Tagged: ebook
New Book: Force of Habit
I think the video says it all, but just in case it doesn’t: yes, my tenth flash fiction anthology is now available! You can find it at:
Smashwords, DRM-free in any format you could ask for, including Kindle.
Amazon UK, for paperbacks in the UK.
Amazon US, for paperbacks in the US.
And also deviantART. Not literally the book itself, but all the stories are there and you can read them for free. I figure that if people like them then they’ll support me by buying a copy, and so far that seems to be panning out pretty well.
Continue readingFlash Fiction Month Omnibus – Send Me Your Artwork!
I’m putting together an illustrated omnibus of all my Flash Fiction Month pieces from 2012 to 2017, and I need your help! This thing will include 186 stories – 31 for each of the first six years I took part in the event – and I’d like at least a significant portion to have an image to go with them. Read on even if you’re not an artist: it matters less than you’d think!
This Google sheet lists the full selection of stories, organised by year (as well as a link to each one to refresh your memory). Produce an illustration for any of them – even if it’s just a doodle on a napkin – and I’ll consider it for inclusion in the book. I don’t promise to add in everything that’s sent, but I don’t rule it out either! Here are some tips to maximise your chances:
- The images will probably be included on their own page, which means it’s preferable for each one to be portrait (taller than it is wide).
- Colour illustrations are absolutely fine (and people reading on phones and tablets will see them in all their glory), but bear in mind the interior of the paperback will be printed in black and white. Most e-readers will show the images in greyscale too.
- Bigger is better. I can always shrink or crop a large image to fit the book, but I can’t do anything to conjure more pixels out of a smaller one!
- Scans are preferable to photographs (if you’re working on paper/canvas/whatever). Each of my #draw365 images is just hastily snapped with my smartphone, and they really suffer because of it. If you don’t have access to a scanner, this blog post offers some handy tips on how to get good photos (even on a phone).
If you’d like to submit an illustration, simply add your name and a hyperlink to the Google sheet. That’s all there is to it, but if you’d like to tell your friends too then that would really help me out a lot!
The goal here is ideally to have one illustration for each of the 186 stories in the book. I’d settle for less, and I might consider more, but that one per story seems like something to aim for. Obviously nobody’s had a chance to ask any questions yet – let alone frequently – but here’s an FAQ anyway.
An FAQ Anyway:
Q: Will I get paid for this?
A: No.
Q: Will I at least get a copy of the book?
A: If I end up using your artwork, I’ll send you a free ebook! I’ll probably send one even if I don’t.
Q: Why should I send you my work for free?
A: Literally the only reason is “Because you want to.” If you don’t, then don’t. Absolutely do not consider doing this for exposure. That’s a terrible idea in general and in this particular case I can’t even promise it’ll get your work in front of a significant audience.
Q: No, seriously, is there any reason I should get involved with this thing?
A: I think it’ll be fun! If you like any of the stories I’ve produced for Flash Fiction Month, this is a chance to engage with them and create something for future readers to enjoy. If you just like drawing and want to get involved with a big project, that’s great too!
Q: What’ll happen if you get more than one illustration for the same story?
A: I’ll probably just choose my favourite and the other(s) will go unused. However, if it’s a long-ish story then I may be able to fit both in.
Q: How should I add my name and link to the spreadsheet if someone else has already illustrated that story?
A: Just stick them in the next available cells on that row. I don’t anticipate that there’ll be too much competition.
Q: What’s stopping me doing an absolutely rubbish scribble just to get a free book?
A: Nothing. Scribble away! But again, there’s no guarantee I’ll use it and therefore no guarantee of a free book. (This is the internet: I acknowledge the possibility that 5,000 people will send me a hastily scrawled dickbutt, but I’m not emailing out books for the privilege.)
Q: Can I submit more than one illustration?
A: Yes, submit as many as you like!
Q: You’ve emphasised that quality isn’t much of a concern, but I’ve got an idea for something really good! Will that look out of place?
A: I certainly hope not! I hope that people will endeavour to produce work of the highest possible quality, much as I did when producing these six years’ worth of stories. However, I realise that people may find they don’t always quite manage to achieve their own expectations, as I did when producing these six years’ worth of stories.
Q: What exactly am I letting you do with my artwork?
A: By submitting an illustration you are granting me the non-exclusive right to reproduce that image for commercial and non-commercial purposes, which is what I need to make, sell, and promote the omnibus. You maintain all the rights you would have if I weren’t using the image at all (which is actually kind of a grey area when it comes to fan art, but I’m not exactly going to sue people for drawing things I’ve invited them to draw!).
Q: I’ve already drawn fan art of one of these stories! Can I submit that?
A: Yes! I actively encourage it.
