Jet is fourteen and has two older sisters, both of whom went crazy (in Jet’s opinion) when they turned sixteen. Now the oldest one, Turquoise, has a minor role in a big Ollywood film, and the entire family moves across the planet (one of Earth’s colony planets) so she can film. Jet, having no ambition to be involved in the film world, is annoyed and bored out of her mind, so she takes her robotic dog Otis (who has missed his six-month maintenance appointment) and goes to explore. Their wandering leads them to a place called Indigara, which is under the Ollywood main complex, and seems to have been created out of the lost worlds of a few pilot movies that never went anywhere. Can Jet and Otis return, unharmed? And how will this affect Turquoise’s movie?

“Indigara” is actually formed of the first syllables of the first words of the four pilot movies (meaning a two-hour movie, often made for TV, that’s intended to have a TV series spun off of it); the strange world seems to have sucked in a handful of minor Ollywood actors. Jet and Otis get there by being sucked through a pipe of sorts; they are originally following a dragon. I thought it was quite a good premise for a book: what happens to all the worlds created for TV series that get cancelled, or never even make it onto a network? We, the TV viewers, only see a small percent of all the shows that are proposed, and even a large percentage of those get cancelled after one season. Because of this premise, the format is rather like a movie script; each section is preceded by a description such as “scene: cut to” or something similar.

Jet is a very amusing narrator; her initial comments about her sisters (she calls them “bitch[es] on wheels”) were pretty hilarious, and drew me into the novel right away. I thought Otis was also a great narrator. His sections were written in a very formal, almost computer-like format, as befits his status as a robot dog, but he still managed to have a great sense of humor and the ironic. The other sections were in a third-person omniscient format; these were best at showing us what was happening in Jet’s world while she was not there, and in some ways, they represented the funniest scenes in the book. I won’t give too much away, but there was a significant amount of drama on the movie set that had nothing to do with the film itself.

It’s short, and a pretty fast read, and I’d definitely recommend it. I found it very easy to enjoy, and rather unlike all the other Tanith Lee I’d read, which tended to be a bit heavy on unpleasant situations. (That’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed other books by Ms. Lee!) Fans of film will definitely enjoy the novel; the closest book I can compare it to would be something like Paula Danziger’s This Place Has No Atmosphere, or other decidedly humorous near-future off-world light children’s spec fic. Although there are references to various light sexual situations, I’d say this book is appropriate for ten-year-olds and up; perhaps those who had finished The Spiderwick Chronicles or the Series of Unfortunate Events recently might enjoy this as a bridge to slightly older YA lit. 4.5/5 stars.

Please send your name, an address at which you can receive mail, and any special signing instructions to steph AT readalready DOT com; I will forward it onto J. Scott Savage and then immediately delete the email and empty my trash. I promise that the only thing that your address will be used for is sending you a copy of the book.

There will hopefully be more contests in the future! Thank you, everyone who entered!

That gives those in the Eastern time zone another 25 hours to enter!

Stephanie: To start, since I’m located in Cleveland, we are conducting our interview in the cafe at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (I’m in italics, he’s in plain text.)

JSS: Rock and roll! Excellent. We are definitely going to have to explore after the interview. Who are your favorite rock bands? I’m partial to Queen, Led Zepplin, and Styx.

I’m quite partial to Queen as well, and the Beatles and David Bowie. There are some awesome artifacts in the basement! Anyway, we’re on a higher level, inside the iconic I.M. Pei glass pyramid, like the one at the Louvre. If you look down, you can see the gift shop; if you look up, you can see the peak of the pyramid and outside, Cleveland’s friendly grayish skies. (Apparently we have more bad-weather days than anywhere else in the U.S.)

Really? So if Twilight hadn’t taken place in Forks, it could have taken place here. Wonder if that long-haired guy with the cool guitar is a bloodsucker.

He probably is . . . Have you ever been to Cleveland? I somehow assume not. If you do come someday, then I would definitely suggest the usual suspects: the zoo, the art museum, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, if you like rock/pop music. For a book signing, I’d see if you can come to Joseph-Beth Books at Legacy Village, in Beachwood. It’s the biggest independent bookstore in the area, and always puts on a great show.

I have! Mostly for business. But now I need to come for pleasure too. Legacy Village will be first on my list.

Excellent! I hope you come while I’m still in town. So what got you started writing, and what drew you specifically to children’s fantasy, after the other books you’ve published? Was there a specific person/mentor involved (teacher, relative, other successful writer)?

There was a mentor that got me excited about writing back in high school. His name was Bill Sheehy and he was a great teacher. I didn’t choose to write fantasy though. It chose me. I started writing this book at 2:00 AM one morning to get rid of a story that wouldn’t leave my head. I knew I couldn’t write fantasy, and yet I kept seeing these characters and hearing their dialog. I figured if I rolled out of bed and proved to myself that I couldn’t write it, the story would go away. That has actually worked for other projects in the past. But this time I found myself still writing five hours and five thousand words later.

