Three Amazing Sisters, Portrayed by an Amazing Chronicler of China

In its own quiet way, The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn has become one of E-Reads' bestselling nonfiction books, and even a cursory look at the story of these three extraordinary individuals will tell you why it compels us decades later. And though the release of this writeup is timed to tie to the Beijing Olympics and the soaring rise of China to a dominant place among the world's superpowers, it's not because China is in the news that we recommend this book to you.

Through inheritance or marriage the girls were among the wealthiest and most influential in China in the 1930s as the clouds of two wars -- first between China and Japan, then the Second World War -- roiled over Asia. Politically, the sisters had been divided between nationalism and Communism and for many years the two supporters of nationalism - Ai-ling and Mei-ling - did not speak to their Communist sympathizer sister Ching-ling. All that changed when the Japanese brutally invaded and occupied their country. It is worth a few moments of your time to read the Wikipedia entry summarizing their story. It's worth a few hours of your time to read the inspiring The Soong Sisters.

The Soong Sisters is the second book by Emily Hahn published by E-Reads, the other being China to Me, about which I have written so enthusiastically elsewhere in these pages (see A Missouri Feminist Captures Shanghai). And there are more books to come by one of the most remarkable women of the Twentieth Century.

- Richard Curtis

The Multiple Book Deal - It Should Only Happen to You! (Or Should It?) - Part 1

For many writers the term "multiple-book deal" conjures images of byzantine negotiations conducted in a crowded conference room by a battery of literary agents, lawyers, accountants, and publishing executives, of telephone-number advances and thick contracts replete with state-of-the-art jargon about best-seller escalators, book club passthroughs, and topping privileges. The tyro author who would be overjoyed to get even a one-book contract must view such deals as relevant only to the gods in some literary Valhalla. What pertinence do these John Grishamian, Dan Brownian, Nora Robertsian transactions have to the humble and brutish lives of nickel-a-word galley slaves?

The truth is that many more multiple-book contracts are proffered to writers than most people imagine, and most of them are no more complicated than one-book contracts. To learn more, click here.

A Handheld Savior of the Newspaper Business

Eric Pfanner reports in the New York Times that a company called France Telecom has introduced a portable device to read newspapers online. By tapping a link with a stylus, you can bring up headlines and articles identical to the paper version. The company is exploring ways to monetize the news delivered online, a problem that is giving newspaper publisher fits.

A number of publications have gone in with France Télécom on an experimental basis. We're not sure how the French public will take to it. Spill latte on your newspaper and you can chuck it in the trash. Spill it on your electronic reader, that's another thing altogether.

Click here to read more

RC

Netbooks - Low Memory, Low Energy, Low Price -- Perfect!

Ultraportable PC's are a consumer's dream, but big-ticket computer manufacturers are very nervous about the emergence of this new breed of modest-sized, modestly priced computers that cater to users who don't demand much more from their machine than easy access and reliability so they can surf the Net and check their emails. In the New York Times, reporter Matt Richtel writes,

Industry analysts say that the emergence of this new class of low-cost, cloud-centric machines could threaten titans like Microsoft and Intel, or even H.P. and Dell, because the giants have built their companies on the notion that consumers want more power and functions built into their next computer.

Ultraportables may threaten the titans but they're welcome news to e-bookers.

Read more about Netbooks.

RC

John Norman Introduces Volumes 1-3 of His Bestselling Gorean Saga

Introduction to The Gorean Saga Volumes 1-3
By John Norman
#1 Tarnsman of Gor
#2 Outlaw of Gor
#3 Priest-Kings of Gor

The Gorean series, to the best of my knowledge, is the longest, most complex, most carefully worked out single-world series in the history of science fiction, or, if you prefer, adventure fantasy. On the other hand, the Gorean series has grown, like a forest, in “foreign lands.” It is not really science fiction, as that genre is normally understood, nor is it adventure fantasy, in the usual way that genre is understood. It transcends genres and its ships beach on unusual shores. For better or for worse it is an “Original,” and it bears all the interest of a new literary form, and risks all the perils of the same.

To read John Norman's complete essay, click here.

JANET DAILEY'S BESTSELLING HEIRESS BACK IN PRINT

Heiress, the Janet Dailey novel breakout bestseller, is available once again. E-Reads has just issued it as a trade paperback, where it can be purchased on amazon.com. It's also available as an e-book download.

