JUNE 2024
I don’t know if you noticed the newsletter sneakily sliding from the end of one month to the start of the next. It meant that April’s went out in May, and now I’m regarding this as the missive for June, so you might argue that we ‘lost’ one somewhere. But after last month’s interminable ramble, I certainly don’t expect riots and fighting in the street, with people shouting, ‘Give me back my month!’ (Apparently, this did happen when Britain went over to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 – two hundred years later than most of Europe – and an adjustment of eleven days was required, leading to many people thinking that their lives had been shortened by that amount of time. I’m sure if my granddad had been around, he would have been with those demanding the return of those precious days.)
Anyway, this month is all about book news. First, we have The Karima Shuffle, which you may or may not have read when it was a freebie (launched way back in March 2023) as Martian Shuffle. I’m going to be publishing this on Amazon at the end of June, but until then it’s on Booksprout trying to get some advance reviews. If you didn’t read it and fancy an ARC epub version, you could always go and grab one (I suppose there is some ‘moral pressure’ to provide a review, but I don’t think you’ll be arrested if you don’t – this is supposed to be fun!). This is the updated cover:
Or you could wait for the ‘official’ copy and buy it (at the usual ‘early bird’ discount price) at the start of July. Or, if you have read it, and feel like leaving a review directly in the Kindle store, you can also use the friendly link I’ll include next month! I think that’s covered all the options, if you haven’t dozed off already.
More exciting, perhaps, is a brand-new freebie coming out in August. I’ve always promised one before each new novel, but this year I wasn’t so sure it was going to happen. And then I got thinking about what Red actually did on Rhea after she rescued Doshi from the police station (ring any bells?), and suddenly I left Roland on Mars and went to the Saturn system for a month or so to find out. It was fun, I have to admit.
So, that’s about it for this month. In my other job as a technical translator, I recently found myself writing about ‘advanced air mobility’ and ‘air taxis’. I know it’s standard fare for sci-fi, and a number of companies are already rushing out prototypes, but I still don’t see it happening. Can you imagine the chaos up there between the skyscrapers? And on rainy, windy or stormy days (of which we may find there are more and more), who would decide whether or not it was safe to fly? We’Il see! Meanwhile, congrats to SpaceX on today’s successful booster ‘landing’! Impressive stuff. Need to go and check what happened with re-entry …