the Author
July
18
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The Black Ospreys

Posted in Short Stories, ebooks, Essalieyan, self-publishing.

The Black Ospreys

The Black Ospreys is now in the queue at Amazon (which states a time of 24 — 36 hours before it’s avail­able; Hunt­brother was much faster, but Echoes took longer); it is up at Smash­words, and in a month (I’m sorry!), will make its way to B&N, Kobo and Sony. Echoes is up at Diesel, so I think once a title clears the Smash­words distri­b­u­tion queue, it imme­di­ately goes up at Diesel. I still have no data on how long some­thing takes to reach the iBook store.

I think you’ll find the intro­duc­tion to the story amusing. The story itself, as the title suggests, is about the Black Ospreys.

I’m now fifty percent of the way through the six stories. But, the final revi­sion of Skir­mish did clear the house, Cast in Peril is going well, as is War. I am hideously behind in reading and in non-short related blog­ging, and of course, I imme­di­ately went to look at Google+ when I noticed an invi­ta­tion in my mail queue.

I am now going to go back to proofing The Weapon.

24 Responses to The Black Ospreys

  1. Paloma Doveny says:
    July 18, 2011 at 2:13 am

    Please forgive my lack of knowl­edge but do you have to have a special machine like a kindle or some sort of note­book to read these ebooks or can they be down­loaded directly onto a laptop computer (all I have) — or better yet can they be found newly in print or is that the whole thing here, that they were in different antholo­gies and now they are ebooks? Someone please help me as I would love to read these new/old stories after having read some 16 books by Michele, whether she be Sagara or West makes no differ­ence — she’s awesome!
    Thanks! My email is 

  2. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 18, 2011 at 2:22 am

    @Paloma: You don’t need a kindle/ereader to read them; you will need soft­ware. Calibre runs on a PC/Mac/Linux box and is free.

    There will, however, be a print collec­tion once I’ve finished the proofing iter­a­tions on all six stories.

    (I can’t send them to be typeset until they’re as perfectly proofed as I can make them — and there will be one cohe­sive round of proofing after they’ve been typeset as well). The minute I have a finished, proofed, typeset manu­script, I will release a print-on-demand collec­tion of all six stories in one volume.

  3. sascha says:
    July 18, 2011 at 9:19 am

    Amazon and Barnes & Noble both offer free e‑reader soft­ware for PC if you want to down­load and read books without a kindle/nook. They also offer free e‑reader soft­ware for android and iphone.

  4. Samuel Harrington says:
    July 18, 2011 at 8:38 pm

    @Paloma: I person­ally use the PDF from Smash­words on my PC (all you need is Adobe Reader), but its all preference. :)

  5. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 18, 2011 at 8:40 pm

    @Samuel: But…but…then you don’t see the cover >.>.

  6. Genna Warner says:
    July 18, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    The cover isn’t included in the PDF? That seems a bit strange to me.

  7. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 18, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    @Genna: Smash­words takes a .doc and crunches it through its meat­grinder (that’s what it’s called. I’m not making this up). I’ve down­loaded the .pdf — once you buy the book, you can down­load any format as far as I can tell — and there’s no cover. I can’t change that; the only uploads Smash­words takes is: .doc.

  8. Ann Kopchik says:
    July 18, 2011 at 11:37 pm

    ‘Tis up on Amazon. *Clicks to buy*

  9. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 19, 2011 at 12:05 am

    @Ann — yes, Kurt (from the West list) posted on my wall on Face­book to tell me it was up, and that he’d bought a copy (which I’m assuming was the first copy sold). It’s still listed as “publishing”, which means unavail­able, on the dash­board, though.

  10. fyreink says:
    July 19, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    Echoes is up on iBooks now in the US. *will buy as soon as I get a iBooks gift card*

  11. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 20, 2011 at 1:13 am

    @fyreink: thank you for letting me know! I hadn’t actu­ally checked iTunes today to see if it was up. That means a lead-time of about two weeks from the day I submit the book for review — that word and authors! — until the time it’s approved for sale.

