will be on a countdown special – discounted from $4.99 to 99 cents at 8 AM Amazon time (I think that’s Seattle) and increasing in one cent increments over the next four days. Get it now while it is cheap!

Two Rats Bats and Vats stories (a novella, and a novelette) another great ‘Pirates of the future’ story and some others

Cheap as chips

I have succeeded in my attempts to get Stardogs onto Smashwords. Meaning it is available from Byre and Ig, Apple Kobo etc.

In a celebration Red Fiddler

is free for the next day or so. Get in quick.

Stardogs, my first independent new release (I have put up A Mankind Witch and Morningstar when their rights reverted is now available on Amazon. In the next few days I will be getting it onto Smashwords (which means B&N, Apple etc) and createspace (for those who want paper copies will follow). If you want to buy it and click via the picture (it’s a link) it earns me a few extra percent.

My reading recommendation is up on the Baen podcast.

is one reprint – the cheapest. All ofthe reprints apparently suffer from average quality.

this one is available in Kindle

GOD DOES NOT FORGET: The Story of a Boer War Commando
by: Deneys Reitz

“One of the greatest war books ever written.” “A vivid, unforgettable picture of mobile guerrilla warfare.” In 1899 a 17 year old boy by the name of Dennys Reitz volunteered to fight for his country, South Africa, against the British. He could ride and shoot with the best of them, so he was quickly assigned to a Boer Commando Unit-one of the highly mobile light cavalry units that were driving the British crazy. Outmanned, outgunned, and under-supplied, the Boer commandos nevertheless checked the British at almost every turn. They became masters of lightning attacks, night fighting, and ambushes, only to disappear to strike again somewhere else. Reitz was in it from beginning to end, and participated in nearly every major battle. His descriptions of war and adventure have come to be regarded as among the best in the English language. After the fighting was over, Reitz chose to live in Madagascar rather than remain in South Africa under British rule; and it was from there that he wrote this book. But his exile did not last. His old commander talked him into returning to his homeland to help build the new dominion. To this task, he brought the courage and leadership he had learned as a commando, eventually becoming a Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and South African High Commissioner to London. He also fought bravely on the Western Front during WW-I-for the British.

They have – for the sf writer, the real advantage of telling about the underdog – the Boer republics -tiny, probably less than 100 000 people, fighting the biggest most powerful Empire of the time, and the story is one which deals not so much with tactics as with the personal realities of war, told through the eyes of 17 year old volunteer. Much of this is guerilla warfare, and it has both a rawness of personal immediate experience, and the sort of Western-orientated education and mind that makes this very accesible – despite the fact that it is a century or so ago.

THE KRUMHORN AND MISERICORDE A longish short story, concerning the back history of a character who has appeared in a number of the books and in the new one (BURDENS OF THE DEAD, Due out on the 4th of June from Baen Books) takes a major role. It is set in the Heirs of Alexandria Universe -SHADOW OF THE LION,

A MANKIND WITCH,

THIS ROUGH MAGIC,

MUCH FALL OF BLOOD

BURDENS OF THE DEAD

For completists – THE WITCH’S MURDER also fits in that universe.

Eric and I planned a series of murder mysteries with a little element of magic, set in that Universe. It could still happen.

Oh -all of the pictures are links -and if you use them I get another 6% from Amazon. Costs you no extra. Just sayin’

Hopefully the page for the e-book
is now up and you can follow the links.

The Forlorn was the first book I actually sold to a traditional publishing house. Out of the about 3000 sluch submissions that year, they bought one… This one. It was the second book up on the Baen Free Library, and many people have read it, but as the rights have now returned to me, and times are tight, I am offering it for sale again. Vet bills I suspect loom, and there are other important things that even the most self-sufficient family need from time-to-time. The picture is a link, which gives me an extra 6% (which, trust me, is welcome. I got 6% royalty on the book, the first time round)

Across the one human colony world, a place technologically regressed to near medieval, possibly the last place humans still survive, a desperate search continues. Scattered across the deserts, tangled jungles, and alien fortresses, lie the core sections of a matter transmitter.
These sections hold the key to vast wealth, power, or… the fulfilment of the colony’s purpose: to help humankind survive the rabidly xenophobic alien Morkth who will tolerate no other intelligent species. The Morkth managed to follow the colony ship, and, despite their mothership being shot down and their queen being killed, they continue their relentless struggle to destroy humankind… and to reconstruct that incredibly valuable matter transmitter. If they succeed, they’ll be able to return to the hive with the location of the colony of vile humans, and have a new world to occupy. If they fail, they’ll destroy the planet.
The search has gone on for centuries, and it is all reaching an end point. The future hangs in the balance.
The Morkth have lasers, aircraft, nukes. Those who want the core sections for their own ends… have vast armies. Against them are three unlikely reluctant heroes: A street child thief, a dispossessed spoiled brat of a princess, and a confused, amoral Morkth-raised human. They’re armed only with 14th century weapons and their own wits.
It’s a lost cause, a forlorn hope.
But it’s all humans have.

I have thrown this pod out has far as possible…

www.baen.com/podcast/podcast.asp

If you catch it, throw it on.

The picture is a link Amazon, bringing me an extra 6% if you decide to click and by via it. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.

I somehow forgot to put up here that AMW is now available as an e-book from… yours truly. So instead of 6 cents in the dollar I got for the paperback, or 20 cents in the dollar I got for the e-book, every copy earns me $4. Trust me I am not getting rich at this, but it is nice to have 70% of the cover price go to support the creator, to make it possible for me to write more books. At 6% I have to make ends meet otherwise.

If you love epic fantasy, dry wit, fast moving adventure, and love dogs…

To the North of the Holy Roman Empire are the pagan Norse-lands. It is here that Prince Manfred of Brittany, and Erik, his Icelandic bodyguard, must venture in the dead of winter to a mountainous land of trolls and ice to find a stolen pagan relic, the arm-ring of Odin, something so magical that it should not be possible to move it beyond its wards, let alone take it away. It is gone, and unless it is recovered before Yuletide and the re-affirmation of truce-oaths, a new Viking age will be born. King Vorenbras will lead his berserkers in an orgy of killing, rapine, looting and destruction, across the Empire’s unguarded North-Western flank.

Princess Signy is the King’s older stepsister, and everyone believes her to be the thief, a witch and a murderess. Everyone, that is, but Cair, her stable-thrall, a man plucked from the ocean, with a hidden past. Cair doesn’t believe in witches or magic, let alone that Signy could steal and murder. If he has to drag the foremost knight of the age, and his deadly bodyguard kicking and screaming though the entire Norse nine worlds to prove it and free her, he’d do it. No Kobold, dwarf, or troll is going to stop him, or his scepticism. Not the wild hunt. Not even a Grendel. He doesn’t believe in this superstitious rubbish. He’s a man of science and learning, and he’s used that to fake his way into being feared as a magic worker. But for Signy, he’ll be all of mankind’s witches.

He’ll have to be, because that’s what it’ll take to defeat the dark magical forces which are marshalled against them.

Ok so – my comment about not telling authors reached someone with the lights switched on upstairs (Yes, I am always complimentary. Never ever sarcastic. Me? I am shocked. And also grateful.)

BURDENS OF THE DEAD, by Freer, Flint and Lackey

will be in bookstores and available online June 4, 2013.

The picture is a link, which means Amazon pays me 6% of the purchase price. It doesn’t cost you any extra.

The eARC is up and available for purchase now:

www.baenebooks.com/p-1862-burdens-of-the-dead-earc.aspx