Adventures in E-Publishing: First Book is Out!

Announcing my new collection, Neither Here Nor There. If you’re familiar with earlier collection, Near + Far, this is the same double-sided format, with secondary world fantasy stories on one side and fantasy set in our own world on the other, including an original story, “The Wizards of West Seattle,” that will appeal to fellow Seattleites.

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Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a starred review, and other advance reviews have been very kind. Will you help me get the word out in time for people’s holiday shopping?

What can you do? Well, sure, buying the book is great. Here’s the links to the physical and electronic versions.

Amazon (hardcopy) (Kindle)

I’ll make B&N, Kobo, Powell’s, etc links available when I have them as well.

But here’s some other, better ways that you can help spread the word:

1. Request it through your library. Most will even let you do this online. The information you need is publisher: Hydra House and ISBN: 978-0989082877

2. Request it at your local bookstore. It’s available through Ingram, a major book distributor, so they should be able to get it.

3. Write an Amazon, GoodReads or other booksite review. Amazon reviews are great! So are other book selling/reviewing sites such as Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari!

Here’s the book listing on GoodReads. While there, enter the giveaway.

4. Blog about the book. Any mention of the book, particularly one that explains why you liked it, is awesome. Or come blog for me! I’m looking for guest posts about writing, F&SF, or related subjects. Mail me if you’re interested; the offer has no expiration date, since this is something I’m planning on doing on a regular basis.

5. Share news of it on social networks. Sharing links on Facebook and other social networks is great. Just favoriting, plusing or liking posts helps give them a little Google juice. Even going to the Facebook page and clicking “Like” helps. I’ve attached a couple of images that can be used as social media icons and/or backgrounds.

6. Share news of it on mailing lists and other groups. Pass the news along to your fellows on writing, literary, or SF-related discussion boards, BBSes, mailing lists, and other forums

7. Let me know if I’ve overlooked something! Many of you are writers and creative types who also often have something to promote. Please feel free to send me your notices, and if you like the idea of this post, feel free to use what you can from it.

Thanks for reading through all this, and thank you very much for your support in the past. I’m pleased with how lovely this collection looks, and very happy that it’s out in time for holiday shopping!

All the best,
Cat

Look! Mats Minnhagen has finished the cover for A SEED ON THE WIND, the Fathomless Abyss novella I’ve got covering out this October. The scene’s one that occurs early in the book and gets referenced again and again throughout, so this cover, which comes so close to what was in my head, delights me with the way it conveys the space of the story.

If you don’t know what the Fathomless Abyss is, it’s a shared world project created by Philip Athans involving myself, Jay Lake, Joe McDermott, Mel Odom, Mike Resnick, and Brad Torgersen. Books out in the series already include Philip Athans’ DEVILS OF THE ENDLESS DEEP and J.M. McDermott’s NIRVANA GATES. I had a lot of fun writing “A Querulous Flute of Bone” for the TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS anthology and just as much fun writing this novella, which is the first half of a pair, to be finished in A CAVERN RIPE WITH DREAMS. Charles A. Tan recently talked with me about it for S.F. Signal.

Here’s something from the first chapter:

One morning his father woke him from a nightmare. He was still young, perhaps six or eight. His father squatted on his heels besides Bill’s bedroll and shook his shoulder. When he woke, shuddering and gasping from dreams of strangle-fingered demons, feeling his breath still in jeopardy, his father didn’t say anything, just beckoned to him.

He followed at his father’s heels, towards the world and the great tube that the village of Poit clung to. At the end of each tunnel the space widened considerably, leaving places where shelves and ladders and catwalks could be stretched. And beyond them all you could see the abyss itself, stretching downward and upward into darkness.

The air was full of something. What was it?

Bill moved to the railing to see what was happening. His father said, “Sometimes the world opens and things fall in. This far down, we rarely see them. This is something you will remember all your life.”

Tiny things floated through the air all around him. He stretched out his palm and kept it motionless long enough that one drifted to be trapped in his palm. A seed, a brown seed. Attached to one end a tuft of hairs, fine and feathery, to carry it along. Carefully he raised his hand, examined it more closely. So small. As it neared his eye, it became no longer brown, ridges and swirls marked its surface in grays and greens and reds that somehow blended together to create the impression of brown from just a few inches farther away.

He closed his fingers around it, meaning to keep it. But it was so small that it wafted away even as his fingers moved.

He’d only seen things fall into the abyss. But these, so light, sometimes moved upward or downward, sometimes tugged sideways as though snatched by invisible hands. Thousands and thousands, swirling through the air.

He picked several from the ground around his feet. Gingerly, he put one between his teeth, crunching down.

The seed gave way, falling into woody shreds, tasting like nothing he’d ever tasted, a sweet roundness mixed with sharper, angrier notes. Not unpleasant, but awake. He swallowed the fragments, feeling them rough in his throat.

He gathered a painstaking handful, picking them from crevices. Other people were doing the same. How often did you get something like that without cost, like a gift from the universe?

He and his father stood for hours on the platform, hands resting on the stone balustrade, watching it. Almost everyone in the city came to see the phenomenon, even if their children had to carry them. People did not speak much, simply watched, as though storing it up.