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.

Great show, Seether and Bush; Pepsi Center, you suck

Last night we went to see Seether and Bush (and My Darkest Days and Nickelback, but I'll come back to that) at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Seether were excellent as always, and Bush were good too (this was the first time I'd seen them live). But the whole experience was marred by the total fucked-up-ness that is the Pepsi Center.

The tickets were expensive in the first place; I guess that's just par for the course these days and anyway Americans don't seem to mind being ripped off. So it was adding insult to injury to find that parking at the Pepsi Center is $15. We've seen Seether at Fiddler's Green (aka Comfort Dental Amphitheater, which is a bloody stupid name) and other places, and parking was free there.

But the ripping-off wasn't over yet. It was hot weather so we both had bottled water with us, which was taken away as we went in so that I had to pay $7.50 for two bottles of water inside the Center.

Water wasn't the only thing to drink, though; there was beer, wine, whiskey, you name it, and plenty of people were carrying alcohol onto the floor. And plenty of people were drunk, of course. Inconsiderate assholes carrying drinks continually tried to squeeze through the crowd to get closer to the stage; someone started picking a fight about ten feet from us; we both got beer and who knows what else on us. Thank you, Pepsi Center, for encouraging people to get brainless drunk in a crowded arena.

And of course there was the obligatory six-foot-four man-mountain who didn't give a shit that nobody behind him could see the show they'd paid for.

We ended up leaving after Bush left the stage (which is why we didn't get to see My Darkest Days and Nickelback). We'd had enough. The next time we go anywhere to see a band, it'll be somewhere we can get seats, and it will NOT be at the Pepsi Center.

Agents, Schmagents

I'm writing this as a blog post because I have to get it out of my system and I can't do that in 140 characters. It may come across as whining, which is fine by me; whining is a tradition with a long and distinguished history.

Last September I submitted a query to a literary agent. I'm British, so is the agent, my manuscript is written in British English using an A4 template, so I felt compelled to use A4 paper rather than American Letter size; as such I had to find somewhere to buy A4 - which took some doing, I can tell you.

Having done that I had to print the first three chapters, the cover letter, the synopsis and a one-page bio, then put the whole pile in a strong envelope and mail it to the UK.

I gave the agent nine weeks. There was no word, so I called and was told that (1) they couldn't tell me when they'd received the query because they didn't keep a log, and (2) their reader was at that time going through work that had arrived in April. This was November, and a little thumbnail calculation told me that the reader should get to mine sometime around April this year.

So like a fool I let it go. I decided that rather than bug them by calling too often, I'd wait until April then call if I hadn't received a response.

April went by and May appeared, and I hadn't received a response. Time to call. It took three calls over two days to get to talk to someone, and I was then told that according to the log, there was no record of my script.

Wait a minute; when I called in November there wasn't a log. Now there is?

So the guy said I should submit again. I asked him if, given the circumstances, I could send the material by email. He said that their crappy old system didn't handle email attachments so I'd have to send another print copy.

It sounded like an excuse. It sounded like a lie. Even if their system is so crappy that it can't handle email attachments - which sounds like bullshit - surely they have access to a real computer? Create a gmail account, give me the address, I send an email with the attachments, they get it, job done. And the thing about the log... the guy had checked the log for September, so they must have had it in place at that time; why was I told in November that they had no such log? Why was I not told that my query was not in the log? I could have sent it again right away, instead of wasting months.

I told the guy I would send the query again, but by the time I'd hung up I'd already decided that I wasn't going to.

That afternoon and evening I did another quick revision pass of my 'script, then yesterday I spent most of the day going through the UK agents listings in the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, finding agents that handle the kind of book I've written, and looking up websites. I found seven agents that accept queries electronically, and I sent every one what they asked for. All of them say I should expect a response within eight weeks.

What really annoys me about the whole thing is that the original agency is not some two-bit operation; they handle some very well known names and they're pretty well respected. I chose them in the first place because they represent one of my favourite authors. But they can't or won't accept electronic submissions, and they won't return phone calls or answer emails.

