Voicemail: Helen in Michigan wants to let people know about Smashwords, a site for independent authors to create and publish their ebooks, and about interactive storytelling over at Storytron; Tim wonder if fantasy authors have problems reading fantasy or if they have problems refraining from editing others' books; Trampas revisits the question of executing prologues and flashbacks; Shavon from NJ wants to know if there's a way to import PDFs she already has into the Kindle App on the iPod Touch (Stackpole suggests Airshare for uploading PDFs); are paid bloggers considered published authors?
Anna comments on electronic textbooks, and how students will take electronic versions of required reading and print them out to make notes on them.
Listener Review: Redshirt from Iowa brings us a review of Death's Daughter by Amber Benson.
The Library: New this week: Starfinder by John Marco; Ballistic Babes: The Radioactive Redhead and the Frost-Haired Vixen by John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem; Blood Groove by Alex Bledsoe; Blood of Ambrose by James Enge; Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn; Corambis by Sarah Monette; The Affinity Bridge by George Mann.
Submitting Listener comments: If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know!
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Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wind%20River%20Territory/50/129/22
Link: Storytron Interactive Storytelling
Promo: I Should Be Writing
As a steampunk author myself my ear was caught by The Affinity Bridge, discussed in the library segment.
But... advanced, uncorrected proof? The Affinity Bridge came out in 2008 (to mixed reviews), and if it was just being reissued, they wouldn't need to print up another batch of uncorrected proofs, would they?
Weird!
Just wanted to drop a note and let you know that the John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem books are not as bad as they sound. I picked up Plutonium Blond when I worked at a bookstore, and enjoyed it. It's a nice sci-fi/pulp fiction mash-up, and it's a lot of fun. Following your good ole' hard-boiled PI through the mean streets of a future Earth. If I get a chance to pick up Ballistic Babes, I'll give a review.
Adam, it came out last year as a limited special edition from a small press, but it doesn't hit US shelves as a more wide release by Tor Books until this coming July.
The Affinity Bridge actually came out first as a slipcased limited, then as a regular edition, from Snow Books in the UK, and did well enough that they've since bought six more books from George (six in the Newbury & Hobbes series). Tor bought US rights to Affinity Bridge and a sequel. Pyr bought rights to Ghosts of Manhattan (1920s steampunk superhero) and a sequel. So there's going to be a lot of Mann going around the US starting this summer.
And Summer, thanks for the cover love above.