Recommended Reading: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This novel was given to me years ago in a hardcover edition. I’ll say here at the start that I would never have picked this up in a bookstore. I don’t like the title—it sounds like a literary tear-jerker—and the cover art, while utterly appropriate to the story’s setting, gives no real hint of the tenor of the story. But books have no expiration date. And since I’d been having a hard time finding other books that appealed to me, I finally picked this one up after it had been sitting on my shelf for years.

This is an amazing novel!

Its dual settings are occupied France in World War II and Nazi Germany. Its focus is on the small and the brave, swept up in the horrible currents of war. The writing is beautiful without ever being overwrought, and while the plot is complex it isn’t hard to follow, and it all falls together in exquisite fashion.

I won’t say more about the plot, because part of the fascination of this novel is watching the story develop and come together without any foreknowledge of where it is going.

I do want to mention a technical aspect that I really admired: Almost all the chapters are extremely short, often no more than two pages, often with no transitions. This might sound awkward, but it worked extremely well for me. It kept the story moving and kept all the characters fresh in mind.

If you’ve already read All the Light We Cannot See, or if you give it a try, let me know what you think of it.

BookShop.org got its start during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a book-selling business designed to help small, independent bookstores compete with Amazon and profit from online book buyers. From their website’s about-page:

Bookshop.org began as an idea to help support bookstores and their communities as more and more people are buying their books online. We saw an opportunity to create an alternative to Amazon for socially-conscious online shoppers. Amazon sells over 60% of all books in the US and is growing. That shift threatens the future of bookstores and will hurt readers, authors, and publishers who rely on a diverse, healthy ecosystem for books. We had a better idea—give readers the convenience of online shopping while supporting independent bookstores at the same time.

That sounds terrific! But for a long time it didn’t have anything to do with me, because BookShop.org only dealt in traditionally published books—or so I thought. As it turns out, they’ve been carrying the print versions of my books that are in the Ingram catalog. And now, at last, they are able to sell ebooks by indie writers like me.

I think this is primarily a USA market, though that may change with time.

I know a lot of people are looking to move away from Amazon. So—if you’re in the USA—this is one more option, and it will also help community bookstores. And of course my books are still available through Apple, Kobo, and Amazon too.

Follow this link to see all my titles at BookShop.org.

Very sad to learn of the passing of writer Jeffrey A. Carver. I don’t think I ever met him in person, but he became a friend through our shared work at the writer’s cooperative Book View Café. This is his website: https://www.starrigger.net/

I finally embarked on a task I’ve been putting off for years: cleaning out old writing files. I’ve gone through the business files, where there was correspondence with editors and agents… Oh, I should be clear. This is print correspondence, hailing from the days when we still sent letters through the mail. Also, stacks of printed royalty statements, each one more discouraging than the last. Most of the latter I’ve tossed; most of the former I’ve kept for “historical purposes” in case some hapless descendant should be interested in how things used to be. Otherwise, all this ancient history can get tossed when I’m gone. All that’s really necessary to keep are the reversion letters, returning all rights to me.

Anyway, the business part of this is basically done. I’ve now hit the forty-year-old ( plus or minus) files containing my early attempts at short story writing, stuff printed out in faded dot matrix (do you know what a dot-matrix printer is?). I really don’t want to look at it. I think I should just toss it all. But I’m not good at just throwing things away and my conscience says I should at least glance at it, and spend a few minutes remembering that early enthusiasm and despair.

“Maybe later today,” she says, procrastinating again.

I should mention my motivation for this effort: I promised myself that once I get rid of these file boxes, I can finally look into getting new carpets for this part of the house—the existing carpet being roughly as old as the stories.

Oh my goodness… one of these boxes contains my mother’s The Bobbsey Twins books, from her childhood and almost a hundred years old. What in the world do I do with those?

This is re-posted from my June newsletter:

Aloha,

I’m late again with this newsletter, though not so late as I’ve been in the past. The truth is, I’m in a fallow period when it comes to writing—even the writing of newsletters—and as I’ve confessed before, progress on the fifth and last book in the Inverted Frontier series has been slow. But it will get there!

