Get Unwelcome Matt for cheap!
Unwelcome Matt, my mystery about a librarian who comes home to evict her deadbeat housemate but instead finds a body in her house, is on sale for $0.99 (or the equivalent in other global markets) until midnight Sunday Pacific time. I had a BookBub feature for the book last Monday, and I’ve sold 424 of them already at the discounted price, and there’s been a bit of a boom with readers borrowing the book in Kindle Unlimited, so that’s all very exciting.
Here’s a recent review from one of my most dedicated readers, somebody great whom I’ve met through my books. She’s read them all, I think, or nearly so – I know I signed a bunch of them for her in Roanoke a couple years ago.
Headed to WorldCon
There’s a big annual venerable science fiction convention held each year, called “The World Science Fiction Convention” but usually shortened to WorldCon. It’s held in a different world city each year. Last year, that was Seattle, and I went for the first time, not as a guest, but just to attend talks, meet people, and see what it was all about. It was super fun, and I got to hear panels from authors I’d been reading since my childhood.
This year, it’s in Los Angeles, so I’m going again, and this year, they accepted my application to be a guest. I’ll be involved in several different events:
The Game Design Jam should be really fun for creative folks – we’ve ordered a ton of game pieces, and we have a long stretch of time with all kinds of paper, cards, dice, pawns, etc. to come up with a new game design. Just a Minute is a BBC game show, so I’ll be MCing that with some other cool panelists as players, and the trivia show I’ll run on Saturday solo (I’ve done that many times online and at my local comedy club). The other ones are all discussion panels, and I’m really looking forward to those, especially the fantasy mystery one, which my Inquisitors’ Guild books fit right into.
Writing update
I haven’t done a ton of writing in the last couple weeks, although I got a little done, and I’m getting back into it. Got distracted by my new boardgame design (I’ve played it three times now, and it’s fun!) and by helping my dad move from New Mexico to Iowa, which was a fun road trip in a big U-Haul truck. I’m working on my third sci-fi novel, which is about three-quarters done, and I hope to get it revised and out this year, probably in November or December. Here’s a teaser excerpt from the opening chapter:
“I was kind of hoping for death robots.” Rex sat at the engineering station, but he wasn’t facing the console. That made sense, because he was a marine, not an engineer. He was leaning as far back as the seat would let him, feet resting on the railing surrounding the plasma containment unit. That also made sense, because he was off shift, and he had nothing much to do even when he was on duty.
“Death robots? Really?”
“I mean, no. But it would be more interesting than this.” He waved a hand at the holo display to his right. “This is just sad.”
The display showed Harini, or what was left of it, along with tracking vectors and velocities for the bigger pieces of the huge debris field in orbit. Three and a half centuries ago, Harini had been a colony world, one with ten million people living on it. Now, it had a crater scarring ten degrees of arc across the center of the northern continent, plus evidence of a bunch of other smaller impacts. Most of the surface of the oceans was frozen up now following the impact, and big continental ice sheets crawled across any land mass that was more than 20 degrees from the equator. The darkness from the dust and ash after the impact had tipped a world already on the edges of an ice age deep into colder temperatures, with positive feedback from the high-albedo ice driving it ever deeper. Our science team guessed that most of the residents would have died when the atmosphere reached a few hundred degrees centigrade as the ejecta from the impact fell back through what was left of the atmosphere. If that didn’t get them, there was always the shock wave, the tsunamis, the massive instant volcanic eruptions, or any of the other consequences of the impact. And then the cold.
Some stories to try
I’m part of several author collectives, and we share each other’s work to try to help all of us reach more readers. In many cases, the books we share are are free or discounted. Sometimes, they ask that you sign up for a newsletter like this one. Here are some new books I have to share this month:
First, I have Earth 2100, a collection of 18 sci-fi stories by different authors trying to predict (through storytelling) what Earth might be like in 2100. A cool concept! The editor, J. Scott Coatsworth, will be on my Gen AI panel at the convention in Los Angeles I mentioned above, so it will be cool to meet him in real life. This is free to download, so there’s no obligation other than providing your email.
Next, I have Purpose Unearthed by Darice Fetcher, the first book in her No Winning This War series. This highly rated book (4.8 over 26 ratings on Amazon). It says it’s a “slow-burn philosophical dystopian science fiction novel about identity, control, and the fragile line between truth and perception in a world built for comfort rather than meaning.” Wow! A dystopian future where everyone relies on augmented reality glasses that project a censored, comfortable environment, in exchange for an extended, peaceful life. As you might expect, there are those who walk away. Sounds really intriguing!
Next, I have Last Ember of Azrith by Rowan Ashborne, which has spooky scaly naked-torso glowing eyes guy plus a dragon plus a towering city full of castles. The book itself is not about a fire going out, but instead a half-dragon warrior and an elf princess betrayed by an empire and struggling to save their people. Great stuff. You can get the full 91-page book here for free.
Finally, I have The Control Room by Miriam Khan, a sci-fi mafia romance for adults. A man bent on revenge meets a woman having visions, the daughter of his enemy, and their worlds and idea of reality start to come apart. This is part of a two-book series, and the first one is discounted to $1.99 if you act fast.
Thanks
Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for upcoming books! If you’re going to be at WorldCon and want to meet up, I’d love that too. Just drop me a line.
I hope you and your friends and family are having a safe and rewarding end to the summer (or winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere)!
May the Bloodmother watch over you –
Dave
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