Sunday, January 20, 2013

New Release - America's Galactic Foreign Legion Book 17

Walter Knight and James Boedeker are at again - collaborating on a new volume in the AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION series. In Book 17, things get crazier than usual as Private Randal Telk's psychosis overtakes his life...

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 17 - RANDAL TELK AND THE 396 STEPS TO SEXUAL BLISS
by Walter Knight and James Boedeker
Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, Humor, Political Satire

Legionnaire Private Randal Telk falls deeper into his delusional spell as the platoon searches planet New Colorado's New Gobi Desert for his bride Elena, who was captured by the rebel group Fist & Claw. Telk's delusions revolve around the super-hot Yolanda and his various applications of the 396 Steps to Sexual Bliss - and Randal's Big Bang Theory. Meanwhile things are looking ever more dire for Elena at the hands/claws of her captors. Many try to offer Telk encouragement and advice, but it is an old Legion foe who spurs him on to do what's necessary to get his wife back. It's debatable whether he'll get there in time to save her, and only his delusions keep him sane while the way-out wackiness continues.

Available in print at Amazon, and in ebook at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers where ebooks are sold!

Friday, January 4, 2013

Five-day ebook giveaway FREE EBOOK - AGFL04

Yes, some of our authors are craaaayyyyyzeeeeeeyyyy about giving away their books. For the next five days get AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION BOOK 4 for free on Kindle. Download a Kindle reading app to your electronic device for free too!

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 4: DEMILITARIZED ZONE
by Walter Knight
Fiction: Science Fiction, Military, Humor, Political Satire

The New Gobi Desert on planet New Colorado is hot-hot-hot, and when Major Joey Czerinski and his platoon are ordered there to check on Arthropodan spider military activity, Czerinski finds it hard to believe the spiders are just building a swimming pool. The spider commander is a royal pain in the rear, and Czerinski's cowboy diplomacy doesn't help the situation. Tit-for-tat one-upmanship escalates the conflict, making the DMZ explosive. A juvie militia leader rises from the dust to complicate things, and with Walmart, McDonald's, and chupacabra thrown into the mix, the absurdity never stops. Czerinski handles it all with his usual politically-incorrect aplomb in this fourth installment of the giggles-and-belly-laughs military space opera.


Get it at Amazon FREE 1/5 through 1/9

Charles O'Keefe's blog tour - THE NEWFOUNDLAND VAMPIRE

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Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Looking back, looking forward

Well here it is 2013. We didn't blow ourselves up (of course 2013 is still young, so there's always that possibility). But at least the Mayan Calendar Doomsayers will finally have to shut up. Unless they start claiming there was some catastrophic miscalculation (Like NASA's dropping a decimal point and blitzing a Mars landing project???).

As far as publishing goes, the big six (or is it five - four?) are still trying to hold onto their pants despite an insane run-in with the DoJ. (Summary: the Department of Justice had the silly audacity to pursue a lawsuit that essentially pats Amazon on the head with open approval for undercutting publisher suggested retail pricing and whups Apple for trying to set retail pricing per publisher standards.) While we don't believe in price gouging, we do believe that the government taking sides in an open market and helping an already overly powerful retailer (read that as mega-retailer Amazon) is just wrong. Amazon has an unabashed history of using questionable means to control publishers and pricing strictly to stage its own rise to power in ebook publishing as well as retail online selling. For the DoJ to openly approve of this and assist Amazon by interfering in the retail market is wrong in so many ways, it would take another whole blog post to go into. The DoJ simply has no business stepping in unless it is a clear violation of anti-trust laws. Gas stations price-fix every day, yet there's no DoJ presence to stop that. (OK, you try to explain the sudden jump in gas prices before every holiday, or whenever there's some 'incident' half way around the world. How does that affect the price of gas already in the station's storage tanks????)

For Penumbra Publishing, the year 2012 was a mixed bag. We got to publish a lot of great new authors, but like many publishers, we saw fewer overall sales than in 2011. It is sad to think 2011 was the 'boom' year for publishing. There is no reason to think that with a flood of new self-published books, sales for anyone will improve dramatically. The current 'twenties' generation is thoroughly entrenched in technological dependence. Minute-by-minute start-stop activities like texting, web surfing, and playing silly games to pass the time are easier than sitting down and concentrating to read a book. (What? You don't play 'Angry Birds'? What's wrong with you?) Children as young as three are being handed iPads by their parents as toys - pacifiers - so the behavioral trend becomes ingrained even earlier. Children are becoming amazingly computer-literate at very young ages, but this is not necessarily a good thing. These same children may depend on the calculator function of an electronic device to figure simple math without understanding how to do it 'by hand' or 'in their head.' And why is this bad? Electricity. Electricity has made it possible for us to change our environment, add comfort and ease to our lives, and perform a lot of tasks that might otherwise be more difficult. Electricity is a wonderful utility that we take for granted, but it is not immune to disruption. And total dependency on it creates a potentially bad situation. If we found ourselves suddenly without electricity for a long period of time, would we have a clue how to survive? Electricity has softened us and given us a false sense of superiority and security.

The future is always uncertain until it becomes the present, and speculations about what might happen can prove to be wildly wrong, but looking back at the past, it's fairly easy to see what has happened. (Not necessarily easy to explain why it happened, but oh well.) Instead of looking back and lamenting 'those were the good old days,' we're going to look ahead and brave a fearless smile with the determination to make the best of whatever the future holds for us. We hope you'll do the same. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And here's author/blogger Charles O'Keefe's take on 2012...

http://p45crok.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/2012-my-year-in-review-and-free-stuff/