Cameron Cooper's Blog, page 13

5 Ways to Find More Time to Read More

5 Ways to Find More Time to Read More

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

If you love stories, then finding more time to appreciate them is a good thing.

Stories have been around for as long as man has walked upright.  They began as spoken tales, that taught us how to survive.

So Paleo Bob’s story around the campfire, “This time my mate was eaten by a tiger and I just escaped!” was a warning in disguise:

not to go to the same watering hole where Bob saw the tiger,not to drink without someone on guard, andnever go hunting with Bob.

Stories have grown far more sophisticated over the centuries, and now we get stories in books, on television and on the big screen, as well as a thousand stories that we still tell each other, often over and over.

They still serve a vital purpose, though.  They entertain, yes, but there are lessons in even the lightest and most superficial story about how human nature works.

It’s a sure bet your own family has dozens of favorite stories that get retold at get-togethers.  Thanksgiving dinner disasters.  Surviving bad weather and storms.  Close escapes.  Fun time.  The time Harry got drunk and slept in the neighbor’s petunia patch.

All those family stories are exactly the same as the first stories ever told–they might not be cautionary tales, but they build a sense of family and community, and reinforce the bonds.

Everyone loves stories, but not everyone has time for them.

If you don’t read enough (or watch enough) stories to suit your tastes, or if you don’t read at all (and oh, I feel sorry for you!), but you want to read, then keep, well, reading.  I have five quick tips for finding and saving time, that you can retool and make reading time.

1.  To “make” time, you have to give something else up.

We’re all maxed out.  That’s a given.

Sometimes, though, we are doing things we “should” be doing to meet external expectations.  Sometimes, we do things out of pure habit.  When we began those activities, they had real meaning.  Now you can’t remember why you ever started.

What can you give up?

If you want to be very systematic, examine your week by keeping a log of every activity, then see what pockets of time you can free up.

2.  Combine activities to make room.

Don’t combine reading with something else (driving and reading is generally frowned upon).  Combine other things instead, to make room for more reading.

If you have to drop someone off for training and then come back an hour later, which makes it a waste of time even going home, could you grocery shop while you’re waiting?

Can you do the laundry and practice French phrases?

Most readers use audio books while they’re driving (great idea!).  However, listening to audio books while cleaning, gardening, or doing anything else means your attention is divided and you can’t properly enjoy the story.

Instead, why not listen to your emails?

Did you know that most computers will read text these days?

Android phones and iPhones all come with text to speech apps that will read anything you ask them to.  Instead of using this low-quality time to only half-listen to your story, cut through your emails, blog posts, newsletters and other reading.

Tip:  You can also dictate your responses.

Then use the quality time you save to read stories, instead.

3.  Use pockets of “found” time.

This is where reading on your phone comes to the fore.

When you’re waiting in line, when you’re waiting in a reception area, when you’re standing at the front door waiting for the rest of the family to be ready to go…

There are dozens of opportunities every day when you have even a minute to whip out your phone and read a page or two of your story.

Even if you’re a print reader, a bit of imagination and unconventional thinking will have you taking advantage of spare moments, too.

A cousin of mine, for example, used to chop up print books into chapter chunks.  He would push the latest chapter into the top of his ski boot and read the chapter on the way to the top of the hill on the ski lift.  When he got to the top, he’d shove it back in his boot, and ski down.

There’s always a way.

4.  Read print.  Don’t listen to audio.

One day I will talk about print versus audio.

I’ve already jumped on audio once and I’m about to do it again, simply because it’s a huge chunk of even more time to listen to a single book — the average book is eight to thirteen hours long!

You would read two or even three books in that time, and probably absorb more of the story, too.

If you want to squeeze in more stories, read them.  Don’t listen to them.

5.  Read faster.

I’m not talking about speed reading, where you run your finger down the page and “absorb” the text with single eye scan movements.  Ugh.

No, I mean, simply read a little faster than you usually do.  Pick up the pace deliberately.  Just a tad.

If you continually work to read a little bit faster than normal, every time you read, your “normal” keeps shifting upwards, until you’re reading much faster and still retaining everything you read, cutting down on the time it takes to read one book.

There is a case for slow reading, and one day I’ll talk about that, too. But reading faster will serve to let you read more.

____

These are just five simple tips for squeezing more stories into your life.  There are a dozen other ways to find time, but some of them are major undertakings.  I’ll deal with those in bigger posts in the future.

For now, start thinking about how you use your time, and where you might spend it better to find more time for stories.

Back to Shorties (Sort Of)

Back to Shorties (Sort Of)

The other day, when I was talking about writing long and short stories and how what that meant had evolved a lot, I also mentioned that I had been indulging myself with writing a bunch of short and flash fiction, and that it would start appearing soon.

The first of those short stories, And We Danced All Night, is now available for pre-order.

Because it is a short story, I won’t be doing all the usual build up to its release (as the entire story would qualify as a first chapter on its own!).

Instead, I’m mentioning now that it’s available for pre-order, and will announce when it has been released and that’s it.

You will be able to find the story on my site, here, and on Stories Rule Press, where it is available to buy.

On a future Earth, what is left of humanity lives life to the hilt while denying a harsh truth…

One man, Kaloyan, has lived through that truth and knows what his friends are about to face, including one friend in particular….

And We Danced All Night is a science fiction short story by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

Dystopian Science Fiction Short Story
__

Praise for Cameron Cooper’s SF:

Epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios.

