The Art Collection and other books are free on Kindle from August 10 to the 12th

Summer promotion:

All of the books listed here are free on Kindle for the next few days.  Among them, you can find my last short-format book, THE ART COLLECTION, which contains three stories (about art) that are tinged with the magical and the surreal-- one set in the Northern Catskills, and two set in my neck of the woods, the Main Line of Philadelphia.

You can also download SUMMER DREAMS for free, where my story, "Stranger in Paradise" appears. That one's a bit of a departure for me (with a happy ending)-- but readers found it "spooky" and "entertaining."  Hope you'll download it -- and also give these other authors a chance, too.     

SUMMER DREAMS: short story anthology is free on July 4th and 5th

Holiday reading alert:  you can download the Kindle Edition of SUMMER DREAMS  on July 4 and 5th.  Aside from being entertaining to read, the book has wonderful, whimsical graphics.

It's got a mix of summer-themed stories, including one of mine -- "Stranger in Paradise" in which angels of many types appear.  

Interview with Fiction Author, Lynne Cantwell

Today’s guest interview is with author, Lynne Cantwell, another writer whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting through the magic of the web.   Lynne has authored the Pipe Woman Chronicles

First, a few words about Lynne:

Lynne Cantwell grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan and worked as a broadcast journalist for many years. She writes fantasy -- primarily urban fantasy -- with a basis in mythology, often with a Pagan bent. Lynne is a contributing author at Indies Unlimited. She has a journalism degree from Indiana University, a master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a paralegal certificate.  She currently lives near Washington, DC.

SARETT:  What drew you to the material you write about in The Pipe Woman chronicles?

CANTWELL: One of my odder pursuits is the study of legends and myths. It started as a way to learn about my own genetic background -- I’m half Czech, and the other half is a mix of Irish, German, and Native American -- and to increase my knowledge of Neopaganism. But then the stories themselves began to pull me in, and I realized I wanted to write more about some of them. So I began to incorporate elements of  those mythologies into my fiction.

SARETT: What do you enjoy most when you are writing - story, dialogue, characters, research?  

CANTWELL: Of those choices, although I enjoy all of them, I would have to say writing dialogue is my favorite part. I love exploring the interplay of the characters through their conversations with one another.

SARETT: How do you begin to form your stories?  Do you draw your inspiration from your own actual life experiences or from other books?

CANTWELL: Actually, The Pipe Woman Chronicles began when I was looking for a NaNoWriMo project and decided to try writing an urban fantasy. I had been reading a number of books in the genre and thought it would be fun to write my own. I set the first book in Denver because I love it there, and I made the main character a lawyer because I work at a law firm and understand the culture. Then I brought in a bunch of Native American magic and let her figure out a way to cope with it. So the short answer is that I draw inspiration from everywhere -- which I think is true for most authors.

SARETT:  Tell us about your new book, SCORCHED EARTH?

CANTWELL: Scorched Earth is the third and final book in the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy. The plot revolves around Lucifer’s end game. For millennia, he has been trying to gain enough followers to ascend to godhood, and the gods have succeeded in keeping him out. Since the gods’ return to Earth, he has been encouraging the political, corporate and military leaders to plot against Them in order to stay in control. Unfortunately for him, the gods have positioned three humans to foil all those plots. So now he is turning to blunt force. He intends to get humanity dependent on a miracle grain called ayalendo for its primary food source, and then he will withhold the supply from all but his followers. Tess, Sue, and Darrell are called upon again to stop him.

SARETT: I know from reading your story in the forthcoming Summer Dreams  anthology that you, like me, are drawn to magical realism.  How did it feel to work in this genre?    

CANTWELL: I’ve been thinking of trying my hand at magic realism for a while now, and writing “The Door into Summer” allowed me to dip my toe into those waters. I enjoyed it very much and will very likely do it again -- maybe with my next novel.

SARETT:  My blog readers are always looking for new books.  Are there new fiction books that you’d recommend?   

CANTWELL: For readers of contemporary fiction, I can recommend just about anything Laurie Boris writes. I was particularly struck by her use of voice in Drawing Breath-- the two main characters are a teenaged girl and a young man suffering from cystic fibrosis, and she got the voices of each of them just right. For those who enjoy fantasy, I’ve just finished reading Shaman, Healer, Heretic, the first book a series by M. Terry Green. Green is an archaeologist in her day job, and her background shows -- she’s obviously done a fair amount of research into Native American and Central American shamanism.

