writing.

achievement unlocked: book deal.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been more quiet than usual on the blog and the TwitFaceSpaces lately. There’s a reason for that, of course, and I’m free to share it at this point.

My awesome agent Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency has sold the publication rights to Terms of Enlistment and its sequel, Lines of Departure, to 47North.

<insert Kermit flail>

What does that mean for the near future of the book series?

I have pulled all my self-published copies of Terms of Enlistment from the online sources where they were available. It is no longer on Kobo, B&N, or iTunes, and I won’t be able to offer any copies directly anymore. It will be available on Amazon’s Kindle store, but temporarily as a pre-order.

On May 14th, Terms of Enlistment will be re-released by 47North in Kindle edition, and at that point it will be available on Amazon.com again; a print and audio version will be produced soon thereafter. Those of you who were kind enough to leave reviews will be happy to hear that the 47North edition will keep all the reviews and star ratings of my self-published version. I will work with the team at 47North to make any changes and edits they find necessary (no matter how hard you think you’ve looked, there are always still typos somehow), but overall it shouldn’t be drastically different from the version that’s currently available.

As a result of the deal, 47North will also publish the sequel, Lines of Departure, this time simultaneously in print, Kindle, and audio formats. I am delivering the final manuscript of Lines of Departure by the end of next month, and I’ve been told they are aiming for a release in early 2014, possibly January.

I realize that some of you may be irritated at the fact that Book #2 will be delayed when I had already announced that I’d bring it out in May. It will, however, be a better book because the team at 47North will provide the editorial guidance, along with the production, marketing, cover design, publicity, and other support that will allow me to fully concentrate on my writing schedule and make sure it’s the best version of the novel it can be. As much as I know my stuff, I’m still just a one-man team, and for Terms of Enlistment, I’ve had to do not only the writing, but also all the editing (and there were many editing passes), cover design, marketing, ebook formatting, direct sales, support, accounting, and everything else that comes with putting out a novel. All the time spent on those things was time that had to be subtracted from my ability to actually write the books! With the novel and its sequel going to 47North, I can now concentrate on the sequel and the next two books in the series, as well as future projects.

To make sure that there’s stuff for you to read while you wait for Lines of Departure, I intend to bridge the gap between releases with short stories and a novella in the Terms of Enlistment universe, which will appear alongside Lucky Thirteen on the Kindle store in (hopefully) regular intervals.

So there’s the big news item of the day. The Terms of Enlistment books finally have a publisher, and I have both the time and the financial security to spend my days writing instead of being my own publishing house. I was getting sick of answering all these different phones and doing different voices for the sales, tech support, marketing, and editing departments.

masters and servants. things that go boom.

reader question: what’s wrong with gun registration?

Commenter “Jarin” has a question regarding gun registration which I answered in the comments thread, but which deserves a blog post response.

Jarin asks:

I don’t understand what the fuss is about registration… (no, really, I don’t get it, someone please explain it). Why should we not have registration for something as easily dangerous as guns? Why should firearms have less regulation than automobiles? Seriously, look at the paperwork around owning and operating a car. And yet, everyone does it. Why not treat firearms similarly?

First of all, registration does not do anything to prevent crime. Don’t believe it? Let me write down the serial number of my gun on these two pieces of paper and hand you one of them. What crime exactly are you going to prevent with that?

Second, registration is pretty much good for nothing except preparatory groundwork for confiscation. (Look at NY for a current-day example.) Canada’s expensive gun registration did not help solve a single crime but carried a $60 million price tag. That’s a lot of money that could have gone to stuff that actually fights crime. Lots of gun owners in this country get justifiably nervous at the idea of a registry of firearms when historically such a registry has only ever served to provide the authorities with a list of addresses for confiscating firearms.

Third, firearms do not have “less regulation than automobiles”. If they did, I’d be able to walk into any gun store and walk out with any gun I want, without having to show anything but a means to pay. I could own whatever I wanted on my own property without license or insurance (you only need those for a car if you plan on operating it on public roads.) My carry license would be valid in all fifty states and most countries abroad.

I wish they’d treat firearms like cars when it comes to regulation. If cars were regulated like guns, you’d need to pass a federal background check for each and every dealer purchase, your driver’s license would only be good in your own state unless some other state had explicitly agreed to reciprocity, and things like the capacity of your gas tank, the spoiler on your trunk lid, or the mode of shifting could be legal in one state but a five-year mandatory felony prison term in a neighboring state.

aminals. castle frostbite.

chicken recess.

The girls have been confined to the run and their coop since last summer. With the weather finally nice, and the bugs finally out in force again, I decided they should have some recess time outside in the afternoons again. They love their freedom, risky as it is.

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castle frostbite. new hampshah.

stickahs on our cahs.

 

IMG_1018

Here’s a picture of Frostbite One in all its churned-up-mud-road-dust-caked glory right now. (Quinn thought it needed some Batman logos, which is probably correct. Few things can’t gain from the application of a Batman logo.)

It’s basically pointless to drive this thing through a car wash between the months of December and May. You might as well just set fire to a ten-dollar bill.

Frostbite One is a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan. As a testament to my mostly-shut-in stay-at-home Dad existence until January, I’ve racked up only 94,000 miles on it since we purchased it in late 2005. It’s still in really good shape, though. No major parts failures in over seven years, just the usual wear parts needing replacement. You see a slightly aged minivan that’s still in great condition despite the few nicks and dings here and there. (The dent in the bumper was acquired at South Carolina’s Folly Beach in October 2010, and to date marks the minivan’s only interface with a stationary object.) You see new winter tires, quite a bit of caked-on dirt (again, dirt road), and a really faded oval D sticker above the model name on the trunk lid.

