March Backlist Bonanza: 'Icarus in Flight' and 'The Cecilian Blue-Collar Chronicles'

New month, new backlist sale. This time it's on the following books:

ICARUS IN FLIGHT

James Ellsworth is a bit jaded, especially for his young age. He hates school and longs for his parents' estate, where life is far more pleasant. Meeting new schoolmate Daniel Courtney is a much-needed distraction, one that will prove more and more engrossing as James and Daniel grow older.

When his father dies, James is thrust into a position of responsibility, not just to his estate, but to his mother and sister as well. He leans as much as he can on his friendship with Daniel, but young Courtney has his own problems. His brother, George, is all Daniel has left in the world, and when he loses his brother to a freak accident, Daniel is left alone and without prospects.

All the while, the two young men are discovering a relationship that their Victorian world will never approve of. Trying to deal with their loss and their love for each other drives them apart -- James to a life of debauchery, Daniel to a life of study and work.

As they grow older, James and Daniel discover that life is not what they thought it would be when they were schoolboys together, and that, even as they try to make their own way, they will always come back to one another.

and 

THE CECILIAN BLUE-COLLAR CHRONICLES

In the year 8016 on the newly colonized planet Cecilia, space-age technology, hapless Earthling colonists, and a magical realm no one knew existed, will come together in a collision course when two young men from different worlds cross paths and fall in love. Sheridan Diggins, an astro-cab driver barely scraping a living, finds himself thrown into the deep end of a magical pool when Yuli Soulweaver, the prince of the dead, decides to come to the surface and woo him.

Of course, as it usually happens, nothing goes as planned, and murderous entities from Yuli's world come after Sheridan to stop him once and for all. In the distant planet Cecilia, there are no grand space operas. No thrilling space adventures. No exciting scientific explorations of unknown quadrants. Only a young Earthling suddenly embroiled in high stakes drama when science and magic come together in the most hilarious ways possible.

Contains the novellas Sheridan Diggins and the Dead Horde, The Golem Upstairs, The Romeo and Julian Effect, and Monsters, Science, and Fanatics.

Both of these books are firsts for me. Icarus in Flight was my first attempt at a purely historical romance. What I mean is it's realistic historical romance with not a whiff of speculative elements anywhere. Lots of research went into this book, and it's also the one gay YA book in my backlist that has mature themes.

The Cecilian Blue-Collar Chronicles was my first ever attempt at writing a purely sci-fi collection of novellas (this current volume is an omnibus)... and I utterly FAILED. Because I couldn't work with the plot without weaving more fantasy bits into it.

As with previous months, I'll be posting more background stuff for each of these books in the coming days. Both are marked down by 50% with Icarus in Flight at $1.49 and The Cecilian Blue-Collar Chronicles at $2.49 through the month.

Now Available: 'The Perfect Rochester'

It's finally out! Narcisse's adventures in mortal-immortal coexistence and all the annoying drama that comes with the territory is available. Seriously, it felt like a dog's age, waiting for this day to come since I resisted the temptation to release the book a month or even two months earlier. But discipline is golden, and I'm doing my best to stick to my plans, whether or not the lure of calendar adjustments is good. 

At any rate...

This book takes place concurrently with Nightshade's Emporium, and while it's not necessary, it does help to have read that book in order to get some of the references made to Viktor's own personal drama as the god of death. 

And here's the blurb for The Perfect Rochester:

Being a primordial god has its perks unless one considers maturation, and centuries spent largely isolated from humanity begin to bear awkward fruit. Narcisse Nightshade, primordial god of sleep, is about to discover just how clumsy his coming-of-age at twenty immortal years can be. Prone to collapsing in defensive sleep and finding comfort in his specifically woven dreamscapes, he's used to enjoying his solitude his own way whenever the ills of the mortal world threaten his waking hours.

Until one night a stranger suddenly appears in his dream—a windswept, raging, Victorian dreamboat who instantly catapults Narcisse into a highly irregular adventure playing detective. How on earth did this invader manage to enter a private dream? What did he want from the god of sleep?