In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of small news items and some book recommendations.

“Ride” — a short story set in the fictional world of my novel Pacific Storm
I wrote “Ride” on commission, for publication at Slate magazine in 2021. This past spring it was republished at Issues.org, a joint publication of the National Academy of Sciences and Arizona State University. If you missed “Ride” the first time around, you can read it online now, here at Issues.org.

The Red Trilogy – Saga Press print editions
If you’re interested in a full set of the Saga Press print editions of the Red trilogy—either hard cover or mass-market paperback (and signed!), and you have a mailing address in the United States, please contact me at linda@mythicisland.com. I have two drawers of author copies that I am free to sell now that the Saga editions are out of print. Christmas presents, perhaps, for that reader in your life?

The cover art on these books is different from the Mythic Island Press editions, but the content is the same. Right now I’m charging $15 + $11 postage ($26 total) for the set of paperbacks, and $30 plus $20 postage ($50 total) for the hardcovers. (Edit: When postage goes up, these prices will go up too.)

Recommended Audiobooks
For me, audiobooks have served as a window onto history. I was never a dedicated reader of history, but since acquiring the audiobook habit, I’ve loved listening to such books. It’s a luxury to have someone read to me while I do a task in the garden or in the kitchen. With the best books, I even find myself thinking of more tasks to do, so I can keep on listening.

A recent favorite was The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, written by Hampton Sides and narrated by Peter Noble. The title describes what the book is about. It begins with Cook in semi-retirement after his second great voyage, when he is persuaded to take on another venture, seemingly against his own best judgment, and the narrative follows that voyage in meticulous detail, through and beyond his death on the Big Island of Hawaii. I found the book fascinating, both for its portrayal of island cultures and for its author’s attempt to interpret Cook’s state of mind—which was evidently different and harsher than on his previous voyages.

Another audiobook I enjoyed immensely—fiction this time—was Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh, written by Joseph Conrad and narrated by Kenneth Branagh. I’ve read Conrad’s novel several times, but this was better than reading. Branagh does such an excellent job performing the text that for me, at least, it’s easier to follow and understand, than by reading alone. Unfortunately, I think this one is only available from Audible.

Recommended Reading:
A few years ago I picked up a copy of Alastair Reynolds’s novel Inhibitor Phase and then promptly forgot about it. I’m glad that happened, because I re-discovered it at just the right moment to re-ignite my love of science fiction.

I don’t know if it’s because my own work has been going so slowly, or because of the dark times we are currently experiencing here in the USA, but I haven’t been enthusiastic about reading science fiction lately. Inhibitor Phase is the first science fiction novel in a long time that I’ve been eager to return to—that I’ve made extra time just to read—and that’s a great feeling.

The story is set in Reynold’s Revelation Space universe, but it’s written as a stand-alone, and it also includes a short and helpful stage-setting introduction. It begins with a small human colony hiding out from an ancient alien technology programmed to hunt down and destroy technological lifeforms. This setup is similar to that in my own novel, Vast, but the execution is altogether different. Inhibitor Phase is a long, complex novel of technology, self-discovery, self-sacrifice, and the struggle for survival in a hostile universe.

Comfort Reading
Forgive me if I push my own work here. I’ve long said that I write the kind of books I want to read. Early this year, as existential dread took over, I turned to a comfort read: my own fantasy trilogy, The Wild. It’s a story that took me years to write and re-write, but I’m satisfied with it now. The setting is a world of nature and nature spirits. And although the world has been corrupted by malevolence and hate, good still exists, personified by three young warriors. Together they take on a perilous quest to quell the corruption and to find their own place in the world.

You can read more about the Wild trilogy here, beginning with book 1, The Snow Chanter. I do hope you’ll check it out.

Take care, and Happy Reading!

— Linda

This is re-posted in modified form from the newsletter I sent out.

