C Gockel Writes

Book Review: Looking Through Lace

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Looking Through LaceLooking Through Lace is the second story I’ve read lately that features a matriarchal society. To hold my attention and suspend my disbelief, books that feature matriarchal societies have to be believable. To do that they have to explain away how women who are smaller and weaker and are encumbered by childbirth can get the upper hand. Also, I don’t like it if women in power are shown as being faultless … I tend to think power corrupts everyone.

Looking Through Lace easily slips around the first test of believability because the matriarchal society is alien. Alien matriarchal societies are a whole other different kettle of fish. I have no idea if pregnancy is hard for these aliens (would sort of like to know), but as it never comes up, I can let it slide. The men do appear to be stronger–but there was a singular event on their world that gave the women of society the upper hand. What is fascinating is how they hold onto it, and also how human linguists completely misconstrue the society based on their own preconceptions. The details of the alien species writing and language really set this story apart.

There is science, a little bit of romance, and a lot of drama–another highly recommended read*–I like it enough to purchase the second in series. You can purchase the first novella here:Amazon, Nook, Kobo, iBooks or just purchase the two novellas together Amazon, Nook, Kobo and save a few bucks.

*I will never go to the trouble to review a book I don’t recommend. I’m very picky and don’t finish most of the books I pick up, but I live in a glass house and will not throw stones. (Also, why write about a story I don’t like? My time is better spent writing a story I do like.)

Book Review: A Brother’s Price

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A Brother's Price by Wen SpencerAmazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks.

Somehow lately I wound up reading not one, but TWO books which feature worlds that are matriarchal. As someone who has lived in both Western  and Eastern countries, it’s actually difficult for me to suspend my disbelief about such societies. Yes, the ancient Egyptians, Romans, early European, and the upper class in Sparta had more egalitarian societies than some–but they weren’t equal. And despite varying levels of equality today, I don’t think equality has been truly attained. My guess is that it is just a matter of physical strength and the rigors of pregnancy. Men are stronger and in a “might equals right” society they will have a clear advantage. Pregnancy and childbirth also work a number on women; they can make the toughest woman sick and helpless and make it hard to function even in a society based on skills rather than might. Pregnancy can also cause debilitating injuries that would make combat more difficult. Denying any of these facts doesn’t help women overcome these problems, and some stories I’ve read do deny them.

So, in order to stay engaged, I need a world where it is clear there is a reason women are able to maintain the upper hand.

Secondly, I don’t like worlds that gloss over women’s ability to be evil. I think that the propensity for “evil” comes with power and believing you can get away with it.

So, a book with a matriarchal society has to overcome these first two hurdles before I can find it believable enough to engage in–and two have!

The first is A Brother’s Price, by Wen Spencer. It’s a steampunk sort of alternate reality, and the world building is very well done. In Spencer’s society men are stronger than women, childbirth and pregnancy are still really hard, but only about 3% of the population are male. This isn’t really explained–but I could think of a very scientific reasons it could be plausible right off the bat (a disease that affects those with Y chromosomes for instance–we already have those, just not to such a degree.) In this society women are basically expendable, and do all the hard, dangerous, and interesting work. Because parties of “sisters” will kidnap men for their households, women are trained in combat, and men are carefully guarded. The men also don’t get to have much fun. They wind up doing a lot of the housework and child raising.

“Sisters” by blood and alliance share a single man in unions that are often 30 to 1. This limits the number of times a woman will get pregnant, which means she will have lots of time to do all those other dangerous, difficult, and interesting things. They make the money, and have the power over their sons and brothers. Because men don’t get to do a lot of interesting things, their opinions aren’t valued.

So here is our setting, and where we meet our hero, Jerin Whistler, about to reach the ripe old age of 16 and have his “coming out.” Just a few months before this fateful day, his big sisters and mothers are away from the homestead and Jerin, uses his greater strength to help his little sisters rescue a fallen princess. Jerin is from a lower class than the princess … and so begins a story of forbidden love in a time when the princess (and her sisters) are in danger of losing their crowns. The story is a mystery / adventure / romance with a happily ever after and a lot of humor … but the setting, and how Wen inverted the world was what made it really sparkle. I highly recommend it. You can pick it up at Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks.

