New Star on the Horizon

My novelette “Video Star” is now available at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Amazon, and Baen.  Smashwords has probably already distributed it to iBooks and various other sites.

It’s a mere $0.99!  Which is practically nothing these days!  You can get this story for practically nothing!

“Video Star” is set in the same world as Voice of the Whirlwind— in fact, it used to be in the same book.  “Video Star” was originally a subplot in VotW, but it grew too long, and I replaced it with the chapter where Steward visits Los Angeles and ends up running for his life.  Ever thrifty, I retained the piece I’d cut, changed the names of the principals, left the Flagstaff setting alone, and sold the result to  Asimov’s.  Ric wakes up in the same hospital as Steward, and he ends up with a somewhat less acute version of Steward’s girlfriend.

The story also manages to predict this.  (Though in the story, it’s a nightclub.)

If “Video Star” had remained a part of VotW, it would have made for a much darker book.  Steward would have been far less a victim, far more the complete manipulative bastard.

So I’m kind of glad the novelette calved off from the novel, because now there’s two whole pieces of awesome instead of one.

Enjoy!