"Fortunately, as well as all the action on deck, there’s a really good personal story going on alongside the description. It was this part of the book which had me hooked. The character of Peter was well rounded and I liked his slight aloofness which hid an honourable man who just wanted to get on with being the best officer he could [...] I felt all his frustration at his superior when Peter is punished for showing good sense instead of following orders to the letter; his powerful yearning for Roger and his despair at knowing that Roger could never love him back; and his confusion when faced with the dilemma of betraying his country or following a man he admires and respects." --Jenre
Complete review at: http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/?p=33763
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
PoNS 2 : Men of Honor Ebook Now Available
I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited book two of the Pirates of the Narrow Seas series, Men of Honor, is now available in a variety of ebook formats. You can buy it from Kindle, iBookstore, AllRomance, 1Romance, Rainbow Ebooks, and many other ebooksellers.
PoNS 2 : Men of Honor was reviewed by Nan Hawthorne at All She Read at http://allsheread.blogspot.com/2010/10/men-of-honor-by-m-kei.html
"Men of Honor is fast paced, action packed and exciting. [...] There are lots of vividly drawn characters in this novel, just as there were in The Sallee Rovers. Tangle, Shakil, and Perry are here, and Captain Horner, the ailing Captain Bishop's replacement, is a welcome addition. Towards the end a new character, a recently blinded Lieutenant Abbey, promises to be a refreshingly resourceful disabled character in a genre prone to stereotypes." -- Nan Hawthorne
PoNS 2 : Men of Honor was reviewed by Alex Beecroft at Speak Its Name http://speakitsname.com/2010/05/18/review-pirates-of-the-narrow-seas-ii-men-of-honor-by-m-kei
"unquestionably better than the majority of m/m Age of Sail books I’ve been reading recently. M. Kei has a fine grip on his period and his sailing details, and has produced a book which can stand comparison with C. S. Forester’s Hornblower series." -- Alex Beecroft
An excerpt is available at http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/229363-excerpt-pirates-of-the-narrow-seas-2-men-of-honor
PoNS 2 : Men of Honor was reviewed by Nan Hawthorne at All She Read at http://allsheread.blogspot.com/2010/10/men-of-honor-by-m-kei.html
"Men of Honor is fast paced, action packed and exciting. [...] There are lots of vividly drawn characters in this novel, just as there were in The Sallee Rovers. Tangle, Shakil, and Perry are here, and Captain Horner, the ailing Captain Bishop's replacement, is a welcome addition. Towards the end a new character, a recently blinded Lieutenant Abbey, promises to be a refreshingly resourceful disabled character in a genre prone to stereotypes." -- Nan Hawthorne
PoNS 2 : Men of Honor was reviewed by Alex Beecroft at Speak Its Name http://speakitsname.com/2010/05/18/review-pirates-of-the-narrow-seas-ii-men-of-honor-by-m-kei
"unquestionably better than the majority of m/m Age of Sail books I’ve been reading recently. M. Kei has a fine grip on his period and his sailing details, and has produced a book which can stand comparison with C. S. Forester’s Hornblower series." -- Alex Beecroft
An excerpt is available at http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/229363-excerpt-pirates-of-the-narrow-seas-2-men-of-honor
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Online Pirates Steal $35K from M. Kei
Tonight I was Googling for Pirates of the Narrow Seas looking for new reviews, new booksellers, etc. What I found instead was a pirate site. I'm not going to share the ID with you because I'm not going to help people steal from me. Suffice it to say, this pirate site has served over 33,000 -- that's thirty-three thousand -- unauthorized copies of Pirates of the Narrow Seas. Had each of those 33K copies been purchased through a legitimate ebookseller, I the author, would have received approximately $35,000 in royalties.
Yes. You read that right. Online pirates have cheated me out of my livelihood. I have been hoping I could sell enough copies to make a living writing books. That so many copies of the books have been pirated is proof that I was right -- I could have made a living. If the pirates were paying for them. But they're not.
Guess how much I have received in royalties for ebooks so far: $35. That's thirty-five dollars. In other words, a thousand time as many copies of the books are being stolen as are being bought.
