Neo-Noir StoryBundle Includes GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY

Webrid is not always the best in social situations, but the earnestly goofy protagonist of my trilogy of humorous space opera novels is currently forced to hang out with some pretty striking characters.

StoryBundle is offering a pay-what-you-want collection of neo-noir fiction, and I'm honored to have Green Light Delivery included. Check out this lineup:

And now a word from celebrated indie publisher and editor Kate Sullivan:

The Neo-Noir Bundle serves up, in one fell swoop and at rock-bottom price, a collection of ten riveting works that blur boundaries, mix up expectations, and blend together all the best that noir has to offer.

Cross boundaries and defy expectations while exploring the noir tenets. Unreliable narrator? Check. Cynical, world-weary protagonist who's as quick with wit as a weapon? Check. Complex plots rife with reminiscences, reversals and betrayals? Check, check, and check.

As the founder and once-mastermind of acclaimed small indie press Candlemark & Gleam (now helmed by fellow renaissance woman Athena Andreadis), I had the honor of helping release some of the best new works in the neo-noir resurgence; these days, I'm digging into the best vintage pulp and noir with The Fiction League podcast.

And now, I get to share that dark, brooding twist on speculative fiction with you in this spectacular bundle.

Firmly noir, the bundle nevertheless ranges widely across speculative fiction subgenres: space opera, high and urban fantasy, paranormal romance, horror, alternative history, dieselpunk. From corrupt elves to Twitter-obsessed superheroes, from werewolf cops to ghostly soul whisperers, it's all here!

You'll get shadowy settings, the electric hum of eroticism, bouts of spectacular violence, and lose-lose scenarios familiar to devotees of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Patricia Highsmith; of Blade Runner, Strange Days, and the dark Batman reboots. Add a dash of snark, a jigger of suspense, and garnish with a twist of epic proportions for a neo-noir cocktail that'll leave you reeling…and thirsty for more.

Order this amazing collection at https://storybundle.com/noir

Excerpt: Green Light Delivery, funny #scifi

We're gearing up for the release of the third Webrid Chronicles novel, RED SPAWN DELIVERY, in 2017. The style of these books has been described as a cross between

Douglas Adams and Raymond Chandler.

In anticipation, it seemed appropriate to acquaint (or re-acquaint) readers with the ridiculous but lovable mess that is Ganpril Webrid, carter of the city of Bargival on the planet Bexilla in the Raralt Planetary Circle. And so, let us start at the beginning...


Green Light Delivery
by Anne E. Johnson

Ganpril Webrid, carter for the Bargival district, handed a clod of jamboro cake to the blue-skinned businessman.

He took a dendiac note in payment. “You stayin’ here?” Webrid asked, “or can I bring my cart into your space?”

Obviously pretending that he hadn’t heard, the fellow closed his window and sucked the cake down whole through a slimy blue mouth.

Webrid hated these commuter types. Somehow, they never learned the basic courtesies of urban interaction. And they were always in Webrid’s way. So he tried again, louder this time. “Can I use your space, mate?” He enunciated clearly. “How long you stayin’?”

“Bivisher! Braaap!” came the reply, the first word being an expletive, the second a burp.

“Fine. I’ll go somewhere else.” Webrid knew when he’d been licked. But he couldn’t just keep rolling along. He needed to get off the street for a while, after several hours of selling cakes to commuters, pushing his cart through the hotafternoon smog.

As he thought about how tired he was, Webrid realized that someone was standing next to him. “Yeah? I got cakes today, friend,” was his automatic response. Then he turned his head and focused his eyes.

This guy did not want a jamboro cake; he could tell that much for sure. For one thing, this “guy” didn’t appear to be biologically based. Webrid could see the wires at its joints. A great metal head lowered itself on a slender tube of a neck. A brace of digital cameras absorbed the features of Webrid’s face, which made him squirm.

“Like what you see, sailor?” he joked, but only to hide his fear. This wasn’t a Vox police robot. Not one like he’d ever seen, and he’d seen them all, what with parking tickets and contraband searches every few days. The Vox, always watching and listening, seemed to be after him constantly for one thing or another.

The robot’s head came closer to his face. Webrid pulled back. Maybe it was a cop bot after all. “I ain’t parked wrong. I’m on the move, in search of a legal space, officer.”

