Two good causes, actually: The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Help Pay j sundman's Mortgage, Please, I'm in a Bit of a Jam, Fund."
The book in question is my Acts of the Apostles, a well regarded nanotech thriller, ostensibly about Gulf War Syndrome, which I wrote between 1995 and 1999 and published in 1999. As a quasi-science-fictiony book I think it's held up pretty well, with much of what I predicted about the direction of nanotechnological research coming true. But the eeriest thing is that in it I conjectured that the USA would be tricked into sending its armed forces back to Iraq to finish the job left undone in the first Gulf War, and that the army would be enveloped. I hope I'm not proved entirely right about that part.
After the fold: the deal to help IAVA, my Dkos bonafides, and more about the book (which you can download for free.)
The Deal
The cover price on my book is $15, including shipping in North America. From the next three days (now through January 30, 2007), I'll donate $5 to IAVA for each copy of AofA purchased using paypal through my website Wetmachine, up to 300 copies. A week from today I'll post a diary here with proof of my donation. I'll sign and inscribe the books any way you like. Further, I'll donate $3 for each copy sold of my novella Cheap Complex Devices, and $1 for each pre-order of my forthcoming book The Pains. Sorry, I cannot do that for books sold through Amazon or other outlets, because that would eat up all my profit.
To order, go here.
My DKos Bonafides
Although I don't post much, I've been a member of this site for about 4 years. My old account jsundman got somehow corrupted, but my new account j sundman has been around for years. My sole recommended diary was Hail Freedonia! (Deconstructing Colbert), about Colbert at the correspondents' dinner last May. Would you consider making this a second one?
Try before you buy
I (and many reviewers, see below) assert that my books are great, but you don't have to take my word for it. Electronic versions of my books are offered for free, under the Creative Commons license, from my site Wetmachine.
About Acts of the Apostles
It's a geekoid technoparnoid thriller about nanomachines, neurobiology, and a Silicon Valley Messiah. The plot involves an investigation into the causes of Gulf War Syndrome, bad things that happen to people who investigate it, and a nasty conspiracy to send the US Army back to Iraq.
Here's what some readers have said about it:
Andrew Leonard in Salon gave it a nice write up. Hemos of the premiere geek site Slashdot said it was what Tom Clancy would write if he were smart. The propeller-heads at Geek.com raved over it. Rusty Foster, original creator of the Scoop software that powers Daily Kos (and one time partner of Markos and Jerome) said Acts of the Apostles may well be the ultimate hacker book. The molecular biolgists at Bioinformatics.org said "Sundman not only gets it, he gets it right."
More about the wonderfulness of this brainchild of mine can be found elsewhere on the net, as goolgling will tell you.
The book is indeed self-published, but it does not suck. In fact it won the Writer's Digest's National Self-Published Book Award, beating out 322 other entrants in the competition.
About Cheap Complex Devices
This is a post-moderny thing aimed for those of you with a taste in abstruse wacky stuff. Among other things it's a lampoon of the discipline of artificial intelligence, a meditation on compiler theory and human memory, and a sort of twisted commentary on Acts of the Apostles that one wag described as "Goedell Escher Bach as told by Hunter Thompson on acid." Rusty loved it, as did Hemos. You can see what some people have to say at Amazon. Again, Google is your friend. There are lots of reviews out there on the net.
About The Pains
Well, this work-in-progress is late, about a year late according my projected schedule, but I've nearly finished it and expect to have printed copies available in about two months. You can check out the first two chapters here.
Why I'm doing this
To quote Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, (da Woofa-goofa wit da green teeth), This is a song about desperation. Every now and then we do get desperate. I have about 350 copies of Acts left from my original printing. They're just sitting in my storage shed taking up space, selling at the rate of about ten per month (when I used to sell hundreds per month) and meanwhile I'm in a financial jam. As R. Crumb once said on another topic, "these things happen." So, the shameless entrepreneur in me (aka Paddy One Tune) decided to throw himself at the mercy of the DKos.
About Wetmachine
Wetmachine is a group blog that I started about four years ago. Some friends and I write about the intersection of technology, science, and policy. Significantly for us Kossacks, Harold Feld, a preeminant authority on all things first amendment and media, blogs there under the heading Tales of the Sausage Factory.
Even more about me and my writing
As if you have not heard enough about me and my writing already! Oy! In addition to my books, I've also written a few things here and there, most prominently at Salon.
How I Destroyed the New Economy is about the year and a half I spent as a construction laborer on the apparently cursed house of a one-time Internet billionaire. How I Decoded the Human Genome is about my investigations into moral and political questions raised by the Human Genome Project. And Artificial Stupidity is about wacky goings-on in the land of the Turing Test.
Final note
Wouldn't you know it, but this morning Dear Wife and I are in charge of greeting, flowers, and refreshments at our church. So I won't be around to comment on this for a while. For more about me and my problematic relationship with said church, you can go here. You may get a chuckle out of it.
Thanks!