Rings of Change: Alizant
RingDancers Book 4. After eleven long years, available at last! Alizant comes into his own, as his electrical dreams become reality. But first, there's Deymio's wedding, a visitor from Mauritum, and a child in danger of losing his soul.
Read a free sample: Rings of Change: Alizant
Price: $9.95

This is it! Closed Circle enters a new era. We started with backlist and revisions; and we have now published our first completely original novel!

Equally significant—this is the NEXT novel in a series that was caught in the whole general NYC situation—proving that all those worlds you love to follow can definitely continue!

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here. Tell your friends and family, pass the word on every site you can access, talk to people at cons! If you know anyone who read the original series, tell them about  Rings of Change, and the first book: Alizant, with two more in that arc to come.

It will NOT be the last continuation of a ‘lost’ series on Closed Circle. We promise you that!

Our books come in 11 different formats, edited by the authors, often with additional materials included. More, they can be stored on a DVD and printed out. Hand bind them for inclusion in your paper library, should you wish. And that’s a capability we offer that not everyone does.

The cover is by Jane Fancher herself, likewise the typesetting, and the conversion to e-format. All proceeds from a Closed Circle book go to the author, not to any middleman.

Should you not yet have the original story arc, we have the 3 Ringdancer books ready for download on Closed Circle. They are: Ring of Lightning, Ring of Intrigue, and Ring of Destiny.

Read a free sample: Rings of Change: Alizant

After a mere eleven years, the sequel to Ring of Destiny is finally available! We have babies (these, being Rhomandi children, will obviously not be your run of the mill infants.) We have new characters (who knew Kiyrstin actually had family?) We have Dancer on rooftops (so what else is new?) We have family arguments, political upheaval, lightning storms…in other words, same old, same old…

Or is it?

The world of ley-power is changing, and as with all change, the shifts carry mixed blessings. While the Rhomandi brothers have settled their differences and set Rhomatum on a path toward the future, the Kirish’lani empire is in turmoil, the balance of power in Mauritum is shifting, and in Rhomatum, at the heart of the upheaval, the Rhomandi Triumvirate faces its greatest challenge yet, right within its own heart as one child fights for his very soul, and another battles encroaching blindness in stoic silence.

RingDancers is a different kind of “fantasy.” It’s not the story of ultimate good against ultimate evil. It’s not a story of gods and devils. It’s a story of real people with very personal, if unusual, problems to solve. The stories are long and complex with a large cast of characters.

Ring of Change: Alizant begins a second story arc, each one focusing on a different character. It can be read separately, but it truly is part of an ongoing and interconnected story line which is, ultimately, about what makes a family.

Read a free sample

E-books!

Closed Circle Goodies!

Closed Circle is the brainchild of three authors, multiple Hugo award winner, C.J. Cherryh, Best-selling co-creator of Thieves’ World, Lynn Abbey, and critically acclaimed Jane Fancher. Collectively, we have 150 (and counting) published novels from major New York publishing houses, and at least that many short stories, dating from the mid 1970s.

With that many books involved, you can imagine the sad state of our backlist. Add to that the increasingly conservative New York publishers and their less than sterling attempts in the ebook realm and we just decided to take our creative future into our own hands. We all have series fallowing because New York has moved in another direction, but our readers still want to know what happens to the characters they know and love. And there are more stories. Stories we want to write rather than the stories New York wants us to write.

Thus was Closed Circle born. Ebooks have given us a whole new option and we plan to take full advantage of it. We’re still in the early stages…three months ago, we were still refining our ebook conversion processes…but we’re working on getting samples of all the books up and we have at least twenty more books just waiting for covers and conversions…not to mention the new stories we have sitting in our heads.

We’re still far from perfect, but we’re doing our best to bring you a quality, DRM-free product, in as user friendly an environment as we can manage.
There’s much more to the story. Poke around the tabs at the top and you’ll find comments on the books, guides to ebook files and (free) readers, samples, free downloads and more. When you’re done here, check out our goodies at the Closed Circle Bazaar on Café Press.

(7-6-10 — Well, isn’t this embarrassing.  Apparently I bundled a 0-length pdf file into the downloads.  It’s been fixed, but don’t hesitate to let me know if something’s not working.)

The Wooden Sword
Volume 1 of the Walensor Chronicles. After a terrible war and an almost unexpected victory, peace has come to Walensor, even to the tiny village of Gorse on the verge of the ancient Weychawood. A young shepherd, for whom the new peace will be a decidedly mixed blessing, tends her flock beside the stream that separates Gorse from the forest. She prays for something--anything--to rescue her from a marriage, contracted before she was born, to a man she both loathes and fears. Then, as if in answer to those prayers, a fire-eyed fetch appears on the far side of the stream... Sample here
Price: $5.00

Considering the subject matter — the journeys, both internal and external, of a forest-goddess’s champion and the shepherd who befriends him as a way to escape a backward village and a very bad marriage — it’s probably not surprising that Lynn’s original “dead tree” publisher judged The Wooden Sword too realistic to be good fantasy.

Now, you can judge for yourself…and without harming a tree!

