Look up in the sky! It’s a bunch of books!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Good day, one and all! We have some lovely books for you this weekend, both repeats and new releases. No other real news for the Hunnish Hordes at the moment, so go enjoy your weekend, read some good books, and stay out of the heat if you can! As always, future promo post entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Dragons Rescued, Curses Polished, Evil Princesses Thwarted, and Pans Repaired While You Wait

Alma Boykin

Elizabeth of Vindobona

Book Three of the Colplatschki Chronicles

The fate of the Empire rests with Elizabeth von Sarmas.

In the ten years since she fled to the Eastern Empire, Countess Colonel Elizabeth von Sarmas has risen to be one of Emperor Rudolph’s most skilled commanders. Ably assisted by Lady Ann Starland and Lazlo Destefani, she’s fended off the amorous attentions of Archduke Lewis, thus far. But after losing a political battle, Elizabeth and her men find themselves at the wrong end of the Empire when disaster strikes. Court intrigue and surprise proposals fade into nothing when the Turkowi launch a do-or-die assault on the Empire.

And King Laurence has one last dagger in his sleeve, one that may accomplish what ten years of warfare could not.

Laura Montgomery

Manx Prize

In the second half of the twenty-first century, when Charlotte Fisher was just thirteen, orbital debris took its first large-scale human casualties from an orbiting tourist habitat. Haunted by visions of destruction and her father’s anguish, as a young engineer Charlotte follows in his footsteps and determines to win a prize offered by a consortium of satellite and orbitat operators for the first successful de-orbiting of space junk. Her employer backs these efforts until the reentry of a piece of debris kills two people, and she and her team are spun off to shield the parent company from liability. With limited resources, a finite budget and the unwanted gift of a lawyer who, regardless of his appeal, she doesn’t need, she must face a competitor who cheats, a collusive regulator, and the temptations dangled by the strange and alluring friends of a powerful seastead.

Currently on Kindle Countdown!

T.K. Naliaka

In Time of Peril

The Decaturs Book 1

Raised most of his life in the challenging expanses of West Africa, young Chris Decatur has returned to the United States for college, leaving behind dunes and nomads for the quiet halls of academia. Studying the American Revolution, Chris and his classmates embark on a reenactment trip to Upstate New York and New England. A week of hiking and learning, accompanied by a few reenactment volunteers and Chris’s knowledgeable father, Robert, should be an entertaining excursion.

But even the backwoods are no refuge from the dangers of the world. The group stumbles on a terrorist plot in the works and the students are taken hostage as the mysterious plan unfurls. As Chris faces an ordeal of brutal fighters, uncooperative classmates, deadly threats and a battle of wits against ruthless foes, Robert Decatur risks everything in a daring pursuit to rescue his son from the hands of evil.

Joseph Collins

Kill Code

A Former Assassin: Leo Marston is done with long-distance murder and he’ll do anything to keep it in his past even if he has to make one final kill shot.

A Dead Man: Nathan White seeks revenge from the grave—or so it seems when the computer program he wrote prior to his death begins a systemic killing of prominent government officials whom White has deemed enemies of the state.

A Woman in Trouble: Jackie Winn—White’s co-worker and former lover—unknowingly activates the Kill Code program… and then becomes a target herself.

A Fight to the Death: Leo and Jackie form an uneasy alliance in a dangerous attempt to disable the Kill Code program and stop the Black Hand—a group of cunning, professional assassins following the program’s directives—from murdering the government officials as dictated by White’s crazed plan.

The very fabric of society as we know it hangs in the balance as Leo and Jackie discover what they are made of and risk their lives to defeat the the seemingly undefeatable…

KILL CODE

41 thoughts on “Look up in the sky! It’s a bunch of books!”

  2. Hoot! another Elizabeth book…..dang just on amazon. any idea when/if it would be available somewhere that doesn’t use a c$^% propriety format?

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    2. It will go up on B&N and Kobo as an EPUB in October, as soon as the 90 day limit on Select expires. So few people are buying EPUBs that I thought I’d try the Select program and see what happens. I’ll put the Colplatschki novella and short story out as EPUB as well as Mobi in August, I promise.

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        1. ya I understand why amazon dose it (don’t like it but there ya go) the way it dose and why the authors’ ect ect. Shoot, honestly if your on a kindle to start with it’s not even really noticeable.

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          1. To be honest, the issue is that the clown car of would be competitors, instead of trying to compete with Amazon try to be the Anti-Amazon. This means they discard the things Amazon does right. (Rolls eyes.)

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            1. The lowest barriers to entry to compete are in ebooks, but I’ve not noticed any promising angle of attack there. I know I could put something functional together in a few weeks, but I don’t know how you’d stand out beyond “I’m not Amazon”.

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              1. Very easily. Better categories, ability to pre-order indie books, same as Amazon ease of putting things up, no requirements to take things on sale (Amazon is actually shooting itself in the foot that way.)

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                  1. Amazon — you need to have it exclusive on Amazon to take things on sale.
                    As for attracting readers? Allow them to buy in all formats at once, and to beam them to all their readers, phones included. In the beginning we’ll have to attract them with coupons and programs, but…

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                    1. Ah. Silly me. I thought you meant they had requirements that you had to put things on sale every so often. While still dumb, your explanation makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking. :-P

                      But yeah, I’d love to be able to create something like that. Does Amazon allow the Kindle format to be used by others? I know you can get mobi files at Gutenberg, but that could be a special circumstance…

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                    4. Well I finally broke down and bought a Kindle when they had them on sale for $29, but before that I read ebooks either on the computer or occasionally on my phone, and in both cases I far preferred the mobipocketbook reader to the kindle apps. Enough so that I actually figured out how to use Calibre to change formats.