In Heiress, two sisters meet at the funeral of one of the most prestigious men in the country, Dean Lawson, their father. Abbie Lawson, the dutiful genteel daughter bred in the lap of luxury and, Rachel Farr, a mistake born of a passionate love affair, are almost identical in appearance but are worlds apart. Only one daughter can be the heir to the endless oil fields and magnificent thoroughbreds. A fierce competition has arisen between the women, not only for the inheritance but also for the proof of a father's love. They should have been devoted to each other as friends and sisters, but they have become the most embittered of enemies. The Texas men they love watch as the rivals tear themselves apart to become Dean Lawson's heiress.

E-Reads publishes over fifty classic Janet Dailey Romances including the Americana Series, one novel set in every state in the union.


RC

Something Extra from Janet Dailey

Janet Dailey fans will be glad to see the print edition of Something Extra reissued. It's also available as an e-book download.

In Something Extra, Jolie Antoinette Smith wants to marry the man of her dreams. But when she meets that man in the form of brash and confident Louisiana native Steve Cameron, he quite clearly wants something different. Jolie's sensitive soul and passionate heart are now at odds--and she wishes she had never found true love!

E-Reads publishes over fifty classic Janet Dailey Romances including the Americana Series, one novel set in every state in the union.

RC

Writers-for-Hire

If one were to compose a Bill of Rights for authors, ownership of copyright to their works would certainly be close to the top of the list. We hold self-evident the truth that if a person produces an original book-length work, he or she is entitled to proprietorship under the law, and to full benefit of its commercial exploitation.

Are there occasions when it's right and proper to give up copyright to your work? The answer may surprise you. Click here to read more.

E-READS LAUNCHES FLEET OF DESTROYERS

E-Reads has just posted books 25-50 in Warren Murphy's bestselling Destroyer series. You can either download them as e-books or buy print editions from amazon.

In time E-Reads will issue more Destroyers as well as action adventure thrillers featuring other Warren Murphy heroes.

- RC

Harlan Ellison's Shatterday: Not Just a Book - an Event

Shatterday, the revolutionary classic from one of science fiction's most highly regarded authors assembles 16 coruscating stories combining science fiction, horror, and fantasy with ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation. From "Jeffty is Five," the tragedy of an innocent child wrenched out of an idyllic past, to humanity's encounter with dangerously seductive aliens in "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" and "Shatterday," the dark allegory of an identity-stealing doppelgänger replacing his inferior twin, this incendiary collection alone authenticates its legendary author's claim to Grand Mastery.

On the basis of Shatterday The New York Times Book Review proclaimed, "The spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind," and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction described Ellison as "the quintessential science fiction short story writer of his time." And Science Fiction Review says, "You have to read Shatterday, feel it, experience it. It is an event."

The trade paperback edition is published by Tachyon.

Shatterday is in the vanguard of a fleet of more than thirty Harlan titles that E-Reads' plants to reissue in the coming year.

No, He's Not A Monkey, He's An Ape and He's My Son

Some years ago I visited Hester Mundis and her then-husband who were living in a large apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. When I rang the doorbell, the most fearful snarling erupted on the other side of the door. A man's voice issued sharp commands in German that did not seem to have much of a pacifying effect on whatever was in that apartment. When the door opened a furious German shepherd lunged at me and would cheerfully have disemboweled me had his master not restrained him with an iron grip under his collar and a series of gutteral commands that sounded like a Nazi officer rounding up civilians. Every terrifying childhood memory of the bloodthirsty hunting dogs in Bambi gripped me as Jerry Mundis struggled to hold the growling beast back.

"Come in," Mundis said with the warm smile of the benign host of dinner party. "And don't mind Ahab. Just be sure not to let him smell your fear."

That was far easier said than done. I'm sure you could smell my fear in Delaware as I edged along the opposite wall past the snapping jaws of Ahab.

The Mundises were thoughtful enough to put their dog under lock and key, but then they revealed the second denizen of their menagerie, Boris the baby chimp. Boris, clad in a diaper, was chained to a mahogany dining table easily weighing several hundred pounds but he was dragging it behind him like a pull-toy on wheels. The racket from Ahab in the other room was enough to wake the dead; it was clear that he was murderously jealous of his simian sibling.

