Free (Kindle KDP+) Vampire Junkies & Mind Game by Norman Spinrad [Science Fiction]

[ATDrake]

Today's KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile trawl yields some nice backlist sf/fantasy from Norman Spinrad and a few short stories from others. Also some romance repubs for the non-sf/fantasy readers.

Two of multiple-award nominated heptagenarian Norman Spinrad's badly formatted but bravely uploaded titles have been made free for a limited time under the 5-days-out-of-90 thing. Only one of them seems to be available worldwide and the other, more interesting one, seems geo-restricted despite the KDP thing. Perhaps non-US persons outside Canada will still be able to get it.

Vampire Junkies just what it says in the title @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT.

Count Dracula escapes by the skin of his teeth from Romania, ends up in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where the first drink of blood he finds is a junkie hooker. It's love at first bite, at least for Drac, Little Mary Sunshine has somewhat different ideas.

Humor in a jugular vein.

A down and dirty low budget movie adaptation is in the works.

The Mind Game I Can't Believe It's Not Scientology!™ published by Bantam circa 1985 @ Amazon main (probably geo-restricted to US only).

Down on his luck Hollywood director's down on her luck actress wife gets taken over by a mind game cult like Est or Scientology called Transformationalism.

She disappears into the bowels of Transformationalism, he's determined to "rescue" her to the point where pretends to be taken over too. Is he or isn't he? As he delves deeper and deeper (or higher and higher depending on what who believes), he's no longer sure either.

A novel about the power of cults, show biz and cults, and just maybe the nature of "reality" assuming there is one.

One of the real such cult took a certain offense with the author, there was a mysterious burglary with nothing of value taken, a few other such mind games. Long out of print in English though still around in a few other languages.

Also in the KDP select slushpile:

Nebula Award winner Eric James Stone's short story: P.R. Problems.

Iain Rowan's Black Gate magazine-published short story: Looking for Goats, Finding Monkeys.

Jim Baen's Universe-published newbie author Amber D. Sistla's 2 short story collections: Open the Door & Going Somewhere and Other Stories.

Judith Arnold's Harlequin-published romance: Aztec Sun.

Bell Bridge Books-published Alicia Rasley's backlist Regency romance: Poetic Justice.

Formerly Dorchester-published comedic chick-lit mystery writer Gemma Halliday's "Viva Las Vegas" in 2-book Sin City omnibus by her and J.R. Rain.

ETA: Baen author Sarah A. Hoyt writing under her historical mystery pen name Sarah d'Almeida's short story: Juggler. Her regular sf story which ties into her award-nominated novel Darkship Thieves is still free, by the way: Neptune's Orphans.

[mikaelalind]

Thank you! I like Gemma Halliday, and I have wanted to read J.R. Rain, so I picked up the Sin City Omnibus .

[Britomart]

Thank you for pointing out the Rasley book!

[ATDrake]

A few minor additions which aren't significant enough to merit their own thread and will probably expire around the same time anyway:

HarperCollins-published Stephen Hunt's backlist space opera: Six Against the Stars: Book 1.

The daily Eric James Stone short story: Bird Dropping and Sunday: A Fairy Tale.

Kate Silver's previously-Kensington-published historical romance: On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all)

Gemma Halliday's previously Dorchester-published comedic chick-lit mystery "Spying in High Heels" (which has been freebied a couple of times previously) in another 3-novel omnibus edition with J.R. Rain and Aiden James: J.R. Rain's Whodunnits. I've read this one and it was pretty decent. A bit over the top sometimes, but mostly good clean silly fun.

[ATDrake]

Two more for the historical culture-clash romance readers:

Doreen Owens Malek's previously Zebra-published Roman Britain: The Lion and the Lark and her prev-HarperMonogram-pubbed Irish ruffian/English noblewoman: The Highwayman.

Also, "Red Hot Publishing" has a number of their sci-fi/horror and vampire paranormal romance titles KDP-selected, so if you're interested in trying newbie author stuff in those categories, here's the low-to-high keyword link which should just show the $0.00 stuff (be careful when 1-clicking anyway, since some may have reverted to only be Prime Lending "free").