The concepts are staggering and intensely interesting.

This story is terrific! It’s intriguing and futuristic and human in its telling.
________

And We Danced All Night will be released on September 22nd.  As usual, if you pre-order from me at Stories Rule Press, you get your copy a week earlier.

Or, you can just buy your copy on September 1, if you don’t like pre-orders.  (If this is you, do make a note of the date, as there won’t be any notifications when it becomes available on SRP.  Just an email when it is released on all other retail sites.)

Pre-order from Stories Rule PressPre-order from your preferred retail store

Enjoy!

Ptolemy Lane Gets A Full Length Story

Bring on the Novel!Ptolemy Lane Gets A Full Length Story

I’ve had a back-and-forth tussle with myself and with readers for over a year now, about short versus long stories.  It’s not at all cut-and-dried, these days.

When traditional publishing was the only game in town, everyone wrote novels.  Period.  More, they were very long novels–especially in this century, when paper costs meant charging more for a book, so publishers would stuff more pages into the book (which cost less than printing a whole new book), to justify the higher price.

In some genres, science fiction in particular, there was a very active magazine market, too.  That was where the short stories, novelettes and novellas found a home.  But there weren’t many magazines (paper costs, again), and they didn’t pay very much (except for the Big 4 or 5 pro markets) so mostly, authors wrote novels, because there were more places to market them and stand a chance of earning decent money.

Problems with Length

The problems with length of story started around this time.

Originally, a “novel” was considered to be any story above 43,000 words.  And according to the SFWA–which is now the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association–a novel still starts at that length.

They break up story lengths this way:

Under 1,000 words:  Flash Fiction

1,000 to 7,500 words:  Short Story

7,500 to 17,500 words:  Novelette

17,500 to 43,000 words: Novella

43,000 words and up:  Novel

The Romance Writers of America use the same cutoffs, but add another tier:

43,000 to 100,000 words: Novel

100,000 words and up: Super Novel (or Plus-Sized Novel)

In the golden age of SF, a novel was usually at the lower end of the scale.  50K words was considered perfectly adequate to tell a good tale properly.

But now, traditional publishers all want plus-sized novels.

Then there’s indie publishing, which takes advantage of the ebook-first market, which allows authors to publish a story of any length at all as a standalone product, a “book”.

As soon as indie publishers escaped the limitations of an arbitrary page count, they began to write novels that ended up being the length they needed to be. They avoided the bloated plotting and verbose prose and told fast, clean stories that clipped along like nobody’s business.

Hardly surprising that as the readers grew to enjoy the fast pace and lean storytelling (once more), they looked for more stories like that.  Indie authors provided.

I have been publishing since 1999, and 100% indie since 2011.  I trained myself to write super-sized novels when I was still trying to break into publishing, but I switched to ebook-first and ebook-only markets from the very first.  My first professional sale was to an ebook-first company and my second sale (in the same week) was to a traditional book publisher.   The ebook-first book was 50,000 words.  The traditional sale was for a 95,000 word book.

Since I became 100% indie, I’ve re-learned how to tell well constructed, tight stories, and my novels have slowly shrunk from the bloated 100K to hover around 70,000 as an average.  Most of the authors I know have found the same thing; their readers like the faster reads, and the shorter word counts.

Grey Hat Tactics?

One of the advantages of indie publishing is that authors can get immediately, accurate feedback from readers about what does and does not work with their stories.  Readers tell us via sales.  If a story works, more readers buy it.

It’s a harsh feedback mechanism, but it works.

Readers have told indie authors for many years that they prefer very long novels they can sink into. You know, like the traditional publishers sell, and trained millions of readers to enjoy.

Yet readers have told indie authors in the last few years via indie sales counts that they like the shorter length stories much more than the very long tales.

I know of at least two authors, who I won’t mention by name here for reasons that will be obvious in a second, who don’t write anything longer than short novellas, and haven’t for years.

They don’t tell their readers the stories are novellas.

And their sales are more robust than mine.

I’m in the opposite camp.  I prefer to be open about the stories I’m offering.  In part, that is why I’m writing this post.  I’ve always made sure you know the length of the story you’re contemplating reading.

Especially with ebooks, you can’t tell just by looking at it what the general size of the story is. I’ve been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by how short/long a story ended up being, that didn’t disclose the general length in the book’s description.

Everything Else But Novels

I love short stories, novelettes and novellas.  I grew up reading Golden Age short stories and appreciate the form in a way that many readers do not.  I’ve had lots of emails from readers who say they abhor short stories and flatly refuse to read them.

But there are many more readers (especially in SF) who love them.

After spending nearly a year writing a big, full novel every single month (The Iron Hammer series), I indulged myself with shorter stories for a while.  Novelettes, mostly, but also half a dozen short stories and flash fiction, which you will see later this year.  (The first of those I’ll be announcing in a few days).

One of those shorter projects was the Ptolemy Lane tales.  The series begun because I did a favor for a friend who desperately needed a story to fill his magazine, and knew I could hit the deadline.  The magazine for that month had the theme of “peacekeepers”…and a word count limit.

And so Ptolemy Lane was created. The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel was first published in the magazine and later, as a standalone indie published tale.  Shortly, a second Ptolemy Lane tale came along, which appeared in Space Opera Digest 2021: Fight or Flight.  By then, I stopped writing Lane tales for magazines and wrote them to build the series itself.  The third tale went straight to indie-published.

And so, without further ado….

