It’s that time of year where authors flock to the internet to blatantly proclaim all that is mighty and good of their works from the previous year. Some people consider this a tad unsavory, while others have pointed out that if the author cannot stand proudly for his/her own stuff, then who can?
Speaking as someone who is published by small presses, I tend to err on the side of pragmatism: the odds are good that most people haven’t seen my work and anything that helps them to encounter my fiction is a “good thing.”
And that includes an annual bit of blog-inspired self-promotion, so let’s get to it.
For your reading pleasure and award consideration, I present my novella, Calendrical Regression, published by the fine folks at NobleFusion Press as a slender trade paperback, but also available from their site as a free ebook (both ePub and mobi formats).
This is the third novella in the past three years that I’ve written in the Amazing Conroy series of tales. It came out late in the year (November 6th, 2014) and from an even tinier small press than ever before, which basically means despite the thing being an utter delight (hey, would I lie?), most people simply haven’t seen it.
So let me tell you a bit about it.
Calendrical Regression features Conroy, my stage-hypnotist-turned-wealthy-CEO protagonist as he attempts to slip away for a little downtime performing for conventioneers in the midwest. Some well-meaning aliens show up, intent on luring him down to Mexico with the promise of gourmet cuisine. They want him to hypnotically regress the descendant of a Mayan priest, with the intention of unraveling the mystery behind the ancient calendar that apparently predicted Earth’s contact with the rest of the galaxy when its grand tun ended in December of 2012. I could tell you more, but, spoilers! Suffice to say that complications ensue, some amusing and some dire, and the whole wraps up at under 20K words.
This is probably a good place for a bit of the ol’ “full disclosure.”
I mentioned above that this is my third Conroy novella in as many years. I should add that the previous two efforts both landed on their respective Nebula Award ballots. I’m not sure if that’s happened before, consecutive novella nominations from the same universe, but I feel confident that if SFWA members decide to put me on the ballot again this year, the resulting “hat trick” will be something of a record. And that’s kind of cool.
But that can’t happen if people don’t read it, which, again, is why we have posts like this one. I encourage you to follow the link, download a free copy of the ebook, and give it a read.
If you’re a SFWA member and you’d prefer a different format, this URL (http://j.mp/SFWA2014Schoen) will take you to my page in the SFWA 2014 Fiction archive where “Calendrical Regression” is available as a downoad in not just ePub and mobi, but in PDF and DOC formats as well.
This novella is released under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
Follow the link if you’re not sure what that means.
Tags: Awards, Conroyverse, ebooks
Lawrence, unfortunately the links on the NobleFusion page don’t work. I’d like to review your work if I can get to it.
03.18.15 at 11:13 pm
David, this is a puzzlement to me, and one I’ve heard before. Some people can download without a problem, others report it as impossible.
Let me know if you’d prefer an ePub or mobi file and I’ll simply send it your way.
03.19.15 at 6:22 am