Until now, my answer has always been, It’s not my decision, pal. I don’t own the electronic rights. And don’t call me a jackass, punk.

To which they reply… well, you get the picture.

But as of today, I can now join the ranks of the electronically published. Yes, via the Pyr-o-mania blog, I see that Infoquake is now available on the Amazon Kindle. Go check it out on Amazon. Not only is it available, but it’s one of the first five titles available on Kindle from Pyr. (For the record, the others are: Justina Robson’s Silver Screen and Going Under, Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate, and Lou Anders’ anthology Fast Forward 1.)

I’m told there are a lot more Pyr titles in the works — including, yes, MultiReal — but there’s no telling exactly when they’re going to hit the street. So hopefully by some point next year, you’ll be able to read the entire Jump 225 trilogy electronically. You won’t be able to project it holographically on your retinas yet, unless you’re Ray Kurzweil, but here’s hoping we’ll be able to do that in our lifetimes too.

(And by the way… yes, I would love to be able to post a picture of what Infoquake actually looks like on the Kindle. But unfortunately, I don’t own one and don’t anticipate buying one anytime soon. So if anyone does get a chance to email me a nice high quality digital photo of Infoquake on the Kindle, I’d really appreciate it.)

The cover painting is once again by the incomparable Hugo Award-winning artist Stephan Martiniere, whose paintings for the covers of Infoquake and MultiReal have been blowing minds for many a month.

And here is the catalog copy for the book, which provides something of a spoiler (though a necessary one) for the cliffhanger at the end of MultiReal.

DAVID LOUIS EDELMAN’S BUSINESS SCIENCE FICTION SAGA THAT BEGAN WITH INFOQUAKE AND MULTIREAL COMES TO A STUNNING CONCLUSION WITH GEOSYNCHRON, THE LAST BOOK OF THE JUMP 225 TRILOGY.

The Defense and Wellness Council is enmeshed in full-scale civil war between Len Borda and the mysterious Magan Kai Lee. Quell has escaped from prison and is stirring up rebellion in the Islands with the aid of a brash young leader named Josiah. Jara and the apprentices of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp still find themselves fighting off legal attacks from their competitors and from Margaret Surina’s unscrupulous heirs — even though MultiReal has completely vanished.

The quest for the truth will lead to the edges of civilization, from the tumultuous society of the Pacific Islands to the lawless orbital colony of 49th Heaven; and through the deeps of time, from the hidden agenda of the Surina family to the real truth behind the Autonomous Revolt that devastated humanity hundreds of years ago.

Meanwhile, Natch has awakened in a windowless prison with nothing but a haze of memory to clue him in as to how he got there. He’s still receiving strange hallucinatory messages from Margaret Surina and the nature of reality is buckling all around him. When the smoke clears, Natch must make the ultimate decision — whether to save a world that has scorned and discarded him, or to save the only person he has ever loved: himself.

I’ll have more to say about this later, but figured that it couldn’t hurt to just post this stuff asap.

(Oh, and if you’re so inclined, the book’s now available for pre-order on Amazon.)

Doyle really didn’t have enough material to fill four novels and fifty-six short stories’ worth of paper. The plots are fairly trite, the mysteries are sometimes clever but mostly commonplace, the insights into human nature are fairly shallow, and the prose is expedient if unremarkable… But there is one thing Doyle had that makes up for all the other shortcomings: he had a frickin’ incredible character in Sherlock Holmes himself…

I find that when I think back on the great stories I’ve read in my lifetime, SF/F or otherwise, it’s generally the characters that I remember. That’s why I can barely remember a single plot from the original Star Trek, but I know the triad of McCoy, Spock and Bones like the back of my hand. (Same goes for The Next Generation, though the only truly great character from that show was Picard.) That’s why I remember Long John Silver but barely remember Treasure Island. And that’s why, for all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s insane worldbuilding and linguistic inventiveness, the first thing I think of when I think of The Lord of the Rings is Gandalf leaning on his staff (or Gollum writhing on the ground pining for his preccccccccious).

Go make my editor happy, and post your comments on the Pyr-o-mania blog.

Update 2/18/09 @ 12:41 PM: Fixed the link to the blog piece.

