So I now have Netwalk: Expanded Edition, Netwalker Uprising, Winter Shadows, Shadow Harvest, and Alien Savvy up on Payhip, and links are up on the appropriate book/series pages as well as below.
Tag Archives: Shadow Harvest
More stuff available at the new marketplace
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Orycon Week Specials!
Because it’s Orycon week, I’m offering a special on my two most recent works, Winter Shadows and Shadow Harvest. They’re parts two and three of an occasional series about Diana Landreth, her husband Will, and their development of wireless implant technology which eventually leads to uploaded personalities. With politics and weird weaponry, as well.
Anyway. From November 6th through 14th, you can get Winter Shadows for .99 (down from 1.99) and Shadow Harvest for 2.99 (down from 5.99) at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo (I think?!). Shadow Harvest is available for 2.99 at Smashwords.
What are they about? Here’s Winter Shadows:
Diana Andrews wasn’t expecting trouble when she came home on winter vacation from a difficult bioremediation assignment. But the imprisonment in a hostile country of her lover, Will Landreth, puts not just Diana and Will at risk but possibly her business and her family as well. Can Diana find the help she needs to rescue Will while protecting him from those–including his father–who would see Will silenced?
And then Shadow Harvest:
Diana Landreth encounters a witch’s brew of personal, professional, and political problems when she returns home for a quick visit. Her dying father’s ranch has been poisoned by an unknown radiological and/or biological agent. The Third Force’s Relocation Affairs office has given him a low buyout bid insufficient to support Diana’s stepmother and young half-sister after her father’s death. Her husband Will continues to struggle with PTSD in the aftermath of his imprisonment in the Petroleum Autonomous Zone. Her mother, Sarah Stephens, and Will’s father, Parker Landreth, engage in a shadow war where Will and Diana may be no more than proxies for higher stakes in a battle for corporate dominance. Can Diana discover the truth about what’s been done to her father’s ranch? Can she and Will enhance their own bioremediation company’s reputation by rehabilitating the ranch while supporting her stepmother and sister? And can they finally overcome the shadows of the past to earn their freedom from their families’ desires?
I promise that Shadow Harvest is the last of the “Diana comes home to problems” stories.
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Well, that was a birthday
I am now the same age as the last two digits of my birth year. Auspicious or what? I’m taking it to be a promising new development and plan to make the most of it. The day started out pretty well with my first email being the notice that Shadow Harvest is now live on Kindle. Let the promotional games begin….
I went onward to showers of birthday messages on Facebook. I have to love that part of Facebook because the birthday messages started the day before and they’re still trickling in, as people check their Facebook accounts. There are some things that social media does right and that’s one of them. Once again, thanks to everyone who shared. I couldn’t answer all the messages but I loved every one of them. Thanks, folks.
Mocha time was pretty anti-climactic, nothing big or dramatic there.
Then I joined a friend for a drink, plus a visit to a comic book store. We shared a few laughs and thoughts, then I came home. Had a lovely takeout dinner provided by the husband and just plain partied out (as much as one does as a member of Club 57).
So I’m a little slow and fuzzy this morning, but that’s okay since I am just plain waiting around for a serviceperson. Have some work to do, primarily promotional for Shadow Harvest, plus finishing off Alien Savvy, then plotting and planning for two short stories and a novel.
Onward.
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And….it’s a book.
I liked this cover better than the one I previewed a few weeks ago. The e-versions just need a couple of polishing runs on them, tweaks here and there, but they’re pretty much complied and ready to post, possibly as soon as Thursday or early next week. I also plan to put out Winter Shadows in hard copy at the same time that I issue Shadow Harvest in hard copy. That….could take longer. Or I could end up releasing Winter Shadows first. We shall see. I need to learn how to design hard copy covers instead of handing them off.
And what’s this one about? Here’s an early version of the pitch.
When Diana Landreth returns for a quick visit home from a long-term bioremediation project in the Amazon, she encounters a witch’s brew of personal, professional, and political problems. Her dying father’s ranch has been poisoned by an unknown radiological and/or biological agent . The Third Force’s Relocation Affairs office has made him a low buyout offer that will not support her stepmother and young half-sister. Her husband Will still struggles with PTSD from his imprisonment in the Petroleum Autonomous Zone. Her mother, Sarah Stephens, and Will’s father, Parker Landreth, engage in a shadow war where Will and Diana may be no more than proxies in larger battles for corporate dominance. Can Diana find the truth about what’s been done not just to her father’s ranch but to their neighbors? Can she and Will use rehabilitating the ranch to establish their own bioremediation company’s reputation while protecting her stepmother and half-sister? And can they finally overcome the shadows of the past to become free from their family histories?
