Free Serialized Romance!

E-Reads presents our first serialized ebook, The Faithful. These faithful are a cadre of volunteers devoted to the most charismatic presidential candidate in fifty years. The story is a sexy, cliffhanger romance taking place during the 2008 presidential campaign and it's published in weekly installments, available only at E-Reads.

What Your Agent Has Done For You Lately

After talking a hotheaded author out of beating up his copyeditor, I began to reflect on some of the unusual things that agents are called upon to do in the course of their careers. I am often asked to speak to groups of aspiring writers and explain just what literary agents do. I wonder how the audience would react if I told them that among other things, literary agents babysit for their clients' kids, paint their clients' houses, and bail their clients out of jail. They even fall in love with their clients and marry them. In fact, I have done all these things and more.

If you think that all agents do is submit manuscripts in the morning, collect checks in the afternoon, and go to lunch for three hours in between, you're in for some interesting insights. Click here for the inside dope on the secret lives of literary agents.

- Richard Curtis

The Faithful - Chapter Eight ("The Empire Fights Back")

What's assault to the the goose is consensual sex to the gander. Those bruises? Spanking, and she asked for it.

The trail of the double crosser, Spy X, in the Obama campaign becomes red-hot with the discovery of a photo of one of our Obama stalwarts posed with - Hillary! Someone has some very tall explaining to do. Scandal couldn't come at a worse time, with the tide turning in Hillary's direction. She wins Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

Read more in this week's installment of The Faithful.

Beyond Weird Tales: Fritz Leiber's Black Gondolier

Assembled in The Black Gondolier is a selection of some of Fritz Leiber's most horrific tales, many virtually unobtainable for decades. From the riveting "Spider Mansion" and "The Phantom Slayer" from Weird Tales to the more recent "Lie Still, Snow White" and "Black Has Its Charms" culled from rare, small-press magazines, this collection provides an overview of Leiber's fifty-plus years as an acknowledged master of the weird tale. While much of his seminal science fiction and fantasy remains in print, his work in the field of supernatural horror has been sadly neglected.

Until now.

- Richard Curtis

Jaki Girdner's Kate Jasper

We'd like to let Jaqueline ("Jaki") Girdner tell you about her Kate Jasper mystery series, now available from E-Reads, in her own words:

My protagonist, Kate Jasper, lives in Marin County, California, a very strange place. I like to call Kate, "Marin's own, organically grown, amateur sleuth."

Marin County, for those of you who haven't been here, is filled with people who still think the New Age is really new. There's a lot of money here too, not to mention an attitude of spiritual elitism. (In Berkeley across the Bay, people like to be politically correct. In Marin, they like to be spiritually correct.) So Kate Jasper tends to stumble over dead bodies against this particularly touch-feely Marin backdrop: a human potential discussion group in Murder Most Mellow; a chiropractor's table in Adjusted To Death; a lethal health spa in The Last Resort; and a psychic seminar in Murder on the Astral Plane (just to name a few). Kate has a serious side too. She recognizes the dichotomy of spiritual correctness in collision with poverty, crime, injustice, and despair, collisions that often end in murder in Kate's world.

Yet Kate Jasper is definitely a product of mellow Marin County. Kate's a vegetarian. Since I was a vegan for fifteen years, it's easy for me to write the semi-orgasmic food scenes. And of course, her vegetarianism gets her into trouble. There's a lot more comic potential in vegetables than most people realize. In Fat-Free and Fatal, Kate attends a vegetarian cooking class along with her psychic friend, Barbara Chu. Unfortunately, Barbara isn't psychic enough to avoid tripping over a murder victim on her way to the restroom. The murder weapon? A little hand-held electrical appliance used to grate vegetables, called a SaladShooter. But don't worry, the victim wasn't shredded to death. Now if you want to find out exactly how to murder someone with a SaladShooter, you might want to read Fat-Free and Fatal.