I mean, a copy of MultiReal is literally sitting in my lap as I type this. The stack of my author copies is sitting on the ottoman in my living room right now, as this photo here can attest. They were waiting for me, all tidy and snuggling in a box of styrofoam peanuts when I got home from work.

The book’s so hot off the printer, you could make pancakes on it. It’s so slick, those pancakes would slide right off the book cover without leaving a trace. And I feel so sweet, I wouldn’t need any syrup. (Anybody else suddenly in the mood for an IHOP run…?)

My first thought on opening the box was wondering how long it’s going to be before men can have children, like Arnold Schwarzeneggar in that stupid movie or that weird George Michael-looking dude on Oprah. Because seeing the cover of MultiReal with this fabu Stephan Martiniere artwork, I was struck by a sudden urge to bear the man’s children. Really, it’s that good. It’s also a little darker on laminated cardboard than it is on a computer screen, which somehow seems to lend the book a bit of gravitas.

My second impression, just as I had when I saw the finished trade paperback of Infoquake for the first time, was that the book is both taller and thinner than I had imagined it would be. I found myself holding the book up and pinching the entire section 5 (called “Possibilities 2.0″) between my thumb and index finger. It’s 70 pages packed full of intrigue, drama, and intellectual stimulation, yet it’s about the thickness of an issue of Playbill. How can that be?

Once I’d gotten over staring at the book in isolation, of course the next thing I had to do was stack it next to both versions of Infoquake. As you can imagine, the Solaris Infoquake with the complementary Martiniere painting looks super keen next to MultiReal. But what was totally surprising to me was how well the Pyr trade paperback with the original cover looks side-by-side with the new book 2. Witness:

(Yes, I did take those photos myself on my cell phone. Sorry, Annie Leibowitz isn’t returning my calls anymore, that minx.)

So I now officially have two published books to my name, and I’m feeling as high as a zeppelin right this moment. Hey, lookit me! I’ve got an oeuvre!

In addition to thanking Stephan Martiniere for the fabulous cover, special mention should also go to my editor, Lou Anders, whose fabulous instincts are what make Pyr books look as special as they do. Also at Pyr/Prometheus, Jackie Cooke, who is responsible for the marvelous type treatment and overall layout of the book. (She used a font called “Tall Films” for the titles, and a font called “Am Sans” for the rest of the cover text.) And finally, Peggy Deemer, who shepherded the book through production and put up with about 400 paranoid emails from me about things I misspelled and section breaks I mistakenly left out of the final Word documents.

The “official” launch date for MultiReal is July 8, but if you know anything about this business you know how meaningless those official launch dates are. Amazon is claiming they already have it in stock and can deliver it to your door by Monday morning…

(FYI, the announcement for this sampler mistakenly says that my excerpt is from 2006′s Infoquake. Rest assured, the 45 pages in the Pyr sampler are indeed from MultiReal.)

Also included in the sampler are excerpts from Joe Abercrombie‘s Before They Are Hanged (sequel to the acclaimed The Blade Itself); Kay Kenyon‘s A World Too Near (sequel to the equally acclaimed Bright of the Sky); Theodore Judson‘s The Martian General’s Daughter; Robert Silverberg‘s classic Son of Man; and two from Mike Resnick, Stalking the Unicorn and Stalking the Vampire.

But first, a few words about the excerpt from MultiReal.

What you’re reading in this sampler is the entire first section of the book, titled “Lessons Learned.” Three of these chapters are written from the point of view of a new character, Magan Kai Lee, the lieutenant executive of the Defense and Wellness Council. (Actually, he’s not entirely a new character. If you re-read Infoquake, you’ll notice that he makes a cameo appearance in chapter 5, though he’s not mentioned by name.) One chapter is a 40-year-old flashback written from Margaret Surina’s point of view. Only one chapter of this excerpt features Natch, the trilogy’s protagonist and central character. Jara, the series’ secondary protagonist, isn’t even mentioned in these five chapters, even though she plays a major part in MultiReal.

