"Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations" - Adam Carlton

Amazon link

I joined this blog a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty aligned with its view of the world. I've been writing political and technical science-fiction on the literary website Booksie for almost a year and have just published my first book on Amazon (Kindle and paperback). Hence the picture above.

For more about me look here.

This is the description of the book.

"Adam Carlton’s thirty four stories are set in a world of total surveillance, pervasive AI and high-tech interrogation. A revolutionary organisation fights repression in the streets of Paris; in a sordid Internet sweatshop, an AI is trained - its successors will build starships and contemplate a disposable humanity; an artefact found on the moon, impervious to study, recounts an unacceptable truth. These are the stories of our times, suffused with the victories of stupidity, the deceit of our friends and the betrayal of our deepest hopes."

I'm interested in the biggest issues: future society, technological trends, where we're all going. I tend to publish new material regularly on Booksie - it's flagged on the webview blog sidebar here along with all the other blogs. I usually try to get something out once a week. Eventually the material will find its way into new published volumes.

If you want a flavour of what I'm doing, visit the Amazon site and download a Kindle sample to get the first 10% of my book for free.

I hope to publish occasionally here - book reviews (like my take on 'Serotonin') and perhaps some political stuff which I can repost on Booksie. The audience over there is not as sophisticated politically or technically as the readership here, so I may be a little hand-wavy and introductory.

More to come, anyway.

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Update Thursday November 28th 2019

I've today withdrawn my book from Amazon (both Kindle and paperback versions). It may take a day or two to take effect.

Why?

First off it hasn't sold at all. Zero sales in October and November. Four in September - to known individuals. This was expected as I'm an unknown author and did no marketing.

Instead I'm choosing the harder route, which is to seek to get past the gate-keepers of SF magazines with my short stories. Assuming I can succeed I will build up a portfolio of published work in paying outlets - this is what a published writer does.

My next step will be - on the strength of this - to seek an agent who can perhaps package my stories into a bundle which will be effectively marketed. This is the key to getting sales. But my self-publishing efforts are a major obstacle here - it makes me look amateurish and ties up material which could be better used elsewhere.