It was around this time I started getting hints from reviewers, street team members and general readers that they wanted a Ptolemy Lane novel.

As it had been too long since I’d written full length SF, I wondered if I could overcome my completionist tendencies and break out of the novelette format that had been established, and write a novel.

Apparently, I can.

An early reviewer said:

Cameron’s short stories were awesome in themselves but a mind like Jovan’s has got to have an expanded adventure.

Welcome to the adventure. 

——–

Serials can’t feel emotions as humans do.

Or so Ptolemy Jovan Lane has always insisted.  Yet when he learns that an old friend, Marija, might still be alive, he leaves an unsolved murder behind him in order to dash across the fringes to find her, bringing his human assistant, Ninety-Nine, with him.

His intention is purely to learn the truth, but his impetuous mission goes swiftly and spectacularly awry, leaving Ninety-Nine and him cut off and at the mercy of an enemy Jovan didn’t know he had.

The Ancient Girl in the Autopod is the fourth story and the first full novel in the Ptolemy Lane space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

The Ptolemy Lane Tales:
1.0: The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel
2.0: The Captain Who Broke the Rules
3.0: The Maker of Widowmakers’ Arm
4.0: The Ancient Girl in the Autopod
____

The Ancient Girl in the Autopod was released this morning on all bookseller sites, everywhere.

It is also available at my publisher site, where you can earn reward points toward your next purchase.

Buy from your favourite booksellerBuy directly from me.

Enjoy!

Time for 20% Off Everything

Time for 20% Off Everything

It’s the second last day of the month, which is the start of the four day SRP monthly sale, where you can get 20% off absolutely anything in the SRP store.  That includes boxed sets, pre-orders, even books already on sale.   It also includes every author at SRP, not just me.  So if you like other genres beside mine, you can dip into a new-to-you author at a discount.

The sale started this morning, and ends at midnight MDT on August 2nd.  You can use the coupon as often as you want, give it to friends to use, and buy as much as you wish, until the deadline.

Use the coupon code:  R9AJUG3A.   Enter the code as you check out to have the 20% discounted from your whole shopping basket.

Start here to sort and filter the books you’re interested in.  And enjoy your browsing!

Cam

.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;margin-top : 0px;margin-bottom : 20px;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {padding-top : 0px !important;padding-right : 0px !important;margin-right : 1.92%;padding-bottom : 0px !important;padding-left : 0px !important;margin-left : 1.92%;}@media only screen and (max-width:1024px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;order : 0;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}@media only screen and (max-width:640px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;order : 0;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}.fusion-body .fusion-flex-container.fusion-builder-row-1{ padding-top : 0px;margin-top : 0px;padding-right : 0px;padding-bottom : 0px;margin-bottom : 0px;padding-left : 0px;}

9 Ways to Organize Your Ebook Collection

9 Ways to Organize Your Ebook CollectionUncover Buried Treasure

Photo by Lawrence Chismorie on Unsplash

If you have hundreds of books on your reader, but can’t find anything to read, then read on for nine tips to clearing out the clutter and catching up with all the great reads you forgot you had…

Pick an ebook format as your “primary” format.

Thanks to smartphones, tablets and the proliferating number of dedicated ereaders available, there’s a good chance you have more than one reading application on your devices:  Kindle, Sony, FB Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, or even the proprietary application that was installed when you bought your device.  There are dozens of applications, and each of them read only one or two different formats.

If you catch yourself scratching your head as you try to recall which reader has that book you just remembered you have, then you need to pick a reader and a format as your preferred ebook reading home.

Convert all your other books to your primary format so they’re all in one centralized reader.

Don’t uninstall your other reader programs.  They are useful for reading books as soon as you buy them (if you can’t wait/can’t access your usual conversion process), and for opening books that have DRM protection, if you don’t strip your books (a contentious subject we won’t tackle today).

Centralize your books in one location.

Pull all your book files out of the directories of your other readers and dump them all in the library folder for your chosen reader.  You can convert as you go.  Most readers and applications will “discover” any new books placed in the right folder.

Some readers will not “find” the books, and the book has to be imported or side-loaded through the reader software, which is when an ebook management program comes in useful:

Keep most of your ebooks on your hard-drive/in the cloud, not in your reader.

Don’t use your primary reader as your organizing program, and don’t use it to keep all your books, all the time.

Readers and reading applications are very good for reading.  They don’t organize, sort or classify as well as other programs or you can.  Titles get lost and buried inside your reader.

Keep all your books in your central location on your hard drive or in the cloud (or both!), and only load your reader with a dozen or so books you intend to read in the next few days/weeks.  When you’ve finished with those books, reload your reader with new books.

In this way you’ll never lose track of books you bought months ago.

Use special characters and numbers to keep directories pinned at the top.

If you’re maintaining and organizing your central library manually, then it is easy to keep favourites or TBR’s at the top of the folder.  Use special characters and numbers to rename the folders holding your books or authors, and even the book files themselves to ensure the ones you don’t want to forget rise to the top of the pile.

For example, the characters !, ~,  -, can be used in combination to “pin” folders and files at the top.  So a folder called “Wyndham, John” or a file called “Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” can be renamed as “ ~ Wyndham, John ~ ” or “ ! Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” for them to float to the top.  Combinations can be used, too:  !~XXX~!  or –xxx— or other combinations will all lift a file to the top, but they have their own hierarchy, so a file named  –xxx– will list itself beneath a file named -xxx-.