The robot responded with a mechanical buzz and a series of clicks. A door retracted into its central chamber, revealing a speaker. Somebody—somebody biological—spoke. “Ganpril Webrid, Second-State Licensed Carter,” it announced.

That voice! Icy snakes of déjà vu scuttled up Webrid’s spine. Clear as the bot hovering before him, he pictured the squalid back alley where he used to play with his cousins when he was a kid. Webrid huffed and shook his head, chasing away the random vision.

“Ganpril Webrid,” the voice repeated. “You have been called.”

“Eh?” Webrid had just spoken this syllable when a delicate feeler came flying out of the robot’s head and wiped across his forehead. It stung. “Hey, now, what’s the idea?”

But the thing was gone. Upward. Out of sight.

Webrid felt a headache coming on, and a strange green light pattern was starting to flicker in one eye. The light coalesced into a shape. It was not a very familiar shape, but after a moment of painful concentration, Webrid thought he recognized it. A tree? There weren’t any trees in Bargival, or on the entire planet of Bexilla. Webrid had only seen trees in pictures at school years ago. But now there was one floating in front of him, made of a green cloud. Then its particles dispersed, and there was nothing to see but the comforting grunge of the Bargival streets.

Webrid decided he needed a drink.

* * *

Like Webrid so far? You can buy Green Light Delivery  directly from the publisher, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, and at other online retailers.

Acquisition Announcement: Candlemark & Gleam welcomes a new Webrid novel

Hey, Webrid fans!

You helped everyone's favorite snarky carter figure out where that laser in his forehead came from in GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY.

You watched Webrid and friends keep their solar system from cracking apart in BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY.

And now I am thrilled to report that Candlemark & Gleam Publishing has officially announced the acquisition of RED SPAWN DELIVERY. Poor Webrid, who just wants to sit around guzzling booze, has to hop from planet to planet, chasing down fifty kidnapped alien spider babies. This was not what he had planned for the week.

And if you have not yet been introduced to Webrid or the other madcap characters in the Raralt Planetary Circle, I promised you'll be tickled. These novels have been described as a cross between Douglas Adams and Raymond Chandler, so you know you won't be bored!

See the official announcement on the Candlemark & Gleam blog. The novel is scheduled for release in early 2017.

Webrid's Unlikely Heroes Giveaway!

Milo James Fowler kindly invited me to join a series of giveaways he's linking to from his blog, In Medias Res. Hop on over to see the other great authors raffling off books each Friday in December!

I thought it would be fun to offer both of the Webrid books (that is, one reader gets both Green Light Delivery  and Blue Diamond Delivery) in any ebook form preferred by the winner. The Giveaway is up and running, and the winner will be chosen on Friday, December 20. The theme of my giveaway is Unlikely Heroes.

Webrid never wanted to be the star of adventures, or risk his life, or get off his couch for that matter. Yet, time and again, fate swoops in and forces poor Webrid to fight the good fight.

Do you love unlikely heroes in literature? Who are your favorites? Please share them with us in the comments, and also enter the giveaway here:

Good luck!

It's BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY Launch Day!

Yayyyy! It's my Book Birthday!

Welcome to the world, Blue Diamond Delivery, Book 2 of the Webrid Chronicles!


Cake, anyone? (No, I didn't make this adorable alien cake, but I am making the Blue Diamond Cupcakes for my live launch party on Saturday, June 29. If you're in NYC and would like to come, please RSVP on the Facebook Event Page.)




Here's what you'll find in BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY:

Webrid is a carter. He’s also the savior of the world. Is it so much to ask that he get a break, and get to enjoy the simple things in life―like booze and babes―without being asked to drop everything and save the day? Again?

All Webrid has to do is make one simple delivery to prevent the planets of the Raralt Circle from cracking to pieces. How hard could that be? Unfortunately, to complete this “simple” job he has to drag his reluctant carcass to a mining planet with intense gravity, to the horrifically fashion-obsessed planet Prellga, and across the Redfire Desert on his home planet of Bexilla. All he really wants to do is sit at home on his couch.

Join Webrid, Stravin, and Zatell as they stagger into another nail-biting, spit-taking adventure to save the world, whether they feel like it or not. 

You can buy BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY in print or digital form directly from the publisher, Candlemark & Gleam.

You can buy it on Amazon.

You can buy it at Barnes & Noble.

