New & Free ebook lunches by J. Kathleen Cheney, Astrid Julian, and Matthew Hughes

Free ebook by J. Kathleen Cheney

I reviewed this on SF Site.

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Every ebook of Astrid Julian's is free.

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The Compleat Guth Bandar 
by Matthew Hughes 
$2.99

Reading Update: Fiction

-- Rereading Anne McCaffrey's 1st award-winning Pern stories that made up the first of the novels. Still potent.

--Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman (actually was reading it when my Kindle died)-- survival among the early hominids.

--Dan Krokos' Planet Thieves -- finished awhile ago and was in the writing throes of a review when a triptych of tech woes steered me off course.  The book's a fun YA romp with "alien" baddies.

--Scott Nicholson's Transparent Lovers, a PS Publishing noir-flavored novella about a detective coming back to life to find his murderer and stopping another in process.

--Cate Gardner -- short stories mostly.  Often takes a situation--sometimes common trope, sometimes not--and milks out the emotion of such a scenario.  This and her sometimes startling imagery are her strengths.

--J Kathleen Cheney's The Golden City -- approaching 1/2 way mark.  A cross between Tim Powers, Jane Austen, and a mystery--an original confection set in early 20th century Portugal--both familiar and sufficiently strange.  The love story's kicking in.


--Robert Heinlein (finished Menace from Earth collection -- I just need a stretch of time to write.

--Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.  Loved as a boy.  Still delightful.  It begins as a picaresque tale, but slowly events shape others.  Wonderful studying how Twain twists his turns.  I still remember thinking, "Man, if Tom's this ornery, imagine Huck's Adventures!"  And then Huck wasn't near so bad.  His was still a good story, but for different reasons.

Writers on Writing (interviews, etc.)

Jeannette Cheney [J. Kathleen Cheney] talks about killing…your darlings

Cat Rambo interview

What My Mentor Taught Me By James Patrick Kelly

Why I Write...Karen Traviss: Science Fiction

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

Interesting comment on how people are only associating with the like-minded and becoming more extreme, as psychological studies have pointed long before.

Preview of The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney

J. Kathleen Cheney [link to free fiction] Here's a writer I've enjoyed everything I've read--two suites of stories (~a dozen), which are equivalent to two novels. One was an Irish magic/romance thing:  Tales from Hawk's Folly Farm. Which I reviewed favorably on SF Site: 1, 2, 3.  I suspect a reader who has read and enjoyed these stories would be hooked for life on anything Cheney writes.

I meant to review her Chinese ghost stories, which I liked even more (the other tales available on Amazon) although they're hazy in my mind now.  Even if not always stunning, her work always satisfies--a mark of a true professional (not something all professionals do). Both story suites need to be packaged as novels.

I started the new book, The Golden City, and the first few pages seem to promise a book of manners, magic, and possibly class. I am intrigued so far....

Later, after another 40 pages, more intrigue, politics (although not overtly or annoyingly political), some manners. I am still enjoying it so far.  A tiny yet necessary expository hiccup at beginning, but Cheney's sold me so far.

The 19th century flavors the descriptive style, which matches the early 20th century setting in Portugal:  objects and people in relation to one another:

"A knock came at the door, and she jumped. She instinctively hid her bare hands in the fabric of the skirt. She was usually so careful, but she’d taken off the mitts that normally hid her fingers so she could help Isabel pack. Then she realized she was wrinkling the skirt terribly and forced herself to let it go. She took a calming breath, hoping her voice would sound normal. 'Who is it?' "

There's an artist's underwater city that feel like the kind of creepy weird and wild that Tim Powers might do. Count me in.

An excerpt is here, but you'll probably find it's the second chapter that will sell you.

Interesting forthcoming books/ebooks

The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition: Stories by Kurt Vonnegut (Author), Gregory D. Sumner (Editor)

• Published with multiple drafts of "Welcome to the Monkey House" with commentary by editor Sumner

The Time Traveler's Almanac by editors Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer

• Jeff VanderMeer also has a novel, Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy) 

No Hero by Jonathan Wood

The Land Across by Gene Wolfe

Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois

Tyrannia and Other Renditions by Alan DeNiro

Horse of a Different Color: Stories by Howard Waldrop

The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney

Old Mars edited by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois

On Writers, Writing, Genre, Assorted Ideas about Writing, & Stories

On Writing:

David Farland’s "Writing for Fun and Profit"

7 Reason Agents stop reading

Body language as subtext

12 habits of the creative

On Writers:

Cordwainer Smith remembered

Famous writers':

• Daily routines
• High school photos

Michael Swanwick revisits The Left Hand of Darkness

On Genre:

Cat Rambo's "Books Mentioned in the Magic Realism vs Traditional Fantasy Panel from Worldcon 2012"

Future of SF according to:

• Christopher McKitterick
• Gareth L Powell

On Misc. Writing Idears:

Mary Robinette Kowal on Debut Author photo

J. Kathleen Cheney on benefits and detriments of volunteering

Stories (present and future)

Brian Evenson story online

Amazing Stories (now a blog, proposed future magazine--revival of first SF magazine)

Taking a Mile by J. Kathleen Cheney

Writers of the Future XXIV

Viviana Fuentes waits in a cemetery to die. She is an avatar-- uploarded from her original and downloaded into a new body, designed to senesce or die within a certain timeframe or if told to do so--a being that the Pope is unsure if it has a soul, and Viviana had been a Catholic. When she bumps into another avatar, she is given the choice to run and become independent of the Rand company that built her although it’s hard to hide from the company.