I always knew it was going to be difficult to create a suitable excerpt for this book. As I’ve written before, the middle book of a trilogy is an enormous challenge. I’ve made it doubly so by creating such a complicated backstory for the universe. Pity the poor opening chapters of MultiReal, because I’ve saddled them with all of these duties:

1. Re-introducing the important background concepts in the story (multi, bio/logic programming, creeds, L-PRACGs, MultiReal)
2. Re-introducing the important bits of background history (the Autonomous Revolt, the death of Marcus Surina)
3. Re-introducing the main characters (Natch, Horvil, and Jara) as well as the secondary characters (Len Borda, Margaret Surina, Benyamin, Merri, Serr Vigal, Quell, the Patel Brothers, and Brone)
4. Introducing several new characters (Magan Kai Lee, Papizon, Rey Gonerev, Ridgello, and Khann Frejohr)
5. Summarizing the important bits that happened in Infoquake
6. Setting up the conflicts for the rest of MultiReal
7. Engaging the reader so they’re interested in reading more (or buying the book in the first place)

I concluded that it’s nearly impossible to cover all of this ground without turning the opening chapters into one big, fat gelatinous glob of exposition. So when you finally do get your grubby hands on MultiReal (have I mentioned that it’s available for pre-order on Amazon?), you’ll find that Appendix A is a rather detailed summary of Infoquake. It will be interesting to see if that summary is enough for those who haven’t read Infoquake to still enjoy MultiReal. At the very least, I hope it will jostle the memories of those who did read the first book, but have forgotten some of its details.

One last thing to note: for those who haven’t read Infoquake, there will be spoilers in this five-chapter sample of MultiReal. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I don’t think there’s anything in the first few chapters of book 2 that would spoil your experience of book 1. (And if you’re that concerned — well, you could always go ahead and start reading the first seven chapters of Infoquake instead.)

Go. Read. Enjoy. Buy. Discuss.

• I’ll have two new books on the shelves in Summer 2008: Solaris’ mass-market paperback of Infoquake, and Pyr’s trade paperback of MultiReal. (The trade paper of Infoquake will still be available as well, natch.)
• There will be a new look for the Jump 225 series, with matching covers across the series. I’ve heard some very encouraging news about what these new covers are going to look like, but I can’t tell you yet.
• Solaris’ distribution deal with Simon & Schuster in the U.S. should put copies of Infoquake and MultiReal in just about every bookstore across the country. Which means I’ll no longer hear that complaint I’ve heard a hundred times now: “I went out to buy your book today, but I can’t seem to find it in any of the stores.”
• Solaris has also optioned mass-market paperback editions of MultiReal and Geosynchron, which means there’s a good chance I’ll see mass-market versions of these books in the stores as well.

Extreme thanks go to George Mann and Christian Dunn of Solaris, who were just the coolest guys at Readercon this year. Thanks also to Lou Anders of Pyr, who is automatically the coolest guy in any room he enters that Keith Richards isn’t already in.

More when I catch my breath.

When last we left our intrepid hero (i.e., me), I had spent several years working on my science fiction manuscript, carefully researched literary agents, and sent out about two dozen packages to all of the major players.

What was my original query letter like? I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Dear [Insert Agent Name Here],

Did a flashy marketing campaign persuade Lando Calrissian to buy the Millennium Falcon? Did the company that built the Star Trek transporters have a branding strategy? Did a military contractor sell arms to the Starship Troopers — and what kind of PowerPoint presentation did he use to sell them?

As a programmer and dot-com executive, I am often frustrated by the short shrift science fiction gives to the business world. Authors who go to great lengths to make their work conform to the laws of physics will completely ignore the laws of economics. This frustration was the impetus for my first novel INFOQUAKE, a literate techno-thriller in the tradition of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.

The book’s hero Natch is an entrepreneur in bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He’s a crusader in a war being fought through product demos, press releases and sales pitches. His Holy Grail? The number one spot on the Primo’s bio/logic investment guide.

Now Natch is willing to do anything to get his hands on a radical technology that harnesses the computing power of the mind. But so is the competition in the rough-and-tumble world of bio/logic programming. So is the ruthless Defense and Wellness Council, which sees Natch’s technology as a grave threat to public order. And so is a shadowy organization that wants to bring humanity to its next phase of evolution — ready or not. Eventually Natch must ask himself the eternal question: how far should you go to make a profit?

A little about me: I have trained Members of Congress on computer software, programmed websites for the U.S. Army, and run the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. My non-fiction has been published in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, and Publishers Weekly. My fiction has been published in Urban Desires and Zeniada.