Q: I’ve already drawn something that wasn’t specifically based on one of these stories, but might as well have been. Can I submit that?
A: Yes, that’s fine too.
Q: Is there a deadline for this?
A: Not currently, though I’d like to be able to release the omnibus sometime in 2020.
That’s it!
If you’d like to submit an illustration (or a few!) then here’s that link to the spreadsheet again. Even if not, I hope you’ll consider sharing this around. I think it could be a neat project, and I’d like anyone who might be interested to have a chance to get involved.
OCR is Not the Only Font – Free in Kindle Store
If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ll likely be aware that the first of my flash fiction anthologies, OCR is Not the Only Font, has always been available for free as an ebook (as have Red Herring and Bionic Punchline – nearly 100 free stories altogether). However, anyone using a Kindle e-reader (or the Kindle app) would have had to pay 99p on Amazon or download the Kindle book elsewhere and manually load it onto their device.
That’s now changed for OCR is Not the Only Font, which is free on both Amazon UK and Amazon US (and Amazon Japan and probably others, but I expect any one of these pages will probably point you towards your local site). This means you can download the book directly through your device’s built-in storefront without having to pay a penny – essentially bringing Amazon into line with every other retailer out there. Continue reading
We All Saw It Coming Ebook Available
We All Saw It Coming, my Flash Fiction Month anthology for 2017, is now available as an ebook through Smashwords. It’ll be available through other retailers shortly, but I haven’t yet assigned it an ISBN because I’m still confirming that everything is working as it should.
The sheer scale of this year’s interactive fiction challenge, Ultraviolent Unicorn Deathmatch of Destiny, meant that I had to set up internal hyperlinks just to make it navigable. There was some extra faff involved in making sure I didn’t end up with all 48 of those listed in the book’s table of contents, and although everything seems to have worked out fine, there were enough opportunities for things to go wrong that I don’t like to assume they haven’t. Still, whether or not this story turned out perfect first time, I’ve definitely got a better grasp of how to handle interactive fiction in this format than I had before, and so at some point I expect I’ll be going back and giving the same treatment to Robocopout‘s interactive fiction piece, Inquisition.
The next job will be to format and publish the paperback, and when that’s available I’m strongly considering having a launch party of some kind! This book completes the six-colour cycle I’ve been working towards (I’ll be sticking another orange object on the cover of whatever I write for 2018), so although I’ve never made all that much of a song and dance about the release of these books in the past, I feel as though this is a good enough occasion to start.
Since this is pretty much the first book launch I’ve ever organised, I’m keen to get an idea of how many people would be likely to turn up, as well as where they’d be able to get to. The poll above allows multiple answers: feel free to tick as many as you like. In fact, ideally don’t be too picky: if you really could make it to any of these places, that gives me more options to work with. Conversely, picking only Southampton because you live there could screw things up quite a bit: if 30 people only pick the closest Hampshire town, they could quite easily be outvoted by half that number in London.
Promoting Ten Little Astronauts has put my work in front of people from much farther afield than before, so I’m really not sure where most of my followers are based at this point. My guess is that most know me from various local open mics – and I’d probably prefer a local launch myself – but the biggest events have been in London, and those are generally the ones where my name’s been on the flyers and whatnot. Ultimately I figure the thing to do is to hold the launch wherever people can get to it, so that’s why I’ve put out this poll. Tick whichever boxes work for you, pass it on to anyone else you think might like to come along for readings and live interactive fiction, and if you’ve got any other thoughts then leave those in the comments. As always, you don’t need an account or even an email address: just type words into the box, hit “Post” and it’ll get to me.
Unearthly Sleuths
There’s a new anthology from JayHenge Publishing, and this one’s all about speculative detective fiction! It’s called Unearthly Sleuths, and it features two of my stories: The Card and Noise on the Wire. The former appears in OCR is Not the Only Font, my flash fiction anthology from 2012, but the latter is a brand new Alterworld story I’ve never shared before!
If that sounds like your sort of thing you can grab a copy in ebook or paperback right now! However, the editor has extremely kindly allowed me to offer the ebook as a reward for supporters of Ten Little Astronauts, so if you’ve pledged for that at the Audio Collection level or above (or the bargain Digital Bundle), you’re already due to get a copy when the book is funded!
You might also be interested in Phantasmical Contraptions and Other Errors, also by JayHenge, which has a steampunk theme and features no fewer than three of my flash fiction pieces.
Guest Post: Shona Kinsella
You may have seen Shona Kinsella’s recent review of Face of Glass, but what you might not know is that she’s actually written a work of Prehistoric Fantasy herself. Ashael Rising has not only been launched, but successfully funded through Unbound! I think you’ll find the story behind the book very interesting, and if Ashael Rising itself piques your interest, you’ll be happy to know that although it’s passed 100% funding, there’s still a chance to chip and and get your name in the back of the book as a supporter (among other great rewards)!
