Patty's 99-cent sale and Alasdair's roundup

Patty Jansen is running a sale, and I'm a part of it.  This weekend, you can get Caverns of Mercury for 99 cents.  You can get a bunch of other books for that price, too.  Check it out:

Direct link:

http://pattyjansen.com/promo/3-4-march-2017-99c-promo/

Also, Alasdair Shaw is doing his usual monthly roundup of new releases.  Since I released Mind Games last month, I submitted it to him for inclusion.  To see other new science fiction releases, just click here:

http://alasdairshaw.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-february-roundup-of-scifi-books.html

In other news, I'm currently about 23,000 words or so into the first draft of book 3 of the Wheel of Fire.  It's getting brutal, too.  Huge body count so far.

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.  :)

Sale!

Caverns of Mercury will be on sale for 99 cents this weekend.  I'll announce this in the newsletter, as well as a few other items of interest.  Stay tuned.

The torch goes out

It was a nice closing ceremony.  I think South Korea did a wonderful job hosting these games in spite of the challenging weather.  And I'm already looking forward to the next games in Tokyo and the next winter games in Beijing.

The highlight of the closing ceremony was the guitar kid, Yang Tae Hwan.  He's got some stuff on YouTube, of course.  Here he is playing Sultans of Swing:

Awesome.  And remember Funtwo and his version of Pachelbel's Canon from several years ago?  It was one of the early "viral" videos of YouTube.  Well, Yang Tae Hwan can play it:

Anyway, that wraps up the games.  Thanks to all the athletes and the ceremonies' cast members, and congratulations to all the medalists.

Word count's improving

Got 2k in today.  That's a lot better than the 1000 words per day I've been averaging for this novel.  I might have gone a little longer, but I need to think about a scene a little more before continuing.  The book currently stands at 16k.

I've been more tired than usual lately.  I hope it's just the season and the weather and not old age creeping up on me.  I'm only 42.  I'm not ready to be old.

The promotion on Kobo is going better than I expected.  Hostile Planet doesn't have any reviews there yet, so I wasn't sure how it would go, but I've made a few sales there.  Thanks, Kobo readers.  :)

Miscellany

I've written 14,000 words so far for book 3.  Obviously, this is not the pace I want.  I hope to do better very soon.

Congratulations to the women's hockey team for beating Canada in a shootout and bringing home the gold medal.  Excellent work, ladies, and in dramatic fashion, too.

Hostile Planet is currently on sale at Kobo.  It's part of their "February 40% off" sale.  Check it out:

http://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/feb40

Spring seems to have arrived early.  Too early.  I expect a final cold snap in March or April to kill off the new growth.  Nothing to be done about it, though.  *shrug*

It still takes me more than one attempt to tie a Windsor knot.  I attended a funeral a couple of days ago, so I wore my suit, which is a rarity for me.  In my younger days, I tied my ties using the four-in-hand knot.  In recent years, though, I've decided the Windsor is superior.  But it's more complex, and I don't wear ties often enough to get the hang of the knot.

When I step back from the world and think about it, it amazes me that so many of the systems and infrastructures we take for granted work as well as they do.  There are many unsung, unseen, and unloved heroes in the world.

That's enough for now, I guess.  Back to work.

Fourcade in a photo finish

France's Martin Fourcade won his biathlon event in a photo finish, narrowly edging out the German Simon Schempp.  I watched it on the tape delay, but without knowing the result beforehand, so it was "live" for me.  It was a pretty dramatic moment.  Fourcade had fallen behind earlier due to a missed shot, leaving three Germans in the top three spots.  But on the last round of shooting, each of those Germans missed a shot, allowing Fourcade the chance to take the lead again.  Schempp was right on his tail for the whole final stretch, and he turned on the afterburners at the very end, pulling even with Fourcade.  But the Frenchman lunged early at the finish line, getting his boot out there, and that made the difference.  It was a matter of inches.

Congratulations to both men for winning medals, and thanks to both men for providing us with a bit of excitement.

Updated a few book files

It has come to my attention that Amazon is now putting some sort of popup thingy at the end of its readers' ebooks.  From what I hear, it's a prompt encouraging the reader to rate/review the book.  It apparently shows up before the back matter that the author included in the book, which means links to mailing lists might go unseen by the reader.

So, to combat this, I've added my mailing list link to the copyright pages of my books.  I've done this for books 2 and 3 of Free Space and both books of Wheel of Fire.  (I don't have the link in Clouds of Venus because that's a permafree book.)

I haven't seen this popup thing for myself.  I've only heard about it.  But I want those who purchase my work to join my mailing list, so I just spent about an hour making the changes to the files and uploading them across all vendors.  It's just another small annoyance in an endeavor that is full of them.