If you’re at Goodreads and you haven’t read Semiosis yet, here’s your chance to get the book for free. Five copies are up for grabs. Giveaway closes June 6. Limited to United States. Sign up here.

Semiosis is included in the article “The Best Science Fiction Books About Aliens” by Jamie Green posted this month at Five Books.

Meanwhile, my latest book, Dual Memory, goes on sale today! Available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook at all major retailers, and if you buy the hardcover book from Volumes Bookcafé, I can autograph it for you.

If you’re in Chicago, I can autograph it in person for you tonight, 6:30 p.m., at Volumes Bookstore Café, 1373 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the Wicker Park neighborhood. I’ll be chatting with Richard Chwedyk, another science fiction author and an entertaining raconteur. It will be fun.

Amazon likes my book! Dual Memory is one of the Best Books of the Month: Science Fiction & Fantasy @ Amazon.com.

If you order the dead tree book from Volumes Bookcafé, I can autograph it for you. The book is available May 16, and there will be a launch party here in Chicago at Volumes that evening.

You can also buy it from your own friendly neighborhood bookstore and all major retailers. Links are here where it says “Buy Now.”

You can read the first chapter at the publisher’s website.

I don’t know if I’m a master at revision and rewriting, but I hate writing first drafts. I have to bribe myself to get through them. Once I have something to work with, though, I love to edit, revise, and rewrite. I think it’s where the magic happens.

Adrian M. Gibson and M.J. Kuhn, co-hosts of the SFF Addicts Podcast, and I talk about techniques I’ve learned over 50 years of professional writing (I started very young) that might help you with your writing. Every project is different, so the more techniques you know, the better.

Available today, May 9, in audio and video. Watch/stream/download it:

https://fanfiaddict.com/sff-addicts-ep-52-revision-rewriting/

http://linktr.ee/SFFAddicts

http://youtu.be/M3l14AwEZ58

Any questions, ask in the comments. Thanks!

Audible’s Off the Charts sale, May 8 to 12, includes the Semiosis audiobook.

Thanks for a great reading to narrators Caitlin Davies and Daniel Thomas May!

For the past 58 years, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has presented the Nebula Awards. The finalists for the best works in 2022 in seven categories have been announced. The awards will be presented in a ceremony on Sunday, May 14, streaming live from Anaheim, CA, as part of the 2023 Nebula Conference Online. Winners are determined by the vote of SFWA members.

I’m a member of SFWA, and I’ve read all the works in the novella category, 17,500 to 40,000 words. None of them are romances per se, but love has a place in the plots. Here are my impressions and my vote. If you can, read them for yourself.

“Bishop’s Opening” by R.S.A. Garcia (Clarkesworld 1/22) – The crew of a space ship, a romantic triad, gets dragged into a planet’s deadly political games. Innocence could be a successful gambit, along with forgiveness.

I Never Liked You Anyway by Jordan Kurella (Vernacular) – Love at its most foolish. Emo music students at a college reiterate the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. While they can’t avoid tragedy, Hades, the king of the dead, has godlike wisdom and compassion, which might rescue the afterlife.

High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson (Tordotcom) – A scribe gets sent to record tense and desperate debates that, if not resolved, will result in disaster. Then she falls in love. Genuinely funny, light-hearted, and light-weight, in a good way. Expect shenanigans, not a treatise on governance.

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (Tordotcom) – In Chicago in the 1930s, the “White City Vampire” seems to be an ordinary serial killer, but a private detective knows that a lot more is at stake — more than she thinks, in fact. Can she protect her beloved? Demons, warlocks, and angels keep the plot twisting and turning.

My vote: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers (Tordotcom) – Monk and Robot — that is, Dex and Mosscap — travel together and slowly tackle more and more complex (or simple, depending on your viewpoint) philosophical questions. You’ll see the love: a lot of love in all directions.

I was torn between voting for A Prayer for the Crown-Shy and Even Though I Knew the End, and the originality of Becky Chambers’ story won me over. But you may reach a very different conclusion, and in keeping with Monk and Robot’s theme of acceptance, that would be just fine. We all love reading, and that’s what matters.