Tag: books

Nineteen-year-old Steve Maxwell just wants to get his feet on the star road to find a better homeworld. By facing down Lotus Tong thugs, he earns an opportunity to become an apprentice on a merchant spaceship, leaving the corruption and crime of Earth behind. Sure, he needs to prove himself to an older, tight-knit crew, but how bad can it be if he keeps his head down and the decks clean?

He never counted on the interstellar trade routes having their own problems, from local wars to plagues of pirates – and the jade in his luggage is hotter than a neutron star. Steve’s left a world of troubles behind, only to find a galaxy of them ahead….

TAKE THE STAR ROAD is the first novel in Peter Grant’s popular five-volume Maxwell Saga. Narrated by Bob Allen, the audiobook is 9 hours and 26 minutes. Castalia House will be releasing the entire Maxwell Saga in audio and paperback.

“Have you ever wished you could grow mangoes, coffee, oranges and other delicious tropical plants… but find yourself limited by a less-than-tropical climate? If you long for Key lime pies at Christmas, or homegrown bananas at breakfast, you’re not alone! Expert gardener and mad scientist David The Good fought for years to figure out how grow tropical plants hundreds of miles outside their natural climate range… and he succeeded!

In PUSH THE ZONE: The Good Guide to Growing Tropical Plants Beyond the Tropics, David the Good shares his successes and failures in expanding plant ranges, and equips you with the knowledge you need to add a growing zone or two to your own backyard. Based on original research done in North Florida, PUSH THE ZONE is useful for northern gardeners as well. Discover microclimates in your yard, use the thermal mass of walls to grow impossible plants and uncover growing secrets that will change your entire view of what can grow where!”

Featuring a foreword by Dr. David Francko, the author of PALMS WON’T GROW HERE AND OTHER MYTHS. PUSH THE ZONE is the third book in the Good Guide to Gardening series, is DRM-free, and retails for $4.99. It is already a Gardening bestseller.

From the reviews:

• If Dave Barry wrote gardening books about his mad experiments, this would be the book he would write. If you want to grow mangoes, coconuts, or other tropical plants outside of their established zones this book will show you how.
• I live in New York State, where it gets mighty cold, and there is no way I’ll ever be able to grow tropical plants in my garden. Nevertheless, many of the fundamental zone-pushing concepts in this book can definitely be applied to my 4b-5a USDA Hardiness Zone.  
• I’m thinking, for example, of peaches. They don’t grow particularly well in my zone because of the cold. But in the zone 6 regions of Pennsylvania, a few hundred miles south of me, Pennsylvania peaches are a big deal. After reading Push The Zone, I now feel confident that I could successfully grow a peach tree by finding and/or creating microclimates.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. 

The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many. Genetically sculpted to drive a mech-suit as if he wears a second skin, he must find a path to victory. 

It’s a battle in which he’ll never admit defeat, but not even Straker knows the dark truth behind this titanic struggle. With Lieutenant Carla Engels piloting, STARSHIP LIBERATOR explores enemy territory in search of answers.

STARSHIP LIBERATOR is the first book in the new Galactic Liberation series by bestselling authors David VanDyke and B.V. Larson. It is 492 pages and retails for $27.99 in hardcover and $19.99 in paperback. It is also available at Barnes & Noble.

The publication of Starship Liberator today marks a significant step forward for Castalia House, as VanDyke and Larson are among the most successful authors in science fiction. To put it in perspective, B.V. Larson regularly ranks among the top 10 bestselling authors in the genre, while David VanDyke is usually in the top 75. We are very pleased to be working with both men, and I hope more than a few Castalia readers will consider adding this attractive doorstopper to their shelves.

From the reviews:

• Fast action. Plot has several unexpected twists. Like the development key characters. Good book.
• Great tactical narrative. The characters are enjoyable. Good old-fashioned good vs evil. Harks back to Soviet days and 1984.
• Excellent military space battle story. Kept me riveted from start to finish. Good storyline and well developed characters.
• Another great addition to David Vandyke’s and BV Larson’s repertoire. It’s great to see a return to pure SF for Vandyke, and you can see why it makes sense for he and Larson to collaborate – both are excellent storytellers and create rich, deep characters, in unusual situations.
• Recommended if you’re a fan of either of the authors, must-read if you’re a fan of both.