What's that? You've never read Book 1 of the Webrid Chronicles? Click here to learn about Green Light Delivery.

I've got a blog tour going on, during which you can meet the characters and learn about how I made the weird world of the Raralt Planetary Circle. Click here to see the complete Blue Diamond Delivery Blog Tour schedule.

Thanks for coming to my online launch party!

GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY giveaway winner, plus a plea for help for a colleague.

Tim Holdsworth, you are now the proud owner of a signed paperback copy of Green Light Delivery! I'll be contacting you about how you'd like the book signed and where you'd like it sent. Woo-hoo! Congrats to Tim and thanks to everyone else who entered.

If you didn't win and you'd like to buy Green Light Delivery, you can do so from the publisher, on Amazon, and at B&N.

But now to a more important item:

Attention writing community: Sue Bolich, a novelist who publishes fantasy novels as S.A. Bolich, needs our help. She recently learned that her cancer has returned and spread to her bones. She's asking all her fellow writers to assist her by promoting her books or buying them for yourselves or as gifts.

Here's a link to Sue's Amazon Author Central page, so you can learn more about her work. Please consider giving her a bump on Twitter, FB, or your blog. Thanks!

GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY: Funny noir sci-fi giveaway!

Need some holiday reading? Need a gift for a sci-fi lover in your life?

Enter to win a signed paperback copy of my humorous, noir-inspired science fiction adventure novel, Green Light Delivery!

The book:

Webrid is a carter, like his mother and grandfather before him. It's not glamorous work, but it pays the bills, and it gives him time to ogle the sexy women on the streets of Bexilla's capital. Mostly, he buys and sells small goods and does the occasional transport run for a client. Then he gets mugged by a robot. Now, with a strange green laser implanted in his skull and a small fortune deposited in his bank account, Webrid has to make the most difficult delivery of his life. He doesn't know who his client is, or what he's carrying, but he knows that a whole lot of very dangerous people are extremely interested in what's in his head. Literally. And they'll do whatever it takes to get it. With the help of some truly alien friends, a simple carter will journey across worlds to deliver his cargo. And hopefully keep his head in the process.

Here are some nice reviews on Amazon.

Read an excerpt here.

The contest:

Open to U.S. postal addresses only (because of shipping costs). Please leave your email address and the name of your favorite sci-fi book or movie either 1) in the comments section below or 2) privately by messaging me on my FB author page.

One luck winner gets a paperback copy of Green Light Delivery, with a personalized signature at the winner's request (to yourself or a gift recipient).

Enter by Wednesday, December 5, 11:59 pm EST. Winner will be announced here (and via email) on Thursday, December 6.

Please spread the word. Thanks and good luck!

Thoughts on My Three-Novel Summer

Dear Reader:

Never, if you can manage it, publish three books in as many months.

Now, I'm not saying I'm not thrilled to have three novels published. Trust me, I am. And I certainly had no control over this situation, my books being with three different publishers.

What was the downside? Everything you'd expect:

1. Potential readers got confused. My own family can't keep track of who is publishing what, and in what format. Friends and acquaintances who clearly wanted to support me didn't know which title was which genre or age-group.

2. Three blog tours, back to back. That's really all I need to say on that topic. You can imagine.

3. Over-saturation of my brand. To much of me, too quickly, associated with too many different titles.

But I did learn a huge amount about publishing and promotion. Here are a few of the many things I've taken away from the experience:

1. Daily posts on blog tours are a waste of time, unless the blogs are very high profile and a lot of strangers will read them. Just jumping from one small blog to another tends to keep you in the same circle of potential readers. Your Facebook and Twitter followers and other contacts lose interest quickly ("Wait, didn't you just have a launch day?").

I gained very few readers, despite all that effort. Next time, I will spread out the blog marketing, perhaps to once a week.

2. With three publishers utterly distinct in their approaches, I learned about various release choices. I can see that it is important to me, and to potential readers, that my books are available in both print and e-formats, and at all the major online venues.

3. Publishers probably do want a sequel, no matter what they say on their submissions guidelines.

So, dear reader, I survived the crazy three-book summer of '12. It was fascinating, thrilling, exhausting, and terrifying. And, while I hope to have many novels published in the future, I hope to spread them out by at least a few months!

Closing Out the Green Light Delivery Blog Tour

Want more? There's more!

I answer the burning question, "Why Did You Write That?"

