Solar Clipper Diary

Yeah. That’s me.

Well, I hope I’m not going to continue to be a fool all month, but you never know.

Not much on the news front.

Still waiting for the cover art for Full Share. It should be out this month. I was hoping for *early* in the month but I think we’re looking at mid-month at this point.

I have Cape Grace and a novella in the word processor, altho I’m not making a lot of progress on either.

One thing I’ve had to get serious about is health. I’ve started walking every day again. Every morning at about 5.30 I take a walk around my neighborhood (2 miles) and for the last 15 minutes or so, I record whatever it is I’m thinking about. These are just rambly, whatever I have on my mind, un-edited audio. I put them online at Talking On My Morning Walk so if you want to know what’s going on from day to day, that’s the place to follow.

More news soon, I hope.

I stumbled on this book you might find interesting.

Doug Boulter hangs out on one of the writer’s forums that I frequent. I got intrigued by some of his comments and went looking for his books. Courtesan appealed to me because it’s also set in a trade-based universe (no space battles or bug eyed monsters) and his plot is very largely character driven with two of his major plots revolving around the characters (a romance plot and a sibling rivalry plot).

If you’re looking for something to read while I continue to wrestle with my next one, check it out.

(Sorry, it doesn’t appear to be on Smashwords so I’m not sure what other formats might be out there.)

The response has been pretty positive on the Brain Storming thread. I’ve started a 20k word novella about Odin’s Outpost and while that would normally be a couple of days work, I’m fitting in a few hundred words here and there between other tasks so I’m gonna be another week or so getting through it. I’ll announce it here when we have a Nibble.

Speaking of Nibbles, Debora is doing a give away and has offered three copies to this group, if anybody is interested. If you were intrigued but didn’t want to drop the buck before, or if you just haven’t had a chance to sample this one, here’s your chance. I know some of you have already bought it, and Debora has told me your response has generally been positive there, so thanks from me, too.

The give away is limited to the Kindle (or kindle app) because of the way gifting works, and she’s also offered to find three of her fans who’d like a copy of my book, too, so it’s a kind of exchange program for readers.

No obligation, no expectation. She only asks for the email addresses of three of you who might like to read her book. Leave me a comment and I’ll pass your addresses along to her.

Thanks for your help and support in this. I think it’s going to be fun.

Oh, and just so you know, I’ve also started chipping away at Cape Grace. Look for that late in the spring.

Wow. March is just around the corner…

Safe voyage.

Hey, crew?

While I’m cranking through a lot of back logged audio work (and gearing up for Mike Sullivan’s Avempartha), I’m throwing around a few ideas to help cut down the amount of time you have to wait for new content from me.

A lot of people have said “Write some short stories” but most of you know, I don’t really like to do shorts.

Except, I’ve done a few that were really quite fun. I did one for JR Blackwell’s Birthday Book last year that was a gas. I’ve got one going into Tee and Pip’s Steampunk anthology. I even did one a couple years ago from Matt Selznick’s kick off anthology (and that might show up in a Star Ship Sofa episode some day, too.)

So… That leads me to Novel Nibbles.

I met Debora Geary on the Kindle Boards recently and she convinced me to take a look at her site and read her first nibble. It’s a novella length (20,000 words) and I really enjoyed it. I read it on my phone. While this is not unusual for me, it also struck me that this might be a great way for me to toss a bit of reading your way for the between-times, keep my hand in, and try out some different stories.

At 99 cents they’re not real expensive, but if we moved a few of them, it would help cover bandwidth costs and they’re small enough that you’d get something you could read on your smart phones or ipads or whatever. You don’t even need to own a kindle to as long as you have a device you can get the app for.

It’s not going to take the place of my main writing but I’m trying to find ways to get more work out between the big chunks of stuff. At 20k words it’s enough room to tell a simple story and I think that’s a pretty good value for a buck. So? You interested?

Check out the site, maybe read the nibble there and see how it works for you as a test run, and let me know what you think of this idea? Pllease leave me a comment and lemme know what you think–good, bad, or indifferent?

Thanks.