Free (Kindle DRM-free) The Forest of Time by Michael Flynn [Sci-Fi Alternate History]

[ATDrake]

Once again, I reiterate that for authors/publishers looking to get a publicity boost by using one of their 5 allotted KDP Select freebie days in return for exclusively yanking their stuff from other stores so that it's Amazon's catalogue selection über alles:

It is a really, really bad idea to do it on new-release Tuesdays and the 1st of each month because your book will get drowned and go unnoticed in the flood of stuff inundating the slushpile and thus the freebie/bargain-posting blogs and this forum as a result.

I just spent a significant chunk of my time this time posting 11 new assorted Christian books from official multi-store publisher promos and the amount of energy and enthusiasm I have for dipping into the KDP Select slushpile of glorified amateur offerings is rapidly sinking through the aesthenosphere down into the lower mantle.

Anyway, here's Phoenix Pick's ill-advisedly new-release Tuesdays-coinciding freebie du semaine and DRM-free ePub/Mobi direct-purchase tie-in bargain deal.

The Forest of Time by Michael F. Flynn (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is sfnal travel-to-an-alternate-history novella which originally appeared in Analog magazine in 1987 and went on to be nominated for the Hugo, Analog, and Locus Poll Best Novella awards and has since appeared in a number of Best Of collections (ISFDB for the novella).

I quite liked this when I read it last year after having gotten it from a previous PPick Free eBook of the Month, enough to go and buy the eponymous collection for $4.25 when it was on sale.

So you are getting a real bargain if you decide to spend the mere $1.99 that the full collection The Forest of Time & Other Stories is being offered for, in a DRM-free ePub/Mobi bundle when bought direct from Phoenix Pick using the link to the right-hand side on their dedicated promo listing post, which says it will be available at the deep-discount price until May 5th.

This collection has some nice notes for each story by the author, and is worth it for the very funny filksong "There's A Bimbo on the Cover of My Book!" which mocks that sort sf/fantasy cover art we've all seen so much of.

As for the novella itself, DRM-free for the next two days @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description (PPick really needs to come up with better blurbs; I included just the first paragraph of the author's note, broken up for legibility, since anything more is probably spoilery)
This novella is included in the anthology 'The Forest of Time and Other Stories' published by Phoenix Pick. It was nominated for the Hugo Award when originally published.

From the Author's Commentary:

I had wanted to write a “parallel Pennsylvania” story ever since reading H. Beam Piper’s “Gunpowder God” in high school. Growing up in Easton, Pennsylvania, the historical themes were all Revolutionary, so it was only natural that when I thought alternate history, I thought of that era.

Sometimes we forget how revolutionary our Revolution was. How many other revolutions have slipped from republicanism to bonapartism and wound up with a Napoleon, a Lenin, or a Khomeini?

After all, when you overthrow a System, those who must build something new afterward have only ever known the System. The acorn then does not fall far from the tree.

If I bother at all today, slushpile stuff will go in this thread.

Pro-tip for KDP Select exclusive freebie-izers which I reiterate: For best results, don't do it on new-release Tuesdays (Mondays are also bad), and don't do it on the 1st of each month.

[scrapking]

I love, love, love alternate history (I'm a Harry Turtledove disciple). Thanks so much!

[ATDrake]

This is all there is from the slushpile which I considered to be worth using my time to look at even without waiting for the eReaderIQ hover-over or at least had an author I recognized from before.

Previously feature-titled ISDBDed William Barton returns with another sf short: The Abyss Looks Back

L.A. Taylor has had a book out from St. Martin's Press and offers a 2007 small-pressed stumbled-into-a-parallel-fantasy-world adventure which seems to be YA-oriented, from the School Library Journal review: Cat's Paw

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine-contributor Phoenix Sullivan returns with an historical fantasy saga with some romantic elements which is not KDP Select, but playing pricing catch-up somewhere: Spoil of War: An Arthurian Saga Turns out it's being price-matched with : iTunes (available to Canadians).

