Amazon is giving away Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon. The catch is that it's giving away the Kindle edition only.

This is the first in a four book series entitled The Entire and the Rose. The Entire, as explained on the author's web site, is "a five-armed radial universe that exists in a dimension without stars and planets and that, in effect, tunnels through our own." The other novels in the series include A World Too Near, City Without End, and Prince of Storms.

Bright of the Sky has garnered 4.5 stars out of 5 on Amazon.com, with quite a few impassioned reviews.

Kay Kenyon was interviewed on episode 81 of the podcast, ... [More]

The "All-New" Kindle is here.

The most significant difference, IMO, is that Amazon is now offering two versions of the device: one with wi-fi only capability and the other with more traditional 3G.

There are other differences: smaller form factor, longer battery life, higher contrast, a new graphite color, lighter weight, faster page turns, a newly enhanced PDF reader… the list goes on.

Of particular interest to me is the wi-fi only version and the form factor, mostly because those two things stand out as the biggest differences between this "all-new" device and my now not so new Kindle 2. Amazon's got a nice... [More]

One of the things I often do as I'm reading a novel or short story is keep track of words whose definitions I do not know or that I find interesting. Either way, these interesting words are ones I feel might be of use in my own writing. That, and it's good to expand one's vocabulary every once in a while.

These interesting words were found in Paul Kemp's Ephemera: Dark Stories from the mind of Paul S. Kemp.

apotheosis: the elevation of a person (as to the status of a god)

caravel: The caravel of the 16th century was a small vessel with broad bows, high, narrow poop, four masts, and lateen sails. Columbus commanded three caravels on his... [More]

I'm supporting Kindle writers by selecting for review the occasional eBook from Amazon's Kindle Store each month. This is the second of those selections.

Also, I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 25th read of the 50.

Ephemera: Dark Stories from the mind of Paul S. Kemp by Paul S. Kemp is a collection of previously published shorts that the author collected together into a new, single volume source available in Amazon's Kindle store. Kemp is the NY Times bestselling author of the popular Erevis Cale novels and stories.

As the sub-title indicates, these are dark tales. You won't come away feeling good. You... [More]