© James Pyles
Another of the Cloaked Press anthologies containing a short story of mine has arrived, Winter of Wonder. This edition has the theme “superhuman.”
My Copy of “Winter of Wonder” has Arrived
Tag Archives: scifi
My Own Copy of “Meteor Fall”
© James Pyles
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It’s in my hands.
I’ve now got my own personal copy of the Cloaked Press anthology Meteor Fall: An Anthology of The Collective. It features two of my short stories, “Eden and the Starcat” and “The Sins of the Fathers and the Sons”
Here’s a brief description:
Publications in 2021 and the Impending New Year
© James Pyles
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I’ve noticed other indie authors doing this sort of thing, creating a graphic representation of the books and stories that were published in the past year. Sounded like an interesting idea, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’ve already posted the graphic on social media, but thought I’d add some details for my blog readers.
Here’s a list of my publications from the beginning of 2021 to the end:
Of Sales Rankings and Libraries
Screenshot from Amazon
There are certain milestones that I think a lot of authors pay attention to. One of them I chronicled yesterday when I said that Time’s Abyss received 3 five-star reviews on Amazon and Ice had received it’s first five-star review.
Having also created a promotion for Ice where it can be downloaded to Kindle for free from now until Christmas created another interesting effect. It started “selling” much, much better (see image above-right). Well, it’s free and I have been telling everyone on every social media platform to which I belong about it, so why not? Still, it’s pretty satisfying.
“Ice” is Available to Download for Free through Christmas
Starting midnight Pacific Time on December 21 through Christmas, my SciFi/Fantasy novella Ice will be free to download onto your kindle device. That’s right, just in time for the holidays, give yourself the gift of this unique tale of adventure on the high seas, of magic, science, and dinosaurs, or make it a present for a friend.
I first announced the release of this book at the beginning of the month and published an excerpt just a few days ago.
All that, plus I was interviewed on a podcast about “Ice”, Time’s Abyss, my two short stories published in the Meteor Fall anthology and other projects soon to come.
Excerpt from My Novella “Ice”
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As I’m sure my regular readers know by now, my self-published novella “Ice” has been available for nearly two weeks now. Since I’m the publisher as well as the author, I’m doing all of the marketing for the book myself. While I’ve written summaries and discussed the book on one podcast so far, I still plan to promote the daylights out of it.
To that end, I’m putting up an excerpt of the story. It’s adventure and mutiny on the high seas, but these seas and the ships that sail upon them exist at the farthest reaches of human history where magic and science co-exist. The state of things on the merchant vessel “The Star of Jindo” have gone from bad to worse following a devastating storm that has crippled the ship and killed most of the crew. Captain Ki-Moon Yong has lost control of his command of his vessel for the first time in his career. Here’s what follows:
“The Fallen Shall Rise” To Appear in the 224-Verse
Andromeda Galaxy captured with a Celestron cpc1100 from the Israeli Desert by Deddy Dayag 9 July 2019
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I now have permission to discuss a small novella that has recently been accepted by Starry Eyed Press for their 224-Verse series.
First, a little background from their 224-Verse page:
What is the 224-Verse?
The 224-Verse is an interconnected fictional universe set within the sprawling starscape of Galaxy NGC 224 – Andromeda.
In terms of sheer size, Andromeda is 220,000 lightyears across and is home to a trillion stars and roughly four-trillion planets.
So the “verse” is a shared set of stories set in the Andromeda galaxy, potentially over hundreds of thousands of years of time and 220,000 lightyears of space. But that’s not it.
Still Good Award Winning SciFi in the World
Cover art for Dan Simmons’ novel Hyperion.
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It’s been almost three years since I wrote Hugo Award Winning Novels I Have Read. I authored the blog post mainly in response to the idea that these awards have really changed over the years. At the time, I was reading for review N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season in an attempt to understand how I remembered Hugo award winning novels being so outstanding in “the old days” vs. how I perceived the more modern tomes.
If you click the first link, you’ll see a list of the winning and nominated novels I’d consumed in my youth, their awards issued between 1953 and 1988. I read most of them.
I was posting something similar in a Facebook group earlier today and started wondering if, by now, I’d read any more recent Hugo recipients. I have:
- 1990 Hyperon by Dan Simmons (winner).
- 1993 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (nominated).
- 2013 Redshirts by John Scalzi (winner).
- 2021 Network Effect by Martha Wells (nominated).
I read and reviewed Hyperion mainly because it was a Hugo winner AND Simmons was being trashed on an online fanzine (which shall not be named) by modern SciFi fans because of his politics. I hear that after all these years, it’s going to become a movie. Simmons is still with us and I wish him success.
Jeb’s Guests
Photo Credit: One Big Photo
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Jeb Blackbird was walking next to the workhorse pulling the buffalo carcass laden wagon when he saw the stranger by his house. Only Sioux should be allowed on this land for 400 miles in every direction, but this man was obviously one of the hated colonizers. To his credit, the white haired (white skinned) colonizer was waiting respectfully some twenty feet from the front door of the big house. Although the Dakota plains in autumn got damn cold, and the intruder was only in a shirt and rough trousers, he didn’t seem to mind.
The sun was setting behind the three houses, the big house for his wife and three children, middle for meat curing, storage, and whatever else he could think of, and the small house for the sweat lodge. Jeb reached over to the horse (he never bothered to give it a name) and pulled his Winchester rifle from the long holster mounted on the bridle.
“Speak your piece.” He made his voice as gruff as he could, though when he sang, his wife Ella said he sounded like the sweetest spirits. He pointed the barrel at the ground. This man’s kind had been a terrible trouble before they’d been stopped. His closest neighbor, Stewart Bluefeather said he had friends among them, and that not all white people were cruel, but for Jeb, trust was hard earned.
“Ice” by James Pyles is Now Available
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Admittedly, I’ve tried to sell this story in various forms for quite some time without any luck. I even asked a friend for help, thinking maybe he could suggest the proper venue. However, it didn’t take.
So I thought of self-publishing it. Here it is: Ice by James Pyles. No anthologies, no indie publishers, this one is all mine.
Good thing, too. When I went over my submitted story, I found horrible errors I never saw before. I took weeks just reading and re-reading “Ice” until I finally got it to the point where I thought it was ready (I’ll write a separate blog post about my first experience with Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) by the by).
Here’s the synopsis I wrote for Amazon:
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