Entire Bridge Daughter series now available on Kobo

Hagar's Mother by Jim Nelson

Following up on earlier announcements, the final two books in the Bridge Daughter CycleHagar’s Mother and Stranger Son—are now available for purchase on Kobo. This completes putting my back catalog up on that site. As before, all these books remain available on Amazon.

(The only book not available on Kobo yet is A Man Named Baskerville. Some time after my next book is published, I’ll probably move it over to Kobo as well.)

The entire Bridge Daughter Cycle is here on Kobo.

For more on why I’m going this route with Kobo, check out Kobo & Me” and “Going Wide,” where I discuss the options I weighed and why I finally decided to spread my wings.

Stranger Son by Jim Nelson

More books now available on Kobo

Bridge Daughter by Jim Nelson, displayed in paperback and ebook editions

As I discussed before, I’ve been slowly moving more of my back catalog to Kobo. Two more books are now available there: Bridge Daughter and In My Memory Locked. If you’re a Kobo reader, or considering trying them out, they’re ready to go.

Praise for Bridge Daughter:

“Bridge Daughter is the sort of surprising gem in a sea of fairly ordinary you occasionally run across as a reader of contemporary speculative fiction—smart, highly original, and emotionally brutal.” – John Blair, author of Bright Angel and American Standard

“The thought-provoking story blends action, introspection, and social commentary in a stark but indirect critique of efforts to control female bodies and restrict reproductive rights.” – Publishers Weekly

Praise for In My Memory Locked:

“Ingenious plot…cyber-noir is the right descriptive, and the read is well worth the while.” – T. Mohr

“First-rate cyberpunk…I had no choice but to finish the book straight through.” – brujaja

In My Memory Locked by Jim Nelson

More books are coming to Kobo—watch my blog for future announcements.

Summer sale: Four books available for 99¢

Cover of "A Man Named Baskerville" by Jim Nelson

With the dog days of summer upon us, four of my novels are now available on Amazon for the low price of 99¢.

Follow the links below to view sample chapters or purchase:

All are available in the Kindle Unlimited program, meaning KU members may read them for free.

And, remember that Man in the Middle is free if you sign up for my newsletter.

Have a good summer!

In My Memory Locked by Jim Nelson
Man in the Middle, by Jim Nelson

The Bridge Daughter Cycle covers

Ten years of blogging: Portable dreamweavers

J. Hillis Miller

Previously: An unusual parable
Next: A literary eulogy

2016 was a busy year for blogging. Amazon accepted Bridge Daughter for their Kindle Scout program, which entailed a month-long nomination process before they agreed to publish it. It was the start of a fairly intense roller coaster ride, most of which I captured in blog posts along the way.

Amazon’s imprimatur on the novel opened many doors. With a single email sent on a single day of the week to a mere sliver of their customer base, Amazon could generate hundreds of book sales, as though rubbing a lamp to summon a djinn. Amazon’s backing also led to a movie production company inquiring about film rights. They read the book and they asked questions, but ultimately they passed.

(Amazon dismantled the Kindle Scout program in 2018, which I still consider a tragedy.)

Of the long-form blog entries in 2016, I produced three that I remain proud of. I’m torn which to feature here. My account of Don Herron’s Fritz Leiber tour still evokes nostalgia. Don Herron is the creator of the classic Dashiell Hammett tour in San Francisco. Getting a chance to meet Herron and take his lesser-known Fritz Leiber tour was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as he no longer leads it save for special occasions.

Another piece I’m proud of is my review/analysis of the Generation X cult classic Slacker, one of my favorite films. This entry has an untold side story: A few months after posting it, an online film aficionado site on Medium asked if I was interested in adapting the review. Unfortunately, what the editor wanted me to write about wasn’t what I found interesting about Slacker, and the opportunity fizzled out.

On Literature by J. Hillis Miller

The third is a blog post I keep returning to as a kind of manifesto: “Fiction as a controlled experiment,” a write-up of my thoughts on the book On Literature by J. Hillis Miller.

Miller was a scholar at Yale and U.C. Irvine, and known for promoting deconstruction as a means of literary criticism. I discovered On Literature on a shelf of used books in a Tokyo bookstore, and assumed it would be thick with postmodern terminology and abstruse theories. Instead, On Literature is personal and ruminative. Parts of it read like a confessional. Miller admits to a lifelong love of reading, and writes in glowing terms on several children’s books he marveled over in his youth.

What caught my attention the most, however, is when he confesses to viewing a work of fiction as a “pocket or portable dreamweaver.” He describes books as devices that transport the reader to a new “hyper-world” for them to experience. The way he describes it reminds me of the linking books in the classic video game Myst.

