Tim C. Taylor's Blog, page 21

My steampunk, time-travel novella is out this month

Last Man Through the Gate will be published at the end of September. There's a range of novellas coming soon from Greyhart Press, and mine will be one of them. I'm really excited.

Some people have called my novella steampunk fantasy, others time-travel. It has all those elements and more. I think I'll let author Ian Watson explain what the story is about, as he is so much better at that sort of thing.

"Like some hybrid of Van Vogt and Charles Harness, Tim C. Taylor surprises us with worlds at strange angles to ours, and to each other, in a delicious piece of writing which ramps up excitingly through time distortions, grief, conflict, and peril, to paradoxical revelation. An excellent and provocative read." — Ian Watson

In the days before eBooks became mainstream (say, from Caxton until 2009) novellas were very much a niche format that most people had probably never heard of. I predict eBooks will change that over the coming decade. A novella is simply a story that's longer than a short story and shorter than a novel. That's quite a range but generally means you can read the whole story through in an evening. If printed as a paperback, Last Man Through the Gate would be about 80 pages.

If you want to read a free advance review copy (in exchange for a review) just contact me.

And look at the cover artwork… I think it's top-notch, courtesy of BSFA award-winning artist Andy Bogwood.

Am I Evil?

Am I evil?

Diamond Head in 2008

I asked myself that question this morning while I was working in the public library. I wasn't thinking about heavy metal legends Diamond Head who wrote the song of that name (also the name of one of my son's fave Ben10 characters). I asked myself that question because I realised I was beginning to feel resentful towards all the happy people in the library running Facebook.

There are about 30 PCs in the library and at any time about 20 are running FB, and most of the rest are running Skype, email, or games. I see the same people at the computers every day (and, to be fair, they see me most days too, though I bring my own netbook).

I don't know the personal circumstance of these individuals. I am generalising. I have no right to criticise. They're happy! I only feel a slight twinge of resentment, so what's the big deal?

You see, even for this very mild angst, I can find so many reasons why that makes me a bad person.

And yet I can't help thinking…

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Diamondhead, yesterday

These people are adults but they're here every day. While they're here, they aren't looking for work and they aren't acquiring skills. Now that I'm not earning myself, I'm doubly precious about all that tax I've paid in over the years — am still paying in — and where it goes.

Am I evil to feel that twinge of resentment?

Or am I just stupid because I don't get Jobseekers Allowance as muggins here declares a tax status of self-employed?

Funnily enough, as I'm writing this post I've answered my own question AND cured myself of any resentment. Read on and I'll explain…

An evil person

I'd better give a little back story. I'm not employed by the library; I go there to finish my time-travel novel and do editing and formatting jobs for my e-publishing business. You see, after 18 years producing software for a company called Capita, I was made redundant 5 months ago. My colleagues gave me a Kindle as a leaving present.

I've been around computers and tech-gadgets for 30 years and can say that the Kindle is a brilliant bit of kit. A realisation that led to unexpected consequences…

At first I had intended to spend a little time between jobs finishing my book and enjoying the novelty of having flexibility in my working day. For example, I've recently been a parent-helper on several trips at my son's school. I would never have done that when I had my old software job.

A few weeks in, though, and I kept thinking about how good Kindle e-books were and the excitement at finding some self-published authors putting out great e-books. Then I thought of all the great unpublished stories I had read in my years in writers' critique groups.

So I decided to create my own publishing house: Greyhart Press.

It's exhausting and exhilarating. It's won me friends I would never have come across otherwise, and lost me money. It might never make a useful contribution to my family's bills, but I wake up every day and am grateful that Fate kicked me up the backside and pushed me into doing this.

Am I evil?

I don't know about that. But what I've realised writing this post is that: 

What I am is lucky.

Tim

Greyhart Press is featured on Indie Book Lounge

Happy 4th July to my American friends and Brit ex-pats in the States, especially my brother, Ben, who is in Detroit right now to see what all the fuss is about. Oh, and to my son's girlfriend who lives in Maine. (They're only five… ahhh!)

The 'hep' Indie Book Lounge is featuring an interview with me today. Nice to have the hart on the front page but you can read the interview anytime by clicking on this link.

 

Tim

In defence of Short Stories

Since launching Greyhart Press, I've been delighted to encounter fellow publishers and authors who champion shorter story lengths. One of these evangelists is James Everington. I came across him on an online forum and took a chance on his short story collection The Other Room. I was not disappointed.

In fact, I liked it so much that I… Well, I didn't buy the company but I did a guest blog post on James' Scattershot Writing blog.