In other Castalia-related news, John C. Wright has begun blogging at the Castalia House blog with a detailed critique of the original Buck Rogers novella, ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. It is a must-read for any writer, as he breaks down what works, and what does not, and explains how it is that such a flawed piece of short fiction was able to lead to such a memorable franchise.

And speaking of doorstoppers, fans of Selenoth won’t want to miss Scott Cole’s new series of posts entitled Summa Selenothica, with which he intends to fill in some of the blanks for those who are interested in diving deeper into the epic fantasy world of Tellus Demittus, beginning with The Last Witchking.

APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the various works of
science fiction and fantasy that game designer Gary Gygax declared to be
the primary influences on his seminal role-playing game, Dungeons &
Dragons. It is a deep intellectual dive into the literature of science
fiction’s past that will fascinate any serious role-playing gamer. It
also contains an extensive interview with the designer of the Tunnels & Trolls RPG, Ken St. Andre.

Author Jeffro Johnson, an expert role-playing gamer, accomplished
Dungeon Master and three-time Hugo Award Finalist, critically reviews
all 43 works listed by Gygax in the famous appendix of the original
D&D game books, and in doing so, draws a series of intelligent
conclusions about the literary gap between past and present that are
surprisingly relevant to current events, not only in the fantastic world
of role-playing, but the real world in which the players live. Johnson is also the Editor of the Castalia House
blog and a regular contributor there.

Featuring an Introduction by John C. Wright, himself an inveterate role-playing gamer, APPENDIX N is 355 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $6.99.

Brian Renninger described the significance of Johnson’s APPENDIX N:

With this book we are coming out a dark age. Jerry Pournelle has said “The definition of a Dark Age is that we no longer remember what we once could do.” It’s not just that we have lost capability but, not knowing that we ever had capability that makes it dark. Of course, the term “Dark Ages” has fallen out of current fashion. It seems judgmental and unscientific to call that time after the fall of Rome and through the end of the Viking Age “dark” as if it were lesser in some way. But, I’m not an academic and history is not science. And, Rome was sacked. The aqueducts did stop running. Latin was forgotten, by all but a few specialists, to be replaced by the babble of dozens of local tongues. It’s dark because the records of that time are sparse – fewer people wrote and the people who did write, wrote on fewer topics.

Appendix N is just a reading list. But, a reading list tailored to a topic. The topic being inspirational works for playing the original role-playing game – Dungeons and Dragons. The list was intended to inspire players on adding variety to their game. And, to give players examples that explain why the game was made the way it was made.</

Jeffro Johnson set himself the task to read all of Appendix N in the context of its stated purpose. He found what he was looking for: clear evidence for many of the foundational rules of Dungeons and Dragons hidden in plain sight in the text of old fantastic adventure writing. But, he also found more – the nucleus of an earlier canon of fantastic literature. In that canon he discovered greater variety, subtlety, strangeness and a broader sophistication of theme than found in the general run of fantasy writing today. And, he found some damned fun stories.

So, for us, what has been forgotten? To a large degree, we have forgotten the scope that fantasy fiction can obtain when allowed unfettered freedom of imagination. We have forgotten that fantasy fiction can be just as edgy and daring when addressing the best of human nature rather than the worst. In fact, we have forgotten that literature can and should encompass all things. Or, even more, that literature should also encompass impossible things – especially fantastic literature.

And at Castalia House, Schuyler Hernstrom explains how it was that Appendix N started a literary movement:

Jeffro has indeed unearthed something. It is the hidden heritage of our beloved genres. I feel a little embarrassed, frankly, that I was so wrong about the fiction that I love so much. What I thought I knew about the genre was a series of walls and fences, put into place to guide me toward opinions and attitudes that were presented as things inevitable…. Jeffro’s work has become a lodestone, pulling at a set of emerging and disparate writers. We are out there, creating what we want from influences as varied as Lord Dunsany and anime. From the maps he drew we are navigating rivers back to their sources. We are exploring myth and knocking the rust off old ideas like heroism and honor. 