There’s a downloadable sample that includes pdf, epub, and mobi versions of the first two chapters here

Step 1. On your computer: Download the epub file from Closed Circle to your computer INTO the folder you use for epub. Step 2. Have iTunes and iBooks [free apps in the app store] installed. Step 3. Open iTunes and click on the Books folder/section in the left sidebar. Step 4. Drag the ePub file onto the Books screen/page of iTunes 9.2.

Step 5: On your device: Be sure you have the iBooks Reader installed on your iPhone [an app]. Step 6: Sync your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.

This should do it.

Jane finally got the next two books of RingDancers edited, formatted and ready for sale! These are huge books…each comprising what most authors would call a trilogy story arc. Jane put them all into single books because she’s a masochist…did I say that? If you added the typical setup and semi-conclusion of a trilogy to each book, they’d easily top 1000 pages in print. This way, they’re a mere 800.

Anyway, they’re thick and juicy like a good steak dinner. They are technically fantasy but have a curious appeal to hardcore SF readers as well…Lots of readers liken them to MZB’s Darkover novels in the way they bridge between the two genres, tho they don’t have (yet) the pure SF tech link.

And right now, you can get them for a mere five bucks! Such a deal! When the next book in the series comes available, (in about a month) Intrigue and Destiny will be going up to $9.95 a piece, so if you’ve ever thought about getting them, now’s the time! And just ‘cuz it’s easy, here’s the whole family group!

(And note: you can now download free samples! These are minime versions of the first sections…plus a bit…of each book.)

Ring of Lightning
Wherein a simple case of arranged marriages for our three heroes has (literally) earth-shattering consequences. Dancer, a human child reared by the mysterious ley-creatures, struggles for the right to compete for the coveted title of RingDancer of Khoratum.
Price: $5.00

Ring of Intrigue
In which the brothers return triumphant to Rhomatum, only to be arrested and thrown into the deepest (literally) prison in the Syndicate of Nodes. Dancer finally gets a chance to compete, only to risk everything by winning.
sample
Price: $5.00

Ring of Destiny
Secrets revealed, choices made...and more babies than any fantasy novel ever should have spawned.
sample
Price: $5.00

At long last Daughter of the Bright Moon is available for purchase and download in the store.

Nothing’s quite as humbling as re-editing your first book.  The whole time I was working on it, I kept thinking of a remark, attributed to Robert Browning when he was asked the meaning of a line in one of his poems:

‘Madam, when I wrote that only God and I knew what it meant. Now only God knows.’

Still, it’s my firstborn, and I’m delighted to make it available again.

Daughter of the Bright Moon
Born in a lightstorm, trained as a healer and a warrior, Rifkind has never been on good terms with her clan, but when they are massacred she faces a dire choice: join them in death or leave the steppes forever. She chooses exile and heads for the fertile wetlands, hoping to find gold and adventure. Instead, she will find her destiny. Sample here
Price: $5.00

Here’s a pdf sample of the book: Ring of Lightning: Section One

Have fun:

Ring of Lightning
Wherein a simple case of arranged marriages for our three heroes has (literally) earth-shattering consequences. Dancer, a human child reared by the mysterious ley-creatures, struggles for the right to compete for the coveted title of RingDancer of Khoratum.
Price: $5.00

We at Book View Café are excited for you Lynn, CJ, and Jane in your new Internet endeavor! There’s a lot to take advantage of in the Internet world and a lot of wonderful places to go. And now there’s one more: Closed Circle.

Although BVC has been around just over a year ourselves, we feel like we’re still very much learning the ropes. No day goes by without discovering new possibilities across the breadth of the internet. If it’s not a new ebook reader, it’s a new website willing to help sell our books. New avenues for spreading the word about our site and our writing appear with amazing speed.

We’re excited to hear about your new online experiment and wish you every success. There is no denying that the challenges can be daunting and it can take time and patience to build success.  Internet entities come and go daily. As the webmasters discover just how much work can go into keeping a site vital, they lose faith and energy.  However, it is vital for authors and readers that we all be out in this wider world, sharing our work and our news.

Here’s wishing you patience, determination and success.  We very much look forward to fresh news of your site and work and look forward to helping you celebrate future anniversaries.

The Book View Café Roster

C.L. Anderson, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Ayla D., Kate Daniel, Lori Devoti, Chris Dolley, Jessica Freely, Laura Anne Gilman, Christie Golden, Anne Harris, Sylvia Kelso, Katharine Kerr, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Sue Lange, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rebecca Lickiss, Seanan McGuire, Vonda N. McIntyre, Nancy Jane Moore, Pati Nagle, Steven Piziks, Phyllis Irene Radford, Madeleine Robins, Deborah J. Ross, Sarah Smith, Sherwood Smith, Amy Sterling, Jennifer Stevenson, Judith Tarr, Susan Wright, Sarah Zettel

This file prints just fine at the “fast draft” quality.

Thanks again to all who have offered to put these out at conventions, on campus, or anyplace else that’s legal! Another thing that would be really helpful, now we’re actually getting underway, is if people could send us the contact information for conventions…around the world! We’d like to put some ads in program books.

Some of you have generously offered to print and put out a few fliers for CC at conventions. We can’t thank you enough. Here’s the link. It will remain available on the “freebies” page under the catalog. This file should print fine at the “fast draft” quality. Name: Email: