Our forthcoming novel, Badger’s Waddle, began as a short story called Lettuce. That story became the first chapter of the novel and you can read it on our website now by following this link.
Badger’s Waddle will be launched at FantasyCon in September 2012, worldwide in eBook editions and in the US and UK as a paperback.
Would you like to be in one of our books? If you join the beta reader team and are selected for a book then you get a chance to read and comment on an edited but not yet released book (you can read a paperback or eBook edition — your choice). We’re looking for anything that stood out as wrong for you, especially typos and unfamiliar idiom.
As a thank you, we will send you a copy of the paperback when published, with your name in the list of acknowledgements for beta reader team members.
We’ve had a great deal of valuable comments for our first book in this program, The Last Sunset. Most of the beta reader team members say they enjoyed themselves, certainly no one said they didn’t.
The next book in the program will be Badger’s Waddle, and I’ll be choosing team members at random in around a week’s time. Please leave a comment if you’re interested (no need if you’ve already said you were interested in the program). Sorry, but US, UK, and Canada only please, unless you’re happy to receive an eBook of the published version.
We publish a range of books and I’m sure it will be more fun to do this with books that you would enjoy reading anyway, otherwise reading could become an onerous task and that should never be. So to help, here are some notes on Badger’s Waddle.
Synopsis: Life in the quaint English hampton of Badger’s Waddle is never quite the same as elsewhere in the country… or any other country for that matter. The first sign of impending chaos was when giant rabbits breached the defenses all along the indeterminate length of the vegetable garden of Little Twee cottage. To patch up the defenses took the combined efforts of the resident gastrognome and a Crippin & Hare Indifference Engine operated by Tavarius Truckle, the man with the highest ever score in an apathitude test. But when tourists start exploding at the village fete, bank deposits build up a critical pressure, and the church’s resident saint finds a loophole in his contract of supra-ecclesiastical employment, the whole hampton must unite to restore some semblance of normality (except for Tavarius Truckle, who’s far too apathetic to care). Only Goode Nurture, the nice old lady in the tall, pointy black hat, has been preparing for this moment, shaving her gibbons in readiness for the looming crisis.
You can read the first chapter of Badger’s Waddle on our website here
Style/ Genre: It’s fantasy with deliberate smatterings of science fiction and even a little gothic in places. The little village of Badger’s Waddle is a haven of old-fashioned English politeness and traditional values (hot, sweet tea, stiff upper lips, choir practice in the medieval parish church), but look again its inhabitants are grotesques and pastimes surreal. There is a dark and subtle humor running throughout, and although the language and descriptions are never crude, some will find the goings-on in the village to be “gross-out” humor.
Language: British English, in keeping with the setting.
Length: 55,000 words — short novel
Similar authors/ works: Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Ghormanghast, PG Wodehouse
Here’s a copy of the original beta team invite…
Today, we kick off our Beta Reader Program. Get free paperback editions of our books as soon as they’re published… and see your name in the acknowledgements.
Here’s how it works.
You can register your interest in the Beta Reader Program from today.
The first book we will put through this program will be The Last Sunset by Bob Atkinson.
How do I register? add a comment to this post or to the page on our website for the book you’re interested in.
How do I qualify? we’re currently limiting membership of each team to eight people. If there’s more interest than that we will select membership at random.
Do I have to review the book? The answer is no. Of course, we’re always very grateful for positive reviews on sites such as amazon.com as it helps us and helps our authors. But that’s entirely up to you. This program is about being the final gate of quality control.
What am I looking for? Anything that sounds or feels wrong to you. Typos, grammatical mistakes, bizarre idiom, inconsistencies. Regional variations of English is of particular interest. Our authors come from a variety of countries, and some books will be written in a regional version of English that is not yours. We’re proud to be an international organisation but we do try to be aware of idioms or word choices that don’t travel well, and avoid them.
How long do I have to review the book? Watch for announcements about each book. There will be a minimum of 4 weeks between sending out beta review copies and publishing the book.
Can I also review the book and qualify for Read… Review… Repeat! Absolutely, yes.
What if I don’t like the book, and don’t finish it? We’re sorry. Obviously we can’t guarantee you will enjoy the book. If you had a go and gave up then we will still list you in the acknowledgements but won’t send you the finished book.
