Edward Hoornaert's Blog, page 68

Effing Feline has a job to do

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes the Weekend Writing Warrior / Sunday Snippet posts on Mr. V’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, have little time. I have an important job to do–curling on Mr V’s lap and purring. He’s a little down, you see, because his oldest son moved to Amsterdam this week, and that’s so very far away. I’m stealing a moment to write this, but I have to get back to his lap chop chop.

Today’s snippet continues from the short story, Thimbleriggers, contained in Future Love (which is now available for pre-order!).  The book is my pet human’s upcoming collection of short stories. The crook, Aldous, give his aged subject an injection that puts her into a light sleep and intensifies her recall of the memories he wants to buy. The first is 13-year-old Kathy’s voyeuristic episode involving a babysitter.

Kathy glared at the closed bedroom door. “I’m not sleepy,” she repeated in a stage whisper.

Surely Sharon, the grouchy college babysitter, wouldn’t yell at her for getting a drink of water? When Kathy opened the bedroom door, she heard Sharon giggling; must be a funny show on TV.

A different voice groaned. It was a man—and not on TV, either, even though Sharon was not supposed to let a guy into the apartment.

“Getting to the good stuff,” Aldous cackled. Wanting still more of the memory’s extreme vividness, he turned the breadbox’s volume dial all the way up with his toe.

Kathy crept down the hall, pausing at the bathroom to fill a plastic cup with alibi water. When the giggling and moaning continued, Kathy tiptoed slowly, avoiding the floorboard that squeaked.

Effing Feline again. Poor Mr V’s four children are scattered across three countries and two continents, as shown below. If you want to know a secret, though, I think he’s also a bit proud of having raised independent, adventurous children. He just wishes it was easier to see them.

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Mr V’s bestselling science fiction novel, The Trial of Tompa Lee is available free for a limited time as part of a massive science fiction and fantasy promotion. Come on, you know you don’t have enough books  on your e-reader.  Snatch up some more while they’re free.

Finally, be sure to visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sundays posts.

Now back to Mr V’s lap.

Over 100 Free Ebooks

Click on the image above to see over 100 free ebooks by Indie authors. You aren’t limited to Amazon, either; you can choose the retailer of  your choice.

Categories in the giveaway are Science Fiction, Dystopian and horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Fantasy romance, in addition to 5 box sets, all of them free! As of Friday evening, most of those I’ve clicked on are already free.

Included in the giveaway is my own The Trial of Tompa Lee, which is free for a limited time in honor of its new cover. Enjoy my most kick-ass heroine while it’s free, because that won’t last.

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Cover reveal — Future Love

Zoom, zoom, zoom. One new cover reveal on Monday, and today another! Without further ado — Future Love!

Future Love is a slender tome that contains five science fiction short stories. One of the stories is a traditional love story, but the others deal with how technology encourages love to go slightly wrong — but even at its worst, love has massive possibilities for redeeming even irredeemable characters. Love’s power for transformation — that’s the focus of Future Love.

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Love is gonna get tougher and trickier

A spaceman wins the woman of his dreams … but it’s too late. A crook invents a new form of pornography … but it teaches him about love, not sex. A man pursues his beloved beyond death … but finds only the evil in his own heart.

The SF short stories in Edward Hoornaert’s Future Love probe how the future will make today’s romance seem simple and tame by comparison.  Think that’s not possible?  You have much to learn…

If you crave stories that deal honestly with love’s potential for heartbreak and redemption, you’ll adore Future Love.

Future Love is scheduled for release on June 30, 2016. It will be available for pre-order this weekend, so check back here soon!

Cover reveal: A new look for The Trial of Tompa Lee

Big news for fans of my most popular science fiction novel, The Trial of Tompa Lee: a new cover.

The new cover has more family resemblance to book 3, The Triumph of Tompa Lee, and to the three-books-in-one edition.

 

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The old cover is shown below. Is the new one an improvement?

 

Effing Feline Diagnoses Insanity

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes the Weekend Writing Warrior / Sunday Snippet posts on Mr. V’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, got a question on last week’s post. Aurora Springer asked, “Why can’t Effing use his paws to paint? My cat uses his paw to drink water.”

I can get a longer, more free-flowing line with my tail.
Your cat gets its paws wet? On purpose? Insanity!

Today’s snippet is from a short story, Thimbleriggers, contained in Future Love, my pet human’s upcoming collection of short stories. The crook, Aldous, give his aged subject an injection that puts her into a light sleep and intensifies her recall of the memories he wants to buy. The first is a voyeuristic episode involving her babysitter.

