Campbell Award finalist releasing free e-books

[T3_reader]

Thanks - looking forward to reading book 1.

[Elissa Malcohn]

Hello, all! Vol. 6 and the series conclusion, Deviations: Second Covenant, is now live for free download!
http://home.earthlink.net/~deviations/index.html
(EPUB, HTML, PDF (reflowed), MOBI, LIT, LRF, PBD, PRC)

Second Covenant is also up at Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ElissaMalcohn

I've submitted it to Manybooks -- it wasn't up when last I checked, though the other series volumes are there:
http://manybooks.net/authors/malcohne.html

In the latest news...

I got a nice nod from Jo Walton, who writes, "Elissa Malcohn has continued to produce poems, short stories and novels without ever having a breakout hit to bring her visibility," in her recap of 1985 Hugo Nominees.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/05/hugo-nominees-1985

Mythic Delirium Issue 24 is slated to appear in June. Here's what reviewer Alexandra Seidel says in Fantastique Unfettered:

"[A] venture into lightheartedness" is what editor Mike Allen calls this latest issue of Mythic Delirium. The poetry assembled here certainly makes for an excellent adventure, and lightheartedness often plays a part, but even so, all these lyrical quests have a weighty center.

The best example for this is probably 'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn, a poem in eight parts, eight parts of tale that is nothing if not epic. Each part is in itself a poem and comes to you each in a different form. This poem of a dragon and questing dragon slayers --while it does many other things--clearly acknowledges the longing for myth, the longing for adventure in all of us.

http://www.fantastique-unfettered.co...-issue-24.html

You can also preview the issue's gorgeous cover image on Mike Allen's home page.
http://descentintolight.com/2011/05/...-and-a-review/

Meanwhile, The Open Laboratory 2010: The Best of Science Writing on the Web contains my sonnets "Manipulations" and "In Development."
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperbac...-2010/15242758
(After five years of publishing through Lulu, the sixth anthology (Open Lab 2011) has been picked up by Scientific American Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.)

My contributor's copy has arrived of the Dark Scribe Press anthology A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock -- not yet available for order, but you can see the book here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30268343@N00/5638352651/

Thanks again for reading. Wishing you all a fabulous summer and beyond! -- Elissa

[cromag]

Thanks very much! My sumer reading plans are now set!

[crich70]

It does look like an interesting series. Have you considered putting them all together into an Omnibus Edition? Just curious. It would be one way to be certain of reading them in the right order on an ereader.

[Elissa Malcohn]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely consider it.
Would an Omnibus e-edition simply involve appending the files (and cleaning up frontmatter redundancies)?

If so, I'd want to include a linked TOC, to allow readers to skip down to the individual volumes. Currently I take my HTML files, convert them in Mobipocket to PRC (seems to produce smaller files than when I go through Calibre), and then use PRC as my root file in Calibre for converting to EPUB, LIT, LRF, and MOBI. (For some reason, Mobipocket doesn't always convert to MOBI for me.) I use the HANDebooks macro for PDB.

I assume the a href and a name tags would work in HTML, but am not sure how well they would convert. I know they wouldn't in PDB, but I don't know if any other TOC method would work there. Any advice and suggestions are much appreciated!

Thanks again -- Elissa

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Elissa Malcohn

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely consider it.
Would an Omnibus e-edition simply involve appending the files (and cleaning up frontmatter redundancies)?

If so, I'd want to include a linked TOC, to allow readers to skip down to the individual volumes. Currently I take my HTML files, convert them in Mobipocket to PRC (seems to produce smaller files than when I go through Calibre), and then use PRC as my root file in Calibre for converting to EPUB, LIT, LRF, and MOBI. (For some reason, Mobipocket doesn't always convert to MOBI for me.) I use the HANDebooks macro for PDB.

I assume the a href and a name tags would work in HTML, but am not sure how well they would convert. I know they wouldn't in PDB, but I don't know if any other TOC method would work there. Any advice and suggestions are much appreciated!

