Book Review: Machine Vendetta

This year I'm keeping track of what I read. Whether I enjoy the book or not, I'll post a blurb and brief review. Most will be speculative fiction in some form—genres I gravitate toward in my own writing. Today, it's Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds.

A thrilling tale of deadly conspiracies and old enemies that refuse to die. Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Ingvar Tench was one of Panoply's most experienced operatives. So why did she walk alone and unarmed into a habitat with a vicious grudge against her organization? As his colleagues pick up the pieces following her death, Prefect Tom Dreyfus must face his conscience. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the inquiry by proxy. In using her, did Dreyfus also put her in the line of fire? And what does Tench's attack tell him about an enemy he had hoped was dormant?

When the first book in this trilogy was released way back in '07, I thought it was a standalone. So getting a sequel in '18 followed by this third installment last year has been quite a treat. Machine Vendetta avoids the pitfalls of the second book by bringing the overarching conflict full circle and focusing on the characters we care about most. It's a taut future-crime murder mystery with onion layers, solid plotting, plenty of action and intrigue, and few boring lulls. I've read all of Reynolds' books that take place in his Revelation Space universe, and this is one of the best—a satisfying end to an unexpected trilogy. One star deducted for Minty the Lemur, and for killing off one of my favorite characters. Because that's how I roll. Otherwise, a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

New Release: Angels & Androids

A new player has entered the game. 

As Dome 10's criminal underworld destabilizes with bosses vying for the role of kingpin, assassins target Drasko in an effort to silence him. Hot on a sniper's trail, Investigator Sera Chen makes a terrifying discovery: one of the most powerful men in the Domes is building an army of killbots.

Meanwhile, someone is hacking into citizens' neural implants, forcing them to act against their will. But before Sera and Dunn have a chance to find out who's pulling the strings, they're sidelined. Sera is suspended, and Dunn is assigned desk duty.

That doesn't slow them down for long. Confronting zombies and zealots, mutants and madmen, Sera tries to connect the dots. She'll need people she can rely on, but with a sadistic puppeteer able to control anyone, who can she trust?

eBook       Paperback

Kobo vs. Kindle

There's no doubt about it; Amazon dominates the eBook market. But Kobo is continuing to gain traction, particularly with readers who've realized recently that they don't actually own the content on their Kindles. They've just purchased a license to view it on their devices. There are ways around that (or so I hear), but not everybody wants to go through the rigmarole of downloading and transferring their Kindle eBooks via Calibre and various plugins. Most of us just want to buy an eBook and keep it on our device till kingdom come. Simple as that.

Kobo keeps things simple, and for that reason its market share is steadily growing. I believe they're at around 15% now (up from only 3% five years ago), and with their global reach, that will only increase. This summer, I decided to try out Kobo Writing Life for the first time, selling my eBooks directly via Kobo as I do with Amazon, instead of going through Draft2Digital (and giving up 10% of my royalties). One of the perks is the opportunity to apply to group promotions. After being rejected thrice, I made it into this one, where I had to pay $10 to play. I'm giving away the first book in my Charlie Madison P.I. trilogy, and the hope is that folks will like it enough to buy the sequels. So if I sell-through five copies, I'll break even. 

After locking most of my books in Kindle Unlimited this summer, I'll be breaking out a few at a time and offering them wide again in the fall. Usually, I take the all-or-nothing approach, but this time around, I'll be keeping my short story collections in KU and releasing my novels wide. If a certain trilogy seems to be doing exceptionally well in KU, then I might leave it for another 90 days before setting it free. When KU works for me, it usually adds 20% to my income. But something in me balks at the idea of allying myself exclusively with Amazon, so I have to rebel every now and then.

Keep reading

August Reading Deals

Check out these multi-author book promotions. You're sure to find something you like:

August Cozy Mysteries  |  Cozy Mystery Cravings  |  Cozy Mystery Bookfair  |  Cozy Deals

First in Series  |  Future Crime  |  Mystery Box Sets  |  Mystery Sales  |  KU First in Series

Sound of Stories  |  Collections & Box Sets  |  KU Adventure  |  Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

Space Opera  |  Fierce Fantasy  |  Fantastic Fantasy  |  SciFi Series Sale  |  SFF Book Bazaar

Audiobook Sales  |  KU SciFi & Fantasy  |  KU SFF Promo  |  Kobo Plus  |  More Kobo Plus

Starships & Cyberpunks  |  More Future Crime  |  Bingeable Audio  |  SciFi & Fantasy

Mayhem & Motives  |  Wide Science Fiction  |  Dystopian Fiction  |  Echoes of the End

And peruse these multi-author book giveaways. Download as many as you like:

Dark Reads  |  Free Mysteries  |  Stacked With Stories  |  Mystery Freebies  |  Free SF & F

SFF Mania  |  Free SFF Reads  |  SFF Adventures  |  SFF Freebies  |  More Free SF & F

Free SciFi & Fantasy  |  SciFi & Fantasy Reads  |  Fantastic Realms  |  Free Science Fiction

Dark Fantasy  |  New Worlds  |  Dystopia Ever After

Going Full Indie

Since 2010, I’ve had 130 short stories, 2 novellas, and 8 novels traditionally published. I submitted my work for consideration, waited weeks (or months) for a response, collected hundreds of rejections, and celebrated the acceptances. I was an active SFWA member for two years. I had an agent for a while. I felt like I was doing everything right. There were certain hoops to jump through in order to be considered a "real" author, so jump I did. And I learned a whole lot along the way.

