Mike Shepherd's Blog, page 11

Kris is really popular!

Sunday I opened my e-mail to find a request from a publisher in Brazil who wants to bring Kris's stories out in Portuguese!  I passed him along to my agent.

Monday contracts showed up in the snail mail from Japan to cover Deserter and Defiant.  Those contracts started through the works in October and finally got into my hands on April 25.  Slow boat I guess.

Still haven't seen a contract from Spain but I know it's in the works.

Worldwide e-book rights

A lot of you from overseas have let me know that you can't buy my books in English in England, Down Under and all over.  And you don't like that.

I've done some investigating and found the problem.  For years writers here in the US sold the North American rights.  Writers in the UK sell the British rights and it takes two publishers to bring out one book on both sides of the pond.  That's the way it was for paper.  Then along came e-books and that's silly.

I'm negotiating my next contract.  I don't want to say too much, though I will say that I offered Ace KL Furious and Valiant.  Ace countered by asking for 3 books!  Nice.  I am also offering them the Worldwide e-books rights to all of the Kris books.  As soon as the next contract goes into effect I expect that the wall will come down for those of you who want the English language e-book version no matter where you want to buy it from.

At least I'm hoping this solves it.

Audible.com contract

Thursday last I signed the contract with Audible.com for Kris Longknife — Daring.   I don't have any control over these things, but I suspect this means Daring will be entering Audible's to do list for '11 a whole lot sooner than Redoubtable did for '10.  With luck, those of you who like to listen to Kris's adventures won't have to wait long.  Trust me, you'll want to hear this one as soon as you can.

April was a sad month

I'm sorry to have been gone so long.  April 1 I rushed my wife's mother to the hospital.  She'd lived with us for 25 years.  Despite the best efforts of modern medicine we lost her after a week.  Ellen is the executor of the will so there's a lot of paperwork to do to close out a life spent both here and in Norfolk, Va.  I missed one writing week, but I hope to make it up in June and finish Furious then.

Kris Longknife — Daring's cover

Cover for KL -9

Daring is on the move

I got the e-copy edits for Daring today. Ace wants them back 3/11. The eye is healing well from the cataract surgery and I expect I can make the deadline with no trouble.

Add to that, my editor sent me a copy of Daring's cover. I said everything changes in this book, and the cover shows it. Kris is out of uniform! I'll post it as soon as I can.

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More books to read!

A regular complain I get from you folks is that I write too slow and your left wanting more and having to wait a year for the next book.

I think I have a solution. Tuesday, I published two e-books. One is a collection of short stories that I sold, but, like most magazine stories, they aren't available any more.

Nikki's got her first job! She's working on the moon. It's just delivering pizza, but it's a start. Dave needs a super science project to win a scholarship to a decent high school. He and his buddies plan to be the first middle school to put a satellite in orbit. Just don't tell the teacher. Stacy was raised Program. Her dad was off on missions. Her mom was off doing PR. She's sworn she won't go to space. Not her. But then there's this guy …

The other is my very first novel, First Dawn. It's been out of print, but It's still a good read. How do you win a war lost 6,000 years before you were born! You'll like 2/LT Launa O'Brian and Captain Jack Walking Bear.

I'm sorry these are only available in e-format. Barnes and Noble dot Com has theirs already up. Amazon seems to be taking more time. Smashwords.com has them up for other formats.

Enjoy!

What a Writing Week!

I got away to the Oregon coast this week to work on Furious for four days. I missed November because of that belly ache. In December I only got 45 pages in. January I was up to 70, but never managed a 20 page day.

Monday of this week I put in 21, as I did on Tues. and Wed. Thursday I was feeling kind of wrung out. I also had the problem that Kris needed "to storm the castle" and there were so many thing to do and things to go wrong.

I didn't start writing until 12:30. At 4:30 when my tummy started complaining, I looked up and I'd written 22 pages! After supper I came back and figured I'd write 2 more pages. I did 9 in the next hour and a half! 31 for the day, 96 for the week!

Wow. This is fun writing. I'm sure it will be fun reading. By the way, I've brought all of you into the book. Agent Leslie Chu of the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigations is a member of the Kris Longknife Fan club, and boy is she delighted with her latest assignment!

Mike

Daring begins.

Today I got the cover material for KL-Daring. I haven't seen the copy-edits, but the cover copy is already written. I offered some suggestions.

Here's the story blurb:

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife leads a Fleet of Discovery on a reconnaissance of the vast uncharted regions of space. No one, least of all Kris, expected them to find an alien starship, certainly not one that came out shooting. Faced with a shot first and ask no question situation, Kris shoots back, blowing the ship to bits.

Half a universe away from her superiors, facing a possible mutiny from officers insisting they retreat, Kris holds the fate of humanity in her hands as she struggles to determine the alien threat — and whether or not to start an intersteller war . . .

We'll see if they modify my modifications.

Sunday I'm off to the coast to put another 80 pages into Furious. See you around.

Furious and Valiant are offered

Today I sent off an offer treatment to Ace for the next two books in Kris's saga. I'll let you know when they're accepted and if any of the names get changed. This should cover October '12 and '13.