419 Memoirs & Other Strange Stories.

My first full length ebook story collection is now available:

An outcast child and a mountain shaman hold the keys to humanity's survival. A gunfighter steps out of myth and into the twisted realities of the modern personal development movement. One weary universe collapses-and a new one rises. Voices from an all-too real future reach out to one another, desperate to connect. Hamlet celebrates his 40th birthday with an old friend and a to-do list. A television producer descends into madness. The god of sound taunts the god of sight.

Set in impossible pasts, bizarre futures, and skewed-but-recognizable versions of the present, these sixteen stories, and more, from the inimitable Michael Canfield will take you on iconoclastic voyages of the imagination you won't soon forget.

Includes The Food Processor, Library Rules, They Get Away from You, Once Upon a Time ... At the Learning Annex, A Flavor of Quark, The Last Confessions of NinjaBaby, The Whited Child, A Flavor of Quark and nine others. Plus a complete short novel: The Plastic Fruit Museum, excerpts from two forthcoming novels: Red Jacket, and Growing Up Zombie, and many other extras.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

How To Create a Quick Ebook Cover Using Pages (mac)

Many dedicated graphics programs exist, but writers without a design background find the learning curve steep. Mac users who own the word-processing program Pages already have an easy tool to make an ebook cover themselves.
First, have your art ready. Free and low cost art is available from many stock art sights. Try googling "stock photos", "royalty free art" etc. Keep in mind that simple artwork without multiple complex elements work best for covers. Much of the art you will choose gets covered by text. Think background image.
In Pages open a document. Choose the "blank" template.
Under the File menu go to Page Setup ... > Paper Size.
From the dropdown menu choose "Manage Custom Sizes." Create a new custom size. Call it "Book Cover Ratio, set the width to 6 inches and the height to 9 inches. Leave the other fields alone and hit "Okay." This will give you a page size the correct portions of a standard book, which will look professional when displayed on Amazon or other sites.
Drag your art or photograph onto your open document. Resize the art on the page by clicking and dragging any of the photo's corners or edges. Use the "Lock" icon on the tool bar (or under the "Arrange" menu) to lock your art down and keep it from moving.
Under the "Insert" dropdown menu choose "Text". This creates a box to type into. Create three text boxes: one for your title, one for your byline, and one for your cover blurb if you want one. (A cover blurb can be anything from a subtitle for the book, a teaser about the contents, or a one-phrase background on the author.) Separate boxes work best, so that you size your various text elements differently. Place the title text box near the top of your cover, and the byline text box near the bottom. Keep the blurb near your title, as seen on most professionally produced book covers.
Choose "Fonts" from the main toolbar, which will bring up the fonts window. Play with the fonts and sizes until a combination grabs you. Strive to keep your text readable. A single font works best. Avoid "distressed" fonts, or anything else difficult to read. For text color, black or white usually prove the most readable options.
With ebooks, most prospective buyers see a version of the cover at thumbnail size. Choose View > Show Page Thumbnails, which will allow you to judge how readable your cover appears.
Pages has no capability to save a document as a .JPG. Instead, save your document as a .PDF and then use iPhoto or another photo/graphics program to save the .PDF as a .JPG.
You now have a professional looking cover for an ebook that you can use with any document format.

Free Story of the Week S01E02 The Crossing

This week's free story is from 2003. My first publication ...

THE CROSSING

Only Vincente braved the outside. Mama stayed within, washed linen, swept floors, and clung to the life she knew before the fear. She seemed least anxious in the kitchen. The colonel haunted the walled garden. The girl? well, strange. little Laura kept to the corners.
They could take a lesson from the rats. Nothing bothered the rats; this much, Vincente had learned.

 Continue reading the whole story free until at least 04/15/11. 

Also available for purchase at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Diesel, and other sites.

Free Story of the Week S01E01:

PEAS AND CARROTS

Sophie. The script called her Sophie; and Sam the optimist, Sam traveler-without-cares, loved her since creation. Azure-eyed Sophie, orphaned country maid, as new in Vienna as the century was young; Sophie in chiffon frock of cobalt blue; her brown hair unadorned with silk ribbon, tied in plain linen.

Tonight, upon hearing him speak say, Pardon me, Fraulein, do you believe in fate? brown-haired, azure-eyed Sophie would surely fall into his arms, her cheek upon his breast. His body, breath, and kisses would let her know that fears could no longer trouble love. For this alone had he been written: to rescue Sophie from Maximilian, and sweep her away forever. The invisible hand had scripted it and tonight he'd win her, though she did not even know his name.

<Continue reading the whole story free until at least 03/05/11.Expired!


Available for purchase at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Diesel, and other sites.

Attack of the 50 Ft. Cosmonaut

Download and have it free from Smashwords using the coupon code below:

Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code: MB57C
Expires: February 22, 2011
Expired!

Fifth story up on Smashwords now.

"Wednesday" from the Stoker-Award nominated anthology Corpse Blossoms.

It's .99¢ unless you want to get it free on Smashwords using this coupon:


Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code: BN94Q
Expires: February 18, 2011 Expired!!