Similarly, you can use numbers:

TBR booknameTBR book nameTBR book name

will list, for example, all your chosen TBR books in the order you want to read them.  Once you’re done with the book, you can strip the number and the “TBR” from the file name and the book will refile itself back on the shelf for you.

Calibre eBook Manager

Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is arguably the best ebook management application out there.  It is a “meta” program – it doesn’t care what devices or readers you use, or how many.  It manages all your ebooks from everywhere.  It sorts the files in your central library automatically.

Depending on what plug-ins you install and how you set up your preferences, you can use Calibre to automatically import any new books every time it opens, and automatically convert those books to your preferred format, plus load them into your reader application’s directory, or send them to your preferred device.

It can also fetch all the meta-data that belongs to the book, raiding a dozen different sources for the information.  You can hook up the book with its blurb and reviews (which many books are missing, so figuring out what older books are all about is a pain in the neck), ratings, ISBN numbers, publisher info, tags and more.

You can also bulk assign categories and tags to books, or assign individual tags to individual books – great for when Calibre imports a dozen at a time.

Calibre will also open any format book in its collection, but it’s not the prettiest reader app around.  The reading function is best used for checking contents and title pages as you need to.

Calibre is not the only meta-ebook organizer around, so if you don’t like it, or don’t want to use it, try finding an alternative that suits your preferences.  These über organizers take a lot of the pain out of managing your ebooks.

[PS:  I do not have any financial interest in plugging Calibre.  I just happen to think it rocks.]

Take full advantage of any tagging or categorizing functions

Almost every reader and reading application has a sorting function – tags, categories, folders or subjects that can be assigned to each book and collections.  Some of these sorting functions are crude at best – a good excuse to find a more reader-friendly program.

Use to the hilt whatever functionality is provided.  Read the help guide or application manual and take the time to sort your books – you will thank yourself later.   The first time you do this will take forever, if you’ve got a large collection, but after that, categorizing is a no-time, no-brainer task for each book you acquire.

Don’t think of tags and categories just as genre-sorting devices.  You can use any tag.  Some useful ones include:

Fiction

Non-fiction

Free title

Indie title

Publisher name

TBR (to be read)

Favourite

5-star favourite

Author name

Dud/sucks (if you really want to keep the book in your collection!)

Bookseller name

Delete unwanted books immediately

You’ve probably got dozens and dozens of books you’ve picked up on a whim.  They were free, or cheap, or you went wild with a gift card and now you can’t remember why you thought buying a book about Morroccan Clog Dancing was such a good idea.  Two chapters (or two pages!) in, you’re wrinkling your nose and are ready to shoot the author.

Delete these books from your reader or application immediately.  Now.  You’re still going to hate the book in a week’s time.  Clear out your reader as you go.  The book itself is not lost if your retailer keeps your books on their servers (usually), and/or you’re centralizing all your books on your hard drive.

Convert-Shelve-Categorize & Store as you purchase

As soon as you buy or acquire a new title, move it out of the reader application if it isn’t your default, and “process” the book for your reading preferences.  Don’t wait or let new titles stack up or you’ll be back to square one.

Place the book in your central collection, converted to your preferred format, and with all the meta data included, including any categories or tags the book needs.

Use cloud storage to synchronize your reading devices.

If you’re using a reader that doesn’t automatically synchronize your books across devices, then you can do it yourself.  Set up your reader’s preferences so that the main book folder for the reader is a directory of current books (but don’t use the directory where you store your central library) stored in the cloud.

Do this for every device and application you use, and then you only need copy the books you want to read to the folder sitting in the cloud, and your reading devices will all “receive” a copy of those books.

Happy reading!

First Chapter from the new Ptolemy Lane Tale

First Chapter from the new Ptolemy Lane Tale

We’re two weeks out from release of The Ancient Girl in the Autopod, so it’s time for the first chapter.

And this time, you do get the whole first chapter, as this is the first full novel in the series.

Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM THE ANCIENT GIRL IN THE AUTOPOD
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2022
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Chapter One

At first, I figured taking the kid to meet Georgina was what started the flaming ball rolling. Doc Lowry, who came into it with the autopod thing, would say it was then. That’s because, like humans, our sense of place in history is subjective and very short term—even mine, and I’m supposed to know better.

Georgina was entertaining a potential client, the official representative of a business contemplating setting up in Georgina’s Town. Most of the time I skip the political fawning, which suited Georgina just fine, even though she keeps inviting me.

Must have shocked the hell out of her when I accepted this invitation, although she didn’t try to cross-examine me and find out why. Maybe she should have.

I took Ninety-Nine with me, because he’d been my assistant longer than all but one of the ninety-eight who’d gone before him and was still showing up for work. Plus, he was a painfully ignorant human. And he’d never met Georgina despite living in her town for two years.

Ninety-Nine showed up with his copper features glowing with cleanliness, his jacket formal, his dark golden hair standing up in serried spikes, like he was going on a date.

“It’s just dinner,” I growled as we headed for Georgina’s building.

“With Georgina Ashby.” Ninety-Nine actually skipped a couple of steps.

I rolled my eyes, but shut up. He’d get over it quick enough.

Georgina’s building was close to Guisy Oakmint’s casino, but the proximity was purely one of distance. Stepping into Georgina’s building was to step into history.

Make that a distorted representation of history, because history had never been as tranquil and relaxing as Georgina’s home.

