I’ve heard people use the term “price point,” and I’m pretty sure they only meant “price,” but thought “price point” sounded professional or something.
I’m sure there’s a proper way to use “price point,” but I’m not sure what it is.
In any case, the price point for my self-published novels has been adjusted to $2.99. This does not affect the price points for my Baen or Nordskog novels.
Try Death’s Doors, here.
River Springs Charter Schools in California is reportedly removing all Christian books from its library shelves.
The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a legal defense organization, has been circulating the accusation that this network of California charter schools is culling its stock of Christian material, notably The Hiding Place
The school says it receives state funds and so cannot allow “sectarian materials on our state-authorized lending shelves.” On their Facebook page, the school states, “No, we are not banning Christian novels at all. We are not allowed to provide sectarian textbooks however, so this is where the confusion comes in. So it’s yes to novels, no to textbooks as a public school.”
But attorneys with PJI say the Supreme Court has a “long-established precedent that strongly disapproves of school libraries removing books based on opposition to their content or message.”
Now I fully understand that “sectarian” could be defined in wild and nonsensical ways. I mean, this is California. But I have a hard time understanding how a library is supposed to operate if it can’t remove books over content issues. How did the books get in the library to begin with? If they had a volume of a decade of Playboy issues, would librarians be able to remove it based on the content?
I’m told Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico is in play here. Continue reading So What If School Library Dumps Christian Books?
It’s Banned Books Week again, friends, that wonderful time of year when parents and teachers pull out their cardigans and gather to discuss serious complaints and differences of opinion over mugs of hot apple cider. When we drink cider in America, we think of censorship. Isn’t that right?
This year we have a delightful book about the Islamic Revolution in Iran called Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Parents in Murphy, Oregon, have objected to the language and violent content in the book at their Three Rivers School Board meeting. When one parent was allowed to read from Persepolis, a board member stopped him because he didn’t think the language was appropriate for the meeting, which helped make the parent’s point.
Curiously enough, Chicago public schools pulled the book last year, which provoked parents and teachers to react in support of it. Copies of the book were reportedly taken from schools, and even Chicago’s mayor said he would investigate the reason. They have since rescinded its complete removal. The school CEO asks that it not be taught to seventh graders.
None of this is censorship, friends. I don’t know why Chicago wanted to yank this book, and I’m willing to believe the worst about their intentions, but that doesn’t mean the parents in Murphy don’t have good ones. Both of these things are beside the point. Objecting to a book’s placement on a reading list is not calling for it to be banned. Asking for more parental consent when assigning difficult or morally objectionable material is not a book burning party. It’s democracy and many other things as well.
For years, the New York Times has curated the most coveted bestseller lists of our day. Now they are building on that strength by adding such topics as Travel, Humor, Family, Relationships, Animals, Politics, Manga, and many more, each list bound to occupy literary banterers and book ballyhoo-ers for an hour or so. These won’t be published every week. Some will rotate through the month.
Melville House has dug up even more lists to be introduced by everyone’s friends at the New York Times Book Review. Here are some of the lists you will want to keep on eye on.
Most Fully Realized: Every week, The New York Times Book Review describes dozens of books as being “fully realized.” This lists ranks the top ten fully realized books from “Most Fully Realized” to “Least Most Fully Realized.”
Bestselling Young Adult (Cancer): The most successful books for teenagers that include cancer as a major or minor subplot.
James Patterson: The 10 bestselling James Patterson books released this month. (BTW, Patterson has outsold every other living author and holds a Guinness record for most books on the NY Times Bestseller List.)
Bestselling Non-Sellers: Amazon gives lots of books away for free. The “Best Non-Sellers List” will rank the top books downloaded by Amazon users for $0.00.
Literature: No genre fiction. Unless, of course, genre is employed ironically.
My novel Wolf Time, so long out of print, is now available as an e-book! Kindle version available here.
It just occurred to me that Autumn/Fall is the only season with two names. Perhaps because it’s so depressing they figured they’d divide it up into two bundles to make it easier to carry.
Oh yes, buy my book: Death’s Doors.
So. Fall. This means that my blog posting, never regular even during summer break, will diminish materially. It’s back-to-school time. I’m in my second year of graduate school already. How time does fly!
No it doesn’t. I feel like I’ve been at this for a decade, and have about 30 years left to go.
I had a gratifying moment on Saturday. It’s my ancient custom to go out for lunch somewhere on Saturday noon, and then go to the local Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar.
As I approached the window, the manager said, “I always like to see you coming. You remind me of better times.” Continue reading Rite of fall
CHAPTER I
The Lifestyle Services case worker seemed friendly and genuinely interested in him. Tom Galloway wasn’t entirely pleased about that. The case workers he’d dealt with in the Twin Cities had all seemed overworked and time-pinched. The desks in their cubicles had been piled with file folders and official bulletins, and they themselves had exhaled an institutional miasma that seemed to say, “Don’t show me any red flags and we won’t ask too many questions.”
But Megan Siegenthaler seemed to have all the time in the world, and was cordially curious about everything having to do with Tom and his family. Her small office had been painted a cheery mint green, and a tasteful landscape print hung on one wall. No family pictures though. He supposed those might be stressful for some of the case subjects. Or just as likely she had no family.