Aloha,

This newsletter is about the publishing lifecycle and a title some of you know well, and others may never have heard of. Let me explain…

The Red: First Light is the book that marked my return to writing science fiction after a very long-hiatus. I published it on my own and it did shockingly well—not in sales numbers, but with the critics. It was nominated for the Nebula Award, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List. Saga Press—at the time a newly minted imprint at Simon & Schuster—picked up the title along with two sequels (though I held onto the right to publish in the United Kingdom and Australia). Me, my agent, and my editor, all thought this was going to be my breakout novel. But no. Despite the mostly good reviews, sales never amounted to much. So it goes.

In the early days I did what I could to promote what we called the Red trilogy. But when it became obvious the books would never “earn out” I stopped all promotion on my side.

What does “earn out” mean? When a book is sold to a traditional publisher, the publisher pays a non-refundable “advance against royalties” to the writer. For each copy sold, a small amount of the cover price goes to the writer’s account, incrementally paying off the advance. Only when enough copies are sold to cover the advance, does the writer begin earning more money. That wasn’t going to happen for me.

Back in the nineties, prior to the advent of ebooks, a book would be published and then sell in print version for a few weeks to a few months. If it didn’t take off immediately, it would be removed from bookstore shelves, never, generally speaking, to be seen again. And because it cost money to store unsold copies, publishers tended to quickly put books out of print (ask me how I know) and it was easy to get the rights back.

But after ebooks became popular, publishers realized they could hold onto titles without paying any storage costs and it became really hard for authors to get the rights reverted despite nearly non-existent sales.

Why would I want the rights back? Because when I re-publish on my own, it becomes economically feasible to promote the title and maybe earn a little more for all those days of angst and effort spent writing the thing.

I did not think I could get back the rights to the Red trilogy, but I decided to try it anyway. The first time I asked, two or three years ago, the answer was no. But early this year I asked again, and to my shock and surprise and delight, this time the answer was a generous yes.

I received the official rights-reversion letter, updated my Mythic Island Press United Kingdom ebook editions, made sure the Saga Press copies* had been taken down, and then made my versions available worldwide at the five vendors I use: Kobo, Apple, Tolino, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

I didn’t make an immediate announcement because I was hoping to set up a big promotion to kick things off—and that actually happened. I managed to get a spot in a newsletter with huge circulation, advertising the first book in the trilogy at a discounted price.

I know many of you have already read this book (thank you!!), but for those who haven’t, I hope you’ll decide to give it a try.

So what’s it about?

Well, obviously from the cover this is a military novel. It’s very near-future, very political, fast-paced, and cynical. I’ve been reviewing it, and honestly, I think it’s held up almost too well over the years. Even if you never read military fiction, I hope you’ll take a chance on this one.

Here’s the cover copy:

“There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere”

Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive—because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him—but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger…as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear. (Hazard Notice: contains military grade profanity.)

Oh right…I should probably leave you with some vendor links:

Kobo — Apple — Barnes & Noble

Amazon US — Amazon UK — Amazon AU

Take Care, and Happy Reading!

— Linda

* Saga Press has retained the right to sell off whatever print copies they may have left, so you might still see those around.

This is re-posted from the newsletter I sent out today:

Aloha,

Though it’s hard for me to believe, it’s already been a year since my newest novel was released. Through the support of readers like you, Blade has done reasonably well in the indie marketplace. So thank you! Thank you very much.

And now it’s time to offer my apologies. I intended to send this newsletter on a monthly schedule and I managed that for quite a long time. But it’s been several months since my last one and nearly a year since I posted on my blog about anything other than a short-term ebook sale. I apologize for that and I’ll try to do better going forward. I hope you’ll stick with me. In the meantime, I want to offer a hearty welcome to all those who signed up to receive this newsletter during this empty interim.

So what have I been doing in all this time? Well, after Blade’s publication, I took a long and much-needed sabbatical. Believe it or not, writing has always been a real challenge for me. Putting together a new novel feels nearly impossible—at least until that first draft is done. It’s a painful struggle every time, and after Blade, I found myself with a bad case of burn out. So I took time to do the things that make me immediately happy, like spending time with my grandchildren and working in my garden.

