Short stories this Christmas!

AuthorAppleton on December 7, 2015

Christmas is my favorite time of year. When I was growing up I populated my wish list with books. One thing I dreamed of was writing books that other people would want to put on their Christmas lists. It was five years ago now (which is hard for me to believe) when I had signed a publishing contract with AMG Publishers and I had no books to sell until they released Swords of the Six. In the time between I bundled together my short stories into a new book titled By Sword By Right. It sold surprisingly well for a collection of short fiction, and ever since then I’ve always referred to it as my bathroom reader.

Originally this book was available in paperback as well as on Kindle, but the distributor I had placed it with charged an annual fee so I discontinued the print version. From time to time I still receive requests for By Sword By Right in paperback, and now Amazon’s platform has enabled me to re-release it in time for Christmas!

There is something magical about short stories. From my perspective they are more difficult to write. Everything for me turns into a long-form writing. Short stories usually sit in my “idea bucket” to be later transformed into novels. But with By Sword By Right I put my journey as a writer under the x-ray machine. I included stories that were some of my best writings, and some that were written prior to the launching of my writing career.

For Christmas this year if you are one of those readers who wants something to take into the bathroom or into a closet for a quick read, By Sword By Right has an assortment of fantasy, science fiction, fairy tales, biblical, and even allegory. This book demonstrates the diversity of my writing interests and will give you an idea of where all of my stories will take you. From dark underground worlds to surface utopias, and even into the interstellar divides.

There is no limit to where the imagination can take us. And we can explore the depths and heights of imagination through short stories in the moments that reading longer fiction prohibits.

Q: Do you enjoy short speculative fiction?

Why print books are here to stay

AuthorAppleton on August 10, 2015

Several years ago the success of digital books, mostly related to the wide reception of the Kindle reading device, spawned a big debate amongst readers, editors, authors, and publishers. The question: would digital books kill the sales of print books? At the time most experts agreed the print book had seen its day and the vast majority of readers would shift over to digital. Back then I was one of the few, at least on the web, who took the other position. Print books are here to stay.

Print books are here to stay. It is interesting to note that most of my peers in the publishing industry postulated that the death of print books would be, in large part, a generational thing. It was postulated that younger readers prefer their devices. They prefer their technology.

Truth is, I have traveled through many states and spoken with thousands of students. In public schools a decent portion of the readers did later purchase my books on their iPads and their Kindle readers. Yet still the vast majority purchased the print copy. Some readers bought both. In the homeschool crowd I found many readers like myself, and for the most part they preferred print copies. Print copies can be signed by the author and lifted to your face for that comforting book smell. Ah! Ink on paper.

My personal library contains books dating back to the mid-1800’s. Those books have been handled by people long dead. The scent of the people and of the world they lived in contributes to the book experience in a way digital books never can. Physical books have memory in their pages and in their cover.

I have nothing against digital books. They have been a marvelous medium through which to expand my readership and my own reading material. Also, I have read a fair number of books on my own iPad and have greatly enjoyed it. But they are not an artifact. Nor can they be. A print book can stand on a shelf as a discussion piece. A print book retains an element of each person that touched it.

The publishing industry should not have been so swift to judge print books as artifacts. They are here to stay. Most readers of my books are middle graders, high schoolers, and college students… and they prefer paperbacks.

Question: What advantage do you see with paperback books?