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Preordering a bunch of things ebook roundup

This Gulf of Time and Stars

This Gulf of Time and Stars

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Zen of eBook Formatting, by Guido Henkel. Because this is the guy who wrote the excellent nine-part tutorial for how to do ebook formatting which I followed to do Faerie Blood, Bone Walker, and both of my short stories currently available. This is his extended guide for doing ebook stuff, and I wanted to give him some money to show some support. And also because I want to dive into the more detailed guide he has to offer.
  • Forever Your Earl, by Eva Leigh. Historical romance. Grabbed this because Eva Leigh is a pen name of Zoe Archer’s, and previous stuff I’ve read of hers (i.e., the very fun Blades of the Rose series) was awesome. This is Zoe trying her hand at historicals. Sign me up.
  • Bryony and Roses, by T. Kingfisher. Fantasy, a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast tale. T. Kingfisher is a.k.a. Ursula Vernon, and I grabbed this on the strength of James Nicoll’s excellent review.
  • A Strange and Ancient Name, by Josepha Sherman. Fantasy. Nabbed this because it’s the e-release of a book I very, very much loved when I originally read it, and my paperback copy is getting kind of worn around the edges. Sherman was actually also arguably a strong influence on my own writing, and if you like my stuff, you’ll probably like this book.

And, preordered from Kobo, on the general grounds of I NEED ALL OF THESE BOOKS RIGHT NOW and since I can’t have ’em, I will preorder them, and then will be able to go “OH HEY LOOK A BOOK HAS SHOWN UP WHAT AWESOME PERSON THOUGHT OF THIS? Thank you, Me of the Past!”:

  • This Gulf of Time and Stars, by Julie E. Czerneda. SF. This is not only a new book by Julie Czerneda, not only book 1 of a new trilogy following up on her previous stories involving the species known to the Galaxy only as ‘the Clan’, it’s specifically book 1 of a trilogy revisiting Sira and Morgan from A Thousand Words for Stranger. It’s going to bring the history of Sira’s people full circle, and reunite the split factions.
  • Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. Also SF, and book 3 of Leckie’s amazing trilogy that’s been duking it out with other titles in the last couple rounds of the Hugos.
  • She Walks in Shadows, by assorted authors. Forthcoming Lovecraft-themed anthology, revisiting the Cthulhu mythos from a feminine perspective. GIMME.
  • Scandal Takes the Stage, by Eva Leigh. Book 2 of the series she’s started with the aforementioned Forever Your Earl

73 for the year.

October 1, 2015 by
Books

Steampunk and urban fantasy and SF book roundup!

By Hook or By Crook

By Hook or By Crook

Picked up in print from Third Place Books:

  • Chapelwood, by Cherie Priest. Already bought in ebook, but Priest IS on my list of “people I want in both formats”! And also, see previous commentary re: Lizzie Borden taking an axe to Cthulhu. 😀
  • A Red-Rose Chain, by Seanan McGuire. Her latest October Daye novel, and since I’m finally starting to get caught up on these, I figured I should go ahead and buy the new one while I’m at it! Let it also be said that I really like the cover on this one, both for color scheme and for how the woman in the picture a) is facing forward and b) has a HEAD. But Chris McGrath’s art is consistently excellent that way, and I like seeing his interpretations of Toby as much as I’ve liked seeing his interpretations of Harry Dresden and Harper Blaine!

Picked up electronically from Amazon:

  • Dark Beyond the Stars. SF anthology, with all female authors. Grabbed this on general principles after seeing this post on the Mary Sue, describing how a troll in the Amazon reviews of this anthology took it upon himself to deride women writing SF. All signs point to this chucklehead doing it on purpose to try to draw attention to his own book, to wit, ugh. I’m not going to bother to name him; you can figure it out for yourself if you care, if you dig through the comments on the post. Me, I’d rather call attention to the antho, which I grabbed in no small part because Julie Czerneda did the intro on it and I DO love me some Czerneda. The ebook is an Amazon-only release, unfortunately, and the print edition is through CreateSpace–which is also Amazon. So if you care about either of those things but still want to support the anthology, you might consider contacting the publisher and asking if they’ll do a non-Amazon release.

