The Rusalka’s Song: an excerpt from Konstantin’s Gifts

In celebration of the release of the print edition of Konstantin’s Gifts, on Amazon.com, I thought I’d post a brief excerpt.

Vasya, my main character, is a serf who has been abused and imprisoned by her sadistic owner. In captivity, but faced with the first real prospect of escape, she falls into a restless sleep:

She dreamed of her childhood. Her grandmother’s face, peering down at the cluster of cowering children–Vasya and her cousins–hollow cheeks and knobby features deeply shadowed in the winter lamplight.

“Be good, little children,” the old woman hissed. “Don’t make a peep, or Baba Yaga will hear and she’ll take you away with her forever.”

Vasya and her cousins nodded solemnly, suitably cowed by the threat of Baba Yaga, the evil witch, who travelled on a flying mortar. She lived in a house with tall chicken legs that walked about the countryside, collecting up children, who were never heard from again. Baba Yaga would eat the children for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then, for dessert, she’d save the sweetest, tiniest, most succulent little babies–or at least, that’s what Vasya’s cousin claimed.

Hearts and Bones: September-October

Wow–a busy few months! Not only has school started up again (final year! w00t! Though in truth, I love studying, and am actually a little sad to see the end of it.), but I had ambitious plans to try to release 1-2 of my queued up, forthcoming titles.

So, what are some of the great things that have happened these past two months?

I always wanted to be an Amazon type

I’m live on Amazon with An Immodest Proposal–so exciting (*doing a happy dance*)! I have had to redraft my download page to make it clear that the pdf edition is different to what is being offered for pay (format and some content) because I’ve heard that Amazon will match their price to the lowest elsewhere (even if that’s free) and that would skew my experiment terribly.

So, yes, they’re different. And you can still download the pdf edition.

Still, I’m super excited about being on Amazon and having my book available for the kindle–check it out just for the sake of it, if you get a chance! And if you happen to have read the novel, I’d really love it if you could post a little comment about it–or even just put in a star rating. I think this will help people find the book.

Regardless, this feels very, very cool. What a world we live in.

The Kindle download (US store).

My Author Page (just cause it’s so dang fabulous to have one). I tried to find a picture that was kind of “authorial”.

FAQ: So how does try before you buy work?

Basically, you can read the whole book and then decide if you liked it enough to pay for it. Given the nature of the experiment, you can also consider paying if you felt that even if it’s not “your kind of book”, it was well done, with a sufficient mix of creativity, hard work and craft, to merit payment.

So: I’m not saying “pay if you think this is the best book you ever read of its kind”–because when you read a really awesome book, it’s easy to pay for it. No–I’m asking for honesty, based on your book buying habits: is this book on par with books that you have recently purchased and read? Another way to think of it is: you go to your community bookstore that’s cash only, go to buy a book and find out you don’t have the cash. The bookseller says, “look, take the book, and pay me next time.” It’s just putting the payment at a different point in the process. If you hated the book, you know your bookseller friend will take it back so long as it’s not trashed. Or, you could lie and say you hated it, thereby having garnered a free read.

Me, I would tend to pay the bookseller. But that’s just me. Again, it’s on the honour system–and unlike that friendly neighborhood bookseller, with whom you have a chatty, business relationship that allows him to trust you to pay next time, you don’t know me and don’t have that connection with me. So it becomes about the book–the work itself and your valuation of it–not your relationship with the seller.

Now, if you’re someone who isn’t comfortable with that and who likes to settle your debts up front, then by all means pay at the same time as you download–it won’t skew the experiment and will, in fact, play right into it, because it will be an indicator of your valuation of a given creative work. Similarly, feel free to pay at any point while you’re reading the book–I don’t require that you finish it before you ante up.

FAQ: Do I Have to Finish Before I Buy?

So glad you asked! No you do not.

The nature of the experiment is to determine whether you intrinsically value a work/are willing to pay whenever if you’re enjoying it, or whether you will only pay for access to a work–and once access is gained, you won’t pay anymore. I’m wondering whether, with digital stuff, we can try a different method.

So, you can:

1. pay up front, if you value the work in itself and want to demonstrate that;
2. download the book, start reading and pay once you know you’re enjoying it etc.  This would probably be me, to be honest. I’d give it a try, and if I liked it, I’d probably pay once I was a little ways in, but before I had finished reading. If you’re like me and would generally pay once you knew you were enjoying it, then I suggest you read at least the first three chapters before you ante up. By the end of the third chapter (also the end of the first act), the story has progressed enough that you’ll know the general direction of where it’s going. The early chapters involve a few changes of circumstance for the characters, and so assuming from chapter 1 or 2 that you’re going to like the whole thing might be a bit premature;
3. read the whole thing and decided then.