Great review of Upload from Lou Wallace, CEO of Digital Media Online: http://www.digitalproducer.com/article/Upload-2507336
“The story works on several levels, a cyberspace scifi novel, a romance, but most of all it takes a good look at what may actually be in store not just for our children’s children, but for we ourselves in just a few short decades. Well written, technically intriguing and very imaginative. Once I started I had trouble putting it down.”
It’s up! Check out my radio interview on Good Mornings! with Chris Oaks: http://www.goodmornings.net/download/audio/0329-7a.mp3
It starts about a minute 38 seconds in, and runs roughly eleven minutes. You’ll know it’s coming when you hear the musical lead-in: Gordon Lightfoot singing, “If you could read my mind”. (Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head.)
A big thank-you to Chris for having me on the show. He did a great job framing the conversation and moving it along fluidly — clearly a pro.
I’m also thrilled to see that the interview is prominently featured today on the WFIN-AM home page (http://www.wfin.com/) and the Good Mornings! program page (http://wfin.com/morning/mornings.asp).
Another bit of happy news… a favorable write-up in Midwest Book Review, from reviewer Willis M. Buhle:
The future may be in cyberspace. “Upload” is a novel exploring the concepts of mental uploading and its effects on humanity, focusing on what it could mean for love and life, exploring the philosophy of a completely online world that has conquered biology. “Upload” is an exciting work of science fiction, very much worth considering for fans of the genre who seek something discussing the effects of a possible near future technology.
Established in 1976, Midwest Book Review is an outstanding resource for readers, authors, and others in the publishing and bookselling industry. Its focus is on promoting quality small-press works, a role I believe is becoming increasingly relevant with the increasing number of self-published authors.
Midwest Book Review encompasses several publications. This particular review was in Reviewer’s Bookwatch, “an online forum for volunteer reviewers that makes their book reviews available to librarians, book dealers, and the general reading public.”
Thank you, Mr. Buhle, for taking the time to read and review Upload.
I got a happy bit of news today. My novel, Upload, is a Finalist in Science Fiction for ForeWord Reviews’ 2012 Book of the Year Award.
Curious about the other finalists in Science Fiction? I was, so I compiled a list of Goodreads links to the books and their authors. (In the case of State of Union, I couldn’t find the book on Goodreads. I suspect it’s a sequel to State of Mind.)
Document 512, by Thomas Lopinski
God Bless The Dead, by Evan Geller
Six, by Calvin J Brown
State of Union, by Sven Michael Davison
The Death of Eve, by Shaun Penney
The Samsara Effect, by Paul Black
The Serpent’s Grasp, by C. Kevin Thompson
The Water Thief, by Nicholas Lamar Soutter
The Webs of Varok, by Cary Neeper
Upload, by Mark McClelland (me)
Wildcatter, by Dave Duncan
What is this award? In their own words, “ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards program was created to highlight the year’s most distinguished books from independent publishers.”
If you’re looking for some good fresh sci-fi, this seems like a great place to start!
Another author interview… I was the spotlighted author over at SpecFicPick on Thursday. Check it out: http://specficpick.blogspot.com/2013/03/author-spotlight-mark-mcclelland.html. Fun question to get to answer: “What role do you believe speculative fiction plays in society?”
If you’re an author of speculative fiction, you should check out SpecFicPick, and join the community on Facebook.
Find out about my childhood habit of “car trips” in the living room, how I use functional poetry to fight my mild addiction to video games, what my personal utopia might look like, and much much more in my second author interview.
Thanks so much to Jayme Beddingfield for reaching out and offering to interview me. I had great fun, and I feel like doing interviews is forcing me to think through my own story — an unexpected benefit of publishing my novel and pursuing.
Jayme Beddingfield: Self-published author of the Emerald City Night Series, comic book devourer, shamelessly obsessed with zombies, and Diet Dr Pepper addict.
I just discovered that Upload is now on IndieBound, which means you can easily order the print edition from a local bookseller.
When I typed in my own zip code, I saw Chicago’s The Book Cellar at the top of the list, so I clicked through, and sure enough, you can add Upload to your cart, right there.
Then I noticed that The Book Cellar has partnered with Kobo to bring you eBooks through your local bookseller. How cool is that? The easiest way is to search for the eBook by ISBN: 9781300206705. I tried that on The Book Cellar’s website, and came up with this link to buy the eBook. Cool stuff. This looks to be an easy way to avoid the Amazon monoculture.
A big thank-you to my friend Chrystal Price for posting my first author interview on Marvelocity Style, the fun and informative lifestyle blog for her style consulting company.
What’s a style consultant, and what would she blog about? “While fashion is my focus, this blog is dedicated to living your life in style. That’s everything from food to clothing. My job is to thoroughly study and understand trends and how to use them to my clients’ advantage. I strive to snatch ideas from the runway and artfully apply them to my clients’ closets, no matter their budget, shape, or size.”
And how did someone as decidedly unstylish as myself end up on the blog of a style consultant? Charity, mostly. One look at me and Chrystal knew right away: I need all the help I can get. But I like to think style isn’t all on the surface. Who couldn’t use a little brain food to spruce up their conversation? Next time you’re sipping Sazeracs with some high-caliber minds, do be surprised if Upload is the topic all the cool kids are talking about. And with the help of Marvelocity Style, you can be one of the cool kids, too.
(If Upload actually comes up in the context of cocktailing, please let me know. Cuz that would make my day.)
Somehow, I managed never to post this gem of a birthday gift, written by my friend Camille Martinez. Hope you get a kick out of it. (I’ve loved The Onion since I lived in Milwaukee, back in 1996.)
Camille runs Dígame, a wonderful little language school here in Logan Square. She’s also one of the funniest people I know. If you live in Chicago and are looking to improve your French or Spanish, you’d be hard pressed to find a better or more charming way to do it. Camille also does translation. If Upload takes off in Europe, I know who will be doing my French and Spanish translations!
I first published Upload as an eBook in September. At the time, I performed a search and confirmed that the title hadn’t already been used by any book written in English. I went on to release the paperback in October.
Then, in late December, another book was published with the same title — also a work of fiction. As you can imagine, I was a little irritated. Fully three months after I published Upload, somebody chose to publish another technology-centric novel with exactly the same title? Now, the other Upload has the same number of Amazon reviews as my Upload (13), and I’m worried that my book, which reflects an immense amount of work over thirteen years, is at risk of being overshadowed because someone wasn’t considerate enough to find their own title.
The race is on. If you enjoyed my Upload, help keep it at the top of the Amazon search results by rating it now. If the other book by the same title appears to Amazon’s ranking algorithm to be more popular, it will rise above mine in search results, and then there’s the risk that people will confuse it with mine or will never even discover mine.
If you haven’t read Upload yet but have been meaning to, here’s a little extra motivation — bump it to the top of your reading stack, and help me keep my title on top!