email or leave a comment here.

Teasers for the book are starting to come out, too. Read Chapter 1 of The Alien Element on the blog there.

In the home stretch now!

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Reading: Star Nomad


Star Nomad (Fallen Empire, Book 1) by Lindsay Buroker
I read this science fiction novel when I was traveling back in April. Star Nomad by Lindsay Buroker is a fun, satisfying story that promises to be the beginning of a great intergalactic adventure, empire versus rebels style.

It reminded me of Star Wars media novels in a good way. You’ll probably like this story if you care for Firefly, too. In an alternate universe where Firefly wasnt cancelled, Lindsay Buroker’s got hired as a writer in season 5 when they needed a fresh take on a show that was in danger of growing stale.

Join fighter pilot Captain Alisa Marchenko as she journeys to resuscitate a clunky old freighter and rejoin her daughter on her home planet. It’s a good thing the war ended after she got injured. The galaxy is safer after a war ends…right?

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Steady As You Go

Photo by Andrew Ridley: https://unsplash.com/@aridley88

I completed the second draft of Tales of the Republic on Sunday—a full week past the crazy insane Jan 15 deadline I set. So it took longer than expected, but I got it done. And I would have blogged about it sooner, but writing and freelance work and life (and trying not to mold my ass too firmly to this chair) has kept me busy.

What’s amazing about setting a crazy deadline is that I was forced to adjust my process to fit the deadline, rather than the other way around. Instead of asking, “how long will this take?” and picking a date at the end of that span of time, I picked the date I WANTED it to be done and then said, “now how the hell am I going to make this work?”

The task expands to fill the time allotted—or shrinks, depending on the point of view. I made it work—sort of.

My story tracker from Christmas Eve (one month ago) says I was at 30% complete—after 3+ months of editing! A month later, the draft is done. The difference? A deadline. Three months for 30% vs. 1 month for 70%. And I’d wager that I suffered more in the despairing 3 month crawl than I did in the 1 month sprint. None of it would have been possible without the crazy deadline.

Again, so I remember it: I wouldn’t have finished the book this month without that deadline.

So the lesson here is to set a crazy deadline, stay the course, and go after it. Steady as you go. Even a week late is progress worth celebrating.

After submitting the manuscript on Sunday afternoon, I went to North Austin to have beer and cigars with friends. Then on Monday morning I nailed down the concept for my next story. It’s for a “monster” anthology, and the idea is a ton of fun. I’m 2k words into that now, and I’m aiming to finish it before the week is up. Easy! Can you believe that a short story feels like a vacation after that book? Fun! Energizing! Not to mention new.

I have one other scifi story to finish before Tales comes back from the editor mid-February. And once those edits are cleared out, I’ll be digging into Translocator 2, my next scifi novel. It’s going to be a blast. I’ve been working on Translocator in the background for a while so I’ve got a ton of ideas. There will probably be another crazy deadline involved, but the crazy this time will be trying to double my daily word count since I’ll be writing new drafts. I’m sure I’ll talk more about that project when I get there.

Stay tuned here if you want more fiction. Wendigo is coming out next month. In the meantime check out the fantasy short story I published last month, which you can find below the story tracker.

Story Tracker

Novels

Tales of the Republic … Status: 2nd draft complete–out for edits … 84,671 words

Short Stories

“A Body of Work” … Status: Writing … 2,694 words written / 6,000 estimated total words

“The Boy and the Basilisk” … Status: Writing … 2,286 words written / 7,000 estimated total words

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“Wendigo” … Status: Queued for post-production … 12,000 words

“Centurion” … Status: Out for submission … 3,000 words

“Earworm” … Status: Out for submission … 3,000 words

Nonfiction

Practical Fiction … Status: Planning … 500 words

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