I’ll be at Robinsonfest this year: Sept 12-14. This year, the event will be at Niagara Falls. So far, authors attending include Jeremy Robinson, Kane Gilmour, me, and Dan Delgado. Jeremy and Kane are bestselling authors of numerous books, including the Chess Team series, and Dan is the narrator of a growing catalog of work available on Audible.com (including 4 of my books).
If you’re interested in joining the festivities, you can find more information here!
To paraphrase something I saw in a magazine back in my pre-press days, “if you give a monkey a laptop, time, and enough RAM, it will eventually take itself seriously enough to publish a book.”
I released Sleepwalker: The Journal of Grady Ledger earlier this year. Over this last weekend, I released the audiobook version.
This is my first experiment with Amazon/Audible/ACX’s virtual voice technology. While nowhere close to the talents of Dan Delgado (the narrator for my Cyrus Cooper series), the AI voice tech is better than anything I could accomplish if I tried to narrate myself. Good enough that I think those who have been waiting for the audiobook will be happy until Dan has time to catch up narrating my newer books.
Amazon launched a new crowdsourcing initiative earlier this week called Kindle Scout. Authors can submit previously unpublished books into the program and Amazon then gets a 45-day exclusive with that manuscript. A sample is made available to Amazon account holders and readers then effectively vote on the books they like best. The so-called winners get a publishing contract with one of Amazon’s imprints. I’ve submitted Rogue Faction Part 1 into the program. You can find it here: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2XMSEJY3JFKJ6. Read the sample. Give it a vote if you like. The program will be ongoing—I’m in it through November 27th, 2014 with this submission. Users can vote for 3 books every 30 days. When the month rolls over, you can vote for another 3 books. It’s an interesting experiment in crowdsourcing. Amazon is essentially using its customers to help surface the books that readers like best. Then it awards those authors a publishing contract.
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The social circus has been buzzing with a question that I found interesting. What are 10 books that have stuck with you? The idea is to create a list of books that had an impact on you the lasted for months, or even years. It’s a great question, and one I only needed to give a little thought to before creating my list. The major shortcoming of the meme that’s making its way around the social networks is that it doesn’t ask people to explain what it was about a given book that affected them.
Here’s my list of 10 books, and the reasons they have stuck with me. There is no significance to the order in which they appear.
1. One Second After by William R. Forstchen
This book takes a very plausible look at what life in North America might be like following an EMP detonation that leaves everyone and everything without electrical power. Once you look at the facts of the matter, it’s hard to get this book out of your head.
2. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
One of the best techno-thrillers of our day. Suarez is an author who gets cutting edge technology right, and uses it great effect.
3. Yeager: An Autobiography by Chuck Yeager
Seriously, this is a story you need to experience. Yeager was the first to break the sound barrier and is a hero among heroes. But did you know that he almost washed out of the Air Force before it was even known as the Air Force? There are lots of fascinating stories in this book.