Kate Jasper also practices tai chi, a meditative martial art form that I'm certain no tough P.I. would deign to use. But believe me, it's effective, especially for Kate. In tai chi, the person who is the most relaxed and centered wins. Not the big guys with all the muscles! I've practiced tai chi for over twenty years. And I've done a kind of tai chi sparring called "push hands" in which I was consistently pushed over by a woman twenty years older and much smaller than myself. And in turn, I was always able to push over this young muscular guy who was about six-foot-three. The poor guy kept trying, but he was just too big and tough. I love it. And it's even more satisfying in fiction when Kate uses tai chi to protect herself. In one of the books, Kate uses a particularly elegant move which is meant to strike a person in the groin and the throat at the same time. Unfortunately, she misses the throat of the thug who has been terrorizing her, but what the hey? The man's writhing on the floor, clutching his crotch. Fictional tai chi can be so much fun!

Kate owns her own small business, a gag-gift business called "Jest Gifts." Jest Gifts sells specialty items to professionals, things like shark mugs for the attorneys and shrunken-head earrings for the psychotherapists. She's easy for me to write. I once owned a company called "Jest Cards" which manufactured greeting cards featuring terrible puns. It's also a great position for an amateur sleuth. It's Kate's own company. She can take time off to investigate murder, even though she does have to work late to make up for it. And like most people who own their own business, she's both determined and a little crazy, crazy enough to follow up on her misguided investigations. So far I haven't had a gag-gift murder. No one's been strangled with a psychotherapist's "Uh-Huh" tie or brained with a doctor's quack cup, but you never know.

Kate is too busy with gag gifts to be a professional detective, so why does she keep sticking her nose into murder? Her friends tell her it's her karma. But of course, they're from Marin. The real truth is that Kate Jasper is a caretaker. Unlike the lone wolf detective, she has a lot of friends, and when her friends are in trouble, she tries to help them out. Kate even helps out her ex-husband, Craig, in The Last Resort. He and his new girlfriend, attorney Suzanne Sorenson, have taken a trip to a health spa. Suzanne is not only the woman who broke up their marriage, she's the one who filed the divorce papers. She's found dead, face down in a mud bath. And the police suspect Craig. Kate gets on a plane and flies down to help him. Now that's a caretaker!

I know what makes Kate Jasper tick. Sometimes, she's too close for comfort. She's the kind of character who gets a phone call from a friend in need, say a friend who says her boyfriend's going crazy on her. And Kate says, "Oh that's terrible, why don't you come stay with me?" So the friend does. Then the boyfriend comes over, and he really is crazy. And his friends come over and they're Hell's Angels. And his family members are from another planet entirely, and his dog's a Doberman pinscher, and, well... you get the idea. That's Kate Jasper.

At least, that's how I think of Kate Jasper. Here's what a few others have said:

"Kate is a heroine with backbone, heart, and a sweet sense of humor."
—Pacific Sun

"She's smart, funny, vulnerable, and unpretentious."
—Marilyn Wallace, editor of the Sisters in Crime series

"Clever, smart, and resourceful, Kate is an ideal amateur detective."
—Silk Stalkings, Nicholas and Thompson

"Kate is smart and funny and independent and all those other things we like our protagonist to be. But one of the things that makes her special to me... is that she is a kind and loving person."
—Kathleen Swanholt, editor of Mysterious Women

I'll be curious to find out what you think of Kate. And of course, Kate will be curious about you.

Are Literary Agents Friends or Rivals?

Are literary agents friendly with each other? Are they mutually suspicious or hostile? Do they steal authors from each other at every opportunity, or do they cooperate with one another? Do they have a code of behavior? Are they too competitive to act collectively? You may be surprised to learn the answers. For the complete article, click here

Two Masterworks by a Lifetime Overachiever

There is scarcely an award that James Gunn hasn't won, or a distinguished position in the fantasy and science fiction world he hasn't held. A few minutes reviewing his accomplishments is time well spent. The most significant of his honors is Grand Master for a lifetime of achievement placing him at the pinnacle of accomplishment in science fiction. He earned it not just for his books, of which there are many of great distinction, but for the service he has rendered to the literary genre and the giants and pioneers like himself who created it. He is also an archivist and scholar who has preserved drafts, correspondence, and historical information that satisfy our curiosity about the authors and processes behind the books themselves.

