Here’s what I got so far, crew. The story is complete and this is my draft cover art along with the “blurb” that will go along with it. I suspect we’ll clean up the blurb as it gets closer but I wanted to give you all a sneak peak at what’s coming. I’m contemplating the podcast idea but I think this is too short for Podiobooks–it would barely fill the required five episodes unless I made them REALLY short episodes. Someone made the suggestion that I offer it to Tony C. Smith over at StarShipSofa and I think that might work out quite nicely if Tony wants it.
UPDATE: Wow! That was fast!! A Light In The Dark seems to be available on Kindle already. I messed up the blurb, and it won’t let me fix it yet, but apparently the book is for sale.
UPDATE (Again): Barnes and Noble and Smashwords now available. (Note: The Smashwords meatgrinder put some bullets in front of the chapter headings for some of the formats. I’m working on fixing it.)
When Captain Bjorn Gunderson docks with what he thinks is routine cargo, he embarks on a very different voyage. On a milk run from Welliver to Breakall, a tiny rock punctures his ship, The Wanderer, and leaves the crew adrift twenty-thousand years from home. With food, water, and air running out, a desperate crewman takes a reckless gamble, risking his life in a daring bid to find safety. What he finds instead puts them all at risk.
Join Captain Gunderson and his crew on the final voyage of the Solar Clipper Wanderer in book one of Tales from the Deep Dark — A Light in the Dark.
An award winning producer of science fiction and fantasy podcasts, Nathan Lowell has produced eight novels totaling over 160 episodes and 70 hours of podcast fiction. Since 2008, four of his productions have been finalists in the Parsec Awards and his book–Captain’s Share–won the 2010 Parsec Award for Best Podcast Fiction (Long Form). In 2010, Ridan Publishing began producing his work in paper and ebook formats. Those books are available online from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the iBook Store, and from Ridan Publishing.
A Light In the Dark is the first of a series of novellas set in the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. The series focuses on the happenings in and around a renegade outpost, a place outside the jurisdiction of the Confederated Planets–a place where the normal rules don’t apply and where anything might happen.
For more information about the books and author, visit the Trader’s Diary at http://www.solarclipper.com.
Novel Nibbles are a series of shorter works offered in ebook only format for those who would like something to read on their phones and other small screen mobile devices. Coming in at around 20,000 words, they’re shorter works for smaller screens. See http://novelnibbles.com for more information and other titles in the Novel Nibbles family.
You know, I don’t mind hosting the files myself since there would only be a couple. I get 500gb a month (hopefully be enough if wanted)
oh i could host them, too.
it’s a matter of distribution and whether it’s worth the hassle to do the recording when I *could* be writing new stuff instead of podcasting a novella.
If I record it for Tony, then I’ll probably leave it with him.
Interesting stuff. :)
I look forward to it!
Great news! Nice cover art. It has a pleasing sort of grab to it.
Podcast: on the positive side, putting out at a new place could be a good way to acquaint new readers. It’s not overly long and hopefully would not require too many hours.
On the negative side: you seem to be a roll and it might be good to keep with the momentum. Maybe it would be better to hold off on doing more audio if you feel you could write at this time.
I like it! Yep!
Good news indeed! Of course Tony will want it! Can’t wait to hear it.
Maybe someone else could voice it? Granted, only you could do the Ishmael stories, but I bet you’d have hundreds of volunteers, maybe including some trained or student voice actors, if you asked. Just a thought. (I could do a pretty convincing monotonic old coot myself, but the market for that is probably kinda limited.) If it only comes out as an ebook I may finally buy myself a Kindle. Your solar clipper universe is a much better place to live than the World the Politicians Made.
Ideal timing
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/podioracket-presents-glimpses/
Perhaps worth the effort to enquire?
It’s too long. They have a word count limit that I can’t get under.
I bought it, now I just need to read it.
Wow, I didn’t realize it would be available so soon. Purchased as soon as I saw your tweet!
I was kinda surprised too.