She herself was a honey-haired woman who must have been very attractive once and was still comfortably good-looking. Her green eyes were especially remarkable. She smoked a long thin cigarette, as was her right in all places except for hospital ICUs ever since the passage of the Smokers’ Re-enfranchisement Act. She’d offered Tom a breathing device, in accordance with the provisions of the Act, but he’d turned it down. Tobacco smoke had never bothered him much.
“I suppose it’s pretty dull here in Epsom compared to life in the Cities,” she said.
“I like it dull,” said Tom.
“Does Christine like it dull too?”
Tom adjusted his mouth in something like a smile. “No. She’d like to move back.”
“What do you think about that?”
“I don’t care what she’d like. I’m trying to keep her alive.”
Megan picked up the Galloway file and flipped through it. She had very long fingernails, enameled in red. Tom had always wondered why anyone who had to work with paper or keyboards would bother with such a self-inflicted handicap. “I think we ought to talk about this,” she said. “Your last case worker made a note about your attitude. You realize that, in the long run, you can’t keep your daughter alive, don’t you?”
Tom kicked himself in a mental shin. He should have learned to keep his mouth shut by now. He didn’t want to have this discussion again.
“I know what the law says,” he grunted.
“Then you know that if Christine decides to end her life, you have no legal power to stop her. The Constitution’s on her side. If she complains to us that you’re interfering, she can be taken from you and escorted to the Happy Endings Clinic by a Lifestyle Services worker. The law is very explicit.”
That’s just a snippet from Death’s Doors, my newly released e-book (by the way, Orie says it’s non-DRM, which means you can convert it to your e-reader’s format using the Calibre utility, even if you don’t have a Kindle). I thought I’d just take a few moments to talk about this book, and what I think it means (I could, of course, be wrong). Continue reading ‘Death’s Doors’: a snippet and an apologia
(As best I can figure out, we’re close to releasing my next novel, Death’s Doors. To whet your appetite, here’s a snippet. lw) [Available in eBook]
PROLOGUE
We have no use for barns anymore, but are ashamed to tear them down. So the lofted sheds stand here and there across the land on derelict farmsteads, redundant, their backs swayed like old horses’.
The woman tossed her cigarette away. It arced like comet spit in the dark. She went into the ruined barn through a Dutch door, pulling open first the upper panel, then the lower. The granulated hinges screamed and the bottom scraped an arc in the earth. She was afraid the noise would wake the baby she cradled in her left arm, but it did not. Such a good baby.
The law said she could be rid of a baby up to the age of eight weeks. She would never have let this one go except for something like this – something terribly, cosmically important.
Her flashlight showed her a low-ceilinged side-shed with animal stalls along its inside wall, its dividers and wooden posts scaly with brown flakes of ancient, petrified manure.
The old woman she’d come to see sat so still that she overshot her with the flashlight beam and had to back it up. Once fixed by the beam, the old woman smiled – a smile of radiant beauty that brought to mind a Renaissance Madonna gone wrinkled and white-haired.
“You – you’re the one I was to meet?” the younger woman asked.
Continue reading Death’s Doors, Snippet 1The Amazon.com dispute with Hachette continues with full page ads in the New York Times and emails aplenty. Hachette’s Michael Pietsch writes, “This dispute started because Amazon is seeking a lot more profit and even more market share, at the expense of authors, bricks and mortar bookstores, and ourselves.
“Both Hachette and Amazon are big businesses and neither should claim a monopoly on enlightenment, but we do believe in a book industry where talent is respected and choice continues to be offered to the reading public.”
Many authors are throwing their weight into the fray. “As writers–most of us not published by Hachette–we feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want.” Amazon argues that when paperbacks came out, publishers hated them just like cheap ebooks.
In related news, Amazon is disputing its contract with Disney and withholding pre-orders on select movies.
You know, when you find everyone around you acts like a jerk, the reason could be the common denominator–you.
I’ve been keeping a secret from you. We plan, God willing, to release a new novel of mine within the near future. This is a draft of the cover, with a lovely painting by our friend Jeremiah Humphries, and cover design by our own Phil Wade.
How is this possible, you ask, when I keep complaining of having no writing time because of graduate school? Well, this is a book that’s been pretty much finished for some time, except for a couple plot problems. I took my brief study hiatus this summer to work on those holes, and now I think she’s ready for launch.
The novel, entitled (obviously) Death’s Doors, is sort of a sequel to Wolf Time, but not what you’d call a close sequel. The location is the same, the town of Epsom, Minnesota, but a few years later, and with only a couple of the same characters showing up. In the world of Death’s Doors, assisted suicide has become a constitutional right. The main character, Tom Galloway, is trying to keep his depressed daughter from exercising that right, with no help from the authorities. On top of that pressure, a stranger drops into his life — the Viking nobleman Jarl Haakon (whom you may remember from The Year of the Warrior), who has passed through a door in time.
What we’re asking of you, at this point, is just your opinion on the cover above. Phil isn’t sure he’s satisfied, and would appreciate your input.
Thank you for your support.