Archangel Down (and the whole Archangel Series) is now available in Audio

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Archangel Down AudiobookArchangel Down is now an audiobook. Podium, the same folks who discovered the Martian, decided they liked it! The narrator is the award winning Emily Woo Zeller. The series is available through Amazon/Audible in the Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Ca, Amazon DE, and Amazon AU.

Also available on  Apple,  Google Play and is available to borrow from Scribd.

Happy listening!

Star Heroes: 9 Novels of Space Exploration, Aliens, and Adventure

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starheroesfb-2

No Longer Available as a Set.

Star Heroes is a space opera collection with nine novels of the galactic frontier. Exploration, alien invasions, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence–it’s all here.

Blast off with these adventures by New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling authors:

Star Nomad by USA Today Bestseller Lindsay Buroker
In this fast-paced space adventure, Captain Alisa Marchenko must brave sadistic savages, fearsome cyborgs, and brutal pirates to steal a ship so she can find her way home.

Starship Eternal by M.R. Forbes
When a critical injury leaves Space Marine Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams having visions of a lost starship and an alien invasion, he thinks he’s going insane… He isn’t.

Icarus by Matt Verish
Cole Musgrave’s dream of interstellar travel has become a nightmare. When a delivery is compromised aboard a classified cargo vessel, the unorthodox captain finds himself embroiled in a deadly assignment that will alter his life forever.

Attack on Phoenix by USA Today and New York Times Bestseller Megg Jensen
Two hundred years ago, an interplanetary expedition crashed on a deserted planet. Catching the attention of the dragzhi, an aggressive alien species, they found themselves in a war they were doomed to lose … unless Torsten Vikker, a soldier who’d rather read than fight, can find a way to save them.

Archangel Down by USA Today Bestseller C. Gockel
Commander Noa Sato doesn’t believe in aliens. She’s too busy trying to save the lives of millions and her own skin to ponder the existence of “others.” Fortunately for Noa, aliens believe in her.

Destroyer by Chris Fox
One maverick captain, an unlikely crew, and an aging vessel are all that stand between humanity and the Eradication.

Space Carrier Avalon by Glynn Stewart
Avalon was the first and most legendary of the Castle Federation’s space carriers, but she is now old and obsolete. Accepting the inevitable, she is sent on a final flag-showing tour.
But war clouds gather and this final tour will be anything but quiet.

Symphony of War by David Adams
Lieutenant Marcus Servus and his soldiers, a penal legion, stand against insectoid boogeymen from another galaxy.
Marcus has a gift. An edge against the monsters: he hears music. Songs in his head guide him, granting him knowledge and foresight, a weapon against the alien hordes. But who plucks the strings?

Allies and Enemies: Fallen by Amy J. Murphy
Purpose-bred soldier of the Regime, Commander Sela Tyron is as subtle as a hammer. To hammers, any problem can look like a nail, but solutions aren’t always that easy. When Sela encounters a son she is forbidden to know, falls in love with a man who is clearly off-limits, and is abandoned on a planet of insurrectionists, things get complicated.

Individually, these books would cost $29.99 to purchase, but for right now they’re FREE. This deal won’t last long, and neither will this box set.

Download this collection today at Amazon! 

United States, Canada, UK, Australia, and Germany.

Have I Found My Forever Email Sending Platform?

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SendyHosting
SendyHosting.com offers support and infrastructure for the Sendy Hosting app at a reasonable cost.

If you’re an indy author, you need a mailing list or you’ll be at the mercy of Amazon, BookBub, and FaceBook to get news of new releases out to your customers.

Unfortunately, if you only publish once every six months a mailing list can become expensive to maintain. I started out collecting emails in a spreadsheet, graduated to MailChimp and took advantage of their free program, and then started their pay-per-email plan so that I could take advantage of auto-responders. By paying $250 I was able to get the cost-per-email to $.01. With only a few subscribers a day, and less than one email send a month, that was not too bad.

