James Pyles's Blog, page 69

It’s Okay To Be All Three

First off, Im going to say for the record, that a lot of you arent going to like this. My previous blog post Presenting What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick? drew a certain amount of attention because (I believe) theres this notion that governmental intervention in the face []

Pesky Editing and Contracts

So the usual pattern for me and short stories is that I see a submissions call from (usually) an indie publisher, I read the particulars, look at the submissions deadline, and say to myself something like, I can do that. Then as the deadline approaches, and Ive met all (or most) of the other submissions []

Download “Clockwork Dragons” Anthology FREE for the Next Five Days!

You dont want to miss this promotion. Zombie Pirate Publishing is offering the kindle edition of their anthology CLOCKWORK DRAGONS: A Fantasypunk Anthology as an absolutely free download from Amazon for the next five days. You cant beat the price. Features my steam/fantasypunk short story The Mechanical Dragon: A 19th century engineer and a maimed []

Official “Raygun Retro” Table of Contents

  RAYGUN RETRO: A Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Adam Bennett and Sam M. Phillips over at Zombie Pirate Publishing, is only about two-and-a-half weeks from publication. Its available for pre-order now for delivery to your kindle device May 1, 2020. Above is the official table of contents for the book, and includes my short []

Science Fiction and OPPs (Other People’s Priorities)

Id heard of K. Tempest Bradford before, but only tangentially. So far, she hasnt blocked me on twitter, but I expect that to change any time now. I came across her blog post I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year thanks to a notice posted on Facebook by []

Presenting “What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?”

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) With the grand kids over this weekend (long story but its coronavirus related), I havent had a lot of time to write (even though Ive still got a lot to say, especially on []

My Amazon Review of John Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire” Refused

I know, right? To be fair, Amazon has the right to accept or refuse reviews posted on their site because, after all, it is their site. If I did unintentionally violate their standards, I guess thats that. On the other hand, if you dont like a book thats supposed to be popular (and I did []

Book Review of “Triplanetary,” the Beginning of the “Lensmen” Series

Over 50 years ago, when all the other guys in Junior High were reading E.E. Doc Smiths Lensmen series, I was reading his Skylark series, and loving it. I tried re-reading Skylark of Space, the first novel in the series, several years ago, going so far as to buy a paperback copy. It was tough []

Book Review of John Scalzi’s Novel “The Collapsing Empire”

I recently downloaded a free copy of John Scalzis novel The Collapsing Empire from TOR.com. It was part of a promotion of the third novel in this series The Last Emperox being published later this month (as I write this). Scalzi comes with a rather stellar reputation and background, having won two Hugos and been []

“Spring Into SciFi 2020” Available Now!

As promised the Cloaked Press science fiction anthology Spring Into SciFi: 2020 Edition is now available for purchase on Amazon. As Ive been mentioning (a lot) lately, it contains my short story The Colonists which was recently reviewed. I know these are difficult times, when fact and real life seems stranger than fiction. Believe me, []