That just aint right.
So here I am, unemployed and slowly going broke, contemplating the prospect of having to apply to Walmart or some other retailer to get a seasonal Christmas job so that I can make some money to hold body and soul together a few months longer.
You know what happens when creative people have to devote all their time and energy to working at Walmart? They don't write books. Because Walmart chews us up and spits us out.
Here's the deal: if you like books, pay for them! The ebooks for Pirates of the Narrow Seas are all available for less than $7 each. That's less than the cost of a single movie ticket for three times as much entertainment. I think it's a fair deal. If you like the books -- and I think that you do, because it would be ridiculous for 33K people to steal a book they didn't even like -- please pay for them.
Heck, I know most of you don't know anything about me, so I made the first one available for free right here on this site. You can read an entire novel, my gift to you, by honest means. You don't have to use a pirate site. My hope is that if you like what you read, you will buy the additional books in the series. That's the deal: I give you a fair chance to find out if you like the books, and if you do, you give me a fair payment for the book.
If you have an unauthorized copy of Pirates of the Narrow Seas, please come clean and purchase a copy. If you really can't afford the $18 for a paperback or $7 for an ebook, or feel that the book's just not good enough to justify the cover price, send me a $1. Because the average royalty for the books is $1 (some resellers pay more, some pay less. $1 is the average.)
Send it anonymously to:
PoNS c/o M. Kei
P O Box 516
Perryville, MD 21903
There. You can purchase a clean conscience for just a few dollars. Paying authors for their creative work is not only the right thing to do, it's cheap.
If you love reading, please support authors!
~K~
M. Kei
Yes. You read that right. Online pirates have cheated me out of my livelihood. I have been hoping I could sell enough copies to make a living writing books. That so many copies of the books have been pirated is proof that I was right -- I could have made a living. If the pirates were paying for them. But they're not.
Guess how much I have received in royalties for ebooks so far: $35. That's thirty-five dollars. In other words, a thousand time as many copies of the books are being stolen as are being bought.
That just aint right.
So here I am, unemployed and slowly going broke, contemplating the prospect of having to apply to Walmart or some other retailer to get a seasonal Christmas job so that I can make some money to hold body and soul together a few months longer.
You know what happens when creative people have to devote all their time and energy to working at Walmart? They don't write books. Because Walmart chews us up and spits us out.
Here's the deal: if you like books, pay for them! The ebooks for Pirates of the Narrow Seas are all available for less than $7 each. That's less than the cost of a single movie ticket for three times as much entertainment. I think it's a fair deal. If you like the books -- and I think that you do, because it would be ridiculous for 33K people to steal a book they didn't even like -- please pay for them.
Heck, I know most of you don't know anything about me, so I made the first one available for free right here on this site. You can read an entire novel, my gift to you, by honest means. You don't have to use a pirate site. My hope is that if you like what you read, you will buy the additional books in the series. That's the deal: I give you a fair chance to find out if you like the books, and if you do, you give me a fair payment for the book.
If you have an unauthorized copy of Pirates of the Narrow Seas, please come clean and purchase a copy. If you really can't afford the $18 for a paperback or $7 for an ebook, or feel that the book's just not good enough to justify the cover price, send me a $1. Because the average royalty for the books is $1 (some resellers pay more, some pay less. $1 is the average.)
Send it anonymously to:
PoNS c/o M. Kei
P O Box 516
Perryville, MD 21903
There. You can purchase a clean conscience for just a few dollars. Paying authors for their creative work is not only the right thing to do, it's cheap.
If you love reading, please support authors!
~K~
M. Kei
Shopping for Pirates of the Narrow Seas
I've had some queries about how to purchase Pirates of the Narrow Seas. First of all, let me thank the fans and readers who have emailed and/or posted on their blogs. I appreciate your support, and I'm glad you're enjoying the books! I had fun writing them and I hope everyone has fun reading them.
Pirates of the Narrow Seas is available in paperback and ebooks.
