Thursday, June 10, 2010

Free for All

1000+ novels for free: Online Novels has indexed links to "titles of more than 1000 online books written by both published and unpublished authors who have made their work freely available on the internet. The novels listed here are organized by category, with brief descriptions taken from the websites on which they can be found."

Crime Fic for Free: Charlie Huston has put Caught Stealing, the first book in his Hank Thompson series, up on Scribd.com for free reading and download.Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I do not recommend using their service. See my post about this scam here.

Dragon Lovers, rejoice: this month Suvudu Free Library is offering for a limited time Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, the first book in her popular series, as a free download in all of the major formats.

New/Shiny SF e-zine: Lightspeed Magazine is offering one fiction story and one nonfiction piece free to read online or download as a podcast each week; this week it's Jack McDevitt's The Cassandra Project and an "author spotlight" with McDevitt.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:58 AM

    The Charlie Huston book is a fantastic read. I would double-recommend it to any writer, because he does very interesting things with form. Dialog set apart by a dash with no identification of the speaker. I don't remember if the Hank Thompson series have chapters, but the later Joe Pitt books do not.

    Useful to see how much you can get away with not including - if the prose and the characters are compelling enough.

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  2. Delores2:07 PM

    Your blog is very interesting. However, I have a question about your "Darkyn" series. I have read that you have ended the series, this makes me and it appears lots of your fans sad. I would like to know if this is indeed the case. I understand you have another serie the "Kyn." Is this a continuation of the "Darkyn" series? I just recently began reading your novels and I absolutely love the characters and I am hoping that the series is not ending permenantly. I would truly appreciate you blogging about these issues. Thank you again.

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  3. Anonymous wrote: Dialog set apart by a dash with no identification of the speaker.

    If the writer can get it past an editor (extremely difficult) that sort of thing really sets a book apart, but it can also be insanely tough to pull off. I'll definitely have to download Charlie's book myself after I slay my current deadline and check it out.

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  4. Delores wrote: I have read that you have ended the series, this makes me and it appears lots of your fans sad.

    It's a bit more complicated than that. For reasons that were never discussed with or explained to me my publisher told me to stop writing the series and do something new for them. For the readers' sake I tried to wrap up as many plotlines as possible in book seven because I didn't want to leave anyone hanging (I've been through this before with this publisher and my StarDoc series, and my readers had to wait years before I was able to continue that series, something I didn't want them to go through with Darkyn.)

    I understand you have another serie the "Kyn." Is this a continuation of the "Darkyn" series?

    The Kyndred novels are a spin-off series set in the same universe as the Darkyn but with different characters and plotlines.

    Once I started writing the Kyndred books the Darkyn series evidently began racking up more sales and sort of took off, so the publisher told me to put Darkyn characters into the Kyndred books (you can imagine how much fun it is for a writer to get jerked around like this), which I did.

    I've noticed that a major chain book buyer touted the first Kyndred book as a "continuation" of the Darkyn series, which is incorrect, but that major chain can't even spell my name right so it may be just another error on their part. Or it could be how the publisher is now presenting the books. I'm not ever consulted about this kind of stuff.

    I just recently began reading your novels and I absolutely love the characters and I am hoping that the series is not ending permenantly.

    Honestly, I'm not sure what's going to happen now. I'm finishing up the last Kyndred book I have under contract (#4) and when we talk about the next contract (assuming I'm offered one) they may want more Kyndred or they may ask me to write some new Darkyn novels. Then again they may also decide they want me to do something new and I'll have to figure out a third direction to take. Because they keep changing their minds it's difficult for me to depend on anything or guess what it is they'll want.

    I have written a number of Darkyn novellas and short stories which I've posted online as free e-books for my readers, and I'll probably continue to do so. If you'd like to check them out, go over to the FREEBIES section in the right sidebar -- the Darkyn titles are Incarnation, Midnight Blues, Near Dawn, Wanted, Willing and Worthy.

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  5. I'm queen of planet typo today -- Incarnation should be Incarnatio. Sorry, Delores. :)

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  6. I went straight for Shadowlight and Dreamveil, of course, and relished every savory word. For some reason I found page 279 of Dreamveil hilariously funny. Lots of wierd looks from the hubby. Had to flip to the title page to check out your autograph before I could continue. I was a bit sad that the Darkyn series had ended but now I'm feeling very excited about the Kyndred. Thanks again!

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  7. p.s. If whoever does the contracts concerning what series you write would consult with your adoring public we would surely appreciate it! Haven't they realized by now that you're a genius? We liked the Darkyn. The charactors were wonderful and I was thrilled to no end to see some familier names in the Kyndred books.
    Would it help if we signed a petition to just let you write what you want to write? If they haven't figured out by now that we LOVE your books they need to get their heads up out of their crappy contracts and smell some fresh air.

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