Like the snap of a three-vee turning on, he was immersed in a memory of crystalline clarity.

“I’m not sleepy,” thirteen-year-old Kathy complained in a whisper so alive it made Aldous’s vocal cords vibrate in sympathy. She was in bed, staring at cracks in her bedroom ceiling. Her favorite crack looked like Rhett Butler’s profile; she could always find it, even though other shapes seemed to change from night to night.

Aldous sucked in his breath. His previous experiences with the breadbox hadn’t prepared him for the crisp lucidity of the old woman’s memories. He felt everything she felt, from the mosquito bites on her ankles to a sense of monumental unfairness about her parents hiring a babysitter. Part of him had become her — yet he was still himself, using the headset to watch the scene as though her eyes and ears were camera and microphone.

“Great job, old lady,” he said.

She didn’t respond, of course.

Effing Feline again. Here’s another of my etchings. Remember, framed, paw-printed copies are available for $97.62 each, payable in unmarked bills.

Be sure to visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sundays posts.

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 As some of you may have noticed, my SFRom Alien Contact for Idiots recently completed a ‘review-only’ virtual book tour. I thought some writers might be interested in my impressions, so I wrote about my impression of the tour.

… an entirely unique read.

The side characters are a great addition.

Every single one of them, including the President

of the United States are characters that I started to really adore

All in all a fab easy read.

… refreshingly fun at times with a really interesting set of characters

Results from a book review tour

Alien Contact for Idiots  recently went on a review-only blog tour from Goddess Fish promotions. I’d never run a review-only tour before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew what I was hoping for: more Amazon and Goodreads comments to  guide readers to a book that, frankly, has rather languished.

All in all, I’m pleased with the results of the tour. I got my reviews — more of them than expected, actually, as Goddess Fish promises four reviews and I got six. A couple of reviews were rather slapdash, but others were notably more insightful than the average Goodreads review. The average reviewer, in my experience, takes pride in her work.

Some review sites garnered twenty or more comments, while others had only a few.

(For the record: Other than having been a Goddess Fish customer, I have no connection with the Fish. How could I? I live in the Arizona desert, with rivers, lakes, or streams, hence no fish.)

Was the tour was worthwhile?

Well, maybe.

Did my sales increase?  Not immediately, no.  The steady dribble of sales remains a steady dribble. But then, tours aren’t designed to build sales, but provide exposure.

I think the best use of a review tour might be to coincide with the release of a book, but that’s up to the individual author. I have a bad case of marketphobia.  That’s a fear of marketing my books. I feel strongly that the syndrome should be included in the next release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Anything that eases my marketphobia has value.

Some authors feel it’s somehow cheating to pay for reviews, but personally I think that’s silly. Paying to have someone fawn all over a horrendous book is cheating, yes. But paying for an honest review is no more cheating than hiring a publicist.

If you’re a traditionally published author, quite likely your publisher pays for reviews. Indeed, that might be the ONLY marketing they’ll do.  If you were reviewed by Romantic Times or Publisher’s Weekly, your publisher (or you!) paid hundreds of dollars for the review, and yet these reviews are considered legitimate.

A Goddess Fish review tour costs exponentially less than a single review in either of those publications.  Whether you get what you pay for is beyond my knowing, though I’d love to find out. Do you know? If so, please share your wisdom!

What are review tours?

I don’t know if other book tour companies have review tours. Probably, and maybe they’re as good or better than Goddess Fish. In any case, here’s what Goddess Fish says about their review tours:

This tour must be booked at least eight weeks in advance.

Get reviews for your story, and keep it in front of readers & fans on a regular basis

NOTE: There are a limited number of review tours booked each month. Your start date will be based on availability. We will book you as early as possible, but do not guarantee a start date eight weeks from submission and payment. We strongly recommend booking your tour as far in advance as possible.

Once a week, you’ll have at least one stop each on a genre appropriate blog which will include a review + book cover, blurb, excerpt, author bio and links.  Note: while more than 4 reviews are possible, more than 4 reviews are not guaranteed. Additionally, the maximum number that will be booked on this tour is 8.

For more information, see Goddess Fish.

What did the reviews say?

Here are snippets from some of the reviews Idiots garnered:

“A fun hot book.”

(I don’t think of myself as writing “hot” sex scenes, but okay … I’ll accept the compliment.)

“All in all a fab easy read.”

(A Flesch-Kincaid readability analysis pegs Idiots’ grade level at 5.6, which is that of an average eleven-year-old.)

