@jsundman@mastodon.social
@jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

jsundman

@jsundman@mastodon.social

(Still) biodigital novelist, mover of heavy objects, volunteer firefighter (retired), national treasure. https://linktr.ee/johnsundman https://johnsundman.substack.com/

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jsundman, to random
@jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

My brother Paul was dying of ALS. His wife had leukemia. Their 2 children were young. I moved to their house in Colorado Springs to help. As Paul neared the end I drove a van to a wedding high in the mountains. The whole trip was dream-like.

https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/one-crowded-hour-on-the-road-to-telluride-e87?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

jsundman, to scifi
@jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

Sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free book.

This promo includes my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains. It's set in a world that's a mashup of Orwell's 1984 & Reagan's 1984 and run by an unholy cabal of fascist theocrats & pan-surveillant techbro transhumanists. I wrote it in 2008, but look around. It's about today.

Boosts appreciated.

#scifi #books #dystopian

https://books.bookfunnel.com/lastditchpress1/7x2ie4mki9

strypey, to random
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience …"

, From The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

https://aeon.co/essays/for-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-is-rooted-in-loneliness

jsundman,
@jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

@strypey
Holy shit, that is a profound insight. I believe it 100%.

slothrop, (edited ) to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @slothrop Hey, it's an idea!

    davew, to random
    @davew@mastodon.social avatar

    Call any vegetable, and the chances are good, the vegetable will respond to you.

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @davew Ruta-BAY-A-guh

    jsundman, to scifi
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Book promo. Sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free book. This one includes my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains -- the story of a disintegrating man in a disintegrating world -- a mixup of Orwell's 1984 and Ronald Reagan's 1984, full of autocrats and theocrats and nature out of whack. I wrote it in 2008 but it's your guide to Freemerica today.

    https://books.bookfunnel.com/lastditchpress1/4f4oh4zfok

    Please boost.

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Cory Doctorow @pluralistic is kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to last year's Red Team Blues.

    There are all kinds of reasons to support this project. Starting with the obvious: Doctorow's novels are always good SF, and the audiobooks are always top notch. But too-also, he's showing the way that indies can thrive outside of the Amazon monopoly. This benefits all of us.

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/10/the-bezzle/#marty-hench

    jsundman, to books
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Book promo: sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free book. This one includes my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains -- or, as Scottish SF grandmaster Ken MacLeod calls it, "Orwell's 1984, as told by Philip K. Dick".

    I would much appreciate your boosting this!

    https://books.bookfunnel.com/endofyearsciencefantasy/g7pm56dc2w

    ucblockhead, to random
    @ucblockhead@hulvr.com avatar

    A true fact about me that I am going to drop without here without any explanation:

    I was once arrested at gunpoint with Tom Anderson of "My Space" fame.

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @ucblockhead OH COME NOW, BLOCKHEAD!! Are you really going to tease us like that?

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Christmas movies:
    Die Hard: Never liked it; now hate it.
    Wonderful Life: Same
    Christmas Story: First 19 times were enough.
    Home Alone: Blech.
    'Modern' Santa Claus movies: Worse.
    Hallmark 'very special Christmas' movies: Go to hell.
    "Christian" nativity movies: The absolute worst.

    Happy Christmas!

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Substackers against Nazis.

    Boosts appreciated.

    https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/substackers-against-nazis?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    LillyHerself, to random
    @LillyHerself@mastodon.social avatar

    @jsundman Hi John! I am enjoying following this Finnish lady @KissAnne, I think you might too.

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @KissAnne @LillyHerself Nice to meet you, KissAnne.

    You may enjoy this story on how the branch of Sundmans to which I belong got started in the USA.

    https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/a-lone-figure-skis-across-a-frozen?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Just back from seeing @pluralistic at Strand Bookstore in NYC doing a reading from his new novel The Lost Cause and discussing related topics nonstop for 90 minutes. That guy is a machine (among other things he wrote 9 books during peak Covid. Also pretty generally brilliant.

    I enjoyed the extended selection from The Lost Cause and I was very impressed by his reading of it.

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Free books. Sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free novel. This promo includes my hackertastic nano-bio-cyberpunk Biodigital: A novel of technopotheosis, & The Pains, an illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria.

    Ken MacLeod calls 'The Pains' "Orwell's 1984 as told by Philip K. Dick."

