M.G. Herron's Blog, page 8

Overdose: The Gunn Files Book 2 (Excerpt)

Overdose is now available on Audible and Amazon! If you like detective mysteries with a paranormal twist, if you like the idea of The Dresden Files or Monster Hunter International but with alienser, offworldersand UFO sightings, youll love this series.

Book 1 came out in early April. If you missed it, go back and start with Culture Shock. If audiobooks are your thing, award-winning narrator Oliver Wyman delivers a knockout performance round 2 in this second novel. You can add on the audiobook...

Culture Shock, The First Book in My New Science Fiction Mystery Series

Culture Shock, the first book of a science fiction mystery series nearly three years in the making, launched this week. Its about a broke bounty hunter who stumbles on a secret society of aliens hiding in plain sight, and the havoc this unleashes upon his life. Anderson Gunns got a quick wit and a unique skillset tracking fugitives. But nothing could have prepared him for this.

Experience the start of The Gunn Files on Audible or Amazon. Its perfect for fans of Men in Black, The X-Files, and...

Culture Shock: The Gunn Files Book 1 (Excerpt)

Culture Shock, the first book of a science fiction mystery series nearly three years in the making, launched this week. Its about a broke bounty hunter who stumbles on a secret society of aliens hiding in plain sight, and the havoc this unleashes upon his life. Anderson Gunns got a quick wit and a unique skillset tracking fugitives. But nothing could have prepared him for this.

Experience the start of The Gunn Files on Audible or Amazon. Its perfect for fans of Men in Black, The X-Files, and...

New Space Opera Novella: Spare Parts

Greeting, space cadets,

Today I come to you with a brand-new intergalactic space opera adventure!

Spare Partsis my newest book, a 15,000-word standalone novella featuring a refugee family, a galactic Empire, enormous spaceships, clever bots—and much more.

The Kryl invaded in the dead of night.

The Nevers family had to flee. Yuzosix, once their home, must be left behind.

Along the way, young Elya Nevers develops a strange habit… he begins to collect bot parts. Something about it soothes him.

But...

Sci-Fi Short Story: “The World That Couldn’t Be” by Clifford D. Simak

This story is reprinted courtesy ofProject Gutenberg.View the source text.

The World That Couldn’t Be

by Clifford D. Simak

Illustrated by GAUGHAN

Like every farmer on every planet, Duncan had to hunt down anything that damaged his crops—even though he was aware this was—

• • •

he tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows thevuaplants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient...

Gimme the Loot! Virtual Money Laundering in Video Games

Not that the money is virtual—the money is all too real. Criminals have turned to loot boxes in video games as a way to wash money they don’t want the government to know about.

Thanks to a loophole in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, “nearly all” key purchases for loot boxes within the game have been used for money laundering, reports Vice.

“Worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace ar...Vice.

“Worldwideabout.Thanks

Learn Scrivener in an Hour (In-Person Workshop)

If you’re a writer and happen to live in Austin, TX, I invite you to come out to Half Price Price on Sunday, November 17th at 3:30pm for an hour-long crash course on Scrivener—taught by me!

RSVP for the event on Meetup: Learn Scrivener in an Hour!

This event is a free workshop I’m putting on for the Austin Indie Author Society—the local Meetup group of indie authors I started that grew to over 1,000 people. Carolyn Cohagan took over as organizer earlier this year and she has done a stellar job of organizing ne...Hour!

Thisme!RSVP

Paperbacks: Now Made in Canada!

I discovered while catching up on publishing news at The Digital Reader
that KDP Print is now manufacturing print-on-demand books in Canada.

Since that’s who makes and ships my paperbacks, my readers in Canada now get some extra perks when they order my books from Amazon.

According to the press release, the improvements are twofold:

Faster shipping to readers in Canada. Hurray!FREE Two-Day Shipping for Prime Members. Ohhhhhlala.

On my side, KDP also introduced better price controls with this change, so I’ve taken the opportunity to lower the CAD prices to a normal...Ohhhhhlala.

OnHurray!FREEtwofold:FasterAmazon.AccordingCanada.Since

An Orchestra of Exoplanets

NASA just dropped an astonishingly elaborate map of more than 4,000 exoplanets known to exist outside our Solar System, which takes the form of a video that shows how many exoplanets we’ve discovered each year since 1991.

Exoplanets are not only interesting to us because they orbit a different star, but also because they have the potential to harbor life… (Source: Futurism)

This is the story seed for every space opera novel ever written, from George Lucas’ Star Wars to the milieu of Iain Banks’ Culture novels. (Guess what I’m reading right now...Lucas’ StarFuturism)

This1991.Exoplanets

Sci-Fi Short Story: “The Tunnel Under The World” By Frederik Pohl

This story is reprinted courtesy of Project Gutenberg. View the source text.

The Tunnel Under The World

Frederik Pohl

Pinching yourself is no way to see if you are dreaming. Surgical instruments? Well, yes—but a mechanic’s kit is best of all!

•••

On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream.

It was more real than any dream he had ever had in hi...dream.

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