She’d researched styles of housing through human history and come up with an eclectic group of design ideas, then spent a year haranguing builders into constructing it. She’d picked prime land under the dome, with a view of the spaceport outside the dome. Every day, she could watch Abbatangelo’s blue sun rise over the spaceport, and at night, watch ships and shuttles draw glowing curves in the dark sky.

Not that she watched the view all that often. She had a widow’s walk on the front roof that she could use if she was in the mood to watch the world go by, but mostly, she was too damn busy.

After nearly five hundred years, Georgina Ashby knew how to keep herself occupied.

Ninety-Nine’s eyes widened as we stepped into the front courtyard, which was the smallest of the three courtyards that made up the interior of the building. There was only a small bubbling fountain here, the pool filled with goldfish and lotus plants.

“The fountain masks sounds from the street,” I told Ninety-Nine.

We moved under the arch into the second courtyard. A waist-high firepit burned with low flames. The walls of the courtyard were hung with plants, turning the walls into verdant barriers. Standing at ninety degrees to the first arch was the second, this one more elaborate and vine draped. The arch led through the front of the house into the third and largest courtyard beyond. Georgina herself stood at the top of the two steps up into the house.

“The archives say a servant was supposed to stand by the fire and greet guests and take their muddy shoes,” Georgina had explained to me when I’d first arrived on Abbatangelo. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll have someone doing something I can do myself. Besides, it never rains in my town.”

Ninety-Nine gulped when he spotted Georgina, which was a common reaction, and one that puzzles me. Georgina was ordinary to look at. She was tall for a woman, which just meant her designers had a thing for tall women. She had short hair cut in a blunt bob that might once have been golden but was now silver-white. Her face was almost completely unlined, though.

She tended to view the world through narrowed green eyes. She was doing it with Ninety-Nine right now. “This is the nodoc you told me about, Jovan?” Her voice was a low, pleasant contralto, with a burr in it. She held out her arms as I stepped up into the house.

I bent and kissed both her cheeks. “Ninety-Nine,” I supplied.

“Hyland Sinagra, ma’am,” Ninety-Nine added, still standing on the stones of the courtyard.

Georgina almost laughed. Her brow lifted. “My, how polite of you.”

Ninety-Nine blushed. “S…sorry.”

She waved it away. “Politeness is social grease. Too many folks don’t use near enough of it, which makes socializing painful…and why I built these damn walls. You gonna step inside, Ninety-Nine Hyland Sinagra?”

His blush deepened. He stepped up into the “house”, although this section had no walls to speak of. Just a roof over a well-polished floor, which held up rugs and easy chairs and small tables.

The silence was almost complete.

The other side of the house was open to the primary courtyard, which was stuffed full of plants. It was here that Georgina spent a great deal of her spare time. The garden never looked the same as it did on previous visits. She liked to grow Earth-original plants and the light from the blue sun was supplemented with yellow sun spectrum lights bathing the courtyard, making the greens really green. None of what she grew was for eating, but purely for its beauty and the challenge of making it grow this far away from Earth. Blooms of all colors and shapes were the theme of the garden, but despite the range, the garden wasn’t a hodgepodge.

“I parked Carman in the sitting room with the good scotch,” Georgina told us over her shoulder as she stepped down into the courtyard and picked a path through the garden that would take us to the other side of the four-sided house.

Ninety-Nine’s head swiveled as we traversed the garden. He leaned toward me. “There are no walls!”

Which was true. The whole house faced the courtyard and had no walls hiding the view. Which mean we could see the inside of bedrooms, bathrooms, even the fully functional kitchen, Georgina’s office, the library, and the dining room. Georgina always seated everyone on the far side of the long table, so they could gaze upon the garden while they ate. She said the view enhanced digestion. I couldn’t argue with her on that.

The little sitting room beside the dining room held precisely one guest. She turned to us as we all stepped up into the sitting room, a polite smile on her face. She was nearly as tall as me, with high cheek bones, red lips, and a simple black dress that outlined everything in a very agreeable way. Her hair was black, and curled into near ringlets beneath her ears, which was an adorable note amongst the I-mean-business attire. The dress showed off her legs from high up the thigh down to her toes. They were quite likely the best legs I’d ever seen.

Ninety-Nine flushed a deep red when she looked at him and cleared his throat.

I knew what he meant. I had to remind myself she was the official representative of…and I couldn’t remember the name.

“Keran Carman,” Georgina said. “This is Ptolemy Lane, the town’s peacekeeper, and Hyland Sinagra, his assistant.” She turned to me and Ninety-Nine. “Keran works with Memsoul and is exploring the possibilities of expanding the outlet here in town.”

Which was why I was here.

Keran Carman smiled at both of us and asked polite questions while Georgina arranged drinks for us. Ninety-Nine took apple juice. I never passed up an opportunity to drink Georgina’s scotch because it was the real thing—direct from Scotland on Earth. She said she only had a dozen barrels left of the one hundred she’d managed to export. One day, I’d get that story out of her. As no one else in the fringes could serve the real thing, the story would be worth hearing.

Georgina handed us our glasses and said to Ninety-Nine; “The granddaughter of Kamara Quixada married a Sinagra.”

Ninety-Nine looked pleased, as if Georgina had remembered her manners. “My great-grandmother.”

Both Keran and I stared at Ninety-Nine in surprise. Even out here in the fringes, we’d heard of the Quixada dynasty, founded by Kamara Quixada with a fortune that rivalled the economies of the few still-independent countries on Earth. The Quixadas had managed to overcome their meekness and dominate the last capitalist enclaves of the twenty-third century. All of them.

