Science fiction writers meet here.

[cfmillhouse]

I'm new to the kindle boards and I'm simply trying to find my way on here.  I write science fiction/science fantasy and have published several books over the last few years.  This week I began moving my books to the kindle format and my first book In Memory Alone is now available on amazon.  I'm hoping to meet other science fiction writers, or even fantasy writers for that matter.  I'm creating this topic as a place for us to sound off, tell everyone who you are and what books you have released on kindle or what projects you are working on.  So I'll start.

My name is Charles F Millhouse, I live in Ohio with my wife of twenty years and our two incredible sons.  My website is www.charlesmillhouse.com where you can find a list of my books and some short stories.  I am currently working on a western supernatural book with hopes of publishing over the next several months.

Now your turn...   

[J.R.Mooneyham]

Hello Charles!

I have a couple sci fi books published too (with a couple more to follow). I only had room to put the first in my signature below. But all my books so far follow the adventures of the same central character, with the earlier books describing him at high school and college age, and the sci fi novels focusing on his life around 20 years later (in a manner of speaking).

[cfmillhouse]

Hello J.R nice meet you.
I hope we can share our thoughts about science fiction in general and perhaps publishing on kindle.

[Nicki Lynn Justice]

 

Hey Charles and J.R.!

I put my legal thriller/romantic suspense on Kindle in January. It's doing ok. Sales are increasing steadily, and last month it passed the 1000 mark. This month has been really slow, but I have learned that people don't like you very much if you spam everybody in sight, so I quit doing that. What seems to have worked is getting being featured on sites like Indie Books list, Kinderati, Kindle in the Wind, Chickie Brown's blog, Holly Hook's blog etc etc. AOS (Authors on Show) has agreed to feature my book this month, so that's great news.

Anyway, I am days away from releasing my new young adult novel, The Oracle! I'm really excited about it! Marina, the heroine, is your average  grade 12 girl. She loves facebook, doesn't always get her homework done, scoffs at her grandfather's efforts to make the earth a better place, and has issues with Dragon, her Grandpa's spoiled rotten cat. Marina makes some startling discoveries, not only about who she is but who she isn't, through her efforts to return home when she and Dragon are transported to a distant planet in a not too distant future.  While she's not ready to concede that her Gramps knows everything, she begins to suspect that he knows alot more about life in general than she gives him credit for. She realizes that Dragon isn't the only one who is spoiled. It also becomes apparent that it is time for her to dump the bad girl facade and continue the work that her Gramps is doing with the "green movement" if she wants the earth to survive. But first she has to solve a few problems that exist in the new world before she can go back to the old.

Do you think The Oracle qualifies as fantasy? I found out with Black & White that I am really bad at tags. Readers seem to want to tag it as legal thriller, while I tagged it as romantic suspense. Go figure!!

Anyway, my blog is at www.nickilynnjustice.webs.com, and the first chapter is posted there. Give it a read! And, if you like pizza, I posted my pizza dough recipe there that I recently discovered and just love.

H.E.A.'s Forever,
Nicki Lynn

[cfmillhouse]

Nicki,
Thanks for your input.  You gave some good information that could be useful to everyone who reads this thread.  I'll give your first chapter a read.  I need to fill my kindle and the tell you the truth I would rather do so with independent writers than anybody else (except for a select few). I hope you can share future endeavors together.

[Paul Clayton]

Hey, Charles, J.R., and Nicki, I wanted to introduce myself also.  I'm working on a collection of my scifi stories and plan on publishing them in a couple months.  I'll be following this thread.
Best!

[aandrewtantia]

Hi all,
I actually write primarily comic fiction, so technically all other genres to me are sub-genres. One of these is sci-fi, and so far I've published a short story that falls into this category. I'm fairly new to the whole self-publishing thing too so any helpful advice goes a long way. Thanks for the tip about the indie books sites, Nicki, I'm going to start submitting to them and see if I can get featured.

Anyhow, the short is posted on my blog for free: http://aandrewtantia.blogspot.com/2011/04/not-with-bang.html

Btw I really like your cover for In Memory Alone, Charles, that's all kinds of awesome.