Thanks. :)
Loved the story, Nate!! Thank you so much. Highly recommended to any fan of the Solar Clipper stories. :-)
See, this is why I don’t like Amazon. I’d really rather not run the Kindle App under WINE on Linux – I’m using enough RAM as it is. I’ve got Calibre, and it is *SUPPOSED* to be able to read it, since it’s not DRM’d… (I think that’s what unlimited devices means…)
But there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell Amazon to just let me download the damn file and handle it myself! Amazon *WANTS* that damn Kindle app.
Did ya’ll investigate distributing the e-books through Webscriptions? If so, other than the broader exposure Amazon would give you, was there anything that made it unattractive?
Because Webscriptions really is clean and sweet.
Same kind of issue really. No kindle app, no story. Still hoping smashworlds will have it and the later trader books.
I’ll look at webscriptions … and get it onto smashwords today.
Wait. Webscriptions charges users $18 a month?
That’s a show stopper.
Thank you Sar
what an unexpected bday present I’ll be reading it on my new kindle
No, they don’t. $18/mo is for the monthly Webscriptions bundle (generally, 3-4 new books, filled out with back catalog works) – and as far as I know, those are Baen books only. However, they distribute other publisher’s books as well, sold as individual books. I don’t know about their pricing policy on individual books, though, as I’ve only been on the buyer side, not the seller.
I’ve bought quite a few individual books, as well as individual monthly bundles (I don’t think they even have a plan for automatically getting the monthly bundle), and one particular bundle of a theme (The Jupiter Novels – themed on young men and women just starting out in space careers – gee, wonder why Webscriptions came to mind… *chuckles*) Prices for individual books seems to be between $4-6, so I can see where it wouldn’t fit your plan. I just wondered if you’d looked at them.
Thank you for getting it up to Smashwords so quickly, though!
Bought and read! I liked the story very much. You are a very good author/narrator Nate. Though, considering Odin’s Outpost is the Mos Eisley of the Golden Age universe, I did kind of expect more of a Double Share feel to it. Gunderson seems to be too nice a guy to be running a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” with hot and cold running pleasure :P Still, its a good story and a fun peek at the “not nice” side of the universe.
I am so conflicted I bought on AMAZON as soon as I got the post, But Now it’s on Nook. I know it’s 99 cents but I really don’t like buying Two of the same book(In the same Format) if I can avoid it. But I may just buy it on my Tablet.(I do Have a a number of E-readers on their so it’s no problem.)
I don’t understand, Norman.
You can make as many copies as you like and share them around with your various devices.
Just run the Kindle copy thru Calibre to convert it to ePub or whatever else you need.
I’ll look into Webscriptions, Tara.
I didn’t realize this wasn’t part of Baen Books.
Just downloaded it, Nathan. Luckily I have this coming week off so I’ll be able to sit down and really dig into it.
It’s only 20k words, Scott.
You can probably get through it in under two hours.
I haven’t bought it yet…
…ok, done.
Can’t wait to read it!
I love love love love the fact that you’ve set this in the same part of the universe as CS/OS.
“Please Sar can I have some more”
Bought it and read it yesterday. It was a bit weird reading your words instead of listening to them but it was a great story and I was left wanting to know more.
I’ve listened to all of your books several times and I love them and the way you read them. As an narrator I put you up there with Stephen Fry who reads the Harry Potter series here in England. You are a maestro please don’t stop!
I bought it on Amazon too, Norman, and then had to get the Kindle app running because Amazon absolutely will *NOT* allow you to just download the file – you *MUST* either have an app, or a device, registered with them. Even if their nice little help pop-up implies otherwise.
At least they don’t stuff it into a database so you have to do a magic export from the Kindle App, or install it onto a device and then suck the file from the device directly.
Over all, though, I found the Kindle experience very confusing.
Any chance you’d send me a copy by e-mail if I gave you a PayPal donation, Nate? I have no credit card, therefore no access to paid Kindle books.