    Please boost.

    https://books.bookfunnel.com/sci-fi-fantasy-free-mid-oct/5cf5vgggdd

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    When ‘crypto’ came along, Andreessen’s venture capital fund pioneered securities-fraud-at-one-remove, pumping & dumping ‘shitcoins’ in a legal(?) but transparently sleazy fashion. Now he's become the newest version of that tired cliché, the Silicon Valley techno-libertarian who has all the answers. https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/marc-andreesen-was-going-to-debug?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    jsundman, to sciencefiction
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Free books. Sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free book. This one includes both my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains and the hackertastic nano-biopunk thriller Biodigital.

    https://books.bookfunnel.com/sci-fi-fantasy-free-mid-oct/5cf5vgggdd

    malwaretech, to random

    I do wonder how many people are staying on Twitter due to follower count alone. Having had an account for over a decade, I'd have previously estimated about 20% of my followers were dead accounts. Based on now leaving and making new accounts on other platforms, my estimate is closer to 90%.

    As a blogger I've always known only like 1% of people who retweet/like a post actually clicked the link and read the article, but I assumed that was just a social media thing. Having experimented with basically every other platform, I learned it's more likely that a significant number of Twitter engagements are fake, and those that aren't don't really care enough to read your work, they'll just give you a retweet/like for appearances.

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @malwaretech A few years ago I had nearly 10k followers. Assuming 2k dead accounts and 5k accounts that rarely posted, that still left 3k with whom I had some potential contact, 100's of quasi- regulars.

    All those numbers are way down now. I haven't found anything to replace it, although I do use mstdn, facebook, even linked in.

    Trying to recruit followers to my substack, but it's a challenge. Oh well.

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Lovely obituary of David Golumbia, author of The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right Wing Extremism and the forthcoming Cyberibertarianism. Obit written by noted crypto critic David Gerard. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/09/15/david-golumbia-1963-2023/

    mcnees, to random
    @mcnees@mastodon.social avatar

    Margaret Hamilton, a pioneer of software engineering who led NASA's in-flight software team for the Apollo mission, was born #OTD in 1936.

    Image: NASA

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @mcnees Margaret Hamilton worked with Lorenz BEFORE she worked on the Apollo program? Holy Freekin' Cow! How did I not know this?

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Lovely rain this morning on Martha's Vineyard. I love the sound of rain on the skylight above the desk in my attic office; I love looking at the tops of the oak trees in the woods behind our house through the cascading water.

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @Jonathanglick Are you here on the Vineyard?

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    My (2002) novella Cheap Complex Devices, ostensibly about a storytelling contest between two AIs, has proved to be remarkably prescient.

    Tons of glowing reviews here & there on the net, including amzn, goodreads, etc. Typical: "Like Godel, Escher, Bach told by Hunter S. Thompson on acid."

    Grab a copy for free just by signing up for my newsletter. Easy to unsubscribe if you find it's not your cup of tea.

    Boosts much appreciated.

    https://dl.bookfunnel.com/1e7142jomu

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    Another free SF book promo. Sign up for an author's email list, get a free book. This one includes both my "Biodigital: A novel of technopotheosis," and "The Pains," an illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria that is set in a 1984 that is a trippy mashup of Orwell's 1984 and Ronald Reagan's 1984 (and anticipates Trumpworld to a remarkable degree),

    Please boost.

    https://books.bookfunnel.com/fastpacedsciencefantasy/gt5d4wcuul

    AimeeMaroux, (edited ) to fediverse
    @AimeeMaroux@mastodon.social avatar

    , where do you usually buy steamy ?

    Is it the 'Zon, is it another big retailer or do you ?

    What links are most useful for us authors to share with our audience here?

    Boosts are very much appreciated ❤️

    @bookstodon @smutstodon

    jsundman,
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    @AimeeMaroux @bookstodon @smutstodon

    I've been a self-publishing novelist since November, 1999. I've been on Smashwords (and through them to Apple, Kobo, B&N, etc), since about 2012.

    Over 23 years my sales have been:
    (paperback and ebook) approx,
    65% amzn;
    30% direct;
    3% bookstores;
    2% Smashwords/etc.

    For ebooks it's 99% amzn; 1% smashwords/other

    jsundman, to random
    @jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

    For 4 years my agent
    Joe Regal tried to sell my 1st novel, "Acts of the Apostles." No luck, despite many nibbles from NY publishers & Hollywood.

    Since 1999 I've self-published 'Acts' & 3 novel(la)s. New editions coming soon, w intro's by Cory Doctorow, David Weinberger, Ken MacLeod & John Biggs. I feel vindicated. A new novel coming this fall too.

    Please invite me on your literary, SF or tech podcast.

    Please boost. Pretty please.

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