How wonderful to have stories that you can throw away! So was there something that specifically inspired this novel, or the series?

It’s hard to nail down one inspiration. It came to me over the course of a couple of years.

And I assume future volumes are going to be associated with the other four alchemical elements? (Earth, Fire, Air, Spirit)

There is a tie-in to the alchemical elements.

Excellent. I love alchemy. I have to admit, one of my favorite elements in the book was the talking barnyard animals telling Bennett Cerf-type riddles. Since your bio indicates that you have children, did you have any influence or help from them in coming up with these riddles?

Definitely!

That’s what children are for, right? So, what made you decide to go with Shadow Mountain Publishing? What do you like about them? Are they very different from your previous publishers?

I liked that they are a smaller publisher who really works with their authors to help them succeed. But they also have a national reach. Having hit the NY Times bestseller list before, they are quickly gaining clout.

Excellent! I hope they hit it again, with this volume. Can you describe what a typical writing day is like for you, if you would? (I assume you’re a full-time writer?)

Not yet. I’m hoping to reach fulltime status with this series. I typically start by rereading what I wrote the day before, editing as I go. Then I try to get in at least 1,000 to 5,000 words. I do most of my writing in the evening and on weekends.

Huh. I’ve written like that, but I usually get so caught up in revisions that I never add anything new. I’m glad it works for you. In addition to that, do you work from an outline, or notes, or from your head? Do you do extensive drafting, or does the work spring from your head, fully formed, like Athena from Zeus?

Just in my head. But I do have some very detailed plans for each book. I won’t start writing until the story feels full grown in my head. It’s important to write a book knowing you are setting things up for down the road.

Very true. What’s your number-one piece of advice for people who want to write? Considering that you’ve taught writing, I assume this will be a blindingly brilliant insight.

Does write a lot count as blindingly brilliant? No. How about this? Know why you are writing in the first place. It’s funny how many people take their first stab at writing a book with the sole intent of selling it for millions of dollars. Does anyone ever pick up a paint brush for the first time and think, “Think I’ll just whip out a Mona Lisa here. Got a mortgage payment to make and all?” Write because you enjoy writing.

That’s a surprisingly simple and yet complex point. I’ve got one last question for you, though: Did you ever find out how many fish are in your pond, now that it’s presumably unfrozen? (Are they koi? I love koi ponds. I have a 55-gallon fish tank, and, well, it just isn’t the same, as much as I love my tetra collection.)

That’s actually kind of a sad story. It was a particularly hard winter. But the good news is, we started off the year with a really nice fish fry. (I know that’s just yucky. We actually gave them a very nice burial.) Yes, they were Koi.

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[Back to Stephanie.]

Anyway, despite the demise of the koi, I’ve got a contest, the first ever for Someone’s Read it Already (well, we’re only eight months old here)! Leave a comment on this entry before Friday, Aug. 22, at 12 midnight EDT (Cleveland time), and you’ll be entered in a random drawing to win a copy of Farworld: Water Keep! Please leave a good email address in your comments, or send an email to steph AT readalready DOT com if you’re uncomfortable doing that. The publisher (Shadow Mountain Publishing) will be mailing the copy to the winner. One entry per person will be counted. YAY! FREE BOOKS!

Why small presses? Well, I’m reviewing books by small presses primarily because I like them, and secondarily because I noticed I had quite a few novels published by small presses. Why do writers publish with small presses? Sometimes it’s because they’re writing things that perhaps aren’t easy to sell (short story collections as a first work, for example) right now. Sometimes it’s because they think what they’re publishing might only have a limited audience (a Ray Bradbury screenplay, for example). Sometimes, yes, it might just be because New York (the traditional publishing industry) has rejected the book, but one has to remember that New York rejects things for a large number of reasons. Obviously if the work was accepted by a small press, overall writing quality wasn’t the reason. Another reason might be that the small publisher reflects one’s personal values more. I’m sure there are many other reasons that I can’t think of at the moment, but readers and small-press publishers should definitely feel free to comment with some.

Monday’s Small Press is Subterranean Press. I’ve reviewed quite a few of their books before (like these), and they’re one of my personal favorites. It’s not just because they’re publishing Charles de Lint’s obscure works, either. Their editions are frankly beautiful; although I’ve been reading ARCs recently, I own enough that I know that they’re all fully cloth-bound, with beautiful covers and often really nice endpaper. Sub Press also has a link to a few New York publishers; they do collector’s editions of some of the more popular works, such as Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon. They’re based in Burton, MI; I don’t know how many people they have on staff, but they seem to have a few hundred books in print at this time.

Tuesday’s Small Press is Norilana Books. This small publisher was started by Vera Nazarian on August 3, 2006, so it has just turned two years old. They currently have a whopping 174 books in print; many of these are the Norilana Classics line, which is lovely reprints of public domain works. The covers are generally fairly pretty; I feel they’ve been improving in quality since they started publishing. They’ve published a few of Sherwood Smith’s books, including the just-released A Stranger to Command, a prequel to her popular Crown and Court Duet. They’re based in California.