“I have not read anything with a storyline even remotely similar to this and the way the author carried our the story, was also very different. Sometimes, this can result in disaster, as it is too out there, but this book is one of the few that has stepped well outside the envelope and pulled it off very well.”

(I love this comment, because I aim for originality. It hurts my sales, I’m sure, because a “typical” sci fi romance features a kick-ass heroines who can beat up any man ever born. But I’m still going to do my own thing.)

“A new spin on a science fiction book. Only would the US would think to put aliens on TV.”

(Again with the idea of a ‘new spin’. Thank you!)

“A good balance of science fiction, romance, action and comedy in this amusing title.”

(Right on! After all, the tagline for my blog is “Science fiction with romance and humor.”)

“I loved the humor and all the emotion of the drama aka space soap opera.”

(Humor and emotion? Great. But WTF about the last part of this review? While I do have a space opera series — comprising The Guardian Angel of Farflung Station, Escapee, and the recently completed Constellation XXII — Alien Contact is a near future story that takes place on Earth.)

“Alien Contacts for Idiots was fun, it had a great pace to it, some action with some awesome martial art moves, a love story and some great bad guys.”

(Uh oh. I just said I don’t write kick-ass heroines, yet now the reviewer mentions my made-up martial arts.  Oops.)

What about you?

Have you had any success scaring  up reviews for your books? Tell me about it in the comments — please, please. I’d love to know.

Get Alien Contact for Idiots on Amazon or find other links.

 

Do you have a wandering eye?

Sometimes it feels like I’ve traveled extensively, but other times I feel like a stick in the mud.

I came across neat little site that displays my travels graphically. Douwe Osinga’s site has a neat little app that creates maps showing the places a person has visited in:

The world
The United States
India
Canada
Brazil

Here are the Canadian provinces I’ve visited.

Visited 6 provinces (46.1%)

I feel I should add that I passed through Manitoba and Saskatchewan just once, but have visited the other provinces multiple times.

Here  is my map of US states I’ve visited:



Visited 33 states (66%)

This may look impressive, but except for west coast states and the Great Lakes states, I’ve merely passed through or landed at an airport.

What about you?  Create your own visited map of The United States or Canada.

 

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Escapee

The African Queen in Outer Space

Catt Sayer just wants to survive.  The working-class fugitive delivers military supplies on her decrepit airship, but her hard-won livelihood vanishes when invaders overrun Banff, her harsh moon. And now an idealistic, upper-class officer wants her to risk her life on a hopeless voyage to attack enemy headquarters – manned by 10,000 soldiers.

Edward Hoornaert’s romantic space opera, Escapee, continues the saga of the Dukelsky family (begun in The Guardian Angel of Farflung Station).  If you like The African Queen and the thrill of underdogs finding love while battling a hostile environment, you’ll love Escapee.

Don’t let this rousing adventure escape from you.

Amazon US  |  Canada  |  UK  |  Australia
MuseItUp Publishing
Apple iBooks
Barnes and Noble
Kobo Books

Effing Feline Takes Drawing Lessons

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes the Weekend Writing Warrior / Sunday Snippet posts on Mr. V’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, was annoyed when my pet human, Ed Hoornaert (aka Mr Valentine) said I needed a hobby so I didn’t just lie around all day (even though that’s what cats are supposed to do). He enrolled me in art lessons at Parks and Recreations, and it’s actually okay.  I dip my tail in paint, slap down a quick picture … and then go curl in Mr V’s lap without cleaning my tail.  Heh, heh, heh.

Once again, today’s snippet is from Future Love, an upcoming collection of short stories, and the story is Thimbleriggers, in which a crook invents a new form of pornography — with unintended consequences. The crook, Aldous, asks his aged subject whether she’s selling her sexy memories because she’s an exhibitionist. She says no.

“Then why you doing it? Nah, don’t bother answering — just sign the releases and let’s get started.”

“It’s my husband.”

Aldous jerked around, but no axe-wielding geezer doddered into the tiny room.

“He’s in University Research Hospital,” Kathleen said. “He must never find out about this.”

“Hey, my padre’s a large-sarge doctor at URH. Let me guess, you couldn’t afford the expensive new procedure Hubby needs, so Dad’s buddies froze him in medical stasis until you have the cash.” When she nodded, Aldous chuckled. “Dad would crap his scrubs if he knew him and me were tag teaming.”

Effing Feline again. Here are some of my first drawings. Framed, paw-printed copies are available for $97.62 each.