Narcisse fumbles through his own coming-of-age with the help of immortal messengers, a soulless older sister bent on exacting bloody justice, a hovering mother widely feared by their feuding kin, and Chaos itself. What he discovers about this elusive mortal opens the floodgates to his own inner world and his heart, and perhaps—perhaps—the god of sleep is a great deal more human where it counts the most.

Taking place concurrently as the events in Nightshade's Emporium, The Perfect Rochester is a romantic comedy about dreams, elusive and otherwise.

The book has its own Book Gallery page over yonder, and you're more than welcome to dig in there and read up on a few behind-the-scenes tidbits (plus extra music videos). The Perfect Rochester is available in e-book format for 99 cents and print for $9.00. 

Hurry Up and Leave, February

Nope, this month dragged like a mofo, and just about every day has been a waist-deep slog through Satan's cesspit. This week (and the month) is ending on a higher than usual note, and I'll take it. Jesus. With any luck -- Mercury retrograde aside* -- March will be a full purging of this month's nasty juju. 

So we axed Netflix a few months sooner than planned. We're just not checking out the site anymore for entertainment, and I'm really less inclined to follow any kind of series nowadays and would rather settle in for one-shots. The only series I'm honestly watching are re-watches, i.e., favorite series I've seen before and have become comfort viewing. Like, for instance, the Granada production of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett. I mentioned I'm on a Poirot kick and am checking out episodes and reacquainting myself with them. I'd lose myself in Cadfael all over again as well as Inspector Morse, but they're hard to come by.

On the whole, though, my primary source of entertainment is books. I've posted about Amazon Kindle and the changes in their policy of ownership previously. My epub reader is now packed -- PACKED -- with my library from not just Amazon, but Smashwords and Kobo as well. Since I re-downloaded the app and re-uploaded my library, every book is currently marked "unread", which is sending me over the moon. 

Because it means I'll be rereading my choice books (I went through my collection and removed the ones I remember not being thrilled with from my app) and rediscovering them.** Yeah, baby.

I also have a Hoopla app downloaded, and that's an alternative to my preferred fare of genre fiction. I don't use it as often since not all books I want to read are available there, but it does give me access to authors with massive backlists. 

One more thing I did for myself to preserve my peace of mind is to delete my Disqus account as access to it encouraged me to dive right back in political sites for socializing and commentary, and that's the last thing I need (or even want). I've come to terms already with distancing myself from my favorite sites like Joe My God, but mental health is paramount, and the less negative distraction I expose myself to, the better. The same goes for Youtube, where I'm now actively muting political accounts. My current sources of entertainment and information there are video essays on films and books. Also cats. And cooking. And nifty science accounts on how things are made. Also history. And ghosts on video.

And speaking of actively sequestering myself online, I recently watched Conclave. 

It's an intelligent film that's gorgeously directed and acted with cinematography that's just as beautiful and meticulous as the procedure of choosing a new Pope. Ralph Fiennes carries the weight of the film with painful gravitas, and his face conveys so much without him speaking a single word. The movie takes it time and allows the viewer to sink slowly into every scene, which has almost an unearthly quality to it. It's contained, restrained, and equal parts luxurious and claustrophobic. 

The one thing about it that didn't quite wow me as much was the plot. It's touted as a thriller, which it is in a more restricted sense, but it's not a standard thriller by way of its use of suspense. There's mystery, of course, and a gradual unearthing of conspiracies, but the tension of high stakes isn't really there. At least I didn't feel it as much as I thought I would. Things were resolved surprisingly quickly and easily, I felt, which means there was a bit of an imbalance in the screenplay's emphasis (more was placed on Lawrence's search for the truth over the final battle between two ideologies). That said, what ultimately made it work in spite of all that was the palpably increasing weight being placed on a man who doesn't want the job but is gradually realizing he might just have to make that sacrifice if he didn't want the wrong candidate ascend. Fiennes's portrayal of a reluctant Dean is just incredible.

As a (lapsed) Catholic, I deeply appreciate the movie's unflinching exposition on men of God being mere mortals and prone to weakness and corruption. We see that not only in the Catholic church but other denominations as well in the real world. 

