“Investments” Has Arrived!

I’ve spent the last three days in a place so remote and blissful that there was neither Internet nor telephone.  Interesting things happened there, and I’ll tell you about it if the photos turn out.

Hours before I left, I managed to upload my short novel “Investments,” set in the Praxis universe.  And now I see that the ebook has gone live via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Here’s the cover.

Looks kinda like a novel from Baen, circa 1995.  At least it screams “space opera!”  The picture’s got space, it’s got tech-things, it’s got a penis-thing, and it’s even got a vagina-thing!   Most science fiction covers don’t have vagina-things, so I think I’m ahead!

You know, I spend an awful lot of time on these covers.  I try out one elements after another.  I work hard at balancing the colors so that the text is readable at all sizes, not too boring, and not to garish.

And then I save the Photoshop file in another format, and all the colors become slightly different.  And they also look different depending on which browser I look at them with.  And then the picture looks even more different depending on which website I upload the image to.

So it usually ends up looking nothing like what I intended.  I think I’m just going to have to get used to this.

“Investments” came about a decade or so ago when I was asked to contribute to an anthology of space stories edited by Robert Silverberg.  The anthology, Between Worlds, would appear exclusively from the Science Fiction Book Club.  SFBC had come up with a generous advance for us all, and I was very pleased.

I’d either just finished the three Dread Empire books for Harper, or was on the verge of finishing, so I was very pleased to set the story in the Dread Empire universe by way of bringing some attention to the books.

“Investments” is set three years after the conclusion of Conventions of War, which became problematical when it appeared a year before Conventions of War was released.

Sorta gives the ending away.  You are warned.

As I recall, Silverberg wanted me to write a longish novelette or a short novella.  But being me, I wrote a short novel instead.  I really have no idea how long my ideas are going to turn out.

This is the most hard-sciency thing I’ve ever written.  I had physicists doing the math to make sure it would all work as planned.

“Well,” one of them said dubiously, “you’re going to need enough antimatter to fill an aircraft carrier.”

“Hah!” I said triumphantly.  “And I know just where to get it!”

In addition the story includes the first meeting of Martinez, the unconventional thinker, with Severin, the completely-Gonzo-not-just-outside-the-box-but-outside-the-universe thinker.  Who makes a stab at saving the world, but who is really much more interested in his puppet theater.

(Sula does not appear in the story.  Sorry.  I was going to write a companion story featuring her adventures while exiled on Earth, but things happened, and the story didn’t.  Still may write it one of these days.)

“Investments” also gives you a idea of what the Shaa Empire looks like after the Naxid War.  The single most crucial change to the social structure of the empire— which I snuck into The Sundering at the top of Page 254 of the American mass market edition— resulted in a somewhat more swashbuckling economic milieu than had existed in the empire’s first twelve millennia.

(Why did I sneak this into the book instead of proclaiming it?  First, I always like to know which of my readers is actually paying attention.  But second, that change really didn’t have anything to do with the action of the series’ first trilogy.  Instead it’s crucial to setting up the second trilogy, assuming of course that I ever write it.)

As for the writing, I knocked myself out to deliver “Investments” by the deadline, and sent it about four minutes to midnight on the day it was due.  Unfortunately the strain showed.  There was some truly inept writing that found its way into the final manuscript, including a couple sentences that just stopped halfway through.  I knew there were problems, but I thought, “What the hell, I’ll fix it in galleys.”

Except I never saw galleys.  Next thing I knew the book was in print, and there it was on my doorstep.  “I’ve given birth to an ugly baby!” I wailed.

I guess the copy editor just took her best guess as to what was supposed to be there.

Turned out that my haste in writing was unnecessary.  One of the other writers— I will not mention names— was months late.  So I could have saved myself the embarrassment of seeing my monster baby in print.

But anyway, the baby is no longer monstrous.  I’ve gone over my little novel with a fine-tooth copy-editing comb, and it’s all nice and pretty, with toenail polish and hair ribbons and everything.

This is the Author’s Preferred Edition.

And what with the first book in the series being on sale, it’s clearly your best chance to enjoy the entire series!

(Next ebook in the chute: City on Fire)