Tentative Q1 Publishing Schedule

Being that it’s the beginning of the year, I’ve been a busy boy laying my evil plans. Since some of you have asked on twitter what’s looming on the horizon for the next few month, here’s a tentative schedule (subject to change if I work faster or get bogged down):

Audio
January:
Launch a Kickstarter campaign in concert with Gail Carriger. Yup, we’re gonna be working together on something audio-oriented (this will happen toward the end of the month).
Recording Free Will (big project) and the first 3 Lantham audiobooks

February:
Free Will podcast re-launches (probably. If not Feb, then early March, as I’ll be travelling in late Feb).

March:
Commercial release of the first (or more) Lantham audiobooks

April:
MAYBE the DF10 soundtrack, if the timing works out with me and Schadey

Ebooks
January:
Throwing Lead (the long-awaited “Gun Book”) will see the light of day this month.
Silent Victor (Clarke Lantham #4) will also show up late this month.
Chicken Noodle Gravity (Lombard Alchemist #2, featured last month on Escape Pod) will release as an ebook
There are two other short stories as well that will release, assuming I can find time to do the cover art.

February:
The Auto Motive (Motives, book 1–a steampunk urban fantasy YA adventure series–might release after I get back from my travels in March)
He Ain’t Heavy (Lantham #5, again, this is a maybe)

March or April:
The Summer Town (standalone Southern Gothic romance/horror)
Sunday Morning Giraffe (Lombard Alchemist #3, short story)
Several other short stories, perhaps as many as five

April or May:
Probably either Student Culture or The Last Uploader (both standalone SF novels, both currently in progress)

Paperbacks:
Janurary:
Down From Ten
Predestination (re-release–we had problems with the printer that have dogged us for months on this one)
Sculpting God, Vol. 1
A Ghostly Christmas Present/Smoke Rings (Lantham #2 and #3 in a single ace-double style volume)

February or March:
Throwing Lead
Free Will
Silent Victor

April or May
The Auto Motive
He Ain’t Heavy (assuming it winds up being long enough for a solo paperback release)
The Summer Town
The Last Uploader or Student Culture

— —
Projects that might jump to the front:
The book version of Principles of Contracts (with lots more content and a better title)
A podcast to accompany Throwing Lead

— — —

Like I said, this is all tentative and subject to change at my imperious whim. The stuff slated for January is basically a lock, the stuff further out is less certain. There’s also more going on behind the scenes here that is not directly tied to writing output, some of which will produce results that you’ll see on the blog and in other places around the ‘net.

And if you’re an Antithesis fan, don’t worry. I start work in earnest on Avarice (Antithesis #3) in April.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled Internet

Released: Down From Ten

I’ve been waiting for this day a long time. When I first wrote Down From Ten as a screenplay, a production company in Canada was going to be handling rights clearances for the Alan Jay Lerner music incorporated into one of the scenes. When I did the podcast, ASCAP was very helpful. But as a print book, I had to wade into a rights clearance arena I’d never worked with before.

It was worth it. And the folks at the company that manages the Lerner estate were very helpful. Because of their kind work, I can now proudly present you with the ebook version of Down From Ten, a novel uniquely close to my heart.

In early January, a group of friends gather for an annual retreat: eight artists, scientists, and authors cloistered together in a mansion in California’s high country for ten days of games, conversation, exhibition, and hedonism while isolated from the outside world.

“Down From Ten is a brilliant, sometimes creepy take on a bohemian cozy with surreal underpinnings and an irrepressibly touching ending.” –Gail Carriger, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Parasol Protectorate series

For the first time in text, read the story that View from Valhalla calls “Unique, lavish, and challenging…amazing in its scope and its detail…with THE most surprising ending I’ve EVER experienced.”
Get it now for your Kindle, Nook, or any other reader.

Or, read the first three chapters here.

Enjoy!

Released: Science Fiction Weaponry

Those of you who follow me on twitter will have seen a lot of tweets regarding the long-awaited “Gun Book,” which finally has a title. This is the book I started work on last year with the blog post Back in the Podcasting Saddle with Guns–in response to your questions and comments, I quickly wound up with the outline for a very comprehensive book, so the intended quickie podcast became a major project.

