CLOUD-CASTLES

Finally at least the e-book is available Cloud-Castles (the highlighted text is a link, via my affiliates account, so I do get a few extra cents on this if you go via it). I am working on the paperback cover, and that will hopefully soon be available. It has been a long hard couple of years – the physical side has been tough (but I am up for that) – the mental/psychological side – with a bunch of petty bureaucrats making my life a misery, while I was severely stressed about Barbs’s health (no, they have no real justification and their legal ground is IMO more than quite shaky. They just have the weight of the system entirely in their favor. We will get through it. But it’s a battle – one that is costing a huge amount both in stress (and lost productivity) and money. The full story will eventually be told in another book.

Anyway: Cloud-castles is designed to make you laugh, maybe even make you cry. It’s a lot of pure escapism and entertainment, with what I believe are very real characters, because they talked to me and did pretty much what they thought was the right thing to do.

It’s all set on a world which is enormously alien (based in science) – a gas-dwarf, a puff-planet, onto which a convict ship of ‘undesireables’ -Australian convicts from a future Australia, made crash-landing — on to the only solid thing with a breathable atmosphere – an alien trading point, a few square miles of floating platform where two ancient and inimical alien empires on the only place that neither wanted – the stratosphere of world where land was unreachable and far below. Generations later, our hero, Augustus, is an idealistic young volunteer from a wealthy neighboring system, comes to help the poor of the trading plate on Sybil III – or as they call it, ‘The Big Syd’. It’s a crowded, corrupt hell-hole, that really needs help. The only problem is that the locals want to help themselves too. Mostly they want to help themselves to his money, his possessions, his liberty and even his life.


All that stands between them and this goal is the ragged urchin he picked up as a guide -Briz. If anyone is going to rob or take advantage of the Drongo she’s picked up… it’ Briz. Even if she has to keep him alive to do so.

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Newsletter Mailing list

This should get you added to my mailing list

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Changeling’s Island E-Arc

Is available from Baen

changeling's Island cover

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Countdown Special – Crawlspace and other stories.

will be on a countdown special – discounted from $4.99 to 99 cents at 8 AM Amazon time (I think that’s Seattle) and increasing in one cent increments over the next four days. Get it now while it is cheap!

Two Rats Bats and Vats stories (a novella, and a novelette) another great ‘Pirates of the future’ story and some others

Cheap as chips
🙂

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The Byres and Ig etc

I have succeeded in my attempts to get Stardogs onto Smashwords. Meaning it is available from Byre and Ig, Apple Kobo etc.

In a celebration Red Fiddler

is free for the next day or so. Get in quick. 🙂

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STARDOGS

Stardogs, my first independent new release (I have put up A Mankind Witch and Morningstar when their rights reverted is now available on Amazon. In the next few days I will be getting it onto Smashwords (which means B&N, Apple etc) and createspace (for those who want paper copies will follow). If you want to buy it and click via the picture (it’s a link) it earns me a few extra percent.

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For anyone who wants to write Military sf – or Fantasy involving war

My reading recommendation is up on the Baen podcast.

is one reprint – the cheapest. All ofthe reprints apparently suffer from average quality.

this one is available in Kindle

GOD DOES NOT FORGET: The Story of a Boer War Commando
by: Deneys Reitz

“One of the greatest war books ever written.” “A vivid, unforgettable picture of mobile guerrilla warfare.” In 1899 a 17 year old boy by the name of Dennys Reitz volunteered to fight for his country, South Africa, against the British. He could ride and shoot with the best of them, so he was quickly assigned to a Boer Commando Unit-one of the highly mobile light cavalry units that were driving the British crazy. Outmanned, outgunned, and under-supplied, the Boer commandos nevertheless checked the British at almost every turn. They became masters of lightning attacks, night fighting, and ambushes, only to disappear to strike again somewhere else. Reitz was in it from beginning to end, and participated in nearly every major battle. His descriptions of war and adventure have come to be regarded as among the best in the English language. After the fighting was over, Reitz chose to live in Madagascar rather than remain in South Africa under British rule; and it was from there that he wrote this book. But his exile did not last. His old commander talked him into returning to his homeland to help build the new dominion. To this task, he brought the courage and leadership he had learned as a commando, eventually becoming a Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and South African High Commissioner to London. He also fought bravely on the Western Front during WW-I-for the British.

They have – for the sf writer, the real advantage of telling about the underdog – the Boer republics -tiny, probably less than 100 000 people, fighting the biggest most powerful Empire of the time, and the story is one which deals not so much with tactics as with the personal realities of war, told through the eyes of 17 year old volunteer. Much of this is guerilla warfare, and it has both a rawness of personal immediate experience, and the sort of Western-orientated education and mind that makes this very accesible – despite the fact that it is a century or so ago.

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Free story in Heirs of Alexandria Universe

THE KRUMHORN AND MISERICORDE A longish short story, concerning the back history of a character who has appeared in a number of the books and in the new one (BURDENS OF THE DEAD, Due out on the 4th of June from Baen Books) takes a major role. It is set in the Heirs of Alexandria Universe -SHADOW OF THE LION,

A MANKIND WITCH,

THIS ROUGH MAGIC,

MUCH FALL OF BLOOD

BURDENS OF THE DEAD

For completists – THE WITCH’S MURDER also fits in that universe.

Eric and I planned a series of murder mysteries with a little element of magic, set in that Universe. It could still happen.

Oh -all of the pictures are links -and if you use them I get another 6% from Amazon. Costs you no extra. Just sayin’ 🙂

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Save the Dragons page

Hopefully the page for the e-book dragon5
is now up and you can follow the links.

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The Forlorn – mine

The Forlorn was the first book I actually sold to a traditional publishing house. Out of the about 3000 sluch submissions that year, they bought one… This one. It was the second book up on the Baen Free Library, and many people have read it, but as the rights have now returned to me, and times are tight, I am offering it for sale again. Vet bills I suspect loom, and there are other important things that even the most self-sufficient family need from time-to-time. The picture is a link, which gives me an extra 6% (which, trust me, is welcome. I got 6% royalty on the book, the first time round)



Across the one human colony world, a place technologically regressed to near medieval, possibly the last place humans still survive, a desperate search continues. Scattered across the deserts, tangled jungles, and alien fortresses, lie the core sections of a matter transmitter.
These sections hold the key to vast wealth, power, or… the fulfilment of the colony’s purpose: to help humankind survive the rabidly xenophobic alien Morkth who will tolerate no other intelligent species. The Morkth managed to follow the colony ship, and, despite their mothership being shot down and their queen being killed, they continue their relentless struggle to destroy humankind… and to reconstruct that incredibly valuable matter transmitter. If they succeed, they’ll be able to return to the hive with the location of the colony of vile humans, and have a new world to occupy. If they fail, they’ll destroy the planet.
The search has gone on for centuries, and it is all reaching an end point. The future hangs in the balance.
The Morkth have lasers, aircraft, nukes. Those who want the core sections for their own ends… have vast armies. Against them are three unlikely reluctant heroes: A street child thief, a dispossessed spoiled brat of a princess, and a confused, amoral Morkth-raised human. They’re armed only with 14th century weapons and their own wits.
It’s a lost cause, a forlorn hope.
But it’s all humans have.

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