You can buy the paperbacks at Lulu.com/Keibooks, Amazon.com, or many other online booksellers. Please note that the cover price is $18 US -- some online resellers are jacking up the price. There is no good reason why you should pay more than $18 US for them. If you're a budget conscious shopper, sometimes discount offers are made through Lulu.com. To be apprised of such things, subscribe to Keibooks-Announce at googlegroups dot com. It is an announcement only elist that sends 0 - 6 emails a month. It will not spam you.
For those of you who dislike giving a credit card online, or who don't have a credit card or debit card with Visa/Mastercard enabled, there are some alternatives. For example, you could use PayPal. Or, since the books have ISBN numbers, you can order them through a brick and mortar bookstore. You can get the ISBNs by visiting any of the online retailers. An ISBN is an 'international standard book number' and is used by publishers and retailers around the world. If you've got it, you can order the book from just about anywhere.
Another economical way to get the books is to buy the ebook versions. The first two are out in ebook formats for a variety of devices. You can get it through Kindle, iBookstore, 1Romance.com, AllRomance.com, and other ebooksellers. The Kindle version is especially accessible -- text to speech is enabled on all books.
Further, you do not need a Kindle device. You can download the Kindle software for Mac, PC, iPad, and other devices and systems. (The software is free, but doesn't do everything the reader does. For example, it does not do text to speech.) The ebooks are less expensive than the paperback, but you will need a charge card or Visa/Mastercard enabled debit card or a gift certificate.
For those of you who do not have charge cards and would like to shop online, it is possible to purchase a Visa or Mastercard gift card. These can be very convenient, but check the fine print -- many of them charge monthly fees, service fees, or other charges.
It is also possible to read the first book, The Sallee Rovers, for free right here on this site. Look up to the right. The rough draft was originally posted at fictionpress.com and is still archived there, but note that the paperback and ebook supercede it. The paperback and ebook are identical. All that differs is the method you use to read them.
Thank you all who are reading, reviewing, and recommending Pirates of the Narrow Seas. Please feel free to email me with your questions and comments.
~K~
M. Kei
Pirates of the Narrow Seas is available in paperback and ebooks.
You can buy the paperbacks at Lulu.com/Keibooks, Amazon.com, or many other online booksellers. Please note that the cover price is $18 US -- some online resellers are jacking up the price. There is no good reason why you should pay more than $18 US for them. If you're a budget conscious shopper, sometimes discount offers are made through Lulu.com. To be apprised of such things, subscribe to Keibooks-Announce at googlegroups dot com. It is an announcement only elist that sends 0 - 6 emails a month. It will not spam you.
For those of you who dislike giving a credit card online, or who don't have a credit card or debit card with Visa/Mastercard enabled, there are some alternatives. For example, you could use PayPal. Or, since the books have ISBN numbers, you can order them through a brick and mortar bookstore. You can get the ISBNs by visiting any of the online retailers. An ISBN is an 'international standard book number' and is used by publishers and retailers around the world. If you've got it, you can order the book from just about anywhere.
Another economical way to get the books is to buy the ebook versions. The first two are out in ebook formats for a variety of devices. You can get it through Kindle, iBookstore, 1Romance.com, AllRomance.com, and other ebooksellers. The Kindle version is especially accessible -- text to speech is enabled on all books.
Further, you do not need a Kindle device. You can download the Kindle software for Mac, PC, iPad, and other devices and systems. (The software is free, but doesn't do everything the reader does. For example, it does not do text to speech.) The ebooks are less expensive than the paperback, but you will need a charge card or Visa/Mastercard enabled debit card or a gift certificate.
For those of you who do not have charge cards and would like to shop online, it is possible to purchase a Visa or Mastercard gift card. These can be very convenient, but check the fine print -- many of them charge monthly fees, service fees, or other charges.
It is also possible to read the first book, The Sallee Rovers, for free right here on this site. Look up to the right. The rough draft was originally posted at fictionpress.com and is still archived there, but note that the paperback and ebook supercede it. The paperback and ebook are identical. All that differs is the method you use to read them.
Thank you all who are reading, reviewing, and recommending Pirates of the Narrow Seas. Please feel free to email me with your questions and comments.