Because of the diversity of your questions, several sections of the book work well as standalone articles, and since not all of you will want the whole book (or are content to wait to get it all at once), I am pleased to present you with the first of the Throwing Lead Singles: Science Fiction Weaponry.

The author of The Antithesis Progression teams up with the author of The Rehumanization of Jade Darcy to provide an in-depth guide to the science fact that underlies some of the most popular weapons in science fiction. Whether you’re a writer looking to add depth and texture to your weapons technology, or a fan who wants to know how it all works, this is the place.

Find out how it all works! This article covers particle beams, phasers, lasers, disruptors, mass drivers, railguns, coilguns, Metal Storm and more, as well as tactical considerations for combat in science fictional environments.

Buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

Released: Free Will

The time has finally come. The revolution is about to begin. It is my distinct pleasure to announce, at long last, that Free Will, the sequel to Predestination, is now available for all electronic platforms.

The Lunar Revolution is faltering, events are spinning out of control, and Bill Shelley is inches away from achieving victory. Meanwhile, far away in the south, the footsteps of a little girl running for her life bring with them a secret that could start the war before anyone is ready.

From the surface of Mars to the forests of Vermont, the players are at the table, their antes are in, and the next round of cards is about to hit the felt. The winners will determine the face of the solar system…if they can survive the game.

Read the first four chapters here.

Or, buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

Released: Sculpting God

Sculpting God, the story collection that started it all, is now available for all e-readers. With the original seven stories, plus new behind-the-scenes essays for each story and an introduction about the genesis of the series, this is first of three volumes coming over the course of the next year. Grab it while it’s hot!

A new voice in fantasy, J. Daniel Sawyer has already left an indellible mark on his readers with his trademark tales of human desires and the moral complexity they create.

Contains: Lilith, Angels Unawares, The Coffee Service, We Create Worlds, Control Room, The Man In The Rain, and Train Time, plus a new essay, poetry, and bonus material.

Smashwords
Kindle
Nook
XinXii

Literary Abominations Newsletter

The time has come. There’s too much going on not to have a mailing list and a newsletter, so I’ve taken the plunge. Newsletter readers will get quarterly (and sometimes more-than) updates and general goofiness from me delivered directly to their email boxes. Two weeks later, an edited version of those newsletters will be posted here.

Edited, you say?
Well, yes. Subscribers to the newsletter will get the occasional special preview, discount coupon, contest, and other such goodies that won’t be available to anyone else. Those items will be clipped out of the newsletter before it’s posted here. But other than that, it’ll be about the same thing.

If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter, simply email me at feedback _at_ jdsawyer.net, or use the contact form on this site, and say so.

So, if you’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I’ve been up to for the last year and a half, wait no longer. You can now download the inaugural issue as a epub, mobi, and PDF.

Released: Smoke Rings

You met him in And Then She Was Gone, you got to know his family in A Ghostly Christmas Present. Now, the hard-boiled snarkfest continues as Clarke Lantham tackles the two most perplexing mysteries of the universe: FBI fugitives, and romance.

Clarke Lantham has a checkered relationship with holidays, and this New Year’s Eve is no different. His space is cramped, his personal life is on the skids, and his business is once again under assault from lawyers and bill collectors.

Yeah, right.

Read the first chapter here.

Or, buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

WorldCon report, part 2

Continuing from the previous post…

By mid-day Friday I had my bearings a lot better. We managed to locate some decent casino food–if your only experience with casinos is looking at the advertisements on billboards and the decadent meals there pictured, trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds–and set about hitting panels and trolling the dealer rooms in search of fun and enlightenment.
Continue reading ‘WorldCon report, part 2′

Predestination in Paperback

Grab a pack of cards. Strap your pressure suit on. It’s time to head to the poker game that started it all, and the book that View From Valhalla called “lovingly detailed, well-written thinking man’s science fiction at its best.*”

Joss Kyle is a one-time National Security Advisor who barely escaped Washington D.C. with his skin intact. For three years he’s lived by his wits and the fall of the cards in the criminal underworld of South America, but jumping planet for Space Station Sidon means walking into an ambush more dangerous than any he’s yet faced:
A man named Alex Hart wants to play cards with him.

