Saturday, November 16, 2013

Win a Free Copy of "Steam on the Horizon"

Care for a free steampunk book? Well, if you would like a chance to win an autographed copy of "Steam on the Horizon" delivered to your doorstep, then check out the new giveaway I am holding on Facebook through November 24th. To enter, 1) be a US citizen 2) like my SteamyGirl Publishing page on Facebook. That's it! Check out this link for more details!

More exciting news: the official SteamyGirl Publishing newsletter is now operational! Check out the first edition here to meet the graphic artist who created the coverwork for "Steam on the Horizon" and delve into some interesting steampunk-related info. You can sign up for the newsletter here to get lots of cool steampunk tidbits, updates on The Aether Saga series and other fun stuff.

Today, I will be wandering over to the house of Kira Gale, the CEO and almighty potentate of River Junction Press, an independent book publisher. After much sharing of ideas and investigating of books, Kira and I have decided to merge talents and interests, and her publishing company will be carrying The Aether Saga. That is right, I have a publisher! Kira is a long-term veteran of the publishing trenches and knows far more about the business than I do. I have full confidence that with her assistance, I can become far more of a successful author and reach the international steampunk community.

However, as anyone in the publishing business knows, getting a book out takes copious amounts of time and energy. Kira and I will be packaging and producing two books at once: both "Steam on the Horizon" and "Clouds of War". During the months that this project will entail, "Steam on the Horizon" will still be available on Amazon and Kindle as it currently is and I will still be running around hawking it at conventions and other venues. However, Kira and I will be repackaging it and putting it through a more more comprehensive and widespread distribution platform.

One of the most exciting aspects of working with Kira will be that she is very much pushing for The Aether Saga to be available as a series of interactive enhanced ebooks. Trying to explain these via text rather than a visual demonstration is quite difficult, and when Kira first talked about this books, I initially dismissed it as frippery. Then she hauled out her IPad and showed me an interactive ebook, and I was instantly hooked. The particular book was "History of a Pleasure Seeker" - essentially the ebook had the normal text like you would expect, but there were all sorts of other additions: extra notes and descriptions from the author, music, video files, etc. As I looked over some of these enhanced ebooks, I realized that The Aether Saga was a perfect fit for these books: I could incorporate so many awesome elements: voice readings from actors, sounds of engines and other mechanical noises, sidebars with historical and cultural information, pictures from the countries where I have traveled, etc.

So in a nutshell, the plan is that The Aether Saga will be offered under River Junction Press both as print and ebooks but Kira and I will also have the series available as interactive enhanced ebooks. I am particularly excited about the last part; enhanced ebooks are amazing! They are also cutting-edge technology and right on the cusp of publishing innovation - here is an article about these books.

Well, Captain Roberts and I have work to do - when I last left him, he was being talked into taking a shipment of cavalry horses from Balaklava Bay to the British camp. Now, anyone who has worked with horses before knows that they are fragile, dumb creatures that actively fling themselves towards peril, so putting a bunch of them on an airship is not the easiest or practical of tasks. Captain Roberts may find himself in a situation like this poor soul here:


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