A Split Worlds Story from Emma Newman

BetweenTwoThorns-144dpiToday, in a very special blog post… I’m going to do something I’ve never done on this blog before: post someone else’s fiction. Hell, I don’t even post my own fiction up here that much. I usually wrap it up in an ebook and either sell it or give it away in that format instead.

To be honest, it never occurred to me to do something like this, but then Emma Newman came along. I had the pleasure of meeting Emma – one of my fellow Angry Robot writers – at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago last Labor Day Weekend. In a lot of ways, the AR crew is like an extended family, and the group of us spent large chunks of the weekend hanging out together swapping publishing war stories and having a fantastic time. So when Emma asked if I’d be willing to put one of her Split Worlds stories up here – set in the same universe as her upcoming urban fantasy trilogy, which launches next month with Between Two Thorns – I only wondered why she hadn’t asked earlier and why I hadn’t thought to offer.

I tried to write a dozen novels last year. Just as ambitious, Emma tackled fifty short stories instead, and she’s still going! Here’s her latest, the fiftieth of the lot.

I’ll let Emma set it up for you. Read More

Grab the Bundle of Holding Now

bundle-books-launchThe Bundle of Holding went live this morning. As I mentioned earlier this week, this is a bundle of fiction ebooks written by games writers, for which you can pay what you like. You get the books in all three major formats (ePub, Kindle, and PDF), and they’re all DRM-free (no built-in copy restrictions).

There are eight books in the bundle in all, including stories from:

If you pay less than the average – down to a minimum of $1, which is there to cover processing fees – you get six of the books. That includes:

  • Irregular Creatures by Chuck Wendig
  • The Birth of the Dread Remorra by Aaron Rosenberg
  • Hero Worship by Derek Pearcy
  • Tournament of Death by Stephen D. Sullivan
  • The Fable of the Swan by Jenna Moran
  • Hexcommunicated by Rafael Chandler

If you pay more than the average, you also get Sarah Newton’s Mindjammer and my Hard Times in Dragon City tossed into your bundle as well. Another neat thing is that when you buy the bundle, you get to choose where the money goes, splitting it among the writers, our chosen charities, and the upkeep of the site.

The average started at $8 this morning, but people have been so generous that it keeps going up. Since our chosen charities go to Child’s Play and Reading Is Fundamental, that’s a good thing.

Now, you might remember that I released Hard Times in Dragon City last week with a note telling you to hold off buying it. That’s because I didn’t want anyone to regret picking it up and missing out on the bundle just over the horizon. Now, though, GO AHEAD AND GRAB IT! PLEASE!

If you like the idea of the bundle, go ahead and pay above the average for that, and get Hard Times in Dragon City with it.

If you don’t want the rest of the bundle, just grab the book by itself.

If you’d rather have a printed version of the book, I should have that available soon too. Meanwhile, be sure to check out the Bundle of Holding and chip in if you can. Thanks!

Magic: The Gathering: Paths of Vengeance #3 Out Tomorrow

MagictheGathering_PathofVengeance_03Tomorrow, IDW releases Magic: The Gathering: Paths of Vengeance #3. This is the 11th comic I’ve written featuring Dack Fayden, the planeswalking spell thief, and it’s roller coaster ride that leads up to the climax in the next and final issue in the series. You can check out a free preview of it over at Comicosity.

Dack’s story – or at least my part in it – comes to an end with the next issue. I’d always plotted the story to fit a dozen issues, and I’m thrilled that Martin Cóccolo, J. Edwin Stevens, and I got to tell the whole thing. Be sure to grab that final issue too, as we send Dack off with a bang.

There’s a Bundle on the Horizon

bundlestarfield-764This Wednesday, keep your eyes peeled for the Bundle of Holding, a bundle of fiction ebooks written by tabletop game designers (like me). It’s going to make for a fantastic deal, and it’ll include one of my novels in the pack.

Tabletop game designers spend their days building worlds and adventures for other people to play in. They come up with characters, locations, situations, and all the others bits that make fictional universes seem the kind of thrilling places you’d like to spend some time in – at least at the arm’s length that playing a game or reading a book affords.