~K~
M. Kei
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Men of Honor reviewed at That's All She Read
http://allsheread.blogspot.com/2010/10/men-of-honor-by-m-kei.html
I am delighted to report that Nan Hawthorne has posted a review of Men of Honor, the second book in the Pirates of the Narrow Seas series at her blog:
"There is no question this is an exciting adventure. If a Spanish galleon is not firing on them, runaway carts are about to crush them, or someone has called someone else out for a duel. The Spanish send flaming ships to destroy a harbor, and Captain Tangle must follow another into a grotto and wage a gun battle within it." -- Nan Hawthorne, That's All She Read
I confess, book 2, Men of Honor, is my favorite of the three so far. I like them all, but writing this one was sheer fun. There was a certain amount of torture in writing the first one, but for this book I knew who my characters were and what they were up to. Of the three it most closely resembles the old-fashioned swashbucklers I loved when I was a child.
I have just finished listening Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood on my new Kindle -- it was Errol Flynn's depiction of that hero which firmly imprinted itself in my twelve-year-old brain as what a hero ought to be. I was rather chagrined to realize that I had named my hero 'Peter' -- and Captain Blood's Christian name is also 'Peter.' Peter Thorton's nemesis is Captain Bishop -- and Peter Blood's nemesis is Colonel Bishop. Both details I had forgotten long ago, but they must have been embedded in the fabric of my brain. Dare I mention more? "M. Kei" is a pen name, but in real life my middle name is 'Rafael.' Kismet, enit.
I do hope the rest of you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
~K~
I am delighted to report that Nan Hawthorne has posted a review of Men of Honor, the second book in the Pirates of the Narrow Seas series at her blog:
"There is no question this is an exciting adventure. If a Spanish galleon is not firing on them, runaway carts are about to crush them, or someone has called someone else out for a duel. The Spanish send flaming ships to destroy a harbor, and Captain Tangle must follow another into a grotto and wage a gun battle within it." -- Nan Hawthorne, That's All She Read
I confess, book 2, Men of Honor, is my favorite of the three so far. I like them all, but writing this one was sheer fun. There was a certain amount of torture in writing the first one, but for this book I knew who my characters were and what they were up to. Of the three it most closely resembles the old-fashioned swashbucklers I loved when I was a child.
I have just finished listening Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood on my new Kindle -- it was Errol Flynn's depiction of that hero which firmly imprinted itself in my twelve-year-old brain as what a hero ought to be. I was rather chagrined to realize that I had named my hero 'Peter' -- and Captain Blood's Christian name is also 'Peter.' Peter Thorton's nemesis is Captain Bishop -- and Peter Blood's nemesis is Colonel Bishop. Both details I had forgotten long ago, but they must have been embedded in the fabric of my brain. Dare I mention more? "M. Kei" is a pen name, but in real life my middle name is 'Rafael.' Kismet, enit.
I do hope the rest of you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
~K~
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Choice of Broadsides
A friend pointed me to a 'choose your own adventure' game online, entitled Choice of Broadsides, located at: http://www.choiceofgames.com/broadsides/
It's a fun way to spend an hour, being witty and well-written. What I especially like is being allowed to choose your gender and orientation. Naturally I chose to play a gay officer :) I enjoyed my passionate romance with a French officer, although I was sorry the fortunes of war separated us.
Given that I wrote Pirates of the Narrow Seas because of the lack of characters in nautical fiction, it was wonderful to find a game in which the option was provided, and done with a dignity and wit. Choice of Broadsides is a nice little game that's worth an hour or two of your time.
~K~
It's a fun way to spend an hour, being witty and well-written. What I especially like is being allowed to choose your gender and orientation. Naturally I chose to play a gay officer :) I enjoyed my passionate romance with a French officer, although I was sorry the fortunes of war separated us.
Given that I wrote Pirates of the Narrow Seas because of the lack of characters in nautical fiction, it was wonderful to find a game in which the option was provided, and done with a dignity and wit. Choice of Broadsides is a nice little game that's worth an hour or two of your time.
~K~
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