Thanks again -- Elissa

As far as cleaning up the front matter I don't really know. You can make some corrections to text I think though most of what I've done in the past is things like removing the disclaimer from the Gutenberg files and the original table of contents that some seem to have (as raw HTML files I mean).
Well I'm not sure exactly how to create the linked TOC at the moment. I did ask some questions elsewhere on the board about it, but I was never able to figure out how to have the main TOC (book titles) and a secondary one for the chapters of each volume (I have created some simple Omnibus volumes before). I loaded the HTML files of the seperate books into a Sigil file to create an epub version and then converted the epub into a mobipocket file that is then compatible with Kindle. The ones I created would have one large TOC with the h2 tag (through Sigil) as the book titles and then h3 tags as chapter links. The Edgar Allen Poe Omnibus here at MR is an example of that as is the two volume collection of Zane Grey's books. And Sigil like Calibre is free software. You can also add jpeg pics via Sigil too so you can easily put in your own Cover Image for such collections.

[astra]

Elissa Malcohn

Re: omnibus.
It is a pretty dubious business from my recent experience.
I have series from a certain publisher, who produced a couple omnibuses of a long series, 2 volumes per ebook. The printed versions Mass Market Paperback: 750 and 960 pages. The resulting epub omnibus is quite heavy even for the latest Sony PRS-650. It means it requires more processing power to navigate it, search through it, change text size, etc. It dramatically affects battery life.
I used to think that omnibus is a very good idea, but I have changed my mind.

[Elissa Malcohn]

Thanks for the pointers! I'll look into the various options.
Quick note: I've exceeded my bandwidth -- though I very much appreciate all the visits and downloads! :-)
This blog entry is a compendium of where free downloads are available. I probably haven't found them all -- will update as I get more info.
http://deviationstrilogy.blogspot.co...g-traffic.html
And thanks again! -- Elissa

[Elissa Malcohn]

I'm thrilled to report my Deviations site is back in business!
http://home.earthlink.net/~deviations/index.html

Thanks for all your comments re omnibus editions. I've put together (so far) an autographed Omnibus CD to use for promotional purposes, keeping the different volumes in separate file folders. It pretty much duplicates what I have on my website.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elissa Malcohn

I'm thrilled to report my Deviations site is back in business!
http://home.earthlink.net/~deviations/index.html

Thanks for all your comments re omnibus editions. I've put together (so far) an autographed Omnibus CD to use for promotional purposes, keeping the different volumes in separate file folders. It pretty much duplicates what I have on my website.

You need a site that doesn't crap out like this one does. I cannot access it.

[Elissa Malcohn]

Thanks for the feedback, JSWolf. It's not Earthlink's fault -- my site experienced an amazing (for me) 1,179 hits on July 9 alone. That ripped right through my bandwidth. I'm back to my fallback position mentioned in post #38:
http://deviationstrilogy.blogspot.co...g-traffic.html

I keep a basic Earthlink account, which gives me 8 websites to fill (the good news) but with various storage and bandwidth restrictions (the bad news). Individual formats of most of the books should be available directly by going to the blog entry referenced above. All but Covenant and several Appetite formats are stored outside the main Deviations site and were still accessible, last I checked. The blog entry also provides links to other free download sites for the series, such as Manybooks (I'm still waiting for Second Covenant to go up there) and Smashwords (where all six books are available).

This problem didn't arise until after I'd uploaded the Second Covenant files. Earthlink uses a formula that combines file size on and traffic through the site.

In somewhat related news, I've been offering the Deviations Omnibus CD to various special collections. USF, U Sydney, and Eaton already have copies of the paperback of Covenant (originally published in 2007 by the now-defunct Aisling Press). For the other collections, this marks my first donation (of both the paperback and the CD). Special collections agreeing to receive the entire series now include:

The Eaton Collection at the University of California, Riverside. From the website: "The Eaton Collection is the largest publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian fiction in the world. ... It is visited by scholars from around the world both for its American and international holdings."

University of South Florida Library's Special Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection: Includes the SF collection of John Clute, believed to be one of the largest privately held collections in the world.

University of Sydney Science Fiction and Fantasy Collections: The library's Ron Graham Science Fiction Collection and Colin Steele Collection together form one of the largest institutional collections of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the world.

Temple University's Paskow Science Fiction Collection: This collection contains more than 30,000 volumes, magazines (pulps, fanzines, and academic journals), over 100 cubic feet of manuscripts, and selected posters, paintings, drawings, and related materials.

University of Liverpool's Sydney Jones Library, Special Collections & Archives: Europe's largest catalogued collection of SF material, including the Science Fiction Foundation Collection and a wealth of literary archives.

I'm waiting to hear back from several more collections. If your public library (or any that you know of) would be interested in receiving the series, please let me know! I'll be happy to send a CD.

Thanks again -- Elissa