But there came a point when I decided No more. I just wasn’t finding joy in the process. I felt like it was holding me back creatively. I tried being one of those hybrid authors for a while, publishing some things on my own while submitting other manuscripts via the traditional route. A route which, as far as my novels were concerned, left me disappointed at every turn. 

I needed to stretch my wings and go full indie, leaving the old ways of doing things behind. So that’s where I am now. No more submitting my work to publishers and waiting on them for a seal of approval. For better or worse, I’m taking care of it all myself. And I’m having more fun at this writing hobby than I’ve had in a long while. 

The rights to six of my novels are still with a trad publisher, but when those rights revert in five years, I’ll be re-releasing them with all-new cover art and maybe some bonus material. Until then, I’ll see how many novels I can write and release on my own. Already, I’ve managed to independently publish 15 books since I fired my agent and forged ahead on this road, no longer shackled by the ways of the past. 

Freedom is a beautiful thing. So is rediscovering the joy of storytelling that my 12-year-old self knew all about. Got a little lost in the weeds for a while, but not anymore. Goodbye, gatekeepers. Hello, new books, new readers, and new adventures in publishing.

Book Cover - Take 5

I've revamped most of my book covers once or twice over the years, but none have gone through more transformations than my time-traveling detective novel BackTracker. Here they are, from the very first to the latest, which just went live this week:

The first one was all about that noir; the second emphasized the hard-boiled detective; the next two focused on the time travel aspect; and the new one places the futuristic setting front and center. Tough to pick a favorite, but I'll stick with the current iteration for a while and see how it does. 

Book Review: Rabbits

This year I'm keeping track of what I read. Whether I enjoy the book or not, I'll post a blurb and brief review. Most will be speculative fiction in some form—genres I gravitate toward in my own writing. Today, it's Rabbits by Terry Miles.

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas. Since the game started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more dangerous the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising. And now the eleventh round is about to begin.

This one hooked me from the opening scene, and I couldn't turn the digital pages fast enough. The intrigue, the pacing, the action and dialogue—seriously impressive. I thought I'd found the next Ready Player One, only more adult in tone, more subversive, more grounded in reality. I'm a slow reader, but I got halfway through the book in only a few days, and I couldn't wait to see what happened next. That was the good part. The wondering. Because where it actually went was...yikes. Sure, there's a sappy happy ending, but it didn't feel earned after so much shark-jumping. A very disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.

New Release: The Interdimensionals Trilogy Concludes

Now Available

The battle has just begun. To save the future, Anthony Reynolds and Sephora Ashton must change the past by becoming cold-blooded assassins. The interdimensional entities have established a tetrarchy spanning four epochs of Earth, thousands of years apart. Anthony and Sephora will have to travel back through time and eliminate each tetrarch—hiding inside the skulls of unwitting human hosts—in order to destroy their foothold in our reality. Otherwise, the interdimensionals will absorb all that we have and leave us with nothing.

To accomplish their mission, Anthony and Sephora must rely on each other and trust Peter Gideon, a young man brought back from the dead who cannot leave the space-between-space without reverting to a mindless zombie. Traveling aboard his ethereal aeroship, existing outside of time, they will track down each of the tetrarchs' interdimensional signatures. But it won't be smooth sailing. The Moule people, possessed by the Red Queen's acolytes, are hunting them, determined to derail their efforts at every port. And Anthony, overwhelmed by doubts when he discovers who his parents were in the real world, may end up jeopardizing everything he and his friends have fought for.

eBook       Paperback

Edits are Done

Even after working in education for 26 years, summer break has yet to lose its thrill. I didn't get into teaching for the summers, but they're a great motivator to keep me in the field for another twenty years or so. I've worked on a lot of projects around the house the past few summers, but this year I decided to buckle down and pretend I'm a full-time writer. So far, that's meant spending a week wrapping up the first draft of Angels & Androids and devoting the last two weeks to revisediting. I made a habit of tightening up the manuscript as I went along over the past year, so the final round of edits really wasn't too arduous. I cut a couple thousand words and added another thousand, so it ended up being about 91K. A little longer than the other two installments in this trilogy, but not by much. And, as promised, the ending is a satisfying one.

Writing two trilogies in the same world with many of the same characters is something I haven't done before, so it's a mixed bag to say goodbye. On the one hand, I'm relieved I was able to pull it off, I'm pleased with how everything turned out, and I'm ready to move on. But I'd still like to stick around for a while and see what happens next. Probably because I've been invested in these decades-spanning tales for so long, I can't help feeling like they're part of me. What a journey!

Next up: formatting the eBook, the paperback, and the box set. Time to put on my publisher hat.

Novel #24

It took me a while, but I finally managed to cross the finish line: 92K of futuristic action and adventure, mixed with some mystery and mayhem along the way. Readers who enjoyed the first two installments of Dome City Investigations can look forward to more riveting character development, thrills, and chills, while those who've also read Spirits of the Earth will get a kick out of the extended cameos. I did my best to wrap up this trilogy in a satisfying way without sacrificing any of the payoffs, and I'm pleased with how it all turned out. The cover and blurb are good to go, so after a few rounds of edits (130 pages down, 215 remaining), it'll be ready for an August 5 release.