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript (120,000 words) or its opening chapters, along with an outline of two proposed sequels in the INFOQUAKE trilogy. An SASE is enclosed for your convenience.

The world’s greatest cover letter? No. Good enough to get someone to crack open the manuscript? I certainly thought so. I used Andrew Zack’s example from Writer magazine as my model (Adobe Acrobat file, 89K), and I think I followed his example pretty closely. If you’ve read the final marketing copy that’s on the final book cover, you’ll see that a lot of that copy comes from this exact cover letter.

So I spent most of the spring of 2004 waiting for some kind of response and trying to decide whether or not to get crackin’ on book 2 of the series, MultiReal, or just to abandon the Jump 225 trilogy altogether and start something new. I said in my last post that of those two dozen packages, I received not a single callback, e-mail, or manuscript request.

That’s not precisely true. I did receive a call from an agent sometime in late 2004. She told me that she really, really liked my manuscript, that she thought it was saleable, that it might need a little bit of editorial work first. I’d have to dig through my notes to verify this for absolute certain, but I’m pretty sure the woman who called me was Cris Robins. She asked if I was nervous. I said yes, a little. She said, don’t be. In the middle of our discussion, she got interrupted by another call. She promised to call me back in five minutes, and gave me her number in case she got tied up.

In that five minutes, I searched for her name on Google. Biiiiiiig mistake on Ms. Robins’ part.

I found this warning from Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I found a number of discussion group posts about her on various writing websites. It’s not worth my time trying to find the original posts, but suffice to say that Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin — two real published authors — have since posted many times about what a scam artist Cris Robins is. (The latest: a judgment against her by Washington Superior Court for scamming a writer named Christopher Dahl.)

Turns out there are a lot of so-called “preditors” out there who contact authors with unpublished work and offer to represent them. And then they offer their editorial services to clean up/rewrite/slash up your manuscript. Yessirreebob, just a few thousand dollars, and your novel will be ready to submit to a big-time publisher! What a bargain! Luckily, I had done my homework, so I’d heard about this sort of thing. (I had actually gotten Ms. Robins’ name from a reputable source, believe it or not — Jeff Herman’s Guide to Literary Agents.)

Ms. Robins never called back, and I never returned her call.

I was pissed. There is an alternate universe out there in which I’m currently sitting on death row for the murder by rusty chainsaw of one particular scam literary agent. (And in this alternate universe, I’m grinning.)

I was about ready to give up — not necessarily on writing, but on Infoquake.

On Friday, June 18, 2004, I drove up to Baltimore to see my old boss (and fellow Johns Hopkins alumnus) Bruce Bortz, who runs Bancroft Press. Bruce gave me my first job out of college, in fact, working at Bancroft on a variety of projects. I wrote dozens of profiles of Florida and Maryland state legislators for a series of his governmental guidebooks back in 1993 and 1994. I did computer work and desktop publishing for him. I was actually under contract to Bancroft way back when to write a how-to book about computers called A Gift from Mr. Wallakahalla, but the book never panned out.

Bruce and I went to lunch at the Mt. Washington Tavern, a place I had dined in many a night during my Baltimore years. I handed Bruce a printout of the book and asked his advice on what to do next. He told me he had acted as literary agent for a handful of novelists before, but knew little about science fiction. I gave him a quick summary of what the field had been up to since the heyday of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. I remember distinctly spelling out Neal Stephenson’s name for him. (Bruce, scribbling on a napkin: “Is that Stephenson with a ‘V’ or a ‘Ph’? And what did he write again?”) Bruce said he’d take a look at the manuscript and give me his honest verdict.

A few days later, Bruce called me. He had taken Infoquake with him on a train trip to New York, and couldn’t put it down. He loved it, and wanted to represent me. He told me that Bancroft had never published a science fiction novel before, but if he couldn’t find me a publisher, Bancroft would publish it.

My wife and I drove up a week or so later to meet with him and one of his associates. Bruce pointed out a few minor quibbles he had with the book. First: the character of Brone was too cartoonish; he spent most of his screen time (so to speak) cackling and making bad jokes. Two: the chapter on the Shortest Initiation didn’t work. Three: the chapter told from the viewpoint of the data agent was unnecessary and should be cut. I agreed wholeheartedly with Bruce on the first two points, and the third I was willing to compromise on.