What don’t you see?

Bumper stickers, that’s what.

Despite the Grand Caravan’s substantial, shall we say, posterior, I have not festooned it with any stickers other than that oval D above the model name. Nothing to indicate hobbies, political affiliation, pet causes, or the number and gender breakdown of family members.

I live in New Hampshire, which is fairly libertarian-minded, still largely pro-gun, and really safe when you look at the crime rate statistics. But I routinely have to take Frostbite One out into the surrounding states, and some of them are somewhat less libertarian-minded, to put it mildly.

For example, I own guns and I enjoy shooting, and I have a drawer full of gun brand logo stickers from various purchases and swag events. But I don’t use them on the car because I do not want to drive down to Boston to pick up a friend or go to a con and end up in front of a MA state trooper in a vehicle with New Hampshire plates that is festooned with gun-related stickers (or worse, “From My Cold, Dead Hands” political ones.) I’m a responsible gun owner and follow local laws, but MA has extremely restrictive gun laws that can land people in hot water very quickly. If I go to MA and forget a box of range ammo in my van–or even just fired brass for reloading–I am looking at three years in a MA state prison if said state trooper pulls me over, goes through the van with a very fine comb (because HEY, GUN NUT), and finds so much as a single piece of expended brass.

Then there’s the fact that gun logos or Second Amendment-related stickers on a parked vehicle are practically a glowing neon sign advertising “HEY, THERE MAY BE GUNS IN HERE”, especially in places where the local law stipulates that a licensed gun carrier has to disarm before entering specific places, like a school, day care, public gathering, or restaurant that serves alcohol.

Another concern is the advertising of politically unpopular viewpoints on one’s vehicle, which can be an invitation for property damage by people who don’t appreciate dissenting or “provocative” opinions in their field of view. I have more than one libertarian friend whose Ron Paul sticker was defaced or removed from their cars while they were parked on the grounds of academic institutions, for example. I also know of an incident where a friend’s car was keyed along the side of the door and across the back of the trunk lid where my friend had put an atheist sticker. A lot of people seem to think that some opinions are worthy of immediate fiscal punishment, and the minivan has enough scuffs and dents as it is without some college Trotzkyist or Defender of the Faith adding to that collection with a car key and/or a spray can.

Anyway, that’s why Frostbite One isn’t stickered up like a six-year-old’s My Little Pony birthday party. Hey–there’s a sticker theme that can’t possibly be offensive, or likely to get me a frisking by the side of the Interstate…

 

 

capitalism. intertubes flotsam.

worst product idea of the decade.

The hilarious Amazon product review page of the month: the Wheelmate Laptop Steering Wheel Desk. (Yes, it’s a desk you can put on your car’s steering wheel.)

The comments are gold, but pay particular attention to the customer images.

books. capitalism.

lucky thirteen, now on the kindelmaschine.

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I  released my short story “Lucky Thirteen” on Amazon Kindle. It’s a very slightly edited version of the one some of you may have read already when I released it on the blog a year or two ago, so if you’ve already read that version, those $0.99 won’t get you anything new except a cover and a convenient Kindle download. If you haven’t read the story yet, then THIS IS TOTALLY FOR YOU. It’s a short story in the “Terms of Enlistment” universe–the tale of rookie Lt. Halley’s first drop ship command.

I’ve also uploaded a revised version of “Terms of Enlistment” that should make its way to all the purchasers automatically within the next 48 hours. I fixed the typos found by readers (and thank you  for the ones you’ve emailed me), improved the formatting a bit, and added a Table of Contents.

The short story is only available on the Kindle right now because I’m running an experiment with KDP Select, which requires that the content stays exclusive to Amazon for a while. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can read it on the desktop, or download the MOBI file to convert it to a format of your choice in Calibre. (None of my ebooks are DRM-enabled, so there’s no copy protection to fight.)

in the news. masters and servants.

having one’s cake etc. etc.

“Assault rifles are only good for killing a lot of people rapidly, and we don’t want anyone in our state to be able to own one…but please keep making them here because we love the tax revenue from selling those death machines.” 

–Connecticut’s Gov. Malloy (paraphrased)

parenting.

in new hampshire, even our playgrounds are harsh.

Girl Child punchi-sized her face on the school playground yesterday by running around WITH HER EYES CLOSED WHILE MEOWING. Now her upper lip is about the size of a Jeep Wrangler tire, and she doesn’t want to eat solid foods. Good thing she had a dentist appointment this morning anyway.

I know it’s totally un-American these days, but instead of suing the school for not wrapping their playground equipment in three layers of foam and assigning a Safety and Impact Prevention Agent to follow my child around at all times, I advised her that running around on a playground with your eyes closed is not a good way to avoid getting smacked in the mouth by peacefully stationary metal objects. RADICAL, I KNOW.

books. writing.

an announcement.

As of today, I have a literary agent. I’ve signed with Evan Gregory of Ethan Ellenberg, who will represent my works from now on. Together, we will make ALL THE MONEY.

I’ve been looking for a literary agent for a few years now (ever since Viable Paradise XII in 2008, in fact), and Ethan Ellenberg has always been at the top of my list based on their client roster and reputation. To say that this is a pretty big deal is a monumental understatement.

Anyway, please excuse me now while I Kermit Flail around the house and mix a celebratory cocktail the size of one of those kiddie pools.