Myst linking book
Myst linking book

This quaint vision of narrative is unfashionable in the world of literary criticism. Miller’s vision is also, in my view, charitable to lay readers, who are less interested in high theory and more interested in enjoying books, and curious why some books are more enjoyable than others.

But I do think this vision—”a pocket or portable dreamweaver”—is also a useful guide for an author developing a story or a novel. Miller insists a work of fiction is not “an imitation in words of some pre-existing reality but, on the contrary, it is the creation or discovery of a new, supplementary world, a metaworld.” That is what the creation of story is—not merely revealing or reporting an already existing world, but creating a new one in the author’s mind, and, in turn, recreating it in each reader’s mind. These multiple worlds are similar but never exactly the same.

Miller died in 2021 due to COVID-related issues, one month after the death of his wife of over seventy years. Reading On Literature makes me wish I could have enrolled in one of his courses. Whereas so many of the European deconstructionists seemed intent on subverting the power of literature, Miller was plainly in awe of the written word, and strove to promote it. We need more readers like him.

Fiction as a controlled experiment

The coming revolution in audiobooks

In November, Amazon opened a beta program for Kindle Direct Publishing authors called Virtual Voice. It may be the biggest upheaval to independent publishing since Amazon launched KDP over a decade ago.

Virtual Voice uses synthetic (i.e., computer) voice technology to produce audiobooks. On first blush, that sounds like a pretty crappy experience—who wants to listen to a robot narrate a book? Know that automated voice technology has advanced tremendously in recent years, to the point that people have trouble distinguishing between it and a human voice.

The AI software that’s in the news so often these days is much of the reason for the improvement. In 2018, Google demonstrated an AI that could order food and make reservations over the phone without the person on the other end knowing it was not a human speaking. More recently, a study shows that 78% of people think they can tell the difference between an AI voice and a human, but only 2% were accurate. (If you’re skeptical, this Google Forms test gives you the chance to listen to recordings of celebrities and AI impersonations and see how well you can tell the difference. You’ll have to admit it’s not easy.)

It’s tempting to go into my thought process over the pros and cons of synthetic voice audiobooks. At this moment, I’ll just say I find the possibility alluring.

I’ve done audio in the past. I recorded Everywhere Man at Fantasy Studios, a dreamy, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was quite expensive and exhausting. A few years ago, I made a concerted effort to hire a voice actor to record Bridge Daughter. I was put off by the terms dictated by every actor who responded to my call for bids. Both experiences impressed on me the risks of producing my own audiobooks, risks of both cost and rights.

Synthetic voice audiobooks eliminate a lot of the question marks. If I’m reading the Amazon announcement correctly, a KDP author chooses a voice from a catalog of voices, previews a sample, and names a sale price. My guess is, the final audiobook will be ready in a few hours. Audiobooks created with synthetic voices are labeled as such on the Amazon market and may be previewed, so the buyer knows what they’re getting.

It sounds like a no-cost, risk-free offer for independent authors. I’m more than curious. Unless Amazon botches the roll-out—a possibility, they’ve botched things before—I predict we’re going to see a Cambrian explosion of audiobooks on the Amazon market soon enough.

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Interview at Queen’s Book Asylum

In My Memory Locked by Jim Nelson

Over at Queen’s Book Asylum is a new interview discussing my cyber-noir thriller In My Memory Locked.

A sampling of the discussion:

What draws you to science fiction?
I’m drawn to the “what-if” element of science fiction. Storytelling is a kind of controlled experiment, a chance to live another life or in another time without the use of exotic technologies. Novels are rather like the Myst linking books transporting you to another age. J. Hillis Miller calls books “portable dreamweavers,” and speculative fiction is perhaps the purest distillation of that idea. That’s why I turn to science fiction time and again.

And:

While taking inspiration from those giants of the genre, how does your book both honor and freshen up cyber-noir?

In most mystery novels, the detective is not deeply involved in the mystery he’s solving. For In My Memory Locked, Naroy is absolutely at the center of the crime—and he’s not sure why. He’s even uncertain he’s not the perpetrator. I couldn’t tell the kind of detective story I wanted to tell without science fiction.

The discussion also touches on my Bridge Daughter series, the differences between San Francisco and Tokyo, and how we’re already living in a cyberpunk world, even if we don’t have quarter-inch stereo jacks in our heads.

Read the full interview here. Thanks to Arina at Queen’s Book Asylum for having me!

Audio

Interview with Reading and Writing Podcast

Posted this week is my interview with Jeff Rutherford at the Reading and Writing Podcast.

During our talk, I discuss my cyber-noir mystery In My Memory Locked, as well as a little on my Bridge Daughter series. It was a great time with Jeff, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Check out the interview at podpage.com or YouTube.