  12. Michael says:
    July 20, 2011 at 9:31 am

    Is “Memo­ries of Stone” supposed to be included with the Kindle edition of “The Black Ospreys”? Because it looks as if it is (although I haven’t started reading it yet — my copy of “The Black Ospreys” finishes at 48% and then there looks like there’s another story after it…

    Not that I’m complaining in any way, shape or form :)

  13. Genna Warner says:
    July 20, 2011 at 11:13 am

    Yes, it looks like the complete short story “Memo­ries of Stone” was appended to the Kindle version of The Black Ospreys. There is no cover art with it.

  14. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 20, 2011 at 12:32 pm

    @Michael & Genna: I have gone through the copy I have on my iPad kindle 3 times and I don’t have that story. I looked at it on the Kindle for Mac — which approx­i­mates the black and white Kindle, rather than the iPad version, and I also don’t have that story =(. I can think of how it could have happened — for one, I could have uploaded the wrong iter­a­tion. I use Scrivener to export to epub, and I could have exported that story because I’m a klutz — but I haven’t proofed that one in any way, shape or form >.<.

    In any case, thank you for telling me — and enjoy . BUT! You have to look at the cover for that one when I post it (it’s the last one). It’s one of two stories that actu­ally has a cover quote (I had a pull quote which made me so happy for that story when it came out that I added it to the cover).

  15. Hugh S. Myers says:
    July 20, 2011 at 6:43 pm

    Hmmm — not done proofing the story or that you are elec­tron­i­cally hand­i­capped? A little ambiguous there :)

  16. Ann Kopchik says:
    July 20, 2011 at 7:44 pm

    I have Memo­ries of Stone too. (iPad using the Kindle app.)

    I’ll prob­ably buy the actual version when it comes out, anyway, since I’m kind of insane about having all of a collec­tion when numbers are involved.

  17. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 20, 2011 at 8:00 pm

    On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:44 PM, comment-​reply@​wordpress.​com

  18. Genna Warner says:
    July 20, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    I will purchase it as well when it comes out for several reasons all having to do with my person­ality. This is the first time for me reading Memo­ries of Stone and it is a very moving story and by far my favorite.

  19. Ann Kopchik says:
    July 20, 2011 at 9:21 pm

    I think you’re reply when astray, Michelle. :) All I see is a link to comment-reply@wordpress.

  20. Ann Kopchik says:
    July 20, 2011 at 9:23 pm

    Your, even. >.<

  21. Michael says:
    July 21, 2011 at 5:15 am

    Seconded, love the story and will make sure to check out the cover when it arrives :)

    Didn’t notice very many egre­gious proofing errors (just a couple of he/she slips), though admit­tedly I’m not the best at picking these things up. Using a black & white Kindle 3 and down­loading from Amazon UK btw.

  22. Kurt Caesar says:
    July 24, 2011 at 12:27 pm

    Did not notice that Memory of stone was there until I read this. It’s past the last page of ‘The Black Ospreys’ that ends “My blog about my written works:Michelle West & Michelle Sagara”. The full story is there replete with the intro­duc­tion etc. Also, only noticed one typo in Ospreys (besides the who/whom thing that I am learning to disre­gard). Duarte says, “I don’t want to leave here here…” instead of ‘her here.’

  23. Hugh S. Myers says:
    July 24, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    Don’t blame the author for that one. If you check page 164 of the orig­inal text you will see that it is correctly written there. So must be a tran­scrip­tion error! A good one too consid­ering the number of eyes that skipped over it :)

  24. Michelle Wooding says:
    July 27, 2011 at 12:46 am

    I really should have logged in before typing a comment… *sigh*

    I too was confused when I reached the end of The Black Ospreys to be at 50%, but excited to find “Memory of Stone” at the end. I ‑really- liked that story and I think it is my favorite by far.

    My only concern while reading is that POV Changes/Sections some­times run into each other. I read on a Kindle 2 and often I read to the bottom of a page, hit next, and it’s a new POV and I’m really confused, espe­cially in TBO where it changes between past and present.

    Some sort of visual indi­cator that things have changes, capi­talize the first word/line, ***, italics, etc would really help. =)

    BTW — Every time I see that there’s a new ebook on amazon, I go hit refresh waiting for it.

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