Ashael Rising: How it All Began
I have wanted to write a book for as long as I can remember. As a child I wrote stories in notebooks that I carried with me. In my teens, the film Bucket List was a big thing and Write a Book was number one on mine. As an adult, I never thought I would actually get around to it; I mean who has the time? But I still squirreled away ideas, guarding them jealously against the possibility that I would win the lottery and become a lady of leisure.
About nine years ago I had a dream that, immediately upon waking, struck me as one of those ideas and though much of the dream faded, the final image has stayed with me all these years. Continue reading
Ten Little Astronauts – New Pledge Levels
Until now, if you wanted anything other than just an ebook version of Ten Little Astronauts, you’d also have to pay for shipping on the paperback included in the next pledge level up. Since that may not be ideal for supporters outside the UK, I’ve just added two new options geared specifically towards anyone for whom shipping costs could be a problem:
£25 Digital Bundle:
This reward consists of absolutely everything I can send you without sticking it in the post. You get all the digital rewards: the ebooks of Ten Little Astronauts, Face of Glass, and all my flash fiction anthologies, plus the audio collection that’s normally introduced at £35. That means you’re getting £10 off the audio collection, and not paying a penny shipping on anything at all.
£30 Read With A Friend:
If you do want a paperback but don’t want to pay the full cost of shipping, this may offer a solution: two paperbacks, two ebooks and two names in the back of Ten Little Astronauts, but all in just one parcel. That means that if you can find a friend who’d also like a copy, you can split the cost of delivery and still get your futuristic sci-fi murder mystery in tried-and-tested dead tree format.
Though I’ve included these rewards with international supporters in mind, they’re still available within the UK. You’ll still save on postage if you want to read with a friend, and if you’re particularly keen to hear my brand new audio collection but aren’t fussed about getting a paperback, then the Digital Bundle could be for you.
If you’ve already pledged but would like to take advantage of one of these new options, you can do so by following the advice in this FAQ guide. Essentially, it’s just a matter of emailing support@unbound.co.uk and asking them nicely: they’ll be able to return the value of your original pledge, which you’ll be able to put towards the new one.
If you initially went for the £10 ebook to avoid the cost of shipping, please do consider upgrading to the Digital Bundle. You’ll get greater rewards, Ten Little Astronauts will be that much closer to publication, and by my reckoning it’s still cheaper than a paperback and postage.
Face of Glass Redesign
While preparing the paperback version of Osiris Likes This, I took the opportunity to revise a few of my other books as well. In most cases that involved little more than making sure the front and end matter was up to date (the “Books by Damon L. Wakes” page has grown significantly since the earliest ones were first released). However, for Face of Glass, I wanted to do something a little more significant.
“Osiris Likes This” Out Today!
Osiris Likes This is now available, and can be found in any format you’d like, DRM-free, right here for just $0.99.
Thanks to the (admittedly brief) preorder period, it should soon be appearing at your favourite retailers as well. I’ll also be taking this opportunity to make all the previous books available through Amazon’s Kindle store, though unfortunately Amazon won’t allow me to give them away free as I do elsewhere. If you want free copies of my first three anthologies for Kindle, your best bet is to download the .mobi (Kindle) version over on Smashwords.
If you’d like to have a look at the stories without buying the book, you can read online right here on my blog and also on deviantART (the home of Flash Fiction Month). This anthology is mostly for readers who want them collected up neatly to read on the go, or who’d like to support me by chucking a little money my way.
If you’d like to support me but wouldn’t like to spend any money, you can do so for free by reviewing or sharing any of my books. Email them to your friends! Throw them at your enemies! Also throw them at your frenemies (but gift-wrap them first, to show that you care)!
But if you would like a copy of Osiris Likes This, here’s that link again.
Oranges in Bulk
My first book, OCR is Not the Only Font, has just passed the 1,000 download mark! Within the last week or so, even: I’m glad I happened to tally up the downloads across all the different retailers just after it rolled over into quadruple figures.
It’s really neat to see one individual book reaching this many people, since it’s hard to guess who’s reading my Flash Fiction Month series as a whole. Because there’s no need to read them in order, it’s possible that the second book, Red Herring, has reached an entirely different audience. However, it’s far, far more likely that the same people who enjoyed one are coming back for the others, or (since the books are free) simply that people who’ve stumbled across one are taking the opportunity to download the whole series at once. That’s great for sharing stories, but as a personal milestone I think the reach of just one book is more significant.
Damon L. Wakes 