Their meeting will fling Joss into a game playing for highest stakes in town: control of the entire solar system. Chased by a revolutionary leader, agents of a corrupt senator, and an underworld boss known only as The Green Lady, he quickly discovers that in the looking-glass world above the gravity well, survival, like poker, is just another sport. And in this contest, it isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you rig the game.

Now available in paperback from AWP Science Fiction, Predestination is the story Nathan Lowell calls “A sweeping tale of politics, corruption, intrigue, betrayal, and murder…a fast-paced ride through a world that’s too plausible to be ignored**” and that Brand Gamblin calls “…a lush, powerful story of hunter and pray, betrayal and rebellion, and poker.***.” Available for the first time ever in paper, this handsome new edition rings in at 341 pages contains the full text of the ebook edition, plus new line art and a sample of the sequel, Free Will.

Now, it’s true that you can buy the novel at Amazon now, and you’ll be able to find it in bookstores this fall, but for you loyal folk that read my blog, it’s available for a special rate. Until Worldcon, buy your copy by clicking here and using the coupon code XX2QR2Z8, and you’ll receive $2.00 off the $14.99 cover price.

Finally, for those of you who run vending booths at conventions (or who work in bookstores) and would like to carry Predestination (or any of my other books), shoot me an email from the Contact Form and I will send you the AWP Books wholesale pricing schedule.

I’ll be back soon with news about Free Will and Down From Ten, but until then remember…
It isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you rig the game.

*Odin1eye, View From Valhalla
**Nathan Lowell, Author of The Golden Age of the Silver Clipper
***Brand Gamblin, author of Tumbler and The Hidden Institute

Playing Jazz With Words

You hear a lot of talk of “discovery writers” and “outliners” in the writing world. The “pantsers” and the “plotters,” respectively. It’s true that there are a lot of people that fall into both categories–including many of my friends–and human nature loves dichotomies, but I’ve never fit comfortably either, and I suspect I’m not alone.

Last night, I had occasion to have a long conversation with a new writer who’s vexed and confused by the options before him when it comes to writing process, and saying “you have to find your own way” only left him more despondent. I know that look–I’ve been there many times when faced with a new field of endeavor with so many options that at once feel constraining and non-specific. So, in the hope of letting those new writers who don’t comfortably fit a category know that they’re not alone, I’m going to describe my method.
Continue reading ‘Playing Jazz With Words’

Blogging Free Will–Ebook Giveaway

So, Free Will is in prep for release right now, with the typos and other nit-picky details being worked over, layout being done, etc. It’s a big step forward in the Antithesis Progression, and there are a lot of you out there who have been waiting patiently for the series to continue.

Some of you will get a sneak peak. You see, this is a big book. It ate up more pages, and more time, than I expected by an order of magnitude, and I’m eager to see it find a good home on the shelves and in the e-readers of all of you, including those of you who have drifted away in the meantime, intending to come back when the series continued.

To let people know Antithesis is back, we’re going to need publicity. Publicity means you! Some of you out there enjoy blogging, posting opinion pieces and reviews, etc., and you are the ones I need. Starting today, the first hundred of you that email me (either the normal way through the feedback at jdsawyer.net address, or through the web form you can find here) with the subject line “Free Will Ebook” will receive a free, pre-copyedits ebook version of Free Will (and a corrected version once the proofs are done).

In return for receiving this advance review copy, you promise to blog the book when you’ve finished reading it and, once the book is released to the general public in the next week or two, to post a copy or extract of your blog review in two of the following: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Goodreads, Kobo, Sony ebook store, Kobo, iBookstore. Those of you who feel enthusiastic enough about the book to post the review in all those places will be entered into a drawing. The four prizes in that drawing will be:

Spread the word!
Also, watch this space. There will be more announcements in the coming days about casting calls, a new Death Threats contest, and other goodies.

Big Updates

As of last night, the fact-checking of what’s currently going by the uninspired name of “The Gun Book” came to a close. We’re now on to layout and diagram phase, as it’s a graphics-rich book. Once I get a proper title for it, it’s going to be a guide to firearms for writers. A spin-off short piece on science fiction weaponry that wound up not fitting in the book will appear next weekend in the relevant markets.

