Beyond the Pale available as ebook!

Beyond the Pale ebook coverI’m happy to announce that my novel, Beyond the Pale, is now available as an ebook on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. Yay!

The timing is possibly fortuitous because the original paperback of the novel was published twenty years ago this month. Twenty!

1998 was before my younger daughter was born, and now she’s graduated from high school. So yeah, my world has changed a lot since then. The world wide web was barely a thing then. Ebooks didn’t exist. Amazon.com was a small, barely known web store that only sold books. There were no iPhones. I wrote using an Atari ST with a Mac emulator. My 20 megabyte hard drive cost $500.

In some ways it’s a surprise that Shadowrun is still around. Yet, it is such a rich universe with larger-than-life characters and a detailed future history. I couldn’t have asked for a better world in which to tell stories. I loved cyberpunk and had read a ton of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and others.

My main drive at that time was to be a full-time fiction writer… never realizing how hard that would be. Even while I was writing novels, I had to work a day job. Despite the relative popularity of my Shadowrun books, they never earned enough for me to stop working. So I wrote the books during my spare time, and now I look back and marvel at how much energy and drive my younger self had to spare. Incredible!

Beyond the Pale is the final book in my trilogy – The Dragon Heart Saga – about the events that occur in the aftermath of the death of the great dragon Dunkelzahn. Beyond the Pale completes the saga, and I’m really happy that people can now get all three as ebooks – because the paperbacks are really difficult to find these days.

Here’s the whole set.

Stranger Souls book cover

Kobo | Nook | Kindle

 

 

 

 

Clockwork Asylum book cover

  Kobo | Nook | Kindle

 

 

 

 

Beyond the Pale book cover

Kobo | Nook | Kindle

Trulon is coming soon!

I’ve been working on a project for a while now, mostly in between life issues like moving to Mexico and holding down a day job. The Trulon project is the brainchild of Johan Lillbacka who contacted me several years ago now about a collaboration. I liked the idea and wanted to work with him and so we embarked on fleshing out his fantasy universe, creating a story arc for a series of novels, and ultimately laying the foundation for other creative outlets for characters in this steampunk-with-magic style world.

Soon you will be able to experience some of what we’ve built by playing the game – Trulon: The Shadow Engine. It’s designed for young adults, but should be fun for adults too. For this, Johan worked with Finnish game makers Kyy Games, the creators of Trouserheart and Rimelands: Hammer of Thor. And later this summer, the first novel – coauthored by me and Johan – will be out. And if you’re in Finland, you’ll be able to see a live performance at Powerpark!

Well, I need to get back to writing! Meanwhile here are couple of links if you’d like more information.

Trulon: Shadow Gears – story primer
Trulon press release

Impressed with Nook Press

If you’ve been paying attention to publishing news, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the new platform that Barnes and Noble trotted out today. Nook Press is their latest attempt to move ahead of Amazon.com’s Kindle Desktop Publishing. At first glance it looks like it’s got a lot of features that might appeal to individual writers.

Frankly, when I got the email this morning with the “great news” that I was going to have to move the Per Aspera Press books from PubIt to Nook Press I was not looking forward to it. What a hassle, I figured. And this perception only deepened when I started looking at the news articles and watched the tutorial videos of creating a publisher account.

Nook Press logo

Yes, all this new functionality is cool. Yes, isn’t it great that I can now use their platform to actually write my manuscript? Actually it’s not. Even though they give me the option to invite collaborators to comment and review, I would never write a draft using a tool like this. Just doesn’t have all the functionality I need.

So I was dreading transitioning my books to this new platform. And that fear wasn’t assuaged by the nookpress.com site being down (or more likely overwhelmed) for much of the day. But when I actually did walk through the steps — not of setting up a new account — but of transitioning my PubIt account over. The process was …

Smooth. Easy. Almost perfect.

Seriously, I entered my old account information, and my new account information. Clicked once. Verified my email. Done.

All my books transitioned. All metadata. All my payment and company information. Seamless. Impressive.

This sort of experience is so rare that I took the time to blog this. Good job, Barnes and Noble. Please don’t let Nook die. We need you around.

Games and Gizmos Event

Stranger Souls (Book 1 of the Dragon Heart Saga) by Jak Koke

This coming Monday (March 18) I will be at Games and Gizmos in Redmond Washington with Jennifer Brozek and James L Sutter. We’re all novelists that have written in game universes. Mine include Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and Forgotten Realms. Come out and hear us read, ask questions about anything, or just to get a signed book.

Clockwork Asylum (Book 2 of the Dragon Heart Saga) by Jak Koke

I will have plenty of (new and never read) copies of my Shadowrun novels available. These are sometimes hard to find so come get yours. In fact it’s ironic, but I am down to one physical paperback copy of my latest book – The Edge of Chaos – and cannot get any more copies because the publisher has designated it as out of print. (It’s still available in ebook and audiobook form.)

So, come out and hear me (and other authors) read and entertain you. There will be snacks, gaming, and you might even learn how the decision to kill off Dunkelzahn came about.

Join me at Emerald City Comicon

For the first time, I will be attending Emerald City Comicon, which features some huge media stars like Patrick Stewart and Felicia Day and Wil Weaton and… and…

I have one panel on Saturday, March 2nd at 2:20. Show up early.

Emerald_city_comicon_logo

ASK THE (BOOK) EDITORS

Room: HALL C (602-603)
Start: 2:20PM
End: 3:15PM

Join novelist Philip Athans as he joins Nina Hess (Editor-in-Chief, Wizards of the Coast) Fleetwood Robbins (Editor, Wizards of he Coast), Jak Koke (Managing Editor, Per Aspera Press), and James Sutter (Editor, Paizo) for a spirited Q&A for aspiring authors of fantasy and science fiction. They will cover such topics as query dos and don’ts, how to write better, how to submit your work, and how to build a career as a novelist.

Hope to see you there!