Guest Post: An Out of this World Soundtrack + Giveaway

Music is an important part of the holidays! It’s also a very useful tool when telling stories. The right piece of music can be the perfect inspiration to make the words flow.

So here are the authors of the sci-fi romance holiday anthology, A GALACTIC HOLIDAY, talking about out-of-this-world music that helped inspire their out-of-this-world novellas.

Sasha: I admit, I didn’t listen to any traditional Christmas music while I was writing GALILEO’S HOLIDAY. I love Christmas music, don’t get me wrong. But the vibe wasn’t quite right. I do write to music, though, so I pulled a few songs that gave me the ‘feel’ I was looking for.  Two favorites are:

SAIL by Awolnation

Memorials/Rebuilding Serenity from the Serenity Soundtrack

Stacy: Since HOW THE GLITCH SAVED CHRISTMAS is in futuristic Chicago, I had the luxury of using Christmas carols in my story, though I made up Edison’s favorite, “Gimme, Santa, …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post – it has been a bit quiet on the publishing front, although there has been a slew of new book deals and announcements as well as some tidbit goodies from Patricia Briggs, Lauren Dane and Jenn Bennett.

First up, Amazon has announced their details for their annual breakthrough contest which for the first time does not involve Penguin which the winner of the previous awards have won a contract to publish their book. In this year’s contest, there will be separate finalists in the genres for Horror, YA,  Scifi and fantasy, Romance, Thriller and General fiction which each winning category will get a $15000 award whilst there is a grand prize of $50,000 and a contract to publish with Amazon’s own publishing imprints. The  date to submit for entries starts at January 14th – For more details and conditions of the contest can be …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

 Welcome to this week’s news post and it is has been an eventful week with news of more lawsuits over 50 Shades infringement, Random House new Digital imprints, and more book news!

Random House has announced they will soon be launching three digital imprints called Alibi (Mystery and Suspense), Flirt (New Adult) and Hydra (Scifi and Fantasy) which will join their sister imprint, Loveswept (Romance).  Random House is also on the search for self published authors who are willing to submit their books to these imprints, which is not surprising because quite a few authors have been recently picked up by major publishers via self publishing platforms. But Random House is not the only big publisher expanding in digital imprint, HarperCollins, Penguin and Simon and Schuster have all released or will be starting their own lines. More information on submissions can be found here.

Simon and Schuster have entered …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! In this edition, we have more rumours of consolidation amongst the Big 6, the nominees for the Bad Sex Awards and our usual book news and covers to watch out for!

Following the heels of the merger between Random House and Penguin, reports of  Simon and Schuster and News Corp’s  HarperCollins are in discussions to merge. News Corp is currently splitting up and spinning off its entertainment arm from its publishing and education companies, but this merger could bring in a greater market share. It does look like that the music industry, the big publishing companies are consolidating amongst themselves so that they can position themselves against the changes brought on by digital adoption. But it will be interesting to see if the other remaining Big two publishers, Hachette and Macmillan will follow suit, but I suspect they will but it does raise the …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and we have a chock full edition on upcoming movie adaptations and trailers as well as news on Fictionwise demise and book news and covers!

I think this was going to happen sooner than later, but Fictionwise has announced that it will be closing down from the 4th of December. For US customers they have up to the 21st of December to gain access to their shelves while the UK it is the 31st of January, there is also the choice to transfer their libraries to the Nook site. Although there is no information about the status on non UK/US customers but I would recommend you download and backup those books while the site is still running.  Fictionwise’s  other sister sites, ereader.com and ebookwise.com will also be affected but I think the writing on the wall for its demise is due to  the arrival of Agency …

Dual Review: Fortune’s Hero by Jenna Bennett

Format Read:ebook provided by the publisher
Number of Pages: 400 Pages
Release Date: November 13, 2012
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Series: Soldiers of Fortune #1
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Formats Available: Trade Paperback, ebook
Purchasing Info: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Book Depository US | Book Depository (UK) | Goodreads | Author’s Website | Publisher’s Website

Book Blurb:

Quinn Conlan had it all: a fast ship, a great crew, a gorgeous girlfriend, money, and adventure around every bend. That was before he agreed to ferry a shipload of weapons to the besieged planet Marica. Now he’s stuck in the prison colony on Marica-3, enduring weekly sessions with the camp’s “medical team,” and praying for a quick death before he breaks under the torture and spills everything he knows about the Marican resistance.

When opportunity strikes, …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! This week have news of a major glitch which led to the majority of the Big 6 books to become delisted on Amazon, Outlander has been greenlit to be turned into a series and much more!

Late last night, Twitter was ablaze with the news that Amazon has started to remove the buy buttons from the Big 6 Kindle books. Whilst in the past this has happened due to the introduction of Agency agreement which led to a standoff, it seems in this case the delisting was a glitch which only affected the US site, while the international counterparts were not affected. It was also interesting to note that smaller and independent publishers were also not affected either.  However this does give credence to the fear that Amazon who has huge market share of the ebook market could really affect sales if something like …

Around The Bookish World: Week-in-review

Welcome to this week’s news post! It has been a bit quiet this week but there is news of the long awaited launch of Barnes and Nobel in the UK and the growth of self publishing is making waves in the world of publishing as well as our usual books to look out for!

It has been a long while but the much promised and delayed presence of the Nook  has arrived in Blighty – Barnes and Nobel have officially launched their UK online site this week along with their devices, the Nook Touch (£79) and the Nook Glow (£109) are now available to order. The HD  tablets will follow suit soon and are available for preoder right now with a release date of 22nd of November. Whether this is too late for Barnes and Nobel to enter the UK market and elsewhere remains to be seen. But they face …

Dual Review: Haven 6 by Aubrie Dionne

Format Read: ebook provided by the publisher
Number of Pages: 326 pages
Release Date: September 11, 2012
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Series: (if it is) A New Dawn #4
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Formats Available: Trade Paperback, ebook
Purchasing Info: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Book Depository US | Book Depository (UK) | Author’s Website | Publisher’s Website | Goodreads

Book Blurb:

A product of an illegal pairing, Eridani is the only woman without a lifemate aboard the colonization ship, the Heritage, and she is determined her less than perfect DNA will not get in the way of finding love. As the ship nears it’s final destination of Haven 6 after five hundred years of travel, images of the surface show evidence of intelligent life on a planet that’s supposed to be uninhabited. Commander …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and it is pretty jam packed with the announcement of talks of merging with two Big 6 Publishers, more amazon news and the usual book news and books to watch out for!

Yesterday my Twitter feed came alight with the surprise admission between Penguin and Random House that they are in talks to merge  into one mega company. This led to some hilarious tweets about the new name which this new publishing company will be named after such as Random Penguin.  But on a serious note this is pretty surprising because Penguin is deemed to be the biggest publisher whilst Random House’s output is quite large and if there was ever a merger it would have been from the other Big 6 companies such as Simon and Schuster and Harper Collins whose parent companies have both separated their publishing arms from their main entertainment businesses. …