We signed a contract. I had an agent.

I spent a couple months smoothing out wrinkles. I had never been satisfied with the Shortest Initiation and welcomed a chance to revisit it. (The draft Bruce read had Natch abandon the initiation camp with a dozen companions, only to have them come trickling back in because Natch had sabotaged their food supply.) Which I did, over and over again. I think the draft that’s in the final product was somewhere around the fifteenth draft. (And that’s not counting partials.) I tried another tack with Brone, and was much more satisfied with the results. It’s amazing how much easier the writing flows once you have an agent actually waiting to read your words.

As 2004 came to a close, I presented Bruce with the finished manuscript for Infoquake and he went to work selling it.

I sat back and waited. I worried tremendously that the book would go nowhere. I wondered what the book’s chances at success would be if Bancroft Press published it.

There were some frustrations over the next couple weeks. One major SF publisher declined to read the book, because they were moving their offices and weren’t accepting any new submissions, period. Another big house loved the book and apparently had some major internal debates about whether to buy it, but decided in the end to pass. One house rejected it, claiming there were too many “confusing shifts of viewpoint.”

My favorite was a major, major SF publisher that sent us an unsigned rejection letter, misspelling the name of the book, the name of the author, and the name of the agent. The letter arrived 18 months later, right about the time that the rave Publishers Weekly review came out.

Finally, in early December 2004, Bruce forwarded me an e-mail he had received from a fellow named Lou Anders, the editor of a new science fiction imprint called Pyr. Lou loved the book and thought it would make a great addition to Pyr’s third season lineup. I discovered later — much later — that it was really only chance that Lou had read the book at all. He had picked up the first page one night expecting to throw it quickly in the “discard” pile, and winded up reading the whole night through. A couple of days later, I got a call on my cell from Bruce while having lunch with my wife. Pyr had made an offer — and it had actual, real money attached to it.

There were still details to take care of. There were calls and e-mails back and forth between other publishers. There was some contract negotiation to be done. The contract was finally signed towards the end of January, 2005. Four years and three months after I quit my full-time job to write a novel, I had a publisher.

And that’s the story of how I became a professional novelist.

The book looks fabulous. From the cover (designed by David Stevenson) to the layout to the recurring use of that font on the cover throughout the interior, it’s a class package all the way. Then again, judging from the quality of the books Pyr has been putting out, I shouldn’t have expected anything less. (Have you seen Ian McDonald’s River of Gods yet? No? Log off right now, go find a copy, and just hold it in your hands. It’s awe-inspiring.)

I’ve been thumbing through the Advanced Readers Copy of Infoquake for the past few weeks, and so the book’s dimensions are actually a little larger than what I’m used to. The book has a nice heft to it, which makes me feel like I’m giving readers a nice bargain for their $15 retail ($9.75 on Amazon).

It’s very interesting to see the actual, final print layout, because the passages don’t look the same way I remember them from the manuscript. I’m not talking about the typeface so much — I actually composed the book in pretty much the same font it ended up in, which was very serendipitous — but the layout and page breaks. The first part of the book feels much thinner than I’d imagined it would, and I was astounded to discover that the reappearance of a certain character occurs at a much earlier place book-width-wise than I had expected.

And, of course, as any published writer will tell you, now that the book is off the printer I’m seeing things I should have changed. One of the penultimate sentences in the entire book, for instance, mentions “a confidence fertilized by desire and sprouted from fear.” Now that I see it in print, I realize that I’ve gotten the metaphor backwards and that the sentence should read “a confidence sprouted from desire and fertilized by fear.” Critics, please forgive me.

The only real bummer I can see is that the blurb from Tobias S. Buckell didn’t make it onto the inside of the book as planned. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but here’s the blurb: “A fascinating glimpse into an all-too-possible future of business, software, wetware, and over-powerful technocrats.”

It’s a not-so-well-kept secret that when you blurb someone else’s book, you get a boost in name recognition, even if it’s just a very slight one. So I’m sorry that Toby’s not going to benefit from that. He’s been incredibly nice and helpful to me, considering that he really doesn’t know me from Adam. So go check out his book Crystal Rain. No, really, go do it right now!

Thanks to everyone who’s made this possible.

(Who’s “everyone,” you ask? Go buy a copy and read the Acknowledgments page to find out.)