                      Of course now I have a bunch of books (mostly older Baen) on those that I need to convert so I can load them on the Kindle.

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                    5. Amazon issues e-books in azw format which is simply mobi with their DRM copy protection layered on. A bit more complicated than that, but that’s close enough for these purposes. Any mobi file can be ported over to your Kindle from a computer via the usb charging cable. Kindles will also read pdf files.
                      Personally, for reading on the computer I prefer epub viewed with the free Stanza software. The two page format just feels more like an open book to me, but that’t on a 21 inch flat screen.
                      Tools exist, calibre is a popular one, to convert back and forth between file formats. They typically do not work with DRM azw files though I hear there are work arounds.

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                    6. Bearcat, if you own a Baen e-book you can go to Webscriptions and download the mobi version. For free! Just about the only format they do not provide is pdf. Jim had a thing about pdf files.
                      Have I mentioned what a fan I am of Baen and their e-book policies?
                      Yet another reason why they are hated so by the rest of the industry.

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                    9. Uncle Lar,
                      A bunch of those ebooks came off of CD’s and I’m sure the simplest thing would be to find the CD’s and redownload them. But finding the CD’s isn’t that simple, so I have been occasionally converting one as I want to reread it on Kindle.

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                    10. Bearcat,
                      If those are the CDs that Baen used to include with many of their first release hardbacks, those can be downloaded at:
                      thefifthimperium.com
                      look for the BaenCD link if it doesn’t take you directly there.
                      Any else of y’all who see this, the Baen Bar Flies have long had permission to share this out as long as nothing is altered or resold for profit, but please do not alert the press or post indiscriminately. It would likely crash the server.
                      fyi, Jim, Eric, and the rest of the old guard at Baen always likened sharing these CDs to the nice young man handing out free samples at the school yard. Get em hooked and they’re yours for life, don’t yah know.

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                    12. Joe Buckley (yes that Joe Buckley). [Smile]

                      Oh, he has had none Baen snippets on his site.

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                    13. What Paul said. Joe Buckley’s site. Separate from but closely kin to Baen.
                      http://jiltanith80.thefifthimperium.com/
                      Is where they post snippets, early chapters of Baen and other novels. Currently five active books by Flint, Sterling, Gannon, Weber, and Spoor.
                      http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
                      is where those legacy CDs reside. I believe you can read them on-line, extract individual stories, and download an entire disk image.
                      It is not a commercial site. Joe posts stuff as a public service which is why we try to be very protective and not overload the system.

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            2. Let me be Captain Obvious here and point out that if you want an example of e-book competition to Amazon done right you need look no further than Baen Webscriptions. Bulk discounts, early access, multiple formats, and of course it doesn’t hurt to be the electronic venue for a well known SFF publisher. Well known and resoundingly hated by tradpub I might add.
              That said, they also do eARCs, a concept so evil, so purely pandering to the desperate cravings of those deep into book addiction, that it took a twisted genius like Jim Baen to come up with the idea. I kid, Jim actually came up with the idea in self defense and in retribution for the constant whining of fans for early peeks at their favorite author’s newest works.

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    3. Why not see it this way: why doesn’t your reader of choice recognize the de facto industry standard format?

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  3. Read “In Time of Peril” and its follow-up; good books, entertaining stories and characters you care about.

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    1. ya I’m serisly looking at it to (nice to know it’s not a one off)….just ya know the amazon thing.

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      1. I did the editing on those two, and last I talked to Naliaka, he was working on the next few in the series. I think #3 is well on its way, 4 & 5 coming along in dribs and drabs.

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    2. Seconded, and they are nice clean books (Christian, but not in a preachy sense) that you can feel comfortable recommending or loaning to either kids or your mother.

      It is often difficult to find good reading that fits that criteria. The Colplatschki books do also, but I don’t know anybody in meat space that reads SF.

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      1. (Sarah, if it’s okay with you for me to include this link? Regardless, thank you again for giving me a chance to connect with readers.)

        Thank you all very very very much. Here’s the site for more background and sneak previews: http://www.thedecaturseries.com/
        (It’s not a blog, with no advertising. Yes, silly).
        The books are not drm, so I think they’re widely accessible.

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  4. The next Colplatschki book wants to be called “Mountains of Grace.” *Sigh* I’m not sure what’s worse: Matthias Corvinus appearing in the library parking lot, or having St. Odile and Margaret of Tirol ganging up on me in my “office.”

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      1. Nope. This is set about a century after the Great Fires, in what becomes Sarmas. Elizabeth’s story wraps up with “Elizabeth and Empire” aka “Laurence the Loathsome Strikes Again.”

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  5. hmmm that sounds like it may be closer to postapoc fiction are you thinking about pulling it back (short story or such) any closer to the “time of oh s*&t”?
    I ask only ‘cuse me and my contemporizes in the Twilight:2000/marowproject* RPG subculture are generally starved for good realistic-ish postapoc stuff.

    *for that matter certain stiles of traveler would fit really well in the world of Colplatschki……gamma world 2 sort off (if she start’s putting some of her bit’s of lander artifacts to use)…..I could go on but I’m going to use some self restraint :)

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    1. “Fountains of Mercy” is TEOTWAWKI, sort of. “Mountains of Grace” is, hmm, is there such a thing as post-postapocalyptic? (Ugh, that sounds like post-postmodernism. *shudder*)

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