An hour ago I learned Kindle Press has accepted Bridge Daughter for publication!
The news is still soaking in. I don’t have much else to say at the moment. I should have more details soon.
What a great Monday.
I don’t have a publication date yet, but you can still download and read the first chapters of Bridge Daughter at its Kindle Scout page.
I’m happy to announce that my new novel Bridge Daughter is ready for the world!
I’ve submitted Bridge Daughter to Amazon’s Kindle Scout program, which allows readers to vote on books written by independent authors (like me).
If my book receives enough nominations over the next 30 days, Amazon will publish and promote it across their web site.
What’s more, if you vote for Bridge Daughter and it’s published, you’ll receive a free copy! It costs nothing to vote. It’s so simple, it’s simple.
Here’s how you can help:
That’s it!
The nomination period will be over before you know it, so please vote now. Thanks!
Click for larger image
After a lot of scratching around in the dirt and a couple of heart-to-hearts with myself, I made the decision to ditch the old cover for Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People. That cover attempted to capture the aesthetic of a classic Pee-Chee All-Season Portfolio that’s been doodled up with pencil and ink over the span of a school year. As much as I liked the concept, my artistic skills were simply not up to snuff for the challenge. I was never really satisfied with the final product.
The good news is, I’ve returned to the drawing board and come up with a cover I’m much happier with. The image to the above left is the result of that labor. I’m updating the ebooks on my various distribution channels as we speak. This is one of the great things about ebooks: if you don’t like the cover, you just change it. (For comparison, you can see the old cover in my original release announcement.)
Speaking of Pee-Chee, check out this great Flickr collection of folders marked-up and mutilated decades ago by school kids who were not altogether dissimilar to Gene Harland, the narrator of Edward Teller Dreams. My favorite in the collection? This one referencing Berkeley’s own The Uptones and featuring a ska sprinter taking the lead on the outside. In the 80s, you lived and died by a white pressed shirt and a skinny tie.
Earlier today Charity Yoro of NextSpace coworking posted an interview with me. On a pleasant afternoon a couple of weeks ago, sitting in Old Mint Plaza drinking New Orleans iced coffee (it was a rough slog), we talked about work, writing, and finding a balance between the two:
Capitalizing on the e-book revolution, Jim found that it was pretty easy to self-publish, as long as you could manage independently promoting your product. So last July, long before the announcement of the end of his company, Jim built a website. He published and sold his e-books on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Nobles, and iTunes.
…
“You have to approach your craft with the same seriousness and intention as full-time work,” says Jim. “In terms of writing, it doesn’t just happen; it’s a different process.”
Read the whole interview. The photo is me doing my best to look authorly.
I’m one of the contestants lined up for the next Write Club SF! As their slogan goes, “Literature as Bloodsport. Prize Money to charity,” which means this event has a heart—ripped beating from each contender’s twitching, still-warm body.
I hope you’ll make it there and root me on. I’ve selected St. Anthony’s as my charity, so this great nonprofit will receive the proceeds if I win. At Write Club the audience selects the victor, so your attendance counts in more ways than one.
Write Club SF
8pm – whenever
Tuesday, February 17
The Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St.
$5 door charge (all proceeds to charity), cash bar, 21 or over only.
UPDATE: I originally posted the event happening at The Elbo Room. It’s at The Make-Out Room. Bad Jim!
For the next month (or so), my short story collection A Concordance of One’s Life and novella Everywhere Man will be available to download for FREE on Kobo and Apple’s iBooks. That’s right, free, as in no money. Get ’em now:
A Concordance of One’s Life: Kobo / iBooks
Everywhere Man: Kobo / iBooks
While you’re at it, be sure to download my latest novel Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People. It’s not quite free but available for the cut-rate bargain of 99 cents on Kobo, iBooks, and Amazon.
(Why aren’t those first two books free on Amazon? Amazon won’t allow me to price my ebooks for anything less than $0.99 without entering into an exclusive arrangement with them, which I won’t do.)
Happy New Year!
UPDATE: I’ve extended the free book giveaway through February. They’re also now available for free on Smashwords (Concordance, Everywhere Man). Grab ’em up, folks.
The Tusk has posted a new piece of mine about the tortured history of my new novel Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People. A sample:
And how could I forget my friend’s father returning home one afternoon from work, tie loose and hair splayed, bedraggled from wrestling some top-secret problem? Most likely not a problem scientific in nature, but bureaucratic. Thirteen years of age or so, a computer geek-in-training (largely because I wanted to grow up and write video games, unaware that a prerequisite for writing video games is to have never grown up), I was fascinated with the engineering problems these nuclear scientists must have faced every day. Sitting cross-legged on the lime-green living room shag playing Axis & Allies (and losing badly), I asked how his latest project was proceeding.
He leaned down to my ear and whispered: “Jim, this shit ain’t ever going to work.” Then he went to the kitchen and cracked open a beer from the refrigerator. By “this shit” he meant the LLNL’s latest budget-busting project, the Strategic Defense Initiative, a la Star Wars, a system of laser-equipped satellites promised to protect our country from ICBM attack and end the Cold War. You know, that Cold War, the mad weapons race the laboratory at Livermore had enabled and fostered and contributed to over the prior thirty years.
Read the whole thing at The Tusk. And while you’re at it, read Nate Waggoner’s brilliant dissection of how authors’ are learning to burnish their own laurels in today’s world of social media and independent publishing, “On Self-Promotion”.