Some may wonder why Castalia publishes such seemingly esoteric books, especially given the fact that I’m not an RPGer, and never was except in the very most casual computer-game sense. The reason is that the dominance of the Left is cultural, and they arrived at their position of political influence in the West primarily through cultural means as per Gramsci rather than the economic means Marx predicted or the violent means Mao, Lenin, and Che utilized. Those on the Right who sneer at cultural matters as being irrelevant or unimportant fail to realize that they are playing a superficial and losing game. It is from children’s tales and children’s games that tomorrow’s voters are made.


“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
– GK Chesterton

Utrum Aelvi habeant anima naturaliter sibi unita. 

Do elves have souls? In a fantasy world in which the realm of Man is dominated by a rich and powerful Church, the Sanctified Father Charity IV has decided the time is ripe to make a conclusive inquiry into the matter. If, in his infallible wisdom, he determines that elves do have immortal souls, then the Church will be obliged to bring the Sacred Word of the Immaculate to them. But if he decides they do not, there will be holy war. Powerful factions line up on both sides of the debate. War-hungry magnates cast greedy eyes at the ancient wealth of the elven kingdoms and pray for a declaration that elves are little more than animals. And there are men who are willing to do more than merely pray.

The delegation sent to the High King of the Elves is led by two great theologians, brilliant philosophers who champion opposite sides of the great debate. And in the Sanctiff’s own stead, he sends the young nobleman, Marcus Valerius. Marcus Valerius is a rising scholar in the Church, talented, fearless, and devout. But he is inexperienced in the ways of the world and nothing in his life has prepared him for the beauty of the elves–or the monumental betrayal into which he rides.


SUMMA ELVETICA: A CASUISTRY OF THE ELVISH CONTROVERSY is the prelude to the massive epic high fantasy saga ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT. In addition to the novel, it contains eight additional tales of Selenoth, including the Hugo Award finalist, Opera Vita Aeterna. 520 pages. $27.99 hardcover, $19.99 paperback.

If you’re collecting the series for your library, you’ll definitely want this one to go with the other doorstopper. And speaking of series, isn’t it fortuitous that WorldCon is experimenting with a Best Series Hugo this year?

An eligible work for this special award  is a multi-volume science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, which has appeared in at least three volumes consisting of a total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the calendar year 2016, at least one volume of which was published in 2016. 


All right, let’s see here:

• Multi-volume science fiction or fantasy story. Fantasy. Check.
• Unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation. Check.
• Has appeared in at least three volumes. Three volumes. Check.
• A total of at least 240,000 words. 634,590. Check.
• At least one volume published in 2016. A SEA OF SKULLS. Check.

It looks like the Rabid Puppies have a strong candidate for Best Series here. Isn’t that nice? And as the reviewers have noted, as the series have continued, AODAL is stacking up increasingly well against ASOIAF.

Meanwhile, over at Castalia House, Dragon Award-winner Nick Cole has made his debut with a bang, with a post entitled You are Fake Sci-Fi:

Fake Sci-Fi is ruining actual Sci-Fi and here’s who’s to blame: Fake Science Fiction Writers. But first… a little background.

Science fiction has always been a rather fragile affair. At times it has not had the significance it enjoys now. In fact, there were times when it was, for all practical purposes, dead. Just a few grandmasters held the torch during those times, breathing life into the guttering flame during those dark unsexy years of the seventies and eighties when it was just us true believers. But now it’s enjoying a cultural renaissance.

Or is it?

If you’ve heard me talk before, you know that I have a point I occasionally rail on. And it’s this: SciFi is a weak medium that’s been high jacked by radical leftist thinkers recently, to advance cultural change through imaginative storytelling both visual and written in order to download their weird thinking into the collective hardrive.

Read the whole thing there.