An author friend, Ian Watson, sometimes talks about meta fiction. I'm not quite sure what that means. In this guest blog I appear as a character in a short story about short stories inside a blog post about short stories. Does that count? Not sure but it was fun to write.

Signals – a little less blood

Hi, thanks for the feedback on my bloody cover image question. The word in from FB & WordPress is: 'keep the blood but not so much splatter'. So here's a second go. Does this look okay (you can click on the picture to get a larger version). If you scroll down two posts, you can see the before picture.

I noticed on the Greyhart Press website that someone had tweeted that a friend had recommended the books but he or she couldn't recommend them because the cover artwork was so awful. So let me know if you think this one is a pile of **** too!

Thanks

Tim

Further Conflicts from NewCon Press now available for the Kindle

Further Conflicts went up on the UK and US Kindle Store yesterday, the first NewCon Press title to do so.

Hot author of the moment is Lauren Beukes who has just won the Arthur C Clarke literary award for her novel Zoo City. Her latest story is Unaccounted, which appears in Further Conflicts. There are a host of other top, award-winning authors such as Eric Brown and Dan Abnett, famed for his Warhammer 40k novels amongst many others. In fact, all the authors are published novelists with multiple books under their belt. All except me and fellow Northampton SF Writer's Group member Dr. Steve Longworth (and he's just been  published in an anthology alongside Neil Gaiman and Stephen Baxter – how cool is that!)

I've read some e-books recently that were badly let down by formatting. Further Conflicts formatting was hand-checked for Kindle3, Kindle DX, iPad, iPhone and is fully compliant with the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines. So you can for example skip between stories with a single click on your Kindle device. You can also jump out to author notes and then jump back to where you left off in the anthology. I know for a fact that this was checked because I did the e-book conversion myself!

It might take a while to work through the retailer back end systems but expect this ebook to appear pretty much everywhere within a few weeks: Apple iBookstore, B&N, Diesel, Sony Reader Store, Kobo Bookstore and Android app stores.

More NewCon Press titles will follow. The Gift of Joy will be up imminently and others are planned.

Tim

How would you like your book? With blood or without?

Hi,

I'm doing cover artwork for a suspense/thriller story about a girl who gets stalked (Northampton SF Writers' Group members might recognise this as one of Emma's).

If not for feedback on Facebook, I would have put out artwork a few weeks ago of a car driving into someone's bottom(!) (After ammending it ended up like this).  So I'm looking for feedback on this new one.

Which book cover would you be more likely to pick up? With blood, without, or neither? (click on the thumbnail to bring up the full-sized image)

With blood

or without?

Thanks

Tim

In the Shadow of the Necromouser

I've just noticed that my e-book Future Speculation is at #12 in the charts for Sci Fi short fiction at Smashwords.

If you click on the thumbnail you'll see the impressively named e-book above me at #11. Hats off to author Mary E. Lowd for such a cracking idea.

By the way, my e-book is free. So give it a spin and if you like it, post a review. If you don't, post a review anyway so I know what didn't work for you.

Tim

We've just passed a thousand book downloads

I've just added up the numbers and realise the thousandth book was downloaded from Greyhart Press today, probably while I was enjoying a read of my Kindle while scoffing my lunch of tinned chilli con carne. It's a tiny number, especially considering most downloads were for freebies, but I feel it's okay for our first month.  

Today I'm writing a press release. Gosh, you get lots of new things to play with when you run your own startup!

Tomorrow I hope to publish another story and the day after is freelance book design work. Next week I'm back onto writing my novel My Future in the Past.

How did I ever find time to go to work?

Greyhart Press – uncrablike behaviour

After playing with the crabs on Cromer beach over the Easter holiday, I confess that one of the first things I did on my return was to check the download and site stats for my epublishing venture, Greyhart Press. Checking the numbers is getting addictive and I must stop. Still, I'm not really off holiday until tomorrow, and just one peek won't hurt…

I was worried a little because in the first (quiet) couple of weeks of Greyhart Press' existence, readers were downloading books only within the first 48 hours of their publication on Smashwords, because the default Smashwords view is most recent publication first. Given the rate Smashwords publish books, after 48 hours or so, my books would be lost under a mountain of newer publications; the only way anyone would find a Greyhart Press title was to search specifically for it. So I though the second two weeks of existence would see a slowing of downloads.

However, unlike the Cromer crabs, Greyhart seems to be moving slowly forwards  .

In the past 12 days we've had 450 downloads and over 1000 visits to the brand new website www.greyhartpress.com Still a long way from making money out of this but I'm pleased with this start and next week will busy myself with the story pipeline from which some cracking new reads are straining to emerge.

Oh, and today I arrived on iTunes (here and here):

Tim