Angelia Almos invites me to consider why I write sci-fi.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt lets me muse about the challenges that face the sci-fi novelist.

Would you like to buy the novel after reading all those interviews? You can get it from the publisher, on Amazon, or on Barnes&Noble.

Oh, and there's a Green Light Delivery public event coming up in a few weeks: I'll be reading and signing at Modern Myths Comic Shop in Northampton, MA, on July 21. More info here.

So far, on the GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY blog tour...

The tour bus has made several stops already. If you'd like to catch up, here's a scooter and guidebook to help you out:

I was interviewed about the Green Light Delivery on The Qwillery. (And don't miss the giveaway for commenters!)

I was a guest of Matt Adams, discussing rogues and rascals.

I mused about fate and science fiction on Scalzi's Big Idea.

I cartwheeled Across the Plain of Shining Books, just to be funny.

GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY Launch Day is Here!

I'm officially a science fiction novelist! Green Light Delivery was released today by Candlemark & Gleam.
*   *   *

Webrid is a carter, like his mother and grandfather before him. It's not glamorous work, but it pays the bills, and it gives him time to ogle the sexy women on the streets of Bexilla's capital. Mostly, he buys and sells small goods and does the occasional transport run for a client.

Then he gets mugged by a robot.

Now, with a strange green laser implanted in his skull and a small fortune deposited in his bank account, Webrid has to make the most difficult delivery of his life. He doesn't know who his client is, or what he's carrying, but he knows that a whole lot of very dangerous people are extremely interested in what's in his head. Literally. And they'll do whatever it takes to get it.

With the help of some truly alien friends, a simple carter will journey across worlds to deliver his cargo. And hopefully keep his head in the process. 

*   *   *

You can purchase Green Light Delivery directly from the publisher, on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

Final Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown!!

Tomorrow is launch day, so this is the end of the countdown! I thought we should finish with an actual alien. Klaus Nomi truly believed he was from Mars. (His mom thought he was from Austria.) Here's a nice little apocalyptic ditty to close things out.

Video #1. Klaus Nomi. Total Eclipse (1981)

New Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown. 2 Days to Go!

Going back a bit (ooh, time travel!) for our penultimate video. Julie London transports us to our favorite satellite. Webrid would like this.

Video #2. Julie London. Fly Me to the Moon. (TV appearance, 1964)

New Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown. 3 Days to Go!

Three more days until launch. Let's get some classical music into the countdown mix.

When I was a kid, Jupiter was my favorite planet. I was mesmerized by its swirling pinks and oranges. Gustav Holst, in his orchestral suite The Planets, calls Jupiter "The Bringer of Jollity."

Video #3. Holst. Jupiter from The Planets. (Sir Charles Mackarras conducting the BBC Philharmonic)

New Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown. 4 Days to Go!

Feel like traveling from star to star? Let Rufus Wainwright take you there on a John Lennon interstellar vessel.

Video #4. Rufus Wainwright. Across the Universe (by John Lennon)

New Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown. 5 Days to Go!

Here's today's space-related countdown video. Remember, Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.

Video #5. Elton John. Rocket Man (live, 2005)

New Video for Green Light Delivery Launch Countdown: 6 Days to Go!

Counting down to launch day with space-related music. Here's today's video, a song about the theory of relativity and how it affects time during a space voyage:

Video #6: Brian May (of Queen). 39. Live, acoustic, 2006.

Video Countdown to GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY Launch!

Seven days to go until Launch Day! I'll be adding a space-related music video each day to count down to launch, so please check back tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Video #7: David Bowie. Space Oddity original video, 1969.

Sci Fi Stew and other Literary Adventures

Candlemark & Gleam, my publisher for Green Light Delivery, entered me in The Qwillery's Debut Author Challenge. To introduce myself, I wrote an essay called "Green Light Delivery as a Sci Fi Stew." It's about process and genre-blending. You can read it here.

In other news, my flash story "Aquarium" was accepted by Drunk Monkeys and should be posted there any day now. My Duotrope "Response pending" list is up to 14 stories, plus I have a novel and a picture book text out looking for homes. So my main activity these days is waiting.

Waiting and writing, of course.

Green Light Delivery cover and free sample!

Look at this beautiful cover for my humorous noir sci fi novel, Green Light Delivery. The book is due out in June from Candlemark & Gleam, but you can read the first 24 pages for free by clicking here.