Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Goodreads Book Giveaway: Nanowhere

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Nanowhere

by Chris Howard

Giveaway ends December 30, 2011.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Nanowhere is back!

The second edition of my tech thriller Nanowhere is out, although the official release--in print--won't be until next month or early 2012.  The ebook's available right now at Amazon and B&N on the Kindle, Fire, Nook, and any device with the Kindle or nook apps.  (More eBook formats and channels to follow).

This edition has a bunch of edits over the original version, which came out in 2005, and includes two of the research reports by the character John Andreden at the back of the book.

The eBook cover is on the left and the print book is below.

Here's some of the back cover copy:

Nanowhere... it's a love story with all the usual elements: rogue soldiers, computer hacking, tyranny, cryptography, hit-men with an affinity for rolled adhesives, rebellious skateboarders, and sentient billion-node self-organizing nanotech ghosts.

Here's a clip of Cory Doctorow's kind words on Boing Boing:

Chris Howard has released an...interesting and well-written...sf thriller called Nanowhere along with a bunch of supplementary materials that purports to be the lab notes and publications of one of the book's characters ...

 

Amazon.com | Amazon.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr
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Doing some reading out loud and recording it

I spent an hour or so tonight reading and recording the first chapter of Teller, preparing to record...all of them. Let me know what you think!  Here's the print and ebook.

 

Same recording, two formats:

 

MP3, 2.4MB

TELLER-ChrisHoward-CHAPTER-01b.mp3

 

OGG, 3.2MB

TELLER-ChrisHoward-CHAPTER-01.ogg

 

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I have jumped into GoodReads

 

Find and friend me here:

http://www.goodreads.com/chrishowardwriter

 

 

Seaborn iPad app available in iTunes!

Calling all iPad owners!

 

Seaborn—the iPad app—is a book and art platform for the stories, illustrations, paintings, and author notes created by me (Chris Howard) for a collected set of my works—the novel Seaborn, the graphic novel Saltwater Witch, and Seaborn's sequel, Sea Throne. Also included: character studies, timelines, maps, character lists, sample audio chapters of Seaborn, art portfolio, short stories, and chapters from the SF thriller Nanowhere.

Okay, that's the formal description of the app. It's also a discovery effort to develop the necessary components of a mobile author and artist platform.

I wanted to create something that makes it convenient to get to an author's or illustrator's work, especially the creative side-stuff we do that doesn't always have a home, some of which appears in our blogs, they're slapped up on image-sharing sites, scattered across the universe. Two things I heard over and over after Seaborn hit the shelves: "I wish there was a character list included in the book", and "how do you pronounce names like 'Kallixene'?"

My ultimate aim is to build something that brings it all together in a place that's always available—with the base assumption that very few of us go anywhere without a mobile device.

Be warned: version 1.0 has a couple embarrassing typoes--fixed in version 1.1, which should be ready for download in a few days.  Version 1.0 is up now.  Go get it.  Grab the update when Apple pushes it to iTunes.

I'd really like some feedback on the contents, layout, the scrolling panes for Saltwater Witch, missing features, everything.

To go along with the app, I've updated the Saltwater Witch comic site, moved everything over to the actual SaltwaterWitch.com site.

Here's a set of app screenshots:

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Last of my vacation...

I'm back at work tomorrow. Spending my last day of vacation--which started the first day of WorldCon--drawing, painting and reading...and drawing and painting Kassandra reading--actually staring off into space in this scene, but she does have a book.  Here's a peek at a closeup of one panel from the next set for Saltwater Witch.

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Reading aloud

Doing some practice reading of Winterdim chapter 1--what I'm going to read at WorldCon in a few weeks.  I have it down, just refining a few points.  Man, I write short chapters.  I may get two read in the eighteen or so minutes allotted.

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Seaborn copies

I'll be at Readercon this weeked--Friday through Sunday--in Burlington, Mass, and I have half a box of Seaborn (15 or so copies) to give away.  I'll probably just drop the box next to the free table.  If you want one, and the box is empty, track me down.  I may have a few stashed in my backpack.

Cheers!

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Readercon

Registered for Readercon--way late, but I'll be there.


Readercon 20

July 9-12, 2009
Burlington Marriott, Burlington, Massachusetts.

Guest of Honor:

Elizabeth Hand & Greer Gilman

Memorial Guest of Honor:

Hope Mirrlees

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Does FREE work?

To narrow that down a bit, does the posting of stories, novels, and art for free downloading, reading, viewing, and even sharing, make any difference in print book sales, in attracting more traffic to an author's or illustrator's blog, in doing anything to help that artist's career?

I give away a lot.  I have a whole blog dedicated to some of my Creative Commons licensed content.  I post my art regularly here on theophrast.us, on Flickr, deviantArt, and other art forums and presentation sites.  I posted an SF novel Nanowhere almost four years ago under Creative Commons license.  I post 3 to 5 panels for my web comic Saltwater Witch every week. 

Free, all of it.  Free to download, to read, to share, some of it out there for years. 

Does it work, giving all of this away if you're just starting out?  (I know it works if you're an established author, celeb, marketing guru, so I don't need the Doctorow, Scalzi, Anderson, Godin, etc. cases). 

I'm curious to hear what other writers, illustrators, and readers think.  Maybe you can guess what I think by what's on my blog or the Saltwater Witch site.  I'm considering posting my entire novel Seaborn, which came out last July.  And I'm wondering about the effectiveness of free.  I completely get Tim O'Reilly's aphorism that the problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.  Maybe my real question is does giving things away solve that problem?

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ChrisCommons
Saltwater Witch Web Comic.