Georgina didn’t look surprised. She just nodded. “Dinner is ready. Come along.”

Keran Carman directed conversation over dinner. She neatly avoided business, which suited me for the moment. I’d caught her quick sideways glances at me, and plied myself to being charming. I had no objections to a playmate for whatever nights she was in Georgina’s Town. My bed had been empty for too long.

Over dessert, though, Georgina got down to business and Keran didn’t object, which reminded me of why I was there. That took some of the shine off the evening.

Ninety-Nine had stammered a few answers to Keran’s polite questions over dinner. I expected him to shut up and listen now, but he must have been inspired by Keran’s attention over the meal, for he interrupted Keran as she was highlighting Memsoul’s attributes with a question of his own. “I don’t understand why you’re talking about a new outlet in GT, ma’am. We already have one. Do you mean a second outlet?”

Keran gave him a warm smile, with not a hint of impatience in it. “The clinic currently in Georgina’s Town is a deposit branch. We’re considering a full service outlet. A one-stop shop, so to speak.”

“Which I, for one, would appreciate,” Georgina said.

Keran nodded. “As you don’t leave Abbatangelo, it was one of the factors that made us think of expanding here. Part of my research while I am here is to determine how many others in your town are reluctant to leave, who might appreciate our full range of services right here in town.”

“Oh, I’m not reluctant to leave,” Georgina said. “I can’t leave.”

Keran raised her brow. “I was not aware of that.”

“Bullshit,” Georgina said, her voice rasping. “You did your research before you came here. You already knew I don’t leave town. If you’re worth your salt at all, you know why, too. I’m nearly five hundred years old. My skeleton can’t survive more than a gee anymore.”

Keran dropped the modest, polite mask. “We knew that, yes,” she said.

“Is there anything in your proposal that isn’t just a sop to my vanity and convenience, then?” Georgina asked.

She did like to shoot straight.

Keran answered smoothly. “Any benefits you gain will, of course, be useful to everyone in Georgina’s Town. Our full clinic will save many of your residents from having to travel off-world, not just you.”

Ninety-Nine frowned. As a human, he’d never had to think about memory back-ups. This was all new to him.

“Not just backups of data,” I told him. “Restoration, too, which is a more complicated procedure and requires a full garage—”

Keran winced. “We call them medical suites,” she said quickly.

I shrugged.

“We can offer more than just restoration at our clinics,” she went on. “Maintenance and repairs, overhauls and updates. Everything a serial might need to stay in tip-top shape. A one-stop-shop, as I said.”

“I know a mechanic who might resent the competition,” I told her, thinking of Doc Lowry. He was one of only three mechanics in town.

Keran’s smile grew broader. “No one need fear competition.” Her tone was silky-smooth from practice. “There is room for everyone in the fringes.”

I sat back. “But you have no competition when it comes to data back-up,” I pointed out. “It’s a highly specialized service. Or so I presume from the prices you charge.”

“We provide a red carpet service. Our prices reflect that.”

“You provide the only service. You charge what you do, because you can. Most of my salary goes to Memsoul.”

Keran’s smile grew brittle. “As you yourself said, we offer a highly specialized service that required considerable up-front investment. We have a right to recoup those expenses.”

“You’re gouging,” I said flatly.

Keran’s smile froze in place.

Ninety-Nine looked alarmed, as if I was sacrificing his pet cat.

Georgina cleared her throat. “Jovan, this is an exploratory conversation, not a cross-examination.”

“So let’s explore,” I said. “A friend of mine, not so long ago, built a business proposal for a back-up facility that could charge everyone by the standard month—a small fee that everyone with a job could afford. I saw her research and the figures. She didn’t have it wrong. So if she could figure out a model like that, why couldn’t Memsoul?”

Keran pushed her chair back and turned it so she was facing me. She’d stopped smiling. Challenge confronted.

“There is not enough margin in a monthly subscription model to pay for the costly extras we provide. Restoration alone—”

“Restoration for when you have people over a barrel, desperate to get their memories back, and can charge like a wounded brontosaurus,” I intervened.

Keran breathed deeply.

My glanced fell upon her shapely knee. From this close, I realized it wasn’t quite as enticing as I had first thought. The skin above the knee was wrinkled. And I could see fine grey strands among her dark hair, too.

“Memory back-up should be available for everyone,” I finished. “Not just for the few who can barely afford it.”

“Then start your own clinic,” Keran snapped. “No one is stopping you.”

No one said anything for a long sixty seconds.

Keran pushed her scotch glass away and got to her feet. “Georgina, perhaps we should continue our discussion tomorrow. I am suddenly very tired—a taxing journey here, I imagine.”

“Yes, that sounds like a good idea,” Georgina replied. “Later in the afternoon, after you have got a good night’s sleep.”

Keran turned to me. “Good night, Ptolemy Lane.” Then to Ninety-Nine, “And Hyland Sinagra.”

Ninety-Nine got to his feet. “But it’s still early…”

She walked away without answering, rounding the table and stepping down into the garden, which was lit with footlights showing where the paths were, now the sun had set. As she was wearing black, she quickly melded with the night.

“Well….” Georgina said, drawing out the word. “That was interesting.”

I finished my scotch. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be offered another one tonight.

“Having a Memsoul outlet here would bring in an enormous amount of revenue for the town,” Georgina said. She wasn’t using her lecturing tone, though.