That’s just one chunk of making a great speculative fiction book, of course, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any group better at it. With the Bundle of Holding, you can read what happens when those same people with their rare skill sets place characters of their own into worlds they’ve created and let them loose.

This Bundle of Holding is modeled on other successful bundles like the Humble Bundle and Story Bundle. You can pay whatever you like for the bundle, down to $1, and you can split the proceeds among the writers, the website itself, and charity. All we ask then is that you enjoy the books and help spread the fun.

The Bundle of Holding site should launch on Wednesday, so look for it then. Meanwhile, you can follow the Bundle of Holding on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Bad Times Out to Backers

Bad-Times-Cover-Standard-600While I’m getting the Kickstarter editions of Bad Times in Dragon City out to my backers, I’m also prepping the files for the release of the standard edition of the book. At the moment, that’s scheduled for March 5, and I hope to have print-on-demand options ready by then too. To whet your appetite, here’s a look at the book’s cover, along with the back cover text.

If It Wasn’t for Bad Times…

Ex-adventurer Max Gibson wouldn’t have any times at all. Saddled with babysitting the heir to the Dragon Empire, a deadly dragonet with a mind all its own, Max wishes he could hunker down in his bar and shut out the rest of Dragon City, but it seems everyone wants a piece of him.

If the scum down in Goblintown aren’t trying to throw him to the zombies on the other side of the Great Circle, it’s the Imperial Dragon’s Guard trying to haul him into protective custody. Or the Wizards Council hoping for a closer look at the dragonet.

All that goes out the window, though, when Belle Sanguigno – a heartbreaker of an elf who’s shattered Max more than once – turns to him for help. She needs to find the body of her sister, who Max and the dragonet killed last week, or pay the ultimate penalty for her loss.

And the bad times keep getting worse.

Bad Times in Dragon City is the second novel in the Shotguns & Sorcery setting.

Gambling with Alas Vegas

My pal James Wallis is a tabletop gaming legend. Among many other things, he co-created the wonderful Once Upon a Time card game; he wrote and published one of the first story-driven roleplaying games, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen; and he launched the much-loved Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. He’s been off doing other things for a while, but he’s returning to tabletop games with a new game called Alas Vegas, and he’s funding it via Kickstarter.

Alas Vegas is, as James describes it, “an RPG miniseries about amnesia, sin, horror and gambling… The player characters begin the game by digging themselves out of a shallow grave in the desert, at midnight. They are naked, and they have no memory of who they are or how they got where they are. On the horizon is a scar of neon. There will be answers there. And trouble.”

I don’t know about you, but that hooked me good.

James’s backers smashed through the funding goal in under eight hours, and he’s lined up a number of excellent stretch goals. These include new campaigns by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Allen Varney, cocktail recipes by John Tynes, a guide for using Tarot cards in other games by Robin Laws, and even an Alas Vegas novel by James himself.

I’m also chipping in a chapter on how to handle Vegas-style gambling in games that are already card and dice driven. As a game designer, that’s a fun challenge, and as you might imagine, I studied a lot about Vegas gambling to prepare for writing Vegas Knights. That kicks in if/when Alas Vegas reaches £13k. Since the drive’s already up past £8k and has 18 days left, I’m betting it can make that.

Go check it out. If you like it, deal yourself in.

Don’t Buy Hard Times – Yet

Hard-Times-book-graphicSetting a firm release date for an ebook is a big challenge with today’s tools. I can submit files and details to the various ebook retailers, but it can take anywhere from hours to days or longer for the files to be posted and actually ready for sale.

I’m in the process of releasing Hard Times in Dragon City – the first novel for my Shotguns & Sorcery setting – so that it’s available soon. You can already buy it here on my site, for instance, and on Smashwords, and it should be up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s site soonish. But you should hold on to your cash for just a little bit longer.

Hard Times in Dragon City is slated to be part of a sweet bundle of ebooks that should be announced any day now. They’re going to make for a fantastic deal, and I’d hate for you to feel like you should have waited for it, especially since the bundle is so close to being here.

