Where to get Pavonis

My SF eBook "Pavonis" is available for download from the following fine online eBook stores: (sites with reviews are marked *)

Smashwords (ePub, Mobi, PDF etc., and read online)

Amazon US (Kindle)

Amazon UK (Kindle) *

Barnes and Noble (NookBook) *

Apple (iTunes) (or search by title in the iBooks app)

Kobo

Sony

Blio

Diesel eBook Store

Versent Books

Inktera

It should also be available for Android apps from Cricket and Asus (I can't confirm that, however).

Nook, Kindle, Blio and Diesel e-reader apps are available for iPad, iPhone, Android, PC and others. See the various web sites for details.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE... I'd really appreciate honest reviews. All the above sites have places where you can do this. If you like the book it'd be great to hear but if you don't, please tell me what you thought was wrong with it. Thanks in advance.

For some reason the book summary is not showing everywhere, so here it is:

After a friend dies in suspicious circumstances, John Vaux finds himself torn from his quiet life and thrown into an adventure that carries him across the huge planet Pavonis in search of an ancient artifact that will change the world. As Vaux travels tens of thousands of kilometres following clues to the location of the artifact he's pursued for a murder he didn't commit, chased by fanatics who will destroy the artifact to protect the status quo and kill anyone who gets in their way, attacked by a 'dragon', robbed, gassed, captured, freed, and shot at. He rides (and crashes) monowheels, stows away on land trains and sea trains, steals (and crashes) a dragonfly, flies aboard a personal skyhouse and sneaks in and out of a city in a meteor crater through the sewers. Twice.

Craig Hallam, author of Greaveburn (excellent read, get it if you haven't already) wrote this wonderful synopsis on his blog:

Pavonis is a habitable planet (M-class to you Trekkies ;D) which the human race have migrated to after Earth becomes poisoned by all manner of unsurvivable pollutions. Two hundred years after they land, and the people of Pavonis have lost their old technologies when a madman destroys the ‘libraries’, a collection of all of Earth’s scientific and cultural (and everything else) knowledge. And so, in an effort to survive, the Pavonis folk have to return to steam and hydrogen power to propel their xeppelins, carriages and seaskimmers. But that’s just where the story starts. It seems that some bright spark managed to smuggle a copy of the ‘library’ away and keep it safe. But the bad guys, and their sticky little fingers, want it. When our hero’s friend thinks that he has found the library, the aforementioned bad guys have him bumped off, and so our hero steps to the plate to figure out who killed his friend and colleague, reclaim the library, and kick some bad guy behind while he’s at it. Written in the first person perspective gives Pavonis a real retro Sherlock Holmesy feel to it, like the old memoir style pieces, with action and intrigue and soem great plot points and description. Basically, it’s ace. A really fun read. And it’s Steampunk! What more could you want!? Go get it HERE, among other places.

Thanks, Craig :)

The FBI is trying to arrest me by email

This is just too funny. I received an email telling me that WE THE FBI HAVE WARRANT TO ARREST YOU GET BACK TO US FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. And it had an attachment; normally I wouldn't open such a thing (dangerous!) but since it was just a plain text file, and it made me curious, I just had to look. It's a hoot, plainly written by a complete asshole:


Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
Fbi Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 Website: www.fbi.gov

Attention, this is the final warning you are going to receive from me do you get me?

I hope youre understand how many times this message has been sent to you?.

We have warned you so many times and you have decided to ignore our e-mails or because you believe we have not been instructed to get you arrested, and today if you fail to respond back to us with the payment then, we would first send a letter to the mayor of the city where you reside and direct them to close your bank account until you have been jailed and all your properties will be confiscated by the fbi. We would also send a letter to the company/agency that you are working for so that they could get you fired until we are through with our investigations because a suspect is not suppose to be working for the government or any private organization.

Your id which we have in our database been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to inset you in their website as an internet fraudsters and to warn people from having any deals with you. This would have been solved all this while if you had gotten the certificate signed, endorsed and stamped as you where instructed in the e-mail below.this is the federal bureau of investigation (fbi) am writing in response to the e-mail you sent to us and am using this medium to inform you that there is no more time left to waste because you have been given from the 3rd of January. As stated earlier to have the document endorsed, signed and stamped without failure and you must adhere to this directives to avoid you blaming yourself at last when we must have arrested and jailed you for life and all your properties confiscated.

You failed to comply with our directives and that was the reason why we didn't hear from you on the 3rd as our director has already been notified about you get the process completed yesterday and right now the warrant of arrest has been signed against you and it will be carried out in the next 48hours as strictly signed by the fbi director. We have investigated and found out that you didn't have any idea when the fraudulent deal was committed with your information's/identity and right now if you id is placed on our website as a wanted person, i believe you know that it will be a shame to you and your entire family because after then it will be announce in all the local channels that you are wanted by the fbi. As a good Christian and a honest man, I decided to see how i could be of help to you because i would not be happy to see you end up in jail and all your properties confiscated all because your information's was used to carry out a fraudulent transactions, i called the efcc and they directed me to a private attorney who could help you get the process done and he stated that he will endorse, sign and stamp the document at the sum of $98.00 usd only and i believe this process is cheaper for you.