Wednesday’s Small Press is Small Beer Press. Small Beer Press was founded in 2000 by Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link; they publish books as Small Beer Press, Big Mouth House, and Peapod Classics. They also produce chapbooks and a zine; they seem to release five or ten books a year, primarily short story collections. Their zine is called Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and a best-of collection was published by Del Rey last year. My primary interest in this publisher is that they have released a few of their titles under Creative Commons licenses; this dovetails with Free Books on the Internet Week.

Thursday’s Small Press is Shadow Mountain. Located in Salt Lake City, they appear to produce quite a bit of children’s and YA fiction. In their guidelines, they say that they prefer works which reflect traditional Christian values; fortunately, this doesn’t keep them from publishing fantasy and science fiction. Look for a special interview and contest with one of their writers! It may appear by Thursday, or it may come in for next week, but it will exist, in either case.

Friday’s Small Press is Samhain Publishing, my only e-press. Founded in 2005, they publish a range of books that generally fall into romance or speculative fiction forms, but they also include “Inspirational” and “Mainstream” as categories on their main page. E-publishing, in general, is a slightly separate ball game from small presses, but I’ve chosen to conflate them for the purpose of this week. Other people do brilliant jobs at reviewing a good deal of the works available at e-publishers; I picked Samhain because they seem to have more sf/fantasy than other e-pubs, and the three (Sherwood Smith) books I’ve already read of theirs (here, here, and here) have been of good quality.

—

If any other small presses out there would like to send me books (or e-ARCs) to consider for a second episode of Small Press Week, planned as soon as I get another set of five, please contact me (see ‘Contact’ tab at the top). I’d also consider doing a dedicated E-Publishing Week, if I can collect sufficient f/sf/ya e-books from various e-publishers to make it worth my readers’ while.

I don’t know if this means I’m moving up in the world or down, but here’s the meme:

The rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to the person who tagged you once you’ve posted your three sentences.

“I think you’d better get the nurse in here,” Mrs. Chen murmured. “What just happened?”

“She stretched too far,” Terry murmured, from the stairwell doorway.

From Worldweavers: Spellspam by Alma Alexander. Tune in on Tuesday for the full review!

Um . . . I don’t think I’ll bother to tag anyone, but if you’d like to do this meme, feel free to.

I would guess at least a few of you have heard of Project Gutenberg. They’re a not-for-profit organization that is putting e-forms of as many public domain books as they can get on the internet. These aren’t all old books, either — I got Cory Doctorow’s novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town there, and he’s not the only one. Browse for yourself. They come available in many formats — .txt files, .pdf files, on the web itself, and usually in .html format as well. I generally prefer books in .html format; they’re more adaptable, smaller than .pdf files, and don’t require conversion before you read them.

A corollary to Project Gutenberg is DailyLit. They will send about two pages of a novel to you every day by email. A good deal of what they have is free, although there are also books you can pay for on the website as well.

Manybooks.net also has free e-books, pre-formatted in .pdf form or many other forms that are good for ebook readers (the Sony E-Reader, Mobipocket readers, Palm Pilots, etc.). I think they get most of their books from Project Gutenberg, but I found a few later works there, as well.

Another good place to get free books on the internet is your local public library. I know that two out of the three libraries I have ever had lending privileges at both have ebook collections. They’re not extensive, but they exist, and I would suspect that the more patrons that use them, the more they will expand them. These books you can’t keep, though — you download the book and can read it for three or four weeks (whatever your library’s typical lending period is). At the end of that period, the book will be locked up, and you might as well delete it. Larger library systems are more likely to have these books, and because they are DRM-protected, I think you have to have a certain program (Adobe, Mobipocket) to read the books. Still, for best-sellers, this can be a good way to read them.

Some publishers have started offering free books on their websites. Harper Collins does occasionally, but more importantly, there’s the Baen Free Library. After a book has been out for a few years, and it stops producing significant royalties, a Baen author has an option of putting his or her book on the website. Many authors have chosen to do so. Tor appears to be doing something similar; at the moment they’re giving away free books by email, while they redesign their website. I’d be interested to see what the end result is.

A more time-intensive way to find free books on the internet is to find single titles given away by authors. These vary in quality; some people aren’t published for a reason, obviously. Many are very good, though; one of the books I’ll be reviewing later this week is an unpublished novel by Diane Duane, of So You Want to be a Wizard fame.

Why do authors do this? Well, many of them are dead, so they have no choice. More relevantly, Cory Doctorow gives his books away for free on the internet for moral reasons, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his print sales or his personal wealth. Recently, John Scalzi had a book of his (Old Man’s War) given away by Tor.com (I’m sure he agreed to it), and he saw a significant uptick in print sales — we’re talking 30-odd percent, and in the hundreds of books per week range. Moral reasons, financial reasons, public domain reasons — I have to admit, I love free books in any way, shape, or form. So this week, I’m reviewing five of them. Enjoy!