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Writerly musings
It’s been a productive writer and editor week. I finished the first round of edits on a freelance job and sent them back to the author, then got my second round of edits on Seeking Shelter at the End of the World (projected to come out from eTreasures Publishing in October), went through that, and sent it back. Ironically, finishing the first round on someone else’s book and having to go through my own second round happened within 24 hours of each other. Not that this is an issue. I found that I learned a lot from doing that edit on someone else (which is one of my patterns) and working on the other MS made it easier to edit my own. FYI, I’m not banging the drum pretty hard (yet), but I am available for editing services. I find that I like editing. Not surprising, since one of my favorite teacher times was working one-on-one with kids and their writing.
I’m in the homestretch for getting Shadow Harvest ready for October publication, and clearing the decks to start writing Netwalk’s Children (at long last). Whew. It’s been a long, hard struggle with both these works. Shadow Harvest started out as Andrews Ranch, but that title really didn’t work. I’m still not happy with my latest cover design, but that’s a skill set I also plan to keep working on. This one is really hard to put together because I have to figure out how to combine both SF and Western elements, and, well, that’s tough.
However, since the ebook of Shadow Harvest is going to have illustrations, I’m having fun planning the photos I’ll use. While I took some useable pix last weekend in the County, there are still a bunch more I need if I’m going to insert 2-4 illustrations per chapter. At ten chapters, that’s a lot of pix. As I go through my edits in Scrivener, I’m either scrounging through my collection of digital photos or listing the new photos I have to take–and that’s fun to contemplate as well.
Once I finish this pass of Harvest, and get to work on the pix, then it’s time to tackle the outline and writing of Netwalk’s Children. This is a tough book to plan and write, but it’s one that I absolutely have to structure before writing. It’s the middle book of the series; it’s a transitional book between generations; and there’s big stuff that happens. I’ve been advancing and retreating from it for a couple of years now, but it’s going to happen this fall.
I’m also planning on expanding and releasing another illustrated short novella in November, called Alien Savvy. It has some connections to the Netwalk Sequence universe but it’s a prequel to everything. Then in December, I’ll release an omnibus of Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Shadow Harvest. Title yet to be determined.
Then I got a pleasant little egoboost when I searched my name during a break. Outside of the unpleasant reality of having to issue a takedown notice to a pirate site, I also discovered that a couple of my professional articles have been copied as references. The one which really tickles me is one that was included in the National Association of Special Education Teacher Special Issue on Learning Disabilities–link is here. I didn’t know about this but it makes me feel good. Alas, unless you have a membership, you can’t see it. Sigh. But it’s about the Patterns of Strength and Weakness identification model for learning disabilities, which is something I strongly believe in.
A good day in the writer life. And now for lunch, then barn.
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First round on Shadow Harvest Cover
So I’ve just been playing around in Gimp, trying to get this:
to look something like an SF Western cover.
Well, this is what I’ve got so far.
It fits the mood, at least. But I’m not as excited by this cover as I was by the Winter Shadows cover. I want to convey the desolation that is a factor in Shadow Harvest, as well as the chill mood. This does that, I suppose…but it’s kind of meh.
Ah well, I suppose it will work for e-book. I do have other pictures similar to the Winter Shadows cover–for reference, below.
But mostly, I’ve got to get up to speed on Gimp. Grrr. Just one more thing to do. Feh. Oh well, I need to not muck around too much and get into turning out the books.
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And the title decision is….Shadow Harvest
Shadow Harvest. I’ve been agonizing over what to call Andrews Ranch for real, because otherwise it sounds too much like a Western instead of science fiction. While there are Western elements (a showdown at the OK Corral-type scene with a war machine in a barnyard), and a quasi-Westernish-theme (saving a ranch from corporate interests), at best it could be titled a Science Fiction Western. Yeah.
I kept thinking about its predecessor and twin story that I’m going to include to make up the omnibus I plan to publish in December, Winter Shadows. My original plans for that omnibus were to include Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Andrews Ranch. But while Dahlia is part of the whole Will and Diana sequence, it really doesn’t fit except as a precursor to the other two stories. What happens in Winter Shadows comes to fruition seven years later in Shadow Harvest. So I’ve decided that the omnibus will be those two stories instead. That’ll be plenty, and there’s a title and thematic connection (the omnibus will also come out in a CreateSpace version).
And I do have a cover pic. Just haven’t made the cover yet.
Now it’s time to go back and discreetly insert some connections to Winter Shadows. Then off to the barn, meet up with a friend, then come home and work on an editorial project.
The days are just packed around here.
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