John Sundman is author and publisher of the cyber-nano-biopunk novels Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains. After Sundman blogged about selling his books at the hacker convention DEFCON, science fiction author Bruce Sterling described him as “the future of printed fiction”. Sundman lives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
This began as a post in praise of the Kindle as a reading device. For writers the Kindle is much more than that. KDP transforms the e-reader into a publishing platform, and the most powerful device a writer has at his or her disposal. But don’t be fooled into thinking you necessarily need professional help to format your e-book. While an editor is invariably beneficial, designers and other opportunists are trying to mystify e-book formatting and cover design for profit. The paybacks of the Kindle will be self-explanatory to anyone who’s held one for longer than a minute. Writers who own a Kindle that doesn’t contain their entire body of work are either slow or have never had cause to refer to their own writing. Being able to instantly search text strings while away from your desk, look up words in the dictionary, research online via a wireless connection, highlight sections earmarked for revision and tweet quotes are just some of the more obvious benefits.
The Bridge is one of those books I first read long ago but have no recollection on whose recommendation it was. More unusually, I don’t remember where I was when I read it for the first time. It was published in 1986, when Banks was 32. He apparently told SFX magazine’s Mary Branscombe in 1996 that The Bridge is the intellectual among his bibliography. “It’s the one that went away to university and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books.” As such, he warned against reading it before his other books, which I did.
I love it because it’s a novel in which the writer takes some hair-raising risks.
Das Schicksal (‘Fate’, also known as the ‘Cruel Countess’) is a 1905 sculpture by German artist Hugo Lederer. It stands in the world’s biggest cemetery: the Ohlsdorfer Hauptfriedhof in Hamburg. It’s among the most distressing, unforgettable works of art I’ve seen and my short story germinated when, after stumbling across the statue, I imagined her coming to life. The story first appeared in the UK magazine The Third Alternative (now Black Static), then in Germany’s Heidelberg Review and subsequently in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s annual anthology, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (10th Edition), published by St Martin’s Griffin Press (USA). It’s now available as a Kindle e-book, with a cover designed by Elisa Bowman. Some history and a brief excerpt follow.
Cover photo: Uwe Barghaan © 2006
“Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trusting intuition and making decisions based on it is the most important activity of the creative artist and entrepreneur. If you are facing (and fearing) a difficult life decision, ask yourself these three questions: 1) “What are the costs of inaction?” 2) “What kind of person do I want to be?” 3) “In the event of failure, could I generate an alternative positive outcome?”
(Author: Dan Andrews; image by Victor Trac, who kindly granted me permission to use his photo of a heavily stapled telephone pole as the cover to my e-book Iniquity)
‘“Hey, Nigel!” Kev shouted. “We’re going on a boat-trip.” He was already at the gangplank.’
What happens when three drinkers take an impromptu boat trip? And why are the other day-trippers so relieved to get back to port? The title of this e-book comes from a reference in the introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, and a quotation from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. JP Donleavy’s A Fairy Tale of New York also gets a mention.
Get Port After Stormy Seas on your Kindle, PC or iPad for US$0.99 – less than you pay for the coffee you drink while you’re reading it. A link and short extract follow the jump.
“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are? Now Do. The Thing. You Fear.
(Author: Lachlan Cotter)
Image: Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry succumbs to the Ministry of Information’s torture in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to one million people, what would you say?
(Author: Eric Handler)
Painting: Railroad Crossing, Edward Hopper (1923)
Dave Pell, the founder of delivereads – curated content delivered to your Kindle – is an internet early adopter who’s stuck with it, in spite (or perhaps because) of having blown cash and time on more than 50 startups, including: Corrigo, Dealbase, GrubHub, Liftopia, Marin Software, SendMe, Three Rings and Trazzler. He also tweets and blogs on Tweetage Wasteland. His posts are syndicated on NPR, Gizmodo, Forbes and Huffington Post. delivereads sends articles from the likes of GQ, Esquire, the New Yorker and the Boston Globe direct to your Kindle – the most satisfying place to read an article apart from on paper.
“There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
What would you say to the person you were five years ago?
What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?
(Author: Corbett Barr)
And yes, there is a tenuous connection here with Sidney Lumet’s film The Verdict.