Picked up electronically from Kobo:

  • Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor. SF. Novella released directly by tor.com, which I’m snagging out of general interest in increasing the presence of writers of color AND protagonists of color in my library, and also because the concept sounds awesome.
  • Demon Fare, by Cory Dale. Urban fantasy. Snagged this because of having featured it on Boosting the Signal!
  • City of Pearl and Crossing the Line, by Karen Traviss. SF. Books 1 and 2 of her Wess’har Wars series. I read Book 1 ages ago and quite liked it, and kept meaning to continue the series. Rebuy of both in ebook since they’re currently available for $3.99 each.
  • By Hook or By Crook, by Eleri Stone. Steampunk romance. Snagged this because Eleri is a fellow member of the Here Be Magic blog! But also because I LOVE her cover. Her heroine has a HEAD. And she’s actually LOOKING AT THE READER. AND! I love that “excuse me?” look on her face, as if she’s just lifted up her goggles to get a better look at whatever damnfool thing has just been done in her presence. Probably by the hero. ;D This? This is a cover that makes me want to learn more about who this person is, and what her story is. For bonus awesome, it’s currently available for 99 cents!

65 for the year.

September 22, 2015 by
Books

Multi-genre ebook roundup

A Lily Among Thorns

A Lily Among Thorns

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. YA fantasy. Gotten since I’ve been hearing buzz about this all summer, and because I’m eager to see what Novik will do with a non-Temeraire novel.
  • Chapelwood, by Cherie Priest. Fantasy/Horror. Book Two of her Borden Dispatches, because Lizzie Borden had an axe and gave Cthulhu forty whacks FUCK YEAH. (And when she saw what she had done, she gave Azathoth forty-one! Presumably that’ll happen in this book. >:D Or so I would like to HOPE.)
  • A Lily Among Thorns, by Rose Lerner. Historical romance. Gotten because it’s on sale as of this writing for 99 cents, because I saw it posted about over here on Dear Author, because it got my attention with the description of “gender flipping historical” (by which it means, the heroine is the one who’s a hardened experienced individual with a criminal background, and the hero is the innocent one), and because I really rather love that cover. I like its color scheme and the relative chasteness of the kiss, and how both parties are in fact fully clothed. A refreshing change of pace. 😉

Preordered from Crossed Genres:

Ordered from O’Reilly Media:

  • Designing for Performance: Weighing Aesthetics and Speed, by Lara Callender Hogan. I saw this getting plugged on the Mary Sue, and after clicking over to the official site to read about it, I realized that a) this might actually be a decent book to brush up my day job skills, and b) I really like that the author is donating proceeds from sales to programs that encourage girls and women to get into coding. If you think this is an awesome thing too, go check the book’s site out.

Picked up from Smashwords:

  • Mad Science Institute, by Sechin Tower. YA. This was one of the books we were selling on the NIWA table at Worldcon, and I really loved fellow author Lee French’s pitch of this as “it’s a James Bond story, only with Tesla instead of Bond, and Tesla is a girl”. Plus book 2 has the title The Non-Zombie Apocalypse, which I gotta admit is a great title.

And lastly, picked up from Amazon:

  • Night Hawk, by Jolene Loraine. SF. This was another book being sold by the NIWA table at Worldcon–and in this particular case, the author herself was one of the ones working the table. I was very happy to have her as a co-table-runner, and was also quite envious of her gorgeous cover art. After hearing her talk to visitors to the table about how her book had a space-opera feel similar to Star Wars, as well as descriptions of her fully sapient horse-like creatures, I went ahead and snagged book 1 off of Amazon. (She’s Amazon-exclusive for the ebooks, so I’m buying from them for once.)

57 for the year.

September 5, 2015 by
Books

A Boosting-the-Signal-y ebook roundup

Stormseer

Stormseer

And now, in the spirit of recent Boosting the Signal posts, behold, some Boosting the Signal books I have acquired!

Picked up from Amazon since its official release date is tomorrow (so it showed up in my account at 9pm tonight as I write this):

Picked up from Kobo, and might I note that I am grateful that the book is in fact available on Kobo:

Last but not least, sent to me by the author for an upcoming Boosting the Signal post:

  • Stormsinger, Stormshadow, and Stormseer, by Stephanie A. Cain. The author emailed me out of the blue asking if she could submit to Boosting the Signal–and as it happened, I’d already seen her post about Stormseer on Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favorite Bit column. And since I thought the book sounded rather awesome and I VERY much liked her cover (as y’all might guess, given Faanshi and all), I was delighted to receive this email. Not to mention the books, which the author was kind enough to send me!

50 for the year.