I’m still not writing regularly, but I’ve made a good start on Inverted Frontier #5, the last in the series. What I need to do now is prioritize the writing. #5 feels like an ambitious novel, as it needs to be to wind up this long series. Whenever I look over my notes I feel excited for what it might become, if I can pull it off. We’ll see!

I try to keep politics out of this newsletter, but I will confess that the horror of the current political climate is acting as another brake on my progress. I need to return to the schedule I kept when writing Blade, which was to not look at any news or email before the day’s writing was done. Self-discipline: that’s usually the key.

Anyway, I want to assure you that except for a minor head cold, we are all well here, and I fully intend to finish Inverted Frontier #5.

Expect another newsletter within a month, if not sooner.

Take care, and Happy Reading!

— Linda

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Audible was pushing this novel at me for ages. I don’t remember why I eventually picked it up; it might have been on a two-for-one deal. Whatever the reason, it was there in my collection of audiobooks when I needed something to listen to — and I loved it almost from the first line.

This was Miller’s debut novel, originally published in 2011. It was hugely popular and I imagine many of you are familiar with it. It is a re-imagining of the story of Patroclus, the lover of the Greek hero Achilles, and his unbreakable relationship with that difficult hero of ancient myth. It is told in Patroclus’s voice, in first person, and the narrator is excellent, and fully captures the tone of the story.

Miller’s writing is stellar throughout. I tend to bounce off novels where the descriptive element feels overdone, as if the clever descriptions are the point of the story. Miller does not do that. Her descriptive power is amazing, always enhancing the story and not weighing it down.

I suspect we all already know how this story ends. I was curious throughout to see how Miller would handle it — and she found what felt like a culturally appropriate way to do so.

I do wish there had been a little more insight on why Achilles, as portrayed in this story, was so powerfully drawn to Patroclus. Despite this, I found The Song of Achilles to be an excellent novel and I highly recommend it, especially if you’re into Greek myth.

Unless you are a big-name author, book reviews tend to become ever rarer the longer a series goes on. So I am extremely grateful that Blade has gotten a couple of solid reviews — and that Edges has gotten a new and very positive write up from long-time reviewer Rich Horton.

Posting at his personal blog, Rich says, “[EDGES] is exciting and stuffed with good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder…There is real tension, real human relationships to deal with, cool technology, and an ending that promises more wonders…It’s a great deal of fun, exciting, scary. And now I’ll have to read the rest [of the series]!” That is a review quote any author would covet! Find the full review here.

Reviews of Blade have so far appeared at SciFi Mind and in Locus magazine (no link yet to the review) — for which I am incredibly grateful. In a crowded field, getting the word out is always a huge challenge…and with that in mind, I want to let you know that I’m also deeply grateful to all of you who’ve enjoyed the books and posted your ratings and reviews, whether at Amazon, Kobo, Goodreads, or your favorite book vendor. I truly appreciate it, and it really does help push a title a little closer to success. Thank you! 🙂

Today is release day for Blade, the fourth volume in my far-future series Inverted Frontier.

I know many of you preordered Blade. Thank you so much for that!

But if you haven’t secured your copy yet, you can purchase the ebook edition today, or order the print version. 

Blade is available at:
Amazon
Kobo
Apple
Barnes & Noble

A note on the print edition:
Right now, the print edition is only available via Amazon. I generally use a secondary printer to offer my books through other venues and I’m attempting to do that with Blade, but due to issues at the printing company, my account was thrown into limbo for a while. That put me behind schedule, but assuming no more fiascos, Blade should soon be available to order from other booksellers. My apologies for the delay!

If you enjoy Blade…

(And I hope you do!)

If you do — or if you enjoy any book by any author — do consider leaving a brief review or even just a star rating at your favorite online book vendor. Those ratings really do help with future sales, and sales are what keep writers in business.

That’s all for this time, except…

Thank you for your interest in my work, for your patience with my slow writing process, and for the encouragement so many of you have offered. You’re the reason I’m still writing.

For more information on Blade or to check out the opening pages, visit my website.