Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Calamity's Child Returns--EBook and Hardcover

What happens to a really good book if the publisher goes under just after the book's release? It's not pretty. But in an ideal world, a bigger, better publisher would pick up the book and bring it back out. Every so often, some things go right. Calamity's Child is back in print. Now with Dark Oak Press, it has a new cover, re-edited and cleaner internals, and is available in EBook, Trade, and everyones favorite: HARDCOVER. If I were asked, should I buy this book? Will I enjoy it? My response would be a polite, quiet, "Yes, I think you would like it." But if I were honest, the response should be, "Oh, heck yeah! This is space opera the way it should be done, old school with laughs and violence. I even managed to pull off good characters. You think Firefly was good? You ain't seen nothing yet. You want to talk about the 'rebirth' of space opera and what's good? This is the best, over-looked book in the genre in the last ten years at least. This book should be on the shelves in every bookstore, grocery store checkout stand, and Wal-Mart bookrack. You know someone who misses westerns? Throw them a copy of Calamity's Child and even if they don't know sci-fi from beans they'll fall in love with the book." And yes, I do think it's that good. If for no other reason than the incredible responses I got from its first run. But, you may say, I already own a copy of the original. Why should I buy it again? Did I mention HARDCOVER? Plus, everyone needs two. One to keep and one to loan. Christmas comes at least once a year and I've heard some people get birthday presents too. So, you should buy...oh, maybe twelve copies ought to be enough. I can hear you now, I'm not made out of money! Of course not but I think we can all agree that a good book is more important than most of what we buy like food. Seriously, if you already bought and read the book, then you know how good it is and you know how the story ends up. And I also know that most of my readers are, like most readers, unable to afford all the books they want. (That's an understatement.) If you want to buy a few more, I'm not going to argue but, if you already own the book, the best thing you can do for me (and the reading public in general) is not to buy another copy. Instead, go find ten people who haven't read the book and convince them to read it. The E-version is very cheap and, after they've read it, they'll want a hard copy for themselves. If you help spread the word, I think this book is good enough to sell enough copies so that by this time next year, I can afford to travel to all kinds of conventions and sign all those copies. The other thing I can offer is, if you've already bought the book in the first edition and you buy it again, I'll sign the new one with the "Evil Uncle" signature...and Evil Uncle is probably worth more than the book cost. (If that doesn't make sense, hopefully someone who knows the EU stories can post and explain because I'm not going to.) So spread the word, review the book on-line, and do what you can to help people find a book, back from the dead, that they might otherwise miss. (If you need promotional images, permissions for quotes, interviews, or anything else you might want to put on your own site, facebook, twitter, etc. simply email me or post the request here on the blog and I'll do what I can to help. If you have any questions about the book or the characters that you think I should discuss on the blog, similarly feel free to post.) Thank you.