What if I don’t like the book, but did finish it and did send a list of issues? Thanks for persevering. We will send you the book you tested, if you like, but we understand you might not want that. So, as an alternative, we will send you another book (existing or forthcoming) of your choice.
Just checking… when you said the program applies to Europe, does that include the UK? Yes it does. Anywhere in the EU. Although I do understand that many British people like to think of Europe as someplace foreign and far-off.
… is my favourite line from space opera horror book, Terminus.
Here’s the rest of the extract…
Almost compassionately the Thanaton extended his fingers so that the tips were touching the human. When they made contact, every nerve in Terminus’s body screamed in pain.
‘Kneel!’ the Thanaton commanded. Terminus did as he was told and the pain stopped.
‘I knew you would return. You are the boy from the new colony’s station. Once we touch a soul, it is ours. Destiny serves us and brings our harvest back to us.’
‘You remember me? From all those years ago?’
‘As if seconds have passed. But you are too late. Your place has been taken. Anwar has given his flesh for us.’ He nodded to the politico.
Terminus was nearly gagging at what he was hearing. ‘You were gonna do that to me? You were gonna cut me open if I’d come with you all those years ago?’
‘You would have begged us to. You would have been prepared, tutored. The darklight would have come to you and you would have torn off your own skin to serve us. Too late now. Your precious flesh has been contaminated by a woman’s fetid touch. But you can still have the honor of spiritual defilement by one of the very Thirteen. Stand and follow me, Terminus.’
His head began to swim, just as it did all those years ago. Choices sapped away until his legs brought him to a halt. But he needed to take action. Terminus used all his mental strength to break this spell. He turned and fired, the bolt taking the Lung-man’s head apart. Soft reddish goo exploded into the air as the body fell. In a sudden rush of inspiration he aimed the fire-blaster at the anatomically compromised politico.
‘You ganntas move aside or your experiment gets it.’ He shifted the sights more precisely to the politico and his mass of organs. Terminus knew this thing was mortal, was flesh, and could be destroyed.
The Arachnid stood firm. ‘You have to understand your destiny. We had great work for you. You weren’t the first of your kind we encountered but your destiny-line was so rich. You had to be harvested.’ The member of the Thirteen took a step closer. ‘We are older than your adopted world, older than your homeworld, Terminus. We are all-seeing.’
Click here for more information on Terminus, including the author’s introductions to space-monsters and space-swearing. Click here to enter the Goodreads competition to win a paperback copy.
The second book of the Skyfire Chronicles, Unauthorized Contact, will be launched at Fantasycon 2012
We’re launching the latest novel from Nigel Edwards at FantasyCon in September. Here’s a little more about it…
Life in the quaint English hampton of Badger’s Waddle is never quite the same as elsewhere in the country… or any other country for that matter.
The first sign of impending chaos was when giant rabbits breached the defenses all along the indeterminate length of the vegetable garden of Little Twee cottage.
To patch up the defenses took the combined efforts of the resident gastrognome and a Crippin & Hare Indifference Engine operated by Tavarius Truckle, the man with the highest ever score in an apathitude test. But when tourists start exploding at the village fete, bank deposits build up a critical pressure, and the church’s resident saint finds a loophole in his contract of supra-ecclesiastical employment, the whole hampton must unite to restore some semblance of normality (except for Tavarius Truckle, who’s far too apathetic to care). Only Goode Nurture, the nice old lady in the tall, pointy black hat, has been preparing for this moment, shaving her gibbons in readiness for the looming crisis.
A short novel — 55,000
Artwork by Dean Harkness
To be published in paperback (US & UK), Kindle and ePUB editions
To coincide with our Goodreads giveaway of Terminus, we’re featuring extracts from the novel this week.
The author, Paul Melhuish, is busy finishing off a collection of tales featuring the character Terminus, but also some other views of the universe in which the novel is set. The novels and short stories are collectively the Skyfire Chronicles, Skyfire being the name of Terminus’s adopted planet, for reasons that will become clear if you read the book. We’d better get crackling (as the Big Friendly Giant might say) because we’re launching this book at the FantasyCon 2012 convention, along with a new novel, Badger’s Waddle by Nigel Edwards.