… and then my list ballooned.

My list is at 7,000 subscribers (and I’ve got another 4,000 who aren’t very engaged that I hit up every now and then … plus a secondary list dedicated to Box Set lovers that is growing fast.) Sending an email to 7,000 subscribers at .01 a send is $70. For that many people, MailChimp’s monthly plan isn’t any better–it’s $75 a month for a list that size. After researching other popular mailing list management apps I discovered Sendy.

After an initial investment of $59 Sendy costs $1 per 10,000 emails sent. So what’s the catch? There’s actually a few.

That initial investment is for the app–and then you have to install that app on your web server. If you’re not technologically inclined that can get expensive. (Also, you need a website, too, obviously!)

There are no preconfigured email templates and its WYSIWYG editor is very rudimentary. You can download free HTML templates from places like Litmus, but still, if you don’t know HTML it can be tricky.

Segmentation is rudimentary at best. Want to send an email quickly just to those folks who enjoy your sci-fi? Ha, ha, ha … no. You can create custom columns in your list to store details like that, but to send to those people you have to export your list, fish out the folks who fit that criteria, create a new list and send your email. (In its favor, if they unsubscribe, Sendy will take them off the original list.) Sendy does allow multiple lists … but that gets clunky too. I noticed I had customers signing up for both my sci-fi and urban fantasy lists. I’m glad they like both–but I don’t want to annoy them twice with every release announcement.

Lastly … not every web host allows the Sendy app. I got Sendy installed (or actually, my tech guys did) and up and running. I was so happy! And then my website was shut down. Turned out, MediaTemple, my web host thought the Sendy code was “malicious.” (It’s not open source and is therefore encrypted.) My web guys had to do an emergency Sendy extraction and then I was left back where I started–well, except out quite a few pennies for installation and purchase of the app. As Homer Simpson would say, “D’oh!”

I tried some websites that used Sendy to send your emails, but it turns out most of them slapped their own look-and-feel on the Sendy app and actually left me with something less functional than Sendy. (I will not name names because they were very nice, didn’t charge me, provide an inexpensive service, and I hope to be able to recommend them someday.)

On a whim I Googled “Sendy Hosting” and discovered … dun, dun, dun … SendyHosting.com and EasySendy.com. I eventually went with SendyHosting because EasySendy seemed really geared to upselling peeps to EasySendy Pro. It looks like an awesome powerful product if you’re sending out 100,000 emails everyday (Comcast is one of their customers). It also looked really complicated when I signed up for a free account and poked around. Like it-could-be-a-job-just-to-know-how-to-use-it-complicated (if you’ve ever worked at a big company like Comcast you realize sending emails is someone’s job. They do it all day everyday. Have respect for them. It’s a job that takes marketing savvy, and techie and analytical brains.) I just want to send one or two emails a month. (If your’e looking to become the next BookBub, maybe it’s for you though?) To be fair, they did offer me free webinars and support … but I don’t want a webinar, I want to jump in and start sending.

So, with some trepidation after already trying two different email sending apps in a month I signed up for SendyHosting.

It was so easy. And at €12 a month affordable! That cost includes security updates to Sendy … I hadn’t figured those in; but as I would have to pay for their installation, it probably would have been more expensive than Sendy hosting in the long run. I had to create a subdomain for them, and grant a few permissions to AWS (Amazon Web Services, Sendy is their product.) But I was able to do it in minutes and I was right back with the interface I was comfortable with.

TL; DR?

If you are comfortable with HTML and you need a cheaper email app, Sendy might be for you. But check your web hosting provider–they may not allow it–and even if they do, a Sendy hosting plan like SendyHosting.com might be cheaper in time and / or money in the long run.

I a still have a $.01 a send MailChimp service to catch anyone who has a link to my sign-up forms, and for Instafreebie sign-ups, but I HOPE that I’ve found my forever plan for general sending.