Berkley-published Michele Scott offers a short story which seems to tie into her wine mystery series: A Perfectly Purloined Pinot (Nikki Sands' Mysteries)

Big 6-published Cheyenne McCray writing under her erotic penname Jaymie Holland has another erotic romance short (maybe a repeat): Taking it Home (Taboo)

Previously-included small genre presses which have new-looking stuff from newbie authors, mostly in the mystery/supernatural/horror categories: Imajin and Dark Continents

Robert W. Walker and Scott Nicholson are offering repeats, in case you are missing anything in their many, many series.

[Joykins]

Oooh, Michael Flynn, I just loved _Eifelheim_.

_Spoil of War_ was memorably reviewed by Dear Author last August.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Joykins

_Spoil of War_ was memorably reviewed by Dear Author last August.

O_o Well, at least you can morbid-curiosity spork it amongst your friends for free.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Oooh, Michael Flynn, I just loved _Eifelheim_.

_Spoil of War_ was memorably reviewed by Dear Author last August.

As I recall that book sparked a bunch of other posts on DA as well.

[ATDrake]

Some backlist books/award-nominee established authors for the horror & thriller fans, and we have an interesting-looking historical as well, plus a couple of Christian things for the people who read Christian things.

Previously title-featured Stoker & World Fantasy Award-winner David B. Silva returns with a horror/suspense novel out from Hodder Headline in 1994: The Presence

Minor ISFDBed Allan Leverone returns with a horror short: The Becoming - a novella

Berkley-published Michele Scott returns with another tie-in short to her wine mystery series: Dog Gone Dog

Bantam-published Peggy Webb returns with a 1980-Fanfare interracial historical western romantic suspense: Witch Dance

St. Martin's/Minotaur-published Gerrie Ferris Finger returns with a detective mystery/thriller: HEARTLESS (Gemma Summers Series)

Mike Walsh, who appears to have had a book out from Onyx (there are a bunch of people with his exact name with very different books who come up on search, assuming they're not all him) offers a 2005 small-pressed 1950s coming-of-age crime/suspense thriller, which quotes blurb praise from I-forget-who-published-him-but-he's-been-here-before Bill Pronzini: The Runaway

Shirley Stephens offers a 1980 Broadman Press-published Christian non-fiction: A New Testament View of Women

Baker-published Angela Elwell Hunt returns with a Christian fiction short which she says originally appeared in a Multnomah-published anthology: The Yellow Sock: An Adoption Story

Daniel Judson offers a 2002-Bantam installment of his PI mystery/thriller series: The Poisoned Rose (The Gin Palace Trilogy)

Kim Cowie (ISFDB entry) offers an sfnal short which they say was sold to a particular British magazine which folded before it could be published: Centaurus

Stoker-nominated Daniel G. Keohane (ISFDB entry) offers what seems to be a newly-written dark suspense/maybe-horror novel: Destroyer of Worlds

Ballantine-published Boston Teran offers a WWI-set historical/political thriller set during the Armenian genocide which actually looks pretty interesting. This apparently continues the overseas adventures of a a US Bureau of Investigation agent in their previously published books: Gardens of Grief

Leon Mare offers his 1996 Janus small-pressed Africa-set big game crime thriller originally published under the title Dying is Not Easy: POACHER (Sam Jenkins Trilogy) ETA: Turns out this is not KDP Select, but price-matched with Smashwords, where the author says it is also a romantic thriller.

I like stuff set in Iceland and the sample for this YA tourist crime/mystery doesn't read too badly and the actual bits of Icelandic sprinkled throughout look mostly okay (I freely admit to not having a terribly good grasp on the language), so I include: Iceland Spar

There's some new-looking & mostly repeat stuff out from the following small publishers if you want to try it: Crossroad Press (backlist), Imajin (newbie & some backlist authors), Deadly Niche (newbie & some backlist), Hydra Publications (newbie, sf/fantasy + historical), Sunbury Press (newbie, mostly UK historical & mystery). And as usual, Books We Love/BWLPP have a bunch of repeats from their assorted backlist and newbie authors.

Happy reading, if you manage to spot something you think you might like, or you are considerably more fluent in Icelandic than I and that last book provides you with geysers of unintentional merriment.