E-Reads has a solid block of Gunn's work, and today we're happy to feature two favorites at the top of everyone's Gunn chart, The Dreamers and the The Listeners.

- Richard Curtis

The Faithful - Chapter Seven (The Inevitable Candidate)

In Chapter 7 of The Faithful, the Obama campaign team speculates that the spy in their midst was planted by the Clinton camp. "Suddenly," says our narrator, "I realized just how dangerous a Clinton camp spy in our midst could be. These people are ruthless. Winning, winning, winning - winning is everything. They have no soul. Hillary didn’t care if her dirty politics hurt the Democratic Party and the nation. Wouldn’t some of the people who worked for her stop at nothing to help her?"

They become desperate to find X, who's been reporting their steamy sexual liaisons to a snoopy New York Times reporter. But any one of them could be the traitor.

All Agencies Great and Small: Part 2

I'm not sure that authors understand the structures of literary agencies much better than they understand those of publishing companies. For those of you who are shopping for an agent or thinking of switching agencies, or who are simply interested in organizational dynamics, it might be interesting to compare agencies of different sizes and structures and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type. In the first installment of this piece we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of sole practitioner literary agencies.

With the introduction of a second person into the agency - even a secretary with no discretionary power - the dynamics of the firm usually alter sharply

To read more, click here.

Sixty Years Later, the Lesson of Korea Still Goes Unheeded

This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach is the most comprehensive single-volume history of the Korean-American conflict that began in 1950 and is still affecting United States' foreign policy,. This ill conceived action tells us as much about how not to conduct a war as how to conduct one. The action was gritty and often brutal, with hand-to-hand combat in the middle of moonless nights to defend naked patches of hillside. Fehrenbach easily shifts from killing ground to the highest precincts of Washington power, chronicling the decisions that led to military and political blunders resulting in a profligate loss of American lives.

The author, an officer in the conflict, provides us with accounts of combat that could only have been written by an eyewitness in the thick of the action. But what truly sets this book apart from other military memoirs is the piercing analysis of the global political maneuvering behind the vicious ground warfare. Tragically, the Korean War has been all but forgotten in public memory. But not in the minds of military leaders, who reverently study Fehrenbach's book at West Point and in the Pentagon as a model of historical narration.

Hailed as "a must for all soldiers and former soldiers" by an Amazon.com reviewer, This Kind of War restores the Korean War to its rightful place in American history - as a touchstone for United States foreign engagement and a lesson for politicians ready to shed American blood on faraway soil. Judging by Vietnam and Iraq, the lesson has not been learned at all.,

"This Kind of War has been studied by two generations of soldiers. Fehrenbach describes good decisions and bad ones with insight and expertise. But what he does best of all, and what is so memorable, is his eloquent, sometimes painful description of the GIs who must bear the burden of those decisions. That is the awful beauty of this book - it cuts straight to the heart of all the political and military errors and reveals the brave souls who have to bleed and die for mistakes made. A timely reissue of a military classic."
--General Colin L. Powell, Former Secretary of State

During World War II, the author served with the U.S. Infantry and Engineers as Platoon Sergeant with an engineer battalion. He continued his military career in the Korean War, rising from Platoon Leader to Company Commander and then to Battalion Staff Officer of the 72nd Tank battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. His most enduring work is Lone Star, a one-volume history of Texas that E-Reads is also honored to publish. He now devotes his time to writing a political column for a San Antonio newspaper.

- Richard Curtis

Amazon Releases "Missionary" Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has gone public with the company's annual message to shareholders highlighting its achievements with Kindle and congratulating the company for all that it has achieved in the past ten years.

"We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools," says Bezos. "I realize my tone here tends toward the missionary, and I can assure you its heartfelt. It's also not unique to me but is shared by a large groups of folks here. I'm glad about that because missionaries build better products."

Though the company has attracted battalions of critics, as any giant and powerful corporation will do, the congratulations are well deserved. Amazon has not only revolutionized bookselling, it has revitalized the publishing business.

As an e-book missionary myself (with the scars to prove it), I hail Bezos and his Amazon team and look forward to more of his zealous annual letters to shareholders, customers, and publishing people.

- Richard Curtis