This was my introduction to the world that Hester Mundis eventually wrote about in No He's Not a Monkey, He's an Ape and He's My Son. It answers the question that’s on everybody's mind: “What’s it like to raise a chimpanzee in Manhattan?” Hester’s hilarious memoir is the complete guide to raising a chimp in the heart of urban America. Join Hester, her husband, attack dog Ahab, and the funniest monkey -- excuse me, APE -- ever to occupy an apartment in New York or anywhere else in this true adventure of woman versus beast.

I asked Hester to give us an update on Boris, and here's what she had to say, along with an award-winning charcoal rendering of the noble mature creature:

Dear Reader,

If you’ve already read No, He's Not a Monkey, He's an Ape and He's My Son, you know it has a happy ending. (Happy endings don’t qualify as “spoilers” in my books.) So, as an update, I’m thrilled to report more good news. Boris continues to thrive in his colony at the Chester Zoo (www.chesterzoo.org), and now has the distinction of being the oldest—and most popular—chimpanzee there.

Recently, British artist Rob Symington won a National Exhibition of Wildlife Award for this charcoal portrait of Boris.

The portrait is on sale for an impressive 560 pounds (that’s more than a thousand dollars), but then Boris always was—and still is—one very impressive chimpanzee.

- Hester Mundis

- Richard Curtis

Fictionwise Hits the iPhone, E-Books Hit the Big Time

Along with today's release of Apple's 3G iPhone and the new iPhone application store, found in iTunes v. 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 software, Fictionwise has become the first major e-book retailer to offer free e-book software for Apple's iPhone.

We all know Fictionwise as the world's largest e-book retailer, and now they have their e-books ready for the world's most famous touchscreen device. Before today, you had to hack your iPhone to run unsupported e-book software that was both risky and limited. Also, there were no stores that promoted the use of such software for your purchased e-books. But now Fictionwise is set to conquer the iPhone with their eReader software, which lets you carry your Fictionwise library everywhere you take your phone.


The best part is that it's a free download through the iTunes application store. The next best thing is that all of E-Reads' Multiformat e-books at Fictionwise are supported by the application!

There are other ebook options and more coming soon for the iPhone. In the future, Adobe and Mobipocket will be hitting the iPhone in a powerful way and hopefully that will bring even more digital e-book content to the world's fingertips. Until then, Fictionwise is your best and safest bet for good reading on the iPhone.

- Michael

Media Tie-Ins - How do They Work?

Novelizations of movies, television shows and video games are among the most intriguing subspecies of commercial fiction. I say subspecies because they obviously cannot be spoken of in the same breath as Lolita or Portrait of a Lady; indeed, even commercial novelists look down their noses at novelizations as possessing not a shred of redeeming social value, as the literary equivalent of painting by numbers. On the spectrum of the written word, tie-ins are as close to merchandise as they are to literature.

There's some truth in this. Tie-ins are kin to souvenirs, and in some ways are not vastly different from the dolls, toys, games, calendars, clothes, and other paraphernalia generated by successful motion pictures and television shows. Those who write them usually dismiss them with embarrassment or contempt, or brag about how much money they made for so little work. Yet, when pressed they will speak with pride about the skill and craftsmanship that went into the books and assure you that the work is deceptively easy. And if you press them yet further, many will puff out their chests and boast that tie-in writers constitute a select inner circle of artisans capable of getting an extremely demanding job done promptly, reliably, and effectively, a kind of typewriter-armed S.W.A.T. team whose motto is, "My book is better than the movie."

How are tie-ins created? Click here to learn.

Tom Disch Dies at 68

I wanted to share an email tribute to the late Tom Disch that I received from Moshe Feder early this morning.
- RC

I was saddened earlier this evening to learn that Tom Disch had left us, dying by his own hand. I hadn't seen him in quite some time and had no idea what a difficult time he'd been having. Here's a link to the New York Times obituary

Tom was, in my estimation, a genius. There were few writers I was more in awe of, and more nervous about meeting. Could I say anything that would possibly be of interest to him? But Tom was as gracious and sweet to me as he was brilliant and acerbic to the world, and always treated me like an equal, which I definitely am not.