But, more importantly for those who have been quietly composing your death threats:

Free Will is done. The continuity edit, all the little fixes, it’s all done. All that’s left now is the copy edit, which’ll take a few days. With any luck, we’re looking at an ebook release this weekend or early next week.

We’re also currently breaking scripts out. Expect a casting call around the same time as the ebook release!

To America, On The Occasion of Your Birthday

Neurological pharmacology–a fancy way of saying “what drugs do to brains”–is a subject with which I have a special fascination. Some of them accentuate specific aspects of personality, some create hallucinations and religious experience, some relieve depression, some kick the sex drive or the bonding drive into high gear. In a lot of ways, though, for my money, I’d nominate alcohol as the most interesting for one reason:

In vino, veritas. Pliny the Elder nailed it: Wine tells the truth. It doesn’t make you do things so much as it lets you do things. You can learn a lot about yourself, and about your friends, by watching what happens when they’re well-buzzed.

National holidays can do the same thing to people–and not just because of the amount of alcohol people tend to consume given half an excuse. Like all things, love of one’s country can come in a lot of flavors. Soviet dissidents, for example, loved their country while hating its system–they loved its culture, its geography, its weather, the shared history in which their identity was rooted. Members of totalitarian systems, on the other hand, are trained to identify the system with the country, and to see non-conformity as so unpatriotic as to deserve death. Some people are patriotic about countries where they’ve never lived, so much so that they’ll move across the world to live in them, because they’ve fallen in love with the ideology, or the people, or the culture of that country. You can learn a lot about a person by watching the flavor of their patriotism.

Writing a political thriller series these last few years, I’ve carefully watched the political micro-climates around the world and studied how they relate to the version of love of country I carry around in my own psyche. Call it a love affair with the Jeffersonian vision of freedom: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

This year has been an amazing year around the world for the struggle against different forms of tyranny, and as an Americans it’s been more exciting than I can say to watch the most action-packed year of calculated struggles against tyranny since the late 80s and early 90s (it’s also more than a little embarrassing how little my home culture seems interested in carrying on their struggle on the home front, but that’s a topic for another time). It’s quite possible that the Arab Spring, the Iranian struggles, and the other protests and revolutions around the world will all come to bad ends in the same way that the revolutions of the twentieth century almost all ended in dictatorship, civil war, and genocide; still, I have a thin hope that some of the people who are laying down their lives–for reasons as simple as the next loaf of bread or as idealistic as bringing democracy and universal suffrage to cultures where such notions are without precedent–may have read history and learned from the missteps of the last hundred years.

Because of that, in celebration of the first revolution that actually worked (if imperfectly), I’ve dedicated Free Will (my new book about revolution) as follows:

This volume is dedicated to the men and women
Who sat in Tahrir
Who crossed the Wall in Berlin
Who fell at Tiananmen Square
Who bled in the streets of Tehran
Who lost their lives in Boston
And all those like them before and since.
To them we owe a debt we cannot repay
Save that we make their dream come true
For Everyone
Forever.

I’ll be seeing you soon, with the rest of the book. Have a safe weekend–and spend it however you want to. The ability to make that choice is a remarkable thing in the history of the world.

Released: Train Time

Have you ever seen that well-dressed man at the airport, or the station, who stands patiently by as if he has all the time in the world? Have you wondered who he was waiting for, and how long he’d stay? Have you ever been that man, stuck in the hours between delay and disappointment, with no way to know if the person you’re waiting for will show? Let fancy take you to the mountains of Northern Italy at the dawn of the 22nd century for the story of a woman and a train–and of a walking stick and the man who owns it, as he waits for Train Time.

You can find the story at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Below, you can find a sample.

Enjoy!

—Story Sample Below The Cut—
Continue reading ‘Released: Train Time’

Down From Ten–next week

Today is the day I was hoping to post the announcement for the ebook of Down From Ten. Unfortunately, I got right to the edge and realized I still had some rights clearances to do for song lyrics that are quoted in the book, so it’ll be another few days.

However, it IS coming in the next week or less!