STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On January 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

(I know I just did this last Sunday, but I figure FP gives me a good reason to do it two weekends in a row. Apologies to the regulars.)

Hi! I’m Luther Siler. I’m the author of Skylights and The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1, both available at various ebook retailers easily accessible from whatever magic rectangle you’re using to access this page. I run this as a service for new folks who might want to know where else to find me on the Web. Regular folks, if you see the STATION IDENTIFICATION tag, feel free to ignore it.

So here’s where to find Luther Siler on the interwebtron:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. I am on Twitter pretty frequently; I use it for liveblogging TV, whining about anything that strikes me as whine-worthy, and for short, Facebook-style posts. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I am accepting any and all friend requests at the moment.
I have a Tumblr now! I don’t actually know what Tumblr is, because I’m old, but I’ve got one.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts here.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.
Coming soon… LinkedIn? Maybe?

Thanks for reading!

Two more SKYLIGHTS reviews

On January 10, 2015January 14, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing4 Comments

I wasn’t going to do this when it was just one review, but SKYLIGHTS has picked up two new reviews tonight– a four-star review on Amazon.co.uk from the most excellent Hilary Custance Green, and a five-star review on regular Amazon. I’ve been starving for reviews of this book, so to see two in one night is great.

These are both gratifying for different reasons; the five-star is awesome because it’s actually the first five-star review that SKYLIGHTS has gotten (literally every review has been four stars!) and the four-star because Hilary is rather emphatically not a sci-fi reader. I love that; this isn’t a book that’s going to trick people into reading it– there are people in spacesuits on the cover, and one of them is holding what appears to be a laser gun– so any time I get a sign that the book has some crossover appeal, it always makes me happy.

SKYLIGHTS is available on Amazon.com now for $4.95 and will be available in print for $12.95 really soon. Like by the end of next week. 🙂

REBLOGS: NOCs of the Roundtable: Best Fight Scenes Ever

On January 10, 2015January 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn moviesLeave a comment

I am having a quiet Saturday, bereft of such niceties as “things to say.” So have some kung-fu.

The Nerds of Color

As our friend Angry Asian Man broke the nerdtastic news this week that some fine fighters from The Raid would be joining the cast of Star Wars, it seemed as good a time as any to convene a roundtable of some of us martial arts film enthusiasts here at the NOC to talk about our favorite martial arts fight scenes.

Before we shared our favorite scenes with one another, we guessed there would be significant overlap, especially concerning the great Bruce Lee. Sure enough, each of us had picked at least one Bruce Lee scene on our individual lists. To avoid repetition, we decided not to double up, so as you can see some folks wrote about legendary Bruce scenes and the rest of us wrote about alternates — but please trust, we keep Bruce at the front of our fighting hearts.

Who’s not on the list, though? Uma…

View original post 2,505 more words

The effects of KDP Select in one graph: Saturday #saleswanking

On January 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

We can all agree that I’m still not lighting the world on fire or anything, but the difference is pretty stark. See if you can guess exactly when I put Skylights on Amazon exclusive. The interesting thing is that two of those sales are for Benevolence Archives, which not only isn’t Amazon-exclusive but is free elsewhere and sells very few copies as a result:

REBLOG: Why I Am Not Charlie

On January 9, 2015January 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

I am trying to avoid having something to say about this, because I really don’t much want to. In lieu of my own thoughts, though, this ain’t bad at all.

a paper bird

There is no “but” about what happened at Charlie Hebdo yesterday. Some people published some cartoons, and some other people killed them for it. Words and pictures can be beautiful or vile, pleasing or enraging, inspiring or offensive; but they exist on a different plane from physical violence, whether you want to call that plane spirit or imagination or culture, and to meet them with violence is an offense against the spirit and imagination and culture that distinguish humans. Nothing mitigates this monstrosity. There will be time to analyze why the killers did it, time to parse their backgrounds, their ideologies, their beliefs, time for sociologists and psychologists to add to understanding. There will be explanations, and the explanations will be important, but explanations aren’t the same as excuses. Words don’t kill, they must not be met by killing, and they will not make the killers’ culpability go away.

To abhor what was done to the victims, though, is not…

View original post 2,316 more words

Review: DARKNESS CONCEALED, by D. Emery Bunn

On January 9, 2015January 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Darkness_Concealed_cover-1500x940 As I said a couple of days ago, I am a terrible friend to my fellow independent authors. However, I’ve been doing my best to curtail that tendency lately and making myself read on my Kindle. Surprisingly, it hasn’t had the same weird sleep-preventing effects on my wife that it was having when I first bought it. So maybe I can keep this up for a while. At any rate, the second book that I’ll be reviewing (of at least three; there will likely be one more review this weekend) is of D. Emery Bunn’s Darkness Concealed. You’ll have heard Emery’s name around here once or twice before; he’s a Twitter buddy and I interviewed him here when the book first came out.