And on that note, I'm getting myself mentally prepared for my next rental, The Substance. Yep, that's a whiplash move from one end of the entertainment spectrum to the other.

* I don't believe in Mercury retrogrades, but I love blaming them for day-to-day fuckups.

** I'll probably re-download them once more and give them another shot. Chances are I'll be able to pull my head out of my ass and actually enjoy them in the second round.

Yeah. Thanks for the Reminder.

Or in brief, "Amazon dun something shitty again" which means I'm being led back to my beloved epub reader app, which I've just loaded up some more with converted Kindle books.

This video came out a few days ago, and I didn't get to see it till just yesterday because I finally have time to sit down and decompress properly BECAUSE I had to call in sick. Yay, day job. 

It's actually been 2 - 3 years since I switched over completely from buying Kindle books to buying epub books, a format that's agnostic enough to be read by a variety of e-reading devices. Yes, including Kindle. You can buy a book elsewhere in epub format, email it to your Kindle account, and Amazon then converts that file to KFX, which is their proprietary format. That way, you can still hold on to old Kindle books and read them alongside the newer (converted) epub ones. That's a win all the way, and that's what I've been doing all this time.

Since I gave up my old Kindle devices when they got too old to be supported and only use the free phone app, I never really thought about the great feature Amazon used to offer customers: download purchased e-books to your computer so you can transfer it to your device via USB. It's a reassuring reminder that the books you paid for are yours. Apparently Amazon's about to take that away, too, with this exclusive move to cloud storage as I understand it.

Yeah, no. Fucking Bezos has too much control already.

So I pretty much spent a good chunk of my sick day yesterday combing through my extensive library of Kindle ebooks from years past. I knew there was no way I was going to be willing to spend time downloading and converting every freaking title I bought. So I just cherry picked books I loved and would like to reread down the line. Happily for me, they all were in a KFX format that I was able to strip before converting to an epub format. Save for the books of one author, that is, and in order for me to own HER books, I'll have to buy them in print format. I don't mind doing that, but it'll take me more time to get those books since print books ain't cheap. 

Once I'm settled down completely and am happy with the stuff I've converted and uploaded to my epub e-reader, I'm deleting my Kindle app for good. I guess ownership ain't what it used to be, so screw that.  

'Dollhouse' and a Bohemian Legend

I ran across the legend of the Knights of Blanik Mountain while researching something else for another book (can't remember the actual book, but I do remember getting happily sidetracked by this). I love the idea of mythical guardians of a country staying hidden and dormant until roused by a threat. In the case of the Knights of Blanik Mountain, it would be the call of the patron saint of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Wenceslaus I. 

The sleeping Knights of Blanik Mountain

So one thing led to another the more I read up on it, and eventually I came up with the idea of supernatural guardians specific to different countries who are locked in a perpetual tug-of-war over human souls against another figure from legend: Viduus, a minor Roman god who is responsible for separating the human soul from the body. In the case of the AU Europe I chose for the setting, Viduus appears in a variety of disguises to desperate mortals, and he tricks them into a bargain over a cursed artifact or object that reflects the victim's deepest desire.

In Dollhouse, we're looking at an orphan boy who's always wished for a family, and he's separated from his older sister one day and is enticed into a mysterious toy store. For poor little Arthur, his desire for a family is turned into a deadly bargain over a dollhouse. 

Wenceslaus I

It's this use of a cursed object that's also spawned the collection's name: Curiosities. Curiosities were previously associated with a collection of oddities housed in a display cabinet, but that idea evolved into its current form the farther I got writing Dollhouse. So Arthur's cursed object is different from Alexej's (Automata) and from Emerick's mother (Eidolon). 

I was tempted to write more for this collection but found myself losing steam with Eidolon, which is a shame because there's really so much more potential for this collection. I'm open to possible future books but in long novella form (see: Ghosts and Tea), but as always, it'll all depend on time, energy, and inspiration. All the same, I'm happy with what I've managed to accomplish with just three books for this collection and don't regret leaving the collection as is. 

Dollhouse is part of February's Backlist Bonanza 50% off sale, and you can get a copy of the book over here.