Here’s today helping of Terminus…
The bar curved across the interior of the club like a half-moon. Terminus headed straight for it, passing through the invisible sound field that dulled the music around the bar area. Above, shifting images patterned the domed ceiling and holo-images sprang from the walls. He perched himself on a stool, ordered a large glass of syntol and began the long slide into alcoholic oblivion. Before him, the teleport delivered the drink with a pay advice hologram. He laughed to himself. If you didn’t pay, the phys-tech locators would put a trace on you and you’d be followed home by two large clones. Terminus had no phys-tech; he could drink this place dry if he wanted and not pay a thing. Not that he was ever going to get home. He’d be picked up and dispatched long before the night was out.
As he drank he felt a presence slide into the seat next to him. He didn’t look directly at her (that could get you a shunt in the mouth in this place) but looked out from the corner of his visual field.
‘Of course, back in England we had dance halls. Now they’re gone forever.’
His brain unscrambled the language. Was she talking to him? He was sure that it was old Earther. Instinctively, he turned to face her.
‘This reminds me of an old Northern Hemisphere city. Quaint, really. Ignorant cattle classes drinking away their sorrows, subconsciously steeling themselves for the final apocalypse. Same behavior patterns here, exactly like Earth.’
He identified her and exclaimed: ‘Oh, digest!’
‘Indeed, Mister Terminus. I’ve come for you.’
Her hair had been cropped short in the Skyfirean fashion which accentuated her cheek bones and her red lips. She wore a catsuit, bright scarlet of course, but also very Skyfirean. The suit’s latex effect creaked as she moved like some feline predator. He could run but what would be the point? She’d catch him.
… answer: our very own Nigel Edwards.
I’m proud that readers from continental Europe are buying (and hopefully enjoying) our English language eBooks. I don’t often check our sales figures, though, as the volumes are so low. But the low volumes can throw up unexpected and amusing results. Right now, for example, in the German short story charts, our book, Waif, is at number 6, behind Nick Hornby and Mark Twain, but above Maeve Binchy, Anais Nin and Stephen King.
Waif isn’t the only book of ours to chart on the continent, but it is the most consistent. Perhaps the title and artwork cross national boundaries well?
Even within English-speaking countries, Waif isn’t consistent. Looking at the Amazon customer reviews, it seems more popular in America than the UK, despite being written by a Brit (though certainly not an Englishman — Nigel’s Welsh).
Looking further afield than our own books, I find 50 Shades of Grey interesting. If you don’t know it, this is a book that’s come from nowhere to be wildly successful — especially as a Kindle book — on both sides of the Atlantic. If you haven’t come across it, it’s often referred to in the press as ‘mummy porn’ — and, no, I suggest you don’t put that term into Google to see what that means. Across continental Europe, it’s been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, and French, and sold in the native Kindle Stores. It’s a big yawn with no reaction from anywhere except for Spain, where for some reason it’s the bestselling Kindle book of all. Perhaps it’s an antidote to the rioting and bank crises? If so, then it’s not exactly getting a ringing endorsement from readers; just look at the reviews on Amazon…
Our space opera horror novel, Terminus, has recently come out in paperback, and we’ll be showcasing it all week, and to coincide, we’re giving away a copy of the paperback on Goodreads (click here for details).
Notice I described the novel as ‘space opera horror’? I kind of made that term up because once you settle in to the book, you realize it’s actually quite unusual. Yes, it features space vampires who will suck out your blood, grungy spacecraft (like the one on the cover; artist Andy Bigwood painted it from the ship’s description in the book), decadent pleasure planets, and shooting things with fire-blasters. But then it surprises you with metaphysical warfare, romance, and a drunken space-bum who might even become a hero, despite his best intentions.
So to give you a feel for Terminus, I’ll be posting several passages, starting right now…
‘World at three hundred pulses under the void-ward side, Coordinator.’
‘Dich,’ snapped Terminus. ‘You’re the only one on this heap that still calls me Coordinator. You don’t get promotion by calling me Coordinator. Save it for the politicos. And don’t say ‘void-ward’ say ‘left’. Now, let’s see it.’
The crew were edgy. Although they could now laugh about the Babel experience, knowing they were going to a world populated by genuine aliens had put them on edge. A look at the nearest planet might offer a distraction. He ordered Tulk to phase the ship out of pulse so they could refuel the engines. Besides, he fancied a beaky look.