*Laughs at Hade* At one point, I was considering offering Linden Dollars in Second Life. I’d have been more than happy to send L$2500 (US$ 10) to get it sorted.
Hear about it, bought it, loved it! Can’t wait for another installment from the Solar Clipper Universe
Hade: smashwords accepts paypal payments
Saw the tweet, snagged a copy via Kindle, and practically inhaled it all in an afternoon. Loved it, and said so at Amazon. Everyone else should, too…make sure to leave a review and show our Captain how much we appreciate his hard work!
Bought it, read it. Bought Quarter Share too cuz I’ve only listened to it 100 times. I’m sure it’ll be even more entertaining to read it. Is it strange that I hear your voice inmy head Nathan when I read the ebook? Even cookie’s accent is there in my head!!!
Nate – great story! Many, many thanks.
After listening to the “Share” series over and over I still can get my brain to read this as YOU… Enjoy all your works, thanks for the entertainment
It seems I have a new story for my Nathan Lowell collection. I like the Supernova 1987A V838 Moncerotis Light Echo photo. The firsttime I saw the whole series of photos I was astounded.
Had a time with B&N getting the book to show across my devices. Arrived fine on the new nook, but wouldn’t show at all elsewhere (iPad, iPhone, old nook, the gorram website!), so Smashwords came to the rescue.
Another great read! Thanks Nate!
Just another fan of yours that mentioning that he loves WebScriptions. I buy most all their bundles, great value and I have discovered new authors!
Waiting for some downtime to read this. I bought on kindle, but I prefer ePub. I should have waited for SmashWords. Oh well, for a buck I’ll just buy it again!
Please, Sar, be so kind to make an audible version of your novella. To me your narration and voice is a very important part of all of your books, making them at least twice as good as they are anyways :-)
Frank (still waiting and waiting and waiting for the limited edition hard covers to finally meet up with the lonely Quarter Share in my book shelf …)
I *will* be reading the story.
Tony C. Smith has accepted it for the Hugo Award Winning podcast, StarShipSofa. It’ll be coming out in a few months.
:)
You should setup an Amazon merchant account so that the referral links you post get you a cut in addition to the normal kindle royalty. Look into doing that for everything you link to. It would be nice to ship you money two ways at once.
Read it and absolutely loved it. I thought the snapshot approach of the novel nibbles was a great way to get a feel for the characters and the situation. May be a good option to get to see more of your universe without spending a lot of time on any one specific character or crew. Fantastic as always, Nate!
Thanks, Scott. Now that I’ve got the feel for it, I suspect there may be more of them.
Enjoyed it tremendously. Amazon is somewhat annoying to buy books from, since my Palm phone does not have a Kindle app, and it will *not* let me buy the books without one. I do of course have a reader that will convert and read Kindle format, however I would have to install the Kindle software on my pc, transfer it to my phone, and then, finally, I could convert it to the reader. Instead, I just read it on smashwords on my phone. Worked fine, and Smashwords “remembers” your place. A little clunky for a larger work, though. May be time to upgrade to a new phone, but I hate to do that for one which otherwise works perfectly for my needs. /sigh
Nice book.I enjoyed reading it and it was nice to be back in Nate’s universe again….i was “almost” expecting that Ish would be one of the bi-persons for a minute or so until i realized it was the story of how Odins outpost came into existens.To bad it was so short though but i will be looking forward to the next book.
Absolutely had to buy it when I saw that post up here. Really good. And I actually enjoy that Odin, as we’ve come to know him, may not have started all grizzled. It could be he’s not a sour old man at all. The only info we have to go by is the short blurb about it in Captain’s Share when they are stuck out there for 22hrs. Ishmael hasn’t been there as far as I remember. Ms. Thomas might have, but she didn’t elaborate very much, did she? It’s really awesome to have another piece of the Solar Clipper Universe.
Really enjoyed this story. Another great story Nate it’s always a good time when I can spend a few hours in the Golden Age. Really can’t wait till Ish is back.