Worldfarm One and the End of the American Century

When I originally wrote Worldfarm One—the story of a man from the United States who travels to Brazil to work, and learns the hard way how hard immigration can be—I expected there to be comments about the characters, about the sexuality and sex-role-reversals, the casting-couch business practices, the feed-the-world model, the prejudice, even my descriptions of Manaus and the surrounding Amazonian regions in the book.

I was surprised, therefore, to discover the greatest number of comments generated by the book were about the idea that the United States would, in the future, lose its status of “greatest nation of the world,” and because of economic hardships, American citizens would be forced to immigrate to other countries with greater opportunities to make a living.

Review of Star Trek: The Immortal Coil

I’m well past the time when I would gladly devour Star Trek novels; in fact, I left that era before The Next Generation and subsequent Trek sequels ever came along.  Still, there’s a draw to Trek novels… the well-detailed history of Trek lore gives the reader a background universe that, at times, seems richer than real life.

It was with this inherent background, and the promise of the book, that I picked up Star Trek: Immortal Coil.  The book promises to answer a question that has nagged the Trek universe for decades: Star Trek: The Original Series seemed to run into androids and artificial intelligences every few weeks; when the Next Generation came along, it seemed Commander Data (and later, his brother and “mother”) seemed to be the only ones anyone knew about or had ever heard of; so what the heck happened to the universe of androids?

Read an E-Book Week 2012: Same great content, easier to find freebies

Once again I’ve thrown in my hat with Rita Toews, designing and producing a new website for Read an E-Book Week 2012.  (And why not?  Web design is my day job.)  We both felt it deserved the new look, what with the Canadian Parliament passing a motion this year establishing the month of March as Read an E-Book Month and all!  (Want details?  You know where to go.)

I had no qualms about putting my own projects on hold to do this.  Rita’s efforts to promote Read an E-Book Week every year have been exemplary, and I think we all agree that promoting reading in general, and ebooks in particular, is a noble and valuable cause.  Also, while Rita may be a great promoter, she’s not an HTML expert, and her website skills are not quite up to major site design. 

4-Star Review of Verdant Pioneers

The following is a review of Verdant Pioneers from Sift Book Reviews:

Verdant Pioneers was a real page turner for me. I haven’t read a ton of space operas, but I have to imagine this story is one of the better ones. Take a look at the description.

The city-satellite Verdant has spent a year out in deep space, moving from system to system in search of the raw materials it needs to survive, fighting off terrorist factions that seek to force their return to Earth influence, and unsure of Earth’s state. No one on Earth knows Verdant’s status, either, and both sides are afraid of aggression from the other.

And when the deep-space discovery of the age is spoiled by the unexpected disappearance of one of their freighters, Julian Lenz and his staff must make a difficult decision: To take Verdant into hiding, perhaps forever; or to return to Earth, and risk Verdant’s survival. 

Matching metaphors: Ebooks and cable television

A recent thesis by Stefan Larsson, entitled “Metaphors and Norms – Understanding Copyright Law in a Digital Society,” received a lot of attention for examining the metaphors being used to quantify digital products like ebooks, MP3 files, etc. The thesis asserts that the many problems holding the ebook industry from a stable, sustainable state have been the result of applying the wrong metaphors to ebooks, for instance, comparing it to physical goods like printed books, to limited data like an email, or public presentations like a website.

In the arena of ebooks, that discussion has predictably covered a lot of apropos and inapropos territory, effectively providing plenty of evidence in Larsson’s assertion; but thanks to his well-informed attack of the problem of recognizing digital products, quite a bit of the discussion about and following the thesis has been exceedingly intelligent and well-considered.

Read an E-book Week is now a MONTH! (in Canada)

Sent to me by Rita Toews, founder of Read an E-book Week—she has lobbied the Canadian government, with fantastic results:

Great news! By virtue of an Order by the 41st Parliament of Canada, First Session, Motion M-293 was passed declaring the month of March Read an E-Book Month!

How biking can save us

Oh, look… another infographic! One of these days, I have to make one of these myself… but for now, you can enjoy this one about the power of bicycles to transform our world.

I can attest to some of the data below… for instance, weight loss.  I lost about 15 pounds in a year of riding just 2 miles from home to the local MARC station, then another 1.5 miles from Union Station to my office.  I admit I do little biking to shop, but I tend to combine trips, and if the store I want to hit is between the station and home, I stop along the way.

Excerpt of The Kestral Voyages: My Life, After Berserker

Enjoy this excerpt from The Kestral Voyages: My Life, After Berserker, available on my site and other ebook outlets.

The excerpt begins with a defining moment for Carolyn Kestral, commander in the Galarchy Rangers, and how it sets her on the next stage of her life, that of a freighter captain.  The excerpt also introduces some of the people that will work for her on the freighter Mary.

SLJ books are great for the “Gift of E”

This year, the “Gift of E,” that is, giving ebooks to those you love for the holidays, is very popular.  Unfortunately, some ebook-sellers make you jump through a few hoops to gift those ebooks to others.

At RightBrane, we make it easy.  You can buy any of the books from the RightBrane site with no DRM or device controls that make it hard to move files about.  Once you buy, simply send your ebook as a gift email, or put it on a thumb drive or memory card.  That’s it!  No device-swapping, gift cards or multiple accounts required.  Giving ebooks can’t be easier than that!

So this year, try introducing someone you know to the books of Steven Lyle Jordan.  They’ll appreciate the new book… and I’ll appreciate a potential new customer!

Happy holidays, and happy reading!

Time to concentrate on selling

We are almost at the end of 2011; a year that has seen many new ebook reading devices, new services by ebook sellers, more schools and libraries opening up the possibilities of ebooks, and a lot of activity in general in the ebook world.

This was also my worst sales year ever.  Even with my two most highly-acclaimed books becoming available this year and last.  It seems I haven’t been able to work out a way to encourage sales of my ebooks, nor have I been able to find affordable advertising outlets.  I haven’t made enough in the last year to take my wife out for a single decent dinner.