Larry Correia fisks a minor author who appears to be hell-bent on convincing herself that mainstream publishing is the only way to go despite having sold fewer books than every single Castalia House author:

I realized that Laurie wasn’t providing writing advice for people who actually want to make a decent living as writers. She is providing advice to people who want to be aloof artistes at dinner parties, before they go back to their day job at Starbucks.

As for what Laurie says about gatekeepers, it is all horse shit. She has no flipping idea what she’s talking about.

Publishers are the “gatekeepers”. If they like you, you’re in, and if they don’t like you, you’re out. Problem is, at best they only have so many publishing slots to fill every year, so they cater to some markets, and leave others to languish. And at worst, they are biased human beings, who often have their heads inserted into their own rectums.

Agents represent the author. Their job is to find stuff they think they can sell to a publisher, and then they keep 15%. So “good” is secondary to “Can I sell this to the gatekeepers?” And then we’re back to slots and rectums.

Editors try to make the author’s stuff better. Period. They aren’t gate keepers, because it is their job to make the stuff that got through the gate suck less (seriously, the HuffPo should hire one).  Only self-published authors can hire editors too. Andy Weir hired Bryan Thomas Schmidt to edit the original self-published The Martian. Last I heard that book did okay.

“National and international reviewers” are on the wrong side of the gate, and I’m baffled why she included them. Reviewers come along after the fact, some are useful, but most aren’t. Even though I was ignored or despised by most of the big review places for most of my career, they haven’t made a lick of difference to my sales.

These gatekeepers are assessing whether or not your work is any good.

The problem is that “good” is subjective. What you personally think is “good” is irrelevant when there are a million consumers who disagree. I wouldn’t buy a copy of Twilight, but the author lives in a house made out of solid gold bars. “Good” is arbitrary. The real question is whether your product is sellable. (and yes, it is just a product, get over yourself)


Readers expect books to have passed through all the gates, to be vetted by professionals. This system doesn’t always work out perfectly, but it’s the best system we have.

It was the only system we had before technology came along and upset their apple cart.

When only the gatekeepers could vet what was “good”, sometimes they were right, but since often the “professionals” were 20 something lit majors just out of college, or some clueless weasel who had spent his whole existence in the echo chamber of Manhattan publishing, often the system fed its own tastes and ignored vast swaths of the market.

And when you neglect a market, it will spend its entertainment dollars elsewhere. So in this case, competition is good. Because the real competition isn’t between traditional and indy publishing, it is between reading and movies and video games and streaming. Ultimately the market decides who wins, not some self-appointed gatekeeper.

As Larry correctly observes, her atttitude is that of an author who is more interested in personal validation than professional status. The viability of independent publishing doesn’t mean there isn’t some advantage to publishing with the Big Five, especially if your name happens to begin with MILO. But, as in so many other things, what works for Milo is very unlikely to work for you. He’s a genuine star. Regardless, even very successful independent writers who sell millions of copies don’t hit #1 on Amazon months before release.

Nor is print anywhere close to dead. It’s not really fair to compare our print sales to our digital sales, since less than one-third of our books are in print yet and we have even fewer audio books out, but the breakdown of Castalia’s 2016 book sales is as follows:

• 67.8% ebook
• 20.5% print edition
• 07.5% Kindle Unlimited
• 04.2% audiobook

That’s unexpected, since we originally assumed Castalia would be an ebook-only publisher. But the real game changer, where the mainstream publishers are concerned, is KU. They don’t play there and they can’t afford to play there. And since publishing is a negative sum game, every $12 million paid out per month by Amazon probably represents at least another $48 million in revenue lost to the major publishers plus around $10 million lost to the authors published by them. It’s my suspicion that Amazon tries to set the KU compensation so that an author will make roughly the same amount from a KU sale-equivalent that he’ll make from conventional publishing sale, rather than the same amount he’ll make from an ebook sale.

KU isn’t great for independent publishers even though some of our big books pay out more per book equivalent than we make per sale. For reference, the average KU payout per page was $0.004848 in 2016. But at least we can afford to be there.