I suspect they feel that by making writers jump through hoops to get the work to them, they'll filter out all but the most determined. Perhaps that's true - but just because someone's determined doesn't mean that they write well, and on the other hand I'm guessing that there are some really good writers out there who nevertheless aren't about to piss about with an agent that insists on paper submissions, especially when there are other agencies, with author lists just as impressive, who don't.

So going forward I've made a decision about agents. If they insist on paper submissions, they're not getting my work. If they can't respond to a query within the time they say they will, they're not getting my work. If they can't return phone calls or reply to emails, they're not getting my work. One agent has managed to sour my opinion of all agents, and that's not likely to change until I find one that I can trust.

Piracy

Before I go any further, I must point out that I am against piracy. That said, I am also strongly against SOPA, PIPA and any other legislation that assumes everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and that anyone and everyone with the means to commit piracy will automatically do so.

Here's the problem:

Fact 1: Music, movies, books etc. can all be stored as files on a computer system. Music on CD, movies on DVD, photographs and e-books are all stored as files. Compare this to vinyl records, celluloid films, videotape and printed books - those media aren't file-structured; they're not even digital. Copying them means having specialised equipment, so piracy isn't the problem with these that it is with digital media.

Fact 2: Files are easy to copy from one system to another over a network connection.

The upshot of these facts is that while the entertainment industry embraces the ability that digital technology gives them to distribute their product easily, at the same time that same technology makes it easy for anyone with a computer to make pirated copies.

It seems that what the industry wants to do is make sure that they're the only ones that can make the copies; they don't appear to have grasped the fundamental fact that the technology itself makes that impossible.

So they've tried a couple of different approaches. One is by using yet more technology, in the form of DRM and encryption mechanisms. The major problem with this is that it still has to allow copying to some extent; for example it's perfectly simple for me to rip a CD on my computer then burn a copy to leave in my car so that I don't need to worry about the original being stolen or damaged. On the other hand if I were to then sell that copy, that would make me a pirate. There's no way the technology can determine my intentions and stop me from burning copies to sell. (Let me make myself clear on something: I'm a software professional and I don't pirate music, videos, software etc. I'm against it in principle.)

The other approach is legislation, and so far almost every attempt at this has been a farce; DMCA, for example, is a total mess.

The root of the problem is that the entertainment industry wants the benefits of the technology, but they want to keep distributing music and movies the same way they always have - in shops, as if they were vinyl records and VHS cassettes.

Entertainment industry execs, here's a clue: That Doesn't Work. This simple fact should be plainly obvious by now. If you sell things that are easy for anyone with a laptop to copy and share, then some people are going to copy them and share them (and forget DRM and encryption; someone, somewhere, will crack it wide open within days).

The real answer - the only answer, from where I sit - is that the entertainment industry needs to work out a completely new way to sell their products. A way that gets away from the old vinyl-and-VHS way of selling things, and takes into account the fact that those products can and will be copied. A way that works for the producers and the consumers, and doesn't place the producers' rights to make a living above the consumers' rights to enjoy the products in any reasonable way. (Message to the industry: We consumers pay your wages. Don't forget that.)

And if you're asking me for how that might work, forget it; if that was that easy, someone else would already have thought of it by now. Entertainment industry, the ball is in your court.

The Christmas Round-up, and Back to Work

All in all a good christmas, despite an extremely tough pre-holiday week involving at least one twenty-hour day of cooking, decorating and present-wrapping. The big day itself was nice in general but marred by one self-centred individual. I tried to not let it spoil the day.

I deliberately left the tree and other decorations up for the following week, for atmosphere, the intention being to take them down on New Year's eve - that didn't happen but we got it all done yesterday.

On the gift front, I got Kate the camera she'd been ogling, and I got an electronic keyboard with two disks packed with piano/keyboard lessons. Anyone who tells you that learning to play is easy is lying. :)

Today, back to work after more than two weeks off - the longest break I can remember in a long time. That meant getting up at my regular time, getting stuck in diabolical traffic, then dealing with email (thankfully not too bad because of the holiday), fixing a bug and finally getting into the list of tasks to be done for the next version release. I've been here five and a half hours and it feels like fifteen; I'll be glad when I can pack it in and head home.