SARETT:  Any new projects in the works that you’d like to share with blog readers?   

CANTWELL: Scorched Earth is the eighth book set in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe. I have some tentative ideas for two more books in that universe, but I plan to put that project on the back burner and start work on something else -- either a new series I’m beginning to mull over, or that magic realism novel I talked about earlier. We’ll see.

Find Lynne's books:

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/author/lynnecantwell

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lynnecantwell

Calderwood Books:  http://www.calderwoodbooks.com/#/lynne-cantwell/4526227421

Connect with Lynne:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynne-Cantwell/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/LynneCantwell

Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/u/0/+LynneCantwell

Blog: http://hearth-myth.blogspot.com

How to Make Ebooks Visual: Alan Seeger

Today’s guest post is with writer and editor Alan Seeger. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Alan on two short story anthologies, 13 Bites and, now, Summer Dreams.

First, here’s some background on Alan:

Science-fiction author and editor Alan Seeger was born in San Francisco and grew up in Oklahoma. In his teens, he began making music, which became his focus for the next thirty years or so. But writing was never far from his heart, and in 2013, he published a collection of short stories Lucid Dreaming and the first two novels in his Gatespace Trilogy, Pinball and Replay. He resides on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

In Summer Dreams, you decided to make the book, including the Kindle Book, “visual” by adding images for each story. What was the impetus for this decision?

It began when a couple of the contributors included “dingbat” style images with their stories as icons to separate different sections of their stories. I debated as to whether to leave them in, but then it occurred to me to see if I couldn’t find something to use for each of the stories.  The thing that ties the stories together is that they deal with events that take place during the summer season, yet they are all quite different -- none of them are about lying on the sand at a California beach, I’ll tell you that -- and so one story has the silhouette of a woman swimming, one has bats -- yeah, bats, no, this isn’t the Halloween anthology… one has an old pickup truck… well, you’ll just have to read it, won’t you?

image size was standardized to 1.5 in

Of the two authors who included decorative elements, one used images inserted into her document and one used characters from a font. When I did a test run, I found that Kindle recognized the images but converted the font-based character into whatever font it used for the rest of the document, so instead of the bat, for example, you might have a letter Q or V. I decided to go into my image program and create an image of that character, and use that (instead of the font-based character. )

One side effect: I realized that I could dissect the title of the book from the layered Photoshop version of the cover (shown to the right), and use that on the Title Page. This takes the words "Summer Dreams" and puts ripples into it so it looks as if it’s in the water… the background is swirly swimming pool water. I took that swirly title and placed it on the title page, changed it to black and white. It looks really sharp, in my opinion. 

So many Kindle books look (to my mind) unattractive compared to the books that I used to read, which had illustrations and book borders.  Will we ever return to visually appealing books?

I hope so. I mean, it’s still possible to publish things as a PDF file, which was how I published Metaverse Messenger, an online newspaper covering events in virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) from 2005-2009.

Kindle publishing, though, raises problems such as screen size vs. document size and so on. Different e-readers, even different Kindles (original Kindle, DX, Paperwhite, Kindle Fire) have different sized screens, pixel-wise, and different amounts of text can fit on them. That complicates things any time you want to dress up your book and make it pretty.  But people are starting to get the hang of what it takes to make Kindle and other e-readers display things the way we want them to be seen.

Learn about Alan's writing at www.alanseeger.net.
His editing services are available at  www.five59.com. 
Facebook www.facebook.com/Five59 
Twitter as @Pinballwizard59.

Summer Dreams: Short Story Anthology to Support Children's Literacy

I'm delighted to be part of another short story anthology, edited by Alan Seeger, whose net profits (that is, every single penny that doesn't go to Amazon) will support children's literary projects. Our previous effort, 13 Bites, is available on Amazon.

This go-around, the topic was summer.  Suffice it to say that no writer offered a merry tale of a kids' summer camp or a funny family road trip.  Thoughts were darker or ( in this writer's case) spiritual.  My story, Stranger in Paradise, appears here -- and it's a story of unexpected redemption.

Monday, we'll be hearing from the editor, Alan Seeger about putting the book together-- and how he introduced visual elements into a plain old e-book.

You can purchase the book on Amazon Summer Dreams