Sanjen Performs Everywhere

It's time to move on from Kindle exclusivity. I weighed republishing my stuff through IngramSpark or Draft2Digital, and decided to go with D2D. At least, with my darling guinea pig novella, "A Nocturne In Red." (The process was so simple that I'll likely do the same with all the others a little at a time.)

As of this week, Sanjen's first adventure is available, not just at Amazon, but everywhere D2D distributes books. I cannot express how excited I was to be able to download my book from Apple Books. Yes, I was my own first sale there. 😋

So now my beloved messed-up bard is "booked" at Apple, Kobo, and Scribd, and will soon perform at Barnes & Noble and all other venues too. If you want to follow his rising career and fall under the spell of his magical music, this is the link to all his current bookings:  https://books2read.com/u/3y6r0V

Crossing fingers that greater exposure widens his success with fans.

Here's the cover to look for:

Blurb:

Sanjen Laurelius, a lute-wielding bard, is a rising star.

He's also wanted by the emperor.

When he calls upon his special brand of song-magic to fight off a rampaging harpy, he finds himself the object of unwanted attention: a powerful officer in the emperor's service hires Sanjen to find the cure for a curse that has transformed a favored concubine into a bloodthirsty monster. But Sanjen's past is catching up with him. Can he find a way to save the victim of the curse before his employer discovers his true identity—and returns him to the emperor in chains?

Genre: somewhere between dark and epic fantasy

Length: novella (a quick weekend read)

Content warnings: drug use, gore, language, allusions to sexual content

Scratch That...

Ignore my last post. The anthology has been temporarily pulled.

Ah, the joys and frustrations of publication! Apparently there was an issue with one of the author contracts, which forced our editor to pull the anthology. Poor Joshua. He's worked tirelessly on this thing, and little snags at the end are always the worst.

But, says I to myself, never fear! As soon as the contract issues are smoothed away, the anthology will be back online, and we'll have our "Release, Take 2" party. It promises to be a storm of a party, too, with blog tours, giveaways, interviews, and, man, would I love some swag. That book cover would look dandy on a black t-shirt. Am I dorky? Heh, yeah, probably.

EXPLORERS Available At Last!

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It was May of last year that I posted that my short story "A Mournful Rustling" had been accepted by Dead Robots' Society for inclusion in their  anthology. Well, Explorers: Beyond the Horizon is available at last! The collection features characters forever changed by their discovery of lands and worlds beyond their own. Whether it’s by charting new stars, trekking across fantastical realms, sailing new oceans, or traversing the wild and unknown spaces between dimensions, readers will find the unimaginable in the pages of Explorers. Authors contributing work to the anthology are:



J. Daniel Sawyer
Jeff Brackett
Lauren M. Roy
Colum Paget
Vincent Morgan
Ira Nayman
Jocelyn Adams
Court Ellyn
Jesse J. Summerson
Andrew Hawnt
Mark Mellon
Laura Givens
James Ebersole
Kurt H. Hyatt
Daniel Latham

So far, the anthology is available at the following venues:

CreateSpace

Amazon Print

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble Nook

Smashwords

Now, the interesting part is, if you purchase a print version of this book from Amazon or CreateSpace and email a copy of the receipt  show(at)deadrobotssociety(dot)com, they will send you the ebook for FREE.

I'm so excited to see how this project turned out. I've been waiting on pins and needs since December 2010, when the call for submissions was extended. The results should arrive in my mailbox soon.

So, cheers! And happy reading!

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My First Review!

Well, after Milo told us about his fantastic review, found right here at blogspot, I decided to find out if July's issue of Kaleidotrope had received any kind of review yet. So I googled it. Ah, the wonders of Google. It seems that SFRevu writes up reviews of several SF&F magazines, and Kaleidotrope happens to be one of them. Sam Tomaino had this to say about my novelette "Fire Eater":

Cort Ellyn's "Fire Eater" gives us Mother Mirrah who wants justice for a draeling, a creature that is partly human, who she is convinced was unjustly imprisoned 140 years ago. She talks with him and has great sympathy for him. I won't reveal how this one turns out, but I will say that is was a very well-written story.

Cool, huh? I had read a review of Kaleidotrope before and the critic that day had nothing good to say. Seriously he must've been in a bad mood or something. So I had cause to be nervous. But all's well that ends well, right?

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