You need to do everything possible within today and tomorrow to get this process done because our director has called to inform me that the warrant of arrest has been signed against you and once it has been approved, then the arrest will be carried out, and from our investigations we learnt that you were the person that forwarded your identity to one impostor/fraudsters in Nigeria when he had a deal with you about the transfer of some illegal funds into your bank account which is valued at the sum of $10.500,000.00 usd.

I pleaded on your behalf so that this agency could give you till 7/9/2012 so that you could get this process done because i learnt that you were sent several e-mail without getting a response from you, please bear it in mind that this is the only way that i can be able to help you at this moment or you would have to face the law and its consequences once it has befall on you. You would make the payment through western union money transfer with the below details.

NAME: OBI JACOB
ADDRESS:  LAGOS  NIGERIA
TEXT QUESTION:FOR
ANSWER: YOU
AMOUNT: $98
Senders name======

Send the payment details to me which are senders name and address, mtcn number, text question and answer used and the amount sent. Make sure that you didn't hesitate making the payment down to the agency by today so that they could have the certificate endorsed, signed and stamped immediately without any further delay. After all this process has been carried out, then we would have to proceed to the bank for the transfer of your compensation funds which is valued at the sum of $10.500,000.00 usd which was suppose to have been transferred to you all this while.

Note/ all the crimes agencies have been contacted on this regards and we shall trace and arrest you if you disregard this instructions. You are given a grace today to make the payment for the document after which your failure to do that will attract a maximum arrest and finally you will be appearing in court for act of terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking charges, so be warned not to try any thing funny because you are been watched.

THANKS FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION.

ROBERT MUELLER

WASHINGTON DC

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
Fbi Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 Website: www.fbi.gov

My New Book

Before I begin this post in earnest, here's a link to the Smashwords page for the book: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177165

It's set five hundred years in the future, on a colonised planet where a war early in the colony's history has resulted in the loss of most technical knowledge. That's all I'm going to say about it here; for more check out the link above. Download the free sample. Then buy the book - it's a snip at $2.99 - and write a review. I'd love to know what you think.

Now, the tale. At the start of May I sent my manuscript of Pavonis, my first full-length book, out to several UK literary agents, then settled down to wait for responses.

Most of them replied pretty quickly - with rejections, unfortunately, but I didn't let that get me down; there was only one that still hadn't answered after eight weeks (the usual period most of the agents say to allow before following up). That eight week wait was up last week so accordingly I sent an email to that last straggler and gave them 24 hours to get back to me; they didn't, so I decided it was time for Plan B.

The only thing was that I hadn't really decided until the last minute what Plan B was actually going to be.

I had several options. I could try to find an agent in the US, but to be honest from what I've seen and been told about the US publishing industry I didn't like that idea much. Another option was to try to rewrite the book, or at least parts of it, to try to make it more agent-friendly, but since I'd had no feedback from any of those agents telling me why they'd rejected the manuscript there was no way to know what changes I'd have to make.

So I settled on the option that in hindsight I should have considered almost a year ago, when I submitted the manuscript to the very first agent (the one that I mentioned in the May 4 post - see below). I decided to self-publish Pavonis as an eBook on Smashwords.

So I reformatted the 'script in line with the guidelines (they publish several books specifically to help their authors, all available as free downloads), created an account, and published.

I've done all I can to make sure Pavonis goes to Smashwords' premium channels - that way it'll be made available through Apple, Barnes & Noble and other major booksellers. It has to go through a review process before that happens, though, to make sure it fits those companies' rules regarding formatting, pricing and some other things. To be honest I'm not certain that it'll pass that review first time. Amongst other things I write using OpenOffice, but Smashwords requires submissions as Microsoft Word documents; OO can save in Word format but I've never been convinced that it does it 100% correctly, so until I actually see the review results I'm in a fingernail-nibbling hold.

While that's going on I'm thinking about the next writing project.

I have another book that I've been working on, which would actually be three stories involving the same characters and settings; the storyboard for the first story is complete and I have some scenes written.

On the other hand, I wrote Pavonis intending to follow it up with a sequel at some point, and I quite like the idea of starting that sequel sooner rather than later.

And then I have a third option, which at this moment is no more than some vague ideas about a fictional place and some characters and an 'atmosphere' that I'd like to create.

So, which way to go? All three ideas have their merits and I really can't decide for sure which one I want to start on. For now, I think I'll continue biting nails and see what happens with Pavonis.