Be sure to visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sundays posts.

Effing Feline discovers a new emotion

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes the Weekend Writing Warrior / Sunday Snippet posts on Mr. V’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, am having second thoughts about getting rid of my big Cousin Lee. He’s gone for good, I’m afraid. After the Fiat-munching episode on Broadway, he got himself a new home where he can mooch as much as he likes, so he won’t be coming back.

I got a picture from him. I’ll share it with you after today’s 10-sentence snippet.

The snippet is from Future Love, an upcoming collection of short stories by my pet human, Ed Hoornaert (aka Mr Valentine). He wanted me to mention that this book is science fiction, not necessarily science fiction romance, though love usually helps characters transform themselves.

This snippet is once again from Thimbleriggers, in which a crook invents a new form of pornography — with unintended consequences. The crook’s first ‘subject’ is Kathleen, the story’s heroine: a 90-year-old woman. They’re alone in her apartment, and she is speaking to the crook, named Aldous.

 “I am—was—a sociologist, so I understand why someone like you is the first private individual to seek such a high-tech marvel.”

“Do I look like I want to hear this, sister?”

“I’m rather surprised, however, that researchers would sell a surplus experimental device to you.”

Aldous didn’t try to hide his satisfied smile. The lab had assumed the son of the famous Dr. Raymond Wiggins must have legitimate scientific interests, and it was sweet, so sweet, to exploit his father’s respectability.

“The sex industry,” Kathleen continued as though lecturing a class, “seizes on new media before social controls catch up. The early days of photography had French postcards, which incidentally honed techniques and helped bring costs within the reach of the common man, and on the Internet, porn sites perfected pop-ups and ads that were later adopted by legitimate sites. In the same way, pornographers may help drive the development of mindscanning technology and lower costs until it becomes a consumer product.”

“Vacuum it, sister. You really got juicy memories to sell, or not?”

“I came of age during the Sexual Revolution, Mr. Wiggins. “

Effing Feline again. Here’s the picture of Cousin Lee I promised you.

 

Confession time. I’ve learned something from this adventure.  Namely, that I’m capable of feeling a new emotion previously unknown throughout the long history of catdom. (Sniff.)

Guilt.

Don’t let my tears of regret keep you from visiting the other Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sundays posts. (Sob)

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…to an all-review book tour for Ed Hoornaert’s science fiction romance, Alien Contact for Idiots. The tour started last Tuesday with an insightful review by our own Elizabeth Alsobrooks, a Weekend Writing Warrior. Leave a comment at one of the stops and I’ll appreciate it — and you’ll also put yourself in the running for a $40 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

Here are the tour stops:

May 3: Book Bling

May 10: Sharing Links and Wisdom

May 10: The Recipe Fairy

May 17: Natural Bri

May 24: Lisa’s Louisiana Home

May 24: Am Kinda Busy Reading!

May 24: Booksomereads

Top Ten non-bookish websites

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.  The blog hop features lists related to all things bookish–characters, authors, titles, and favorites. They’re an excellent way to find new interesting books on a variety of topics, and to connect with bloggers who love the books you do.

This week’s theme is top ten non-book related websites.  I could come up with more than ten, I’m sure, because I waste waaay too much time online. But here are some of them, in no particular order.

Gocomics — For many years now, I’ve started my day by reading my daily comic strips. It’s pretty much always the same strips, too, though there is change over time. Some of my main favorites are Dilbert, BC, Get Fuzzy, and Pearls Before Swine.

YouTube. Duh. Of course.

I’m something of a sports fan, primary for hockey and baseball:

South Side Sox — White Sox

Baseball Prospectus  — more White Sox

Canucks Misconduct — Vancouver Canucks hockey

CBC News is my favorite news site. Or maybe that should be ‘favourite’. Even though I live in Arizona now, I like to keep up with the old homeland. Even for US new, CBC is often more informative and always more evenhanded than anything I’ve found south of the border.

Politico is a guilty pleasure — not always, but I find it addictive during election time.

KUAT, my local classical music station, which I listen more often on my computer than on radio. My taste in music is totally and utterly uncool. But then, so am I — hopelessly nerdy.

Berkshire Record Outlet is another site specializing primarily in classical music. Closeout discs at fantastic prices.

Netflix, though I don’t know if I should really count it, because I watch primarily on TV rather than  computer.

Amazon.com would be a no-brainer, but it’s about books. Actually, I may have to call it quits at this point, because so many of the other sites I waste time on are book related.

What about you? What are some of your favorite websites? Tell us about it in the comments.