Talking to him anywhere was a delight, as was sharing a lively convention panel, and I'll always treasure the memory of the time he invited me up to his hotel room for drinks and a couple of hours of serious literary conversation. I'm not much of a drinker, so I sipped as slowly as I could, and tried to get him to do as much of the talking as possible.

It was particularly a privilege to review his books, and thereby be among the first to read them. In my opinion, his masterpiece was On Wings of Song, a great novel of the 20th century -- period, full stop. It was also, incidentally, one of the greatest SF novels ever written; and surely one of the most affecting. It should have won all our awards. With all due respect to Arthur, it's a travesty that it lost the both the Nebula and the Hugo to Clarke's The Fountains Of Paradise.

It's ironic that Tom's only Hugo win was for a work of nonfiction, The Dreams Our Stuff is Made of, a typically brilliant book that I couldn't quite agree with. His was the tragedy of many of our best writers. Only the literary crowd was capable of appreciating what they are achieving, only the sf/fantasy audience would want to.

Nevertheless, it's the novels and the stories he'll be be remembered for. I'm confident they'll stand the test of time.

His friends and his readers will miss him, and the work he might yet have done.

- Moshe Feder

E-Reading Device Wars -- The Readius E-Scroll Step into the Ring

Polymer Vision of Netherlands literally rolled out its candidate for the hearts and minds of consumers who are not convinced that Amazon's Kindle or Sony's E-Reader are the end of the line for handheld reading devices. In an article by Anne Eisenberg in the July 6 2008 New York Times, Polymer previewed the Readius, a pocket-sized gadget that flips open to reveal a flexible screen that can be unfurled like a window shade -- or like the world's first portable reader, the papyrus -- to carry black and white text suitable not only for books but for e-texting as well.

The Readius is one of many devices in development aimed at breaking the glass ceiling: inflexible screens.
- Richard Curtis

Spider Kiss

In his early novel Spider Kiss Harlan Ellison welds an eloquent tribute to Rock and Roll with a frightening portrait of the bitch goddess Success that drives a rock star into the jaws of hell.

Amazon reviewer "punkviper" says,

I can't believe the bevy of 2-star reviews regarding this work! by people who claim to be H.E. fans, no less!! should i mention this is routinely cited as one of the best rock & roll stories EVER?! people, this novel was published in 1961, it's one of Harlan's early works & like many such pieces it has a very gritty & urban quality about it. the story may seem trite in this day & age, but remember that 1961 was far before the whole "debauched rock star" persona was etched into the collective American unconscious. and even though the story might be familiar, don't forget that the protagonist of the tale ISN'T the rock star! and his story makes the book that much better (btw, it wasn't Elvis that the rockstar character was based on, it was Jerry Lee Lewis.) i believe there are a cabal of "Harlan purists" who chafe at the idea of a young H.E. cranking out such hardboiled non-fantasy-oriented material, and as such seem to roll their eyes at anything this isn't I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, or Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World. possibly because Spider Kiss is one novel that you don't have to be a rabid H.E. fan to enjoy. pick this one up and judge for yourself. not to mention, it's always worthwhile picking up an Ellison book before it goes out of print, as they all-too-often do.

Thanks, punkviper, for reminding Harlan's fans that his books all too often go out of print. E-Reads is remedying that by reissuing no fewer than 32 of them in both print and downloadable formats. Watch this space for news of new releases.

- Richard Curtis

Love Him, Love His Dog: Police Detective Reid Bennett and His Canine Sidekick Sam

His life all but ruined because of a bad rap he took for murdering two guys to prevent a rape, Reid Bennett relocates in a quaint backwater town in Canada. Then the corpses show up. German shepherd Sam by his side, Bennett does what he has to do, and none of it is in the police officer's manual.

Dead in the Water launched Ted Wood's mystery career and the fictional adventures of Reid Bennett. But what brings readers back for book after book -- E-Reads has five of them -- is Sam, Reid's German shepherd. Publisher's Weekly described Sam thus: "...a multitalented utility infielder who can "keep," "track," "seek," "fight," "guard," sniff out cocaine and corpses, save lives and generally pinch-hit for a dozen patrolmen." Fans plead, "Whatever happens to Reid Bennett, don't touch a hair of that dog's head!"

- Richard Curtis