At the same time, there’s a chance that people would rather buy the book than the bundle, and I don’t want those readers to have to sit on the sidelines until the bundle’s sale period is over either. That’s why I’m getting the process for releasing the book rolling now rather than waiting any longer.

Speaking of which, I’ve sent the files for the print-on-demand edition off to my friends at DriveThruFiction.com. Once those are all approved and I’ve checked off on the proof, I’ll have the hardcopy version ready for sale too, both in paperback and hardcover.

So, if you just have to have the ebook right now, go ahead and grab it. I’ll make a few more dollars from that sale than I will through the bundle. If you like yourself a fantastic bargain, though, hold onto your wallet for a few days longer. You’ll thank me for it.

Please Don’t Pirate My Books (Unless)

BNW-Omnibus-BookOver at his website, Chuck Wendig’s been writing a lot about the pirating of ebooks, and he declared today to be Please Don’t Pirate My Book Day, asking authors to pitch in a post about the subject. So here’s mine.

I don’t worry about piracy all that much. I want people to pay for my work, but I don’t tear out my hair worrying that people might be shoplifting my books from stores or borrowing them from a friend or a library. If they read it for free, then dammit, I hope they at least enjoy it.

If you experience some kind of art and love it – book, film, music, painting, and so on – you should figure out some way to thank the creator in a meaningful way that you can afford. It’s the right thing to do, and it helps make sure that the creator doesn’t have to go back to driving pizza and selling plasma instead of making more things for you to enjoy. (Chuck writes eloquently about this today.)

But there are cases in which I don’t mind if my work is pirated. For instance, I’ve written six Dungeons & Dragons novels and four Blood Bowl novels. They’re all out of print, and the publishers haven’t shown much interest in releasing them as ebooks. Those were written as work-for-hire, so the rights will never revert to me. The publishers clearly have better things to do with their limited time, and while I may question their judgment, that’s their right.

Despite that, pirates have scanned them and put them out there on the internet for people to read. So, if you want to go grab those books off a pirate server and read them, more power to you. Other than stumbling over a used copy on eBay or Amazon or in a local store, you don’t have many other choices. And you know how much the publisher and I see from those used book sales anyhow? Not a penny.

If you enjoy those books (and I hope you do), then pony up some of your hard-earned cash for the books my publishers and I do keep in print and available to you. Go grab my books from Angry Robot. Snag my Leverage novel. Buy the BNW Omnibus I have on sale on this very site right now. (All the money from that, barring PayPal’s cut, goes straight into my pocket and from there into my children’s mouths.)

So, enjoy as you like, pay what you can, and keep those wheels spinning. I’ll do my best to keep up my end of that bargain too.

BNW Omnibus at DriveThruFiction Too

BNW-Omnibus-BookI wasn’t planning to sell the Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Omnibus anywhere else but here on my site, but my pals over at DriveThruFiction.com asked so kindly I couldn’t refuse them. Honestly, they’re fantastic people, and I’ve known the people behind the site since before ebooks were even twinkles in their eyes, so when they started promoting the release for me even before I agreed to sell the omnibus through them, how could I refuse?

Sure, I could have, but that’s not how I roll. Sooo, you can now grab the omnibus through DriveThruFiction.com too if you like. They offer the exact same files as you’ll find here: copies in ePub, Kindle, and PDF formats, all free of DRM. None of the other retailers can offer that, which is why you won’t find this massive bargain on Amazon, BN.com, iBooks, and so on. Only in the places where it’s the best deal for you.

The New Newsletter

BNW-Omnibus-BookI just launched a newsletter to promote my next Kickstarter, mostly because I was smacking my best fans with four emails at a time every time I sent messages out through Kickstarter. You can read the whole thing online too.

It also talks a bit about the release of the Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Omnibus and the sale that’s going on for the BNW books right now. (Don’t miss out on that.)

I’ll post most of that information here on my blog as well, but if you’d like the full scoop delivered straight to your email inbox, don’t be shy. Subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to get all the details as they arise. Thanks!