Bunn bills Darkness Concealed as a dark fantasy, and… well, yeah. Right on the nose, that. This is not for the faint of heart, kids; the book starts with a family being massacred by demons in their house, and while the violence is never gratuitous, at least by my standards, that event sorta sets a bit of a tone for the rest of the book. And seeing as the rest of the book revolves around the four main characters trying to find a) a reason for and b) a way to prevent a recurring near-apocalypse that regularly slaughters a fair chunk of the human populace… so yeah, it’s a bit on the dark side.

Darkness Concealed is book one of a trilogy, and it shows; there are a number of weird little bits here and there that are never explained (one of the characters has somebody else living in her head, for example) and there are plenty of questions and plot points left dangling for the sequels. That would be a weakness in the hands of a less skilled author; here it just makes the world look bigger and avoids the dodge of “self-contained first book then a duology makes a trilogy,” a phenomenon I’ve kinda gotten tired of. There are clearly more answers coming and more story here, so if you’re the type who wants everything tied up nice and neat with a bow on it when you close the book (or, uh, exit the Kindle app?) this may not be the book for you.

Why is this a book for you? Worldbuilding. Bunn has big ideas for how the word of Telthan works, and some of the settings that the characters visit, including a ruined city, a magical library tower and a damn-near-literal castle at the end of the world, really made the book for me. These characters are searching for answers, and they’ll go wherever they need to to get them; the author clearly has no shortage of cool locales for them to visit along the way, and one of the joys of the book for me was seeing what they would encounter next.

Three dolla ninety-nine cent at the Amazon. Check it out, you shall.

Here is a story of how I am dumb.

On January 9, 2015January 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews8 Comments

So this is a true story of how I am a huge idiot.

I buy comic books, right? If you’ve been reading for very long you surely know this about me. I generally drop $20-30 a week on comics, which nowadays tend to run $3-4 each. I bought issue 1 of a new creator-owned book by writer Matt Fraction about a month ago. I like Fraction’s superhero work quite a lot, and generally if I like a writer’s work for hire stuff on superheroes they didn’t create, I make sure to check out the stuff they came up with on their own.

The book’s called ODY-C. It’s pronounced “Odyssey,” a fact I didn’t pick up on until discussing it with the owner at my comic shop on Wednesday. I assume the pronunciation would have been perfectly obvious had I read the comic, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I vaguely recall having a pretty heavy day that day, both in terms of stuff at work and number of comics bought. The first issue of ODY-C involves a nine-page timeline, right at the beginning. Understand that I tried to take a picture of this thing and couldn’t figure out a way to do it, but this is the image on the other side of the timeline. Sort of:Now, again: that’s a big art spread. The other side was a detailed timeline.

Those are not my legs. I found the image on Fraction’s website.

It made me tired.

I closed it, closed the comic, added it to a pile, and never opened it again. I thought about it a couple of times, sitting there and all not being read and representing wasted money, and just never bothered.

ODY-C #2 came out Wednesday. And I bought the motherfucker, on the off chance that I was going to someday read the first issue, like it, and then want the second.

I have still not read either issue. Now, granted, I’ve only had ODY-C #2 for two days at this point. Really only one, because I’m writing this Thursday night. But you really have to wonder just how far out I can take this. Am I going to buy issue #3 in a month because I haven’t read #1 or #2 yet?

And how about when I tell you that this isn’t the only book I’m like this about?

I am a dumb person.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

On January 8, 2015January 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Skylights might– MIGHT!!– be available in print (paperback, specifically) within the next couple of weeks.

Reason for the weasel words: I am expecting the cover to be rejected at some point in the next 24 hours. I will then resubmit it in a version that I think they’re more likely to take. So that’s Friday right there. I’m not certain at this time whether they require a print copy to be approved before distribution, and that will probably take a touch longer. The interior of the book looks great. Just need the cover to match that. I have used my day off to pound on this and I think it’s good to go.

Until then, it’s available digitally for just $4.95!

EDIT: I have reviewed the digital proofs– they fiddled with the spine a little bit on their own, which is fine, but otherwise the book looks great. They’re sending me five proof copies, which should arrive next Wednesday. Right now there’s a little timer icon on the “Review Proof” menu, so I can’t approve it yet– but it looks like we’re not more than a week and a half or so away from Skylights being available in print.

Awesome.