My boy’s Lego robot. It has infrared sensors in the front.

I took my family away to Manchester over Easter for the Eastercon science fiction convention (called Mancunicon this year, just to confuse you). My son learned to program a Lego robot to rampage around the room while avoiding all obstacles, and to write his name in Gallifreyan. A definite highlight was lunch with Chris Nuttall (you might know him from books such as Ark Royal and Empire at War) and PP Corcoran and his wife Sarah (Discovery of the Saiph), and artist Andy Bigwood. Much was discussed about how to make a living from our writing while still enjoying ourselves as we do so.

Talking of earning a living, the fifth book in the Human Legion series (War Against the White Knights) is available now for Kindle. Have you got it yet? Paperback will be out soon.

Talking to several people at the convention has pushed forward a job I had in mind to do later in the year: to revamp the website. We can do a much better job, and we will doubly need to do so later this year when we will start to launch books in the Sleeping Legion and Revenge Squad series. I have been told relentlessly that I need a mailing list rather than simply invite people to subscribe to the website. I’m putting my mind to that now. There will be exclusive content sent to people on the mailing list, serialization of new books, signed giveaways of audio books and swag. That kind of thing. If you have suggestions on what you would like to see, please send them my way.

Producing the fifth book hasn’t been as smooth as I’d hoped because, through no fault of his own, my co-writer hasn’t been as available as we would both have liked. A lot of angst has resulted and some of the things I’ve enjoyed doing have slipped out of my schedule, including my looks at the science fiction publishing world through the lens of the amazon.com bestseller charts. I was surprised to hear people at the convention tell me they were disappointed that I had stopped. I will restart that soon, as well as occasional looks at other online articles, events, book releases, and book promotions.

I was asked a while ago why I promoted the books of ‘rival’ authors on my website when there is no reciprocation on their part. The answer is that I’ll point things out that I think might interest readers of the Human Legion because (1) it’s me sharing and discussing my love of science fiction, which I love to do, and (2) I can almost justify doing so to myself on business grounds because it helps to keep people interested in my site, which will tend to dip otherwise between my own book releases. I’m now adding an extra justification to spend my time on this, which is to use Amazon affiliate links. What that means, is that if I’ve set up a link to Amazon correctly, then I get a small percentage of the sale price for anything you buy when you follow that link. Which is rather peculiar because it doesn’t matter what you buy, just so long as you followed the affiliate link to get to the Amazon store.

So if you think I don’t sell my books for a high enough price, then next time you want to buy a Bugatti sports car, do it through my Amazon affiliate links and make me smile. (It’s just a shame that you can’t buy Bugattis through Amazon. Yet. Keep checking…)

Bugatti Veyron 16.4. If you bought one of these through an Amazon affiliate link, I would be very happy. 1001 BHP 8 liter W-16 engine. I’ve driven one, actually. (In a computer game, obviously.)

What I won’t ever do is advertise any old junk just to con my readers out of a few cents. I’ll only draw attention to books on promotion or releases that I think you would like. And if you don’t like the idea of affiliate links, you can always go directly to Amazon and find the book there easily enough. No worries.

image (c) iurii/ shutterstock

Why Reading Science Fiction is Good for Military Officers

I came across this recent article from a science fiction loving brigadier. I recognized the quote at the top from The Forever War, and anything that quotes my favorite book is probably going to be good.

It is.

http://groundedcuriosity.com/why-reading-science-fiction-is-good-for-military-officers

Start the Lost Fleet series at 99c

OK, there seem to be a lot of ‘Lost Fleet’ and ‘Lost Ship’ series out at the moment. I’m referring to the one by Raymond L. Weil, who has put The Lost Fleet: Galactic Search on a Kindle Countdown deal, which means you’ve got until Thursday morning, UK time to pick this up at 99c/99p. I don’t think Kindle Countdowns are available outside of amazon.co.uk and amazon.com, so I’m afraid you’re out of luck if you use a different store.

I’ve not read the series, but I read some of his earlier Slaver Wars books. I thought they were fun, action books and expect the same of the Lost Fleet. So I bought a copy myself.

You can get yours from  amazon.com   or    amazon.co.uk