[cfmillhouse]

Thanks for asking about the cover of In Memory Alone aandrewtantia, all of my covers have been done by my best friend Charles Davenport who has a knack of capturing my ideas and putting them on his cover designs.  If anyone would want more information about cover designs let me know and I'll put you in contact with him.

[Tim C. Taylor]

Hi Charles and welcome to Kindleboards.

I'm an old hand here: I've been around a few hours longer than you!

Thanks for asking about the cover of In Memory Alone aandrewtantia, all of my covers have been done by my best friend Charles Davenport who has a knack of capturing my ideas and putting them on his cover designs.  If anyone would want more information about cover designs let me know and I'll put you in contact with him.

Yes, I thought the cover of In Memory Alone was very good. There seem to be two versions on your site. Is the one on the left by Charles Davenport and the one on the right by Charles Millhouse? I like old maps but I think the text on the image with the ship is clearer and the ship makes it more dynamic. I'll make a note of Mr. Davenport. If I get backlogged on creating artwork, I might need someone to help out. Mr. Davenport might be pleased to learn (if he doesn't already know) that there used to be a major regional brewery in the UK called Davenport's. It was famous for delivery beer to homes out of a cart, something it did until the 70s. When I was at University the Birmingham locals fondly talked of the Davenport's they used to drink; the brewery had closed a few years before.

I'm a sci fi writer myself. Last month I became a publisher too, so if you've got questions on the mechanics of publishing I might be able to help if I've reached that problem before you.

Best wishes,
Tim

[Colin Taber]

Hi,

I write fantasy, with my second book coming out in a few weeks.

Nice to meet some other SF &F genre writers!

[cfmillhouse]

Hello Tim, nice to meet you.
Yes there are two covers to In Memory Alone.  When it was originally published in 2004 (in trade paperback) I sadly had to make the cover myself on the fly.  I've never been happy with it, but there it is.  Thought it might be changed in the near future once I've caught up with releasing my other titles on kindle and I'm done editing my new book and so on and so on - I'm sure you know how it goes.  If you would like to contact Charles Davenport you can do so via his twitter page cdavenport4 is his user name.

Any help a new/self published writer would like to post here is good for all of us and I will keep everyone posted on my upcoming kindle releases.  The second book of Talon's Epic, Crossroads of the World, should be on Amazon late next week.

[cfmillhouse]

Hello Colin,
Keep us posted on your second book.  I'll check out your first one.

[J.R.Mooneyham]

Charles, since you've only recently begun converting your books for Kindle, maybe you'd find this useful:

How to make your own Amazon Kindle ebook in just hours CHEAT SHEET
http://www.jmooneyham.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-make-your-own-amazon-kindle-ebook-in-hours.html

I wrote this after getting seven books onto the Kindle. It's basically a crash course in giving Amazon an HTML form of your book that the Kindle will like (I don't get into CSS though).

[cfmillhouse]

Hey J.R,
Your cheat sheet looks like it could come in handy.  I'll give it a good read before I begin to put the next book in my Talon series on kindle.
Thanks
Charles

[vrabinec]

Hi Charles. I'm Fred. After having trunked my first two attempts before completion, I'm on pace to finish my debut novel by the end of the year. The working title is "The Greatest Sci-Fi Novel Ever Written" but I'm mulling over some titles I hope will be catchier.

I just joined this place today. Never knew it existed until an author friend mentioned it. I'm still trying to figure out if this is a place where people go to discuss their writing, or if it's more of a marketplace where authors go to try to pimp their books and hope someone trips over their link. God, I'm dreading the "marketing" phase. I'm having so much fun writing, that I don't want to think about what comes after it's done just yet.

Is it just me, or does it seem like, once you've finished, if you're not picked up by some bigshot agent and published in hardback in B&N or what's left of the brick bookstores, that you're like a vendor in some bazaar in Marakesh, screaming, and trying to get noticed while thousands of other people around you are trying to do the same thing? I dunno. Feels that way anyway.

Anyway, nice to have "met" you guys. Take care.