I shook my head. “Having a back-up service everyone could use would serve everyone, not just the town.”

Georgina’s eyes narrowed down to slits. “When did you get so interested in politics, hmm?”

I concentrated on the taste of the last mouthful of scotch.

“Shouldn’t everyone be able to back themselves up?” Ninety-Nine asked.

“The way nodocs can?” Georgina whipped back.

He pressed his lips together. That stung.

“Humans don’t need to back-up,” I told her. “In their utopia, one life is all they need.”

Ninety-Nine looked at me gratefully, even though I hadn’t been defending him.

Georgina swore softly and reached for the carafe of scotch and refilled her glass. “This isn’t like you, Jovan. You need to get your head on straight.”

She had a minor point, but I couldn’t resist jumping on the inconsistencies. “It’s okay for you to play politics, but I have to stay out of them?”

Georgina considered me with sharp scrutiny. Then she laughed. “You might be right. I just remembered something.”

I raised a brow.

“Someone else who plays politics. Someone you know. Memsoul is owned by Etriedes Industries.”

Sourness gripped my throat. I knew what was coming. “So? Etriedes Industries controls dozens of companies.”

“And Deniel Harlow controls Etriedes Industries,” Georgina finished.

“I know that,” I said, as evenly as I could while my teeth ground together.

“Memsoul is one of the biggest subsidiaries of Etriedes Industries,” Georgina said. “Deniel probably takes a personal interest in their policies.”

I stared at my empty glass.

“You both know Deniel Harlow?” Ninety-Nine asked.

“Oh, Deniel and us…we go back a long way,” Georgina assured him.

That brought a flash of memory to me. Deniel sitting with a whisky glass in his hand, the mechanical fingers tapping against the glass in musical notes, while he thought through some conversational point or another. The grey streak in the center of his forehead showed up brightly in the blue light the bar had been using to illuminate the room. Then Deniel touched his silver forefinger to his brow, while still holding the glass, making the ice tinkle—not nearly as musically as his fingers against the glass. “I have it…” And he went on to annihilate the logic of whatever the hell we had been talking about. I can’t remember what the conversation was about, but I remember that moment very well.

Who said only nodocs have selective memories?

Georgina gave another of her throaty laughs. “Deniel probably earns billions in salary and bonuses from the grateful shareholders. Where did you go wrong, Jovan?”

I gave up and sat back. Georgina wanted her pound of flesh for me ruining her dinner. Fair enough. “I came to work for you,” I told her. “You don’t pay billions or bonuses.”

“You’d get a big head, if I did.” And she laughed even harder while Ninety-Nine looked from me to her and back, trying to figure out if he should be amused or not.

That’s the problem with employers; they muck up your priorities. I’d forgotten that in the 25,937 days I’d worked for Georgina, for all that time, our priorities had matched.

Until now.

Serials can’t feel emotions as humans do.

Or so Ptolemy Jovan Lane has always insisted.  Yet when he learns that an old friend, Marija, might still be alive, he leaves an unsolved murder behind him in order to dash across the fringes to find her, bringing his human assistant, Ninety-Nine, with him.

His intention is purely to learn the truth, but his impetuous mission goes swiftly and spectacularly awry, leaving Ninety-Nine and him cut off and at the mercy of an enemy Jovan didn’t know he had.

_________

Pre-order now and get your copy a week earlier.

And don’t forget that if you pre-order the book directly from me (at Stories Rule Press), you get your copy a week earlier than anyone else.  That is, next week.

Pre-order from Stories Rule PressPre-order from your favorite retailer

Enjoy!

 

A new Ptolemy Lane Tale!

A new Ptolemy Lane Tale!This time, it’s a novel.

Yes, I caught all those hints and sighs in the reviews, and in your emails to me. 

There have been three Ptolemy Lane Tales to date, all of them novelette length.

Tale #4 is a novel.

Serials can’t feel emotions as humans do.

Or so Ptolemy Jovan Lane has always insisted.  Yet when he learns that an old friend, Marija, might still be alive, he leaves an unsolved murder behind him in order to dash across the fringes to find her, bringing his human assistant, Ninety-Nine, with him.

His intention is purely to learn the truth, but his impetuous mission goes swiftly and spectacularly awry, leaving Ninety-Nine and him cut off and at the mercy of an enemy Jovan didn’t know he had.

_________

Pre-order now and get your copy a week earlier.

If you pre-order from Stories Rule Press, then you get your copy a week earlier than everyone else.

The retail release date is August 4th.  Pre-orders from Stories Rule Press will be delivered July 28th.

Pre-order from Stories Rule PressPre-order from your favorite retailer

Enjoy!

 

I Think AI Covers Have A Way To Go…

I Think AI Covers Have A Way To Go…

I read with interest a post on Medium by Stories Rule Press author Tracy Cooper-Posey, talking about the world’s first AI created magazine cover, by Cosmopolitan.

As a science fiction writer, I’m always interested in computer advances and AI is developing at the speed of sound, these days.  We already have AI Narrated audiobooks popping up into the mainstream (I’ll talk about that one day soon), and AI translated novels (also more on that soon, too).

Now…AI created book covers?  Could that be next?

I did a bit of digging into the AI that created the Cosmo cover.  It was originally called DALL-E Mini, but has since been renamed Craiyon.  (Clever name!).  The version that Cosmopolitan used was trained in the art of magazine coves before they let it loose on their own.

However, there is a public, free portal to access Craiyon right here on the web.

