If you’re looking for “Flight from the Mother World,” this is now a teaser.  The full novella can be found in my new anthology Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, available as an eBook on Amazon.

During my content editing of Sing a Samba Galactica, released last year, I concluded that the Old Storyteller’s tale of the Rangers’ flight from Mother World took away some of our ET friends’ aura of mystery, made the novel a wee bit too long, and would distract the reader from the main story arc.

The Old Storyteller’s original name was Deep Diver.  It turns out she had a very interesting life on Mother World.  This is an introduction to the story of how she came to lead the expedition to New Haven.  You will get to know the Rangers’ culture better in a very direct fashion—it had some problems.  You will also have another encounter with the Tali, albeit indirectly.  Please see the anthology to read more.

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[Note: This is the first post in a three-part series.  Enjoy!]

Amazon has gone over the top with their change in book review policy.  They have responded to the egregious practice where some authors ask family members and friends to write glowing reviews of their books.  These reviews often are little more than attempts to stuff the ballot box because Amazon’s algorithm counts positive reviews.  This practice, of course, offers no real service to readers and hurts authors who receive few but thoughtful reviews.  Amazon’s first attempt to correct this was to weigh negative reviews more than positive ones.  Now they’ve gone over the top.

Amazon, of course, caused its own problem.  It’s the biggest bookseller in the world, I suppose, so the ranking of a book on Amazon is a big deal.  It’s inevitable that some authors will try shenanigans to game the system.  There are two opinions here:  (1) That’s OK, because Amazon forces authors to do this; and (2) it’s morally ambiguous at best.  I suppose there’s a whole spectrum of thought between those extremes.  Joe Konrath, for example, one of the champions of self-publishing and now eBook publishing, has said he sees no problem with such chicanery (this is from the NY Times article mentioned below, so I won’t use quotes—I’m surprised Joe would say such a thing).  I tend to the second extreme.  You’ll find I don’t have many reviews (maybe a consequence of being too moral?).

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