Deep space cargo shells, such as the 850, were powered by pulse drives. Billions of miniscule pulse pathfinders would burrow through the quantum foam until one of them discovered a wormhole that led somewhere a tiny distance closer to their destination. The ship teleported to that new location. The jump might only be measured in millimeters but the clever thing about pulse drives was they worked drenting quickly. The ship would teleport again and again. Trillions of times every second, only completing each pulse when the engines needed to rest, reorganize, and take a quick slurp from the fuel tank.
The pulse drives didn’t need chemicals or antimatter for fuel. Not much, anyway. What they needed was the richness of divergent possibilities, the places where the universe splintered and spawned into multiple variants. That divergence was what the drives required to enrich the quantum foam that filled the universe. Star systems were rich refueling points; inhabited planets were the richest fuel source of all because people were the best thing for stirring up that quantum foam. And so, like chronic voyeurs, deep space ganntas regularly lurked near planets as their pulse drives refueled.
The second and concluding volume of The Reality War is out today for Kindle. Put the two volumes together and you get 205,000 words of time travel adventure with a subtle theme running in the background that borrows from John Bunyan and his Pilgrim’s Progress.
If you like the kind of books Stephen Baxter writes — stories with some big behind them — then you’ll enjoy The Reality War. And if you live in North Bedfordshire, here’s your chance to read novels set in Elstow, Wilstead, and Bedford, though you won’t recognise the alternate version of Bedfordshire (EuroArea-34)
Later this year we’ll be publishing a supernatural thriller novel called The Clearing.
Here’s the artwork for the front page, courtesy of Karri Klawiter. Hope you like it.
The Legends of Light“… very refreshing, a completely different style and format.”— SF Book Reviews
“The poems all told a story, they were not abstract or vivid descriptions of nature…” — Larissa at Howling Turtle
“Adults and young adults will treasure this book.”
“.. .very much in Tolkien’s class.”
“… a cross between Beowulf and Lord of the Rings.”
A high fantasy saga in six poems. For adults and young adults. Crafted to be enjoyed by readers who do not normally read poetry, but do enjoy fantasies such as Eragon, The Lord of the Rings, and the sagas of Norse legend.
Each poem builds upon the last to weave a tapestry of magic, dark creatures, and romance.
This is a novella-length book. The stories are told over 91 pages.
Good luck!
Alternative history romance in the Scottish Highlands
Illustrated high fantasy adventure.
Literary historical mystery
Bestselling espionage thriller
High fantasy romance. Out now!
Dystopian literary science fiction. Out now!
Philosophical science fiction collection
A short novel in the style of Terry Pratchett, Tom Holt, and Douglas Adams
A novella of horror and good medicine.
18 double-espresso shots of verse.
A compendium of fantastic tales for young human adults. Out now!
There is no escape from... the DEATH FLU.
Out now!
In paperback and eBook
#1 bestselling time travel adventure in Scottish Highlands,1746 Out now in paperback and eBook
Speculative fiction collection. Paperback and eBook
SF-horror collection, a part of the Skyfire Chronicles. Available as eBook and paperback
Edgy horror novel ($2.99/ £2.06)
SF/horror novel. Paperback & eBook
YA High Fantasy eBook $2.99/ £1.71 Paperback $4.99/ £3.99
YA short fantasy. Click the image to read it here for free
A double-sestina poem. FREE!
Fantasy novelette 99c / 99p eBook. $4.99 paperback
SciFi time travel novels. Kindle: 99c/ 77p Paperback $9.99 / £7.99 Book2 out now!
SciFi novelette (FREE!)
SF short ($0.99/ 99p/ FREE)
Mayan poetry saga 99c / 99p
Urban fantasy novelette 99c / 77p
Sci-Fi novella
A ghostly novelette eBook 99c/ 99p Paperback $4.99/ £3.75
Horror short ($0.99/ 99p)
Dark fantasy short story ($0.99/ 99p)
Dark suspense novelette ($0.99/ 99p)
Horror short (99c /99p/ FREE)
fantasy novelette (FREE or $0.99/ 99p)
SciFi short ($0.99/ 99p)
SciFi horror short story ($0.99/ 99p)
YA SciFi Short (99c/ 99p/ PRIME)
SF short story ($0.99/ 99p)
Greyhart Press 