I was understandably curious and tried playing around with it for a while.  I thought I’d try my hand at a SF cover.

You have to hone in on your keywords to get just the right effect you want and Craiyon has an issue with human faces (which explains the faceplate on Cosmo’s cover).  But I ended up with a piece of artwork that had potential:

Unfortunately, the artwork is both small, and square.  But it has an interesting “mood” and I could easily see it on the cover of a military SF novel.

I rolled up my sleeves and with my (minimal) digital art skills, chopped and edited the original work into a mockup cover:

 

I don’t think the cover is going to win any awards!  The text is just awful.  But I also didn’t spend very long on this.  The artwork is a bit blurry because I blew it up to a workable size and resampled.  If I’d had a bigger image to play with, it would be crisper.

Still…it’s an intriguing start.

But I don’t think AI created book covers will be invading our bookshelves in the very near future.

 

 

 

A Hack to Enjoy Reading Again

A Hack to Enjoy Reading Again

Has it been a while since you were really bitten, hog-tied and spell-bound by a book?  Do most books you read these days seem okay, but not super-duper fantastic the way they used to be even five years ago?

I can help you change that.

We’re Too Busy These days.

I grew up in Australia, where people really like their downtime and guard it zealously.

North Americans, on the other hand, are easily the hardest working people I’ve ever met.  Shops are open all weekend, and there’s no such thing as a nine-to-five job.  People work through lunch, and stay after five to catch up.  We monitor calls and emails after hours and deal with crises.  Women in particular have all the additional responsibilities of running a house and child-rearing that seem to fall into their laps, including all the taxi-service duties.

There are thousands of people who work second jobs just to pay the bills, too. Then there are the undisclosed millions of us who aspire to greater things, and are moonlighting or working away at potential or developing alternative careers outside of our five day work weeks, while still trying to maintain some semblance of a life.

We work our asses off and crowd instant entertainment into the cracks and margins of what is left of our lives once the work is done.  We all know life has got faster and busier.  I’m not making a new point here.

But you can slow down time.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has demonstrated conclusively that our perception of time is subjective.

Here’s a demonstration.  If you’re already feeling a little impatient because this blog starting off in the strangest place, has been meandering on for too long and you want to get to the good stuff, already, and when am I going to shut up, anyway…

Feel that tension in your gut?

Just below the sternum.  There.  You can even press your fingertips into your abdomen and feel how tight you’re clenched.

Now, while your fingers are still touching your belly, draw in a deep, deep breath, so that your fingers are pushed outwards.  Really get the air right down to the bottom of your lungs.  Hold it there for a few seconds, then exhale slowly.

Repeat that slow inhale and exhale and really bottom-out your breath, four or five times.  Do it properly.  Don’t skip, don’t fudge.

All the tension in your gut should be gone.

And the relationship that tension has to time?

From start to finish, you’ve been reading this post at the same highly efficient speed as you’ve always read.  Reading is so ingrained in the adult reader that if I were to ask you to tell me what the colour of this font was:  Purple, your first instinct would be to say “purple”, not red, because you read the word before you processed the colour.

But while you were reading the first part of the post, you were tense, worrying about everything else you had to do, and trying to skim through it fast so you could get the gist of it and move on.

With the deep breathing exercise, I just helped you remove the tension.  And with the promise of a demonstration, I hopefully snagged your attention fully and completely.  You’re now concentrating fully on my words, and processing them completely, rather than skimming or skipping.

The fact is, you’re not reading any slower than you were when you first started reading the post.  If anything, your reading speed will have picked up, because you’re reading more efficiently.  Why?  Because you’re not trying to do anything else.  You’re not multi-tasking.  You’re only reading this post, so all your attention is on processing these words.

You’re probably enjoying the reading process, now you’re nice and relaxed, too.

So.  It feels like you’re taking your time, slowing down and enjoying reading this post.  Yet you’re reading as fast, if not faster, and absorbing more.

Time is very elastic, isn’t it?

Next time you pick up a book to read, try this.  Deep breathe, relax and tell yourself you’re going to slow down and enjoy the story. See what happens.

By the way, this works for almost everything.

You can slow down time by relaxing and concentrating, whenever you need to.  It just takes practice.

The Monthly 20% Off Everything Sale has Started

The Monthly 20% Off Everything Sale has Started

My publisher, Stories Rule Press, started their monthly 20% off Everything sale this morning. As usual, the discount applies to anything available on Stories Rule press, which includes boxed series sets, pre-orders, and books already on sale.

You can use the coupon as often as you want before the expiry date, and pass it on to friends and family. There is no limit to the number of books you can buy with the coupon.

Also, you don’t have to buy just my books. You can buy any book by any author on the SRP site.

Head here to start your browsing. On this page you can search, sort and filter your results.

The coupon code you need to get the 20% discount is CWXAVYRA

Enjoy!

Cam

.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;margin-top : 0px;margin-bottom : 20px;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {padding-top : 0px !important;padding-right : 0px !important;margin-right : 1.92%;padding-bottom : 0px !important;padding-left : 0px !important;margin-left : 1.92%;}@media only screen and (max-width:1024px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;order : 0;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}@media only screen and (max-width:640px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;order : 0;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}.fusion-body .fusion-flex-container.fusion-builder-row-1{ padding-top : 0px;margin-top : 0px;padding-right : 0px;padding-bottom : 0px;margin-bottom : 0px;padding-left : 0px;}