Thomas gave Frieda the world’s first magic-powered flying toy for Christmas. I can’t match that, but here’s a 50% code for buying The Magic Battery or Files that Last, now through December 25, 2020. The discount code on Smashwords is NQ44E.
Please share if you’d like to make my Solstice a little brighter.
“To Gain the Whole World,” a new story in the world of The Magic Battery, is now up and available to read free of charge.
Nikolas Fest was the character who gave me the most trouble in the story. I had to throw out a whole chapter about him after getting beta reader feedback. Most of the characters are well-grounded. They know what they’re after and what they live by. Nikolas is constantly striking out in different directions and has trouble putting his life together. It’s harder for me to understand that type of character, but they’re often the interesting ones. In this story, Nikolas meets with the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, and he faces a dilemma about how to treat his own past. Meanwhile, pushbutton magic is starting to become a part of everyday life.
It has some spoilers for The Magic Battery. If you haven’t read the novel and hate spoilers, I recommend buying and reading the novel first. :) If you can deal with a few spoilers, it could help you decide whether the hovel will interest you.
If you spot the allusion to an early TV show, let me know in the comments.
In The Magic Battery, I play off the legend of Faust. There are many well-known versions of the story, including Marlowe’s play, Goethe’s play, and Gounod’s opera. Liszt was fascinated with the story and wrote a Faust Symphony as well as the Mephisto Waltzes. My treatment is a free one, but it starts from what’s known of the historical Faust. Or should I should say historical Fausts?
Sculpture above Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipzig, depicting a scene from Faust
I’ve been working on making The Magic Battery available in more ways.
Discount codes work only with Smashwords, sorry. To give a discount for the Kindle version, I’d have to enroll in KDP Select, and I can’t enroll because Amazon doesn’t have an exclusive on the book. Smashwords offers lots of download formats, including ones you can put on a Kindle. Again, the dollar-off discount code for June on Smashwords is RW83R.
It’s your choice how you want to buy it. The Kindle version has nice-looking drop caps at the start of each chapter and some other nifty features.
If you got the book a while back, check the Smashwords page for an update. I’ve fixed some minor errors.
Smashwords was giving me error messages on the ePub file it generated for The Magic Battery. I found a way to eliminate them. This means the book is now eligible for the Smashwords Premium Catalog, which will make it available through additional channels. I’ll post an update when this happens. If you downloaded the ePub, you can grab the new version on Smashwords. The latest version also corrects a minor inconsistency between the table of contents and a chapter title.
Tip from your friendly neighborhood file format mage: If your submission to Smashwords uses the “Quotations” style, you may be better off changing it to a paragraph style that gives your quotations the appearance you want. That was what gave me trouble.
I got my first review on Smashwords, with five stars! It says, in full: “This is a very enjoyable book, and the themes of racism, sexism and religious bigotry are well handled. Oh, and the magic is, too.” I didn’t even know there was a theme of racism, but I’ll take it!