August 7, 2015 by
Bilingual Lord of the Rings Reread

A reread of Lord of the Rings is imminent ebook roundup

The Children of Hurin

The Children of Hurin

Picked up from Kobo recently:

  • Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus, by Mira Grant. Because, well, duh, Mira Grant. This is the latest novella in the Newsflesh universe, and as I have in fact already plowed through it, I can attest that it was delightful. It clues us in on the fate of two particular notable characters following the conclusion of the main trilogy, and it does not disappoint. And there is in fact an octopus.
  • The Lord of the Rings, The Children of Húrin, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth, and The Silmarillion, all of course by J.R.R. Tolkien. Picking all these up in ebook form on the general grounds that I’ve just finally finished re-watching The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and it’s kindled in me a MIGHTY NEED to re-read LoTR. And since my print copy of the trilogy is a single-volume huge honking brick of a book, it’s a bit much to carry to work and back with me. So onto the ereaders it goes! And while I’m at it, I snarfed up the others since UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES am I taking my beautiful hardback of Children of Hurin out of the house, and my paperback of The Silmarillion is pretty ragged! And I need to re-read Unfinished Tales, too!

This puts me at 45 for the year.

July 26, 2015 by
Books

Oh hey I forgot about this post ebook roundup

Deadly Strain

Deadly Strain

This post has been sitting in my Drafts list the whole time I was at Fiddle Tunes. Oops! Here are some recent ebook acquisitions I’ve made, anyway!

From Amazon:

Ghost Hand, by Ripley Patton. Urban Fantasy. Picked this up because Ripley is a fellow NIWA author, and she was handing out her book for free over the Kindle for a bit.

From Carina Press by way of Boosting the Signal:

Deadly Strain, by Julie Rowe. Romantic Suspense. Got this because Julie was kind enough to send me a copy when I featured her on Boosting the Signal!

And from Kobo, because I had some credit to spend:

Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone. Fantasy. Gotten because this is book 2 in his Craft Sequence series and I very much liked book 1.

“The Deepest Rift” and “The Litany of Earth”, by Ruthanna Emrys. Two of her original short works that have been published on Tor.com. Grabbed ’em because I’ve already read “The Litany of Earth” and very much liked it, so wanted a copy for my library.

40 for the year.

July 7, 2015 by
Books

Special 99 cent NIWA book sale roundup

Girls Can't Be Knights

Girls Can’t Be Knights

A bunch of other NIWA authors and I are selling ebooks for 99 cents all weekend, until Monday! You can see all the participating titles at this Facebook event, including my own Faerie Blood.

And to participate as a buyer as well as a seller, I’ve scarfed a bunch of these titles myself. I got them all from Amazon for once, since we’re a bunch of no-DRM-selling authors, and that’s one of the circumstances under which I’ll actually buy ebooks from Amazon. Behold the roundup!

  • Toy Wars, by Thomas Gondolfi. Described as ‘science fantasy of inter-toy warfare’, and this seems like the silly sort of thing I’d like to read sometimes. I’ve seen Thomas at Norwescon. He has pretty awesome huge teddy bears at his booth, and you should look for him!
  • The Witches of Dark Root and The Magick of Dark Root, by April Aasheim. Paranormal fantasy with witches.
  • Core of Confliction, by Maquel Jacob. SF along the lines of “holy crap I’m the leader of a nearly extinct race”.
  • Girls Can’t Be Knights, by Lee French. Urban fantasy. Featured just yesterday on Boosting the Signal! And while we’re on the topic of Lee French, I also grabbed her Dragons in Pieces and The Fallen.
  • Huw the Bard, by Connie J. Jasperson. Medieval fantasy in which a young man has to run from the assassins who’ve killed his father. Also grabbed her Tales from the Dreamtime, a set of novellas billing themselves as “Three Modern Fairytales”.
  • Awake: Finding Dad, by James M. McCracken. SF in which humanity tries to give the Earth time to replenish itself by putting everybody in suspended animation. But of course, this doesn’t go well for everyone…
  • At One’s Beast, by Rachel Bernard. Fantasy, centering around a yearly sacrifice to a beast in a forest–and what happens when the sacrifice doesn’t go as planned. Also got Bernard’s Ataxia and the Ravine of Lost Dreams, YA SF featuring a young heroine in a futuristic military academy.
  • Flower’s Fang, by Madison Keller. Fantasy, in which the hero is a member of a magical race, and the only one who doesn’t have magic.
  • Nouveau Haitiah, by Donald McEwing. SF, though I’m not entirely sure what it’s about, even based on reading the blurb on the Amazon page! Guess I’ll find out!
  • Masks, by E.M. Prazeman. Book 1 of her Lord Jester’s Legacy series, historical-flavored fantasy with the promise of a lot of political intrigue.

Total of 15 scarfed for this sale, which puts me at 35 for the year.

June 13, 2015 by