Free (Kindle KDP) stuff by John Whitbourn, William Barton, F&SF Magazine [SF/Fantasy]

[ATDrake]

Minor triple feature in the KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile.

We have two semi-prominent old-school backlist authors with collections of previously-published short stories in the "worlds" they are probably best known for, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is offering a mini-collection of the three Nebula-nominee stories which appeared within their pages last year which are up for the awards.

Waiting for a Bus and other stories is part of UK author John Whitbourn's (ISFDB, Wikipedia) Brinscombe Tales series, set in an alternate universe English village which blends fantasy and horror in a Catholic-influenced supernatural setting, as far as I can tell from the Wikipedia description.

Free for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
In the quiet English village of Binscombe you will encounter:

the shopkeeper who’s in a world of his own – literally;
the car with some devilish backseat drivers;
the fisherman whose wife is making his life a living hell – even after death;
and the bus that arrived three decades late.

Explore these and other suburban oddities in the company of baffled new resident Mr Oakley and the wise, enigmatic and somewhat scary Mr Disvan.

In the Cavern of the Night by William Barton (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is a collection of stories from his Silvergirl universe, which IIRC is the same one that his Philip K. Dick/Nebula-nominee novel which we received as a previous title-feature was set in.

Free for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
Here are six tales of the Silvergirl Universe, with its robots and optimods, silvergirls, allomorphs, and rogue human soldiers, caught up in the exploration of the universe, and, ultimately, the deadly galactic war between the Starfish and Spinfellow empires. The collection includes Right to Life, The Gods of a Lesser Creation, Heart of Glass, When a Man's and Empty Kettle, and Soldiers Home, previously published in Asimov's Science Fiction, Full Spectrum, and Talebones, and a new story, The Devil in Drag, published here for the first time.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, Stories on the Nebula Ballot 2011 from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fction, is exactly what it says in the title. I don't know if these are actually KDP or not, but F&SF went Amazon-exclusive for their new issues sometime last year IIRC, so this is unlikely to show up elsewhere.

Free for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

(ETA: You can still pick up their old pre-exclusive back issues MultiFormat DRM-free via Fictionwise very cheaply using this week's 55% off coupon, if you're interested. And there's some new backlist sf/fantasy in the new releases with the extra 15% off at FW as well.)

Description
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is pleased to offer you the three stories that appear on the 2011 Nebula Ballot for 2011:

1) "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (Mar/Apr 2011 issue)

2) "The Ice Owl" by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Nov/Dec 2011 issue)

3) "What We Found" by Geoff Ryman (Sep//Oct 2011 issue)

The rest of the slushpile which does not consist of another influx of "my pseudo-incest keeping it in the stepfamily porno, let me show you it" is basically repeats (and quite a lot of them) and I figure that the authors have already had their chance in previous features and it's not worth my time to push their exclusive-or-else products.

This is some of the actual new stuff (or at least, the stuff I don't recognize which I haven't picked up in the new just-for-KDP auxiliary account yet):

Linda McNabb returns with a 2003 HarperCollins New Zealand kids/YA fantasy adventure with a circus going to the dwarves and elves: Puppet Master

Minor ISFDBed Donna Burgess returns with the self-explanatory: The Blue Children: Short Vampire Fiction

Linda Pendleton, wife and sometimes co-author of the late Don Pendleton of Mark Bolan Executioner action/adventure fame offers some sort of mysterious disappearance/government conspiracy to hide the aliens thriller: The Unknown

Berkley-published Erin Quinn offers a paranormal thriller which may also be a romantic suspense via Books We Love/BWLPP who have some of the other repeats today: Echoes

Ryne Douglas Peterson returns with his 1996 William Morrow published: Simple Simon (An Art Jefferson Thriller)

Sally Quilford says that her romance short has been previously published in two specified outlets: Bella's Vineyard

If you've been collecting all the rest of these graphic novel issues, you might as well pick up this one too: CARNIVAL OF SOULS "Special Collector's Edition" (JAZAN WILD'S CARNIVAL OF SOULS)

A bit of history with praise from local Louisiana newspapers if you're interested: Acadian Redemption: From Beausoleil Broussard to the Queen's Royal Proclamation

And finally, if you think you might be interested in a career change or just want to know how to make your Hallowe'en costumes really convincing: GoreMaster's Guide to Basic Makeup Special Effects

Happy reading, if the instructions in the last book don't gross you out.

[Dr. Drib]

Picked up a few that sound interesting.

Thank you.



Don

[bgalbrecht]

As much as I would like to support the Magazine of F & SF, they cancelled my subscription over at Fictionwise, where I could download the issue in my preferred format, epub, so they could sell exclusively at Amazon. At Amazon, you can't download to Kindle for PC, you can't download more than the last 7 issues. As far as I'm concerned they shafted their entire readership (including Kindle owners) just so they could sell through the almighty Amazon. Oh, and even if their stories are the best SF of last year, I'm not going to vote for them for the Hugo, either. Yes, I'm bitter.

[koland]

Cancel a subscription at Amazon and you also lose all your back issues.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by koland

Cancel a subscription at Amazon and you also lose all your back issues.

Ouch.

Yeah, very annoying the F&SF magazine thing not available on the desktop. Although if you have a Kindle calibre with DRM strip it as per usual. Doesn't help much for the 7 billion people that don't, of course.

So need to DRM strip them and email them to your Personal Documents library to have all the back issues going if you cancel.

[Blue Tyson]

Anyway, thanks for that lot - so

459!