[cfmillhouse]

Hey Fred,
Marketing can be hard.  If you think your book is good enough you can try an agent, but if you do get picked up by an agent that doesn't mean your book will sell.  My sister in law has learned that the hard way.  Her book is tied up with an agent for two years and she can't peddle it anywhere else til then.  There are a lot of people trying to sell there books but you just have to push ahead and try your best.  If you have a good story it will find readers, but you have to keep it up.  I like writing, if I sell my books I'm happy, if I don't I'm just as happy and I continue to write.
Good luck with your book.
Charles

[Colette Duke]

Hi, Charles. Welcome to the boards.

It's nice to see what all our SF authors are up to.

I'm working on a series of SF romance short stories that'll go with a series of novels. What can I say, I'm a girl, and I think a story is better with a good dose of love.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming... 

[rdavidking]

Hello everyone! Do you like Space Opera / Science Fiction Adventure with Nanotechnology thrown into the mix? If you answered "Yes!", please suppoft a self-published author and take a chance on my new novel Nanomech. It is an awesome read for .99 cents. I'm not going to make it out there without your help!
 
Nanomech http://bit.ly/jaLtrh by R. David King

Left behind by his childhood friend, Aiben ekes out his existence as a cybermancer acolyte and part-time starship mechanic on a backwater world. He leads an uncertain life, until one day, the Zenzani Protectorate invades his home and destroys everything he has ever known. Aiben soon learns that the molecule-sized machines, which augment his body and mind, have a centuries-old plan for him involving nanotechnology, genetic manipulation, and hyperspatial thought. Now, along with his companions, an old soldier and a sentient mechanoid, he takes his journey to a world of fabricated prophecies. There he navigates the treacheries of war and espionage to find an ancient weapon and a long-forgotten people that will bring his past crashing into his future and seal his destiny forever.
 
visit me and read an excerpt at http://rdavidking.com/nanomech.aspx

 

[navythriller]

My first novel (still unpublished) was science fiction.  (Actually, sort of a cyberpunk detective story.)  I've concentrated on military thrillers for the past few years, but I still think of myself as a sci-fi writer.

Jeff

[cfmillhouse]

Hello R. David,
Your book sounds amazing and the cover looks really nice too.  Think you may have made a sale. I'll post a review after I give it a read.

[Stefanswit]

Hello Charles,

I am pretty new to the boards myself, and am still fumbling my way around. I have written a couple of books over the past two years. They should be listed below. My readers are at odds deciding on the actual genre. I've heard; futuristic suspense, mystery thriller, not quite sci-fi, adventure thriller, and a few others. The jury is still out. Please check out the descriptions, and let me know. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Like the look of your scribblings.

[cfmillhouse]

Stefanswit,
Looking at your books at first glance I would have to say your books look like action/adventure.  But whatever you call it, I wish you all the best in your future books.  Once I have read some books I just bought I might give yours a look.
Thanks for posting.

[K. R. Whitaker]

     Hi Charles, and hello to all of you that have posted to the thread.  There's some interesting information added here that I'm going to look into.  Thanks for that!  Being an avid car nut, I'm also intrigued by the offerings by J.R.Mooneyham.  I'll definitely have to check those out when I stop writing long enough to read for enjoyment.

     Time Patriot is a science fiction story about a brilliant scientist working in Area 51 reverse engineering crashed alien spacecraft.  The story weaves a lot of surprising things together.  Just when you think you've got it figured out, you'll learn that nothing was as it seemed.
 
     Stone Warrior is my latest in the sci fi genre.  It's a new twist on an old theme, the underdog that turns into a superhero quite by accident.  I really enjoyed writing the first installment, and I plan on having a lot of fun with the series in the future.

Thanks for starting this thread Charles!

K. R. Whitaker

     

       

[rdavidking]

Charles, thanks for giving my book a chance. I hope you enjoy it. I'm glad you like the cover, I did it myself in old 3D graphics program I had. I'm still amazed since I don't consider myself an artist. I have other views that maybe I'll post on http://rdavidking.com one day.

[stubbyp]

I have done quite a bit of Science Fiction writing, mostly short stories and screenplays. One of my SciFi short stories is in my collection of shorts available on Kindle.


Dreaded Friday and Other Tales: A Collection of Short Stories