[bgalbrecht]

Since it's currently free, I "bought" The Mind Game and Vampire Junkies. From what I've read about some other Spinrad books, I think it's obvious that he is publishing some crappy versions that he grabbed off the darknet without making any attempt to bring the formatting up to the print edition. The lousy formatting makes dialogue nearly incomprehensible. For example, this snippet:

Kindle edition:
Finally he heard the rumble of Annie's Porsche pulling into the driveway. Vibrating with tension, he met her at the door.
"Hi Jack," she said brightly, looking cool, casual, and relaxed.
"How was your day?"
"How was my day? Is that all you've got to say?"

Print edition:

    Finally he heard the rumble of Annie's Porsche pulling into the driveway.
Vibrating with tension, he met her at the door.
    "Hi Jack," she said brightly, looking cool, casual, and relaxed. 
"How was your day?"
    "How was my day? Is that all you've got to say?"

Can you tell from the Kindle edition that Annie asked "How was your day?", and that Jack was angrily replying?

I found it amusing back when Spinrad announced that he was going to self-publish using ebooks from the darknet, after a suggestion from ebook gadfly Bowerbird, and then got into an argument with Bowerbird over the pricing of the ebooks. Spinrad took the position that they should be priced the same as a new mass market print book, and Bowerbird suggesting something closer to the Amazon minimum price for 70% author royalties. Quite frankly, with the lousy formatting, his books are not worth new book prices, and Spinrad ought to be ashamed to be selling them as is. It's a shame, because many of his books are pretty good, but if people only see these badly formatted editions, they're going to think he's another bad self-published author who can't write.

[ATDrake]

As per interviews, Spinrad now actually thinks that older books should be priced lower than newer books and that e-books should be priced ~20% less than the same paper book.

But yeah, we noticed Spinrad's lack of darknet non-formatting clean-up the first time he KDP-ed his books. Apparently he's been ill. And he is in his 70s and given the attitude of some other authors around that age (Bradbury, Harper Lee, etc.), it may even be some kind of minor victory that he doesn't claim that e-books aren't "real" books and refuse to release in them until enough money is waved under his nose.

And his other stuff is being reissued by Gollancz and one of those small publishers that posts in the Author Self-Promo forum (the one that's been doing the Ben Bova re-releases), so hopefully not everyone trying his work walks away with a bad impression. Or at least does so from problems within the story, rather than with the text of it.

[bgalbrecht]

I can't buy most of the Gollancz SF ebooks (stupid geo-restrictions), but from what I've read, some of them have atrocious formatting also. If Spinrad's too ill to do it himself, it's too bad he didn't appeal for help from his fans. I'm sure there are a number of fans who would do the bulk of the work for a thank you in the ebook and an autographed copy of one of his books. I know it worked for Walter Jon Williams.

[ATDrake]

Two more minor additions, if you've bothered to scroll down this far.

Victor Gischler, whose Adams Media-published The Deputy was a freebie late last year, offers a collection of his previously unpublished early paranormal PI stories: Three On A Light.

Leslie Wooddavis offers a hard sf novel which seems to have been paperbacked sometime in 1999: Rune Logic. She does have some other book paper/Kindle-published by some "publisher" which carries other authors, so probably not entirely glorified vanity self-pub.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

If Spinrad's too ill to do it himself, it's too bad he didn't appeal for help from his fans. I'm sure there are a number of fans who would do the bulk of the work for a thank you in the ebook and an autographed copy of one of his books.

Perhaps you could suggest it to Spinrad. He seems pretty quick at answering comments to his blog, and he posted quite recently about e-books in December.

Apparently the reason why half his self-pub catalogue seems US-restricted is because he accepted an offer from Orion for the UK rights for some of them and has persuaded them to get US rights as well.

So hopefully they'll be putting out nicer versions of his books if he can't do so himself.

Self-publishing one's backlist may work great for some authors, but only if they've got the time/skills/inclination to do it properly or hire someone to do so.