Mushroom eBooks News

Great News! Most of our titles are now available in Sony Reader format from the Sony CONNECT bookstore.

The ebooks can be read either on the portable Sony Reader, or on a PC or laptop using the free CONNECTâ„¢ Reader software.

The Sony Reader is an innovative device for reading ebooks on the go. It has received excellent reviews from the industry and has been well received by users. At the moment there are some very good offers available, but it is currently only available in the USA; hopefully that situation will change soon.

The Call of the Sword by Roger Taylor is currently on special offer at mobipocket.com, so you can pick up a copy of the ebook for only 99c! The Special ends on 8th August, so there’s not very long to take advantage of this generous offer.

The Call of the Sword is the first volume of the Chronicles of Hawklan series, and the story is continued in The Fall of Fyorlund.

We are currently adding paperback information to all the book detail pages where a paperback or hardback edition is available from one of the Mushroom Publishing imprints. Most of them are published under the Bladud Books imprint, and you can see all the titles together there. Links are provided to buy the books either from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, and we plan to offer other options in the future. The integration should be completed by the end of this week.
You can see examples here and here.

Below is the transcript of a speech made by Stratford Caldecott, son of Moyra Caldecott, at the event to launch her latest book, Multi-Dimensional Life, at Gothic Image in Glastonbury on June 9, 2007. It will also be posted on Moyra’s website (www.moyracaldecott.co.uk) as soon as I have a moment!

Strat’s speech at Moyra’s 80^th birthday party/ booklaunch at Gothic Image bookshop, Glastonbury on 9 June 2007

On behalf of Moyra, I want to thank Jamie George for his hospitality tonight, Martyn Folkes of Mushroom Publishing for his immense hard work to get the books out on time, and all of you for coming, many of you from so far away. She invited you, but I don’t think she actually expected you to come! I am Stratford, her eldest son, speaking to you because she is not able to speak as confidently as she once did. But over a lifetime she has been more coherent, more eloquent, than the rest of us. I really doubt if any of us will have heard of anyone else who could have a launch party for NINE books in their 81^st year of life. It is probably a record. I know that the Pope, who is the same age as Moyra, sells more copies of his, but even he doesn’t write so many!

Moyra has always been a poet, and was a leading figure in the London poetry groups of the 1960s as some of you may know, but her first big success as a novelist came late, with the mystically inspired trilogy, Guardians of the Tall Stones, now in print continuously with various publishers for 30 years. Another of her perennial best sellers is Women in Celtic Myth. She has published 30 different titles altogether, averaging no less than one a year, and many of them have been translated into other languages. One or two have even teetered on the brink of becoming a Hollywood movie. As you will read in her long-awaited autobiography, Multi-Dimensional Life, available here, her own life has often resembled a movie too — a kind of cross between Brigit Jones and Indiana Jones, or Miss Marple meets the Scorpion King. She travelled up the Nile and into the Pyramids with rock star Tina Turner, in order to discover the present whereabouts of the pharaoh Hatchepsut, and the result is another of the books on sale tonight. Her adventures both in and out of the body are a phenomenon that I have lived with most of my life.

I really hope that if you love Moyra as I know you do, you will buy as many of her books as you can tonight, and make this event a success for everyone. Apart from the classic titles, and the new editions of several of them, she has several brand new books tonight. Multi-Dimensional Life reveals the amazing experiences of a writer exploring other worlds and the deeper reaches of this one. (She writes: “I did not realize it at the time, but during the writing of my books I was on a Quest. By mapping it now I hope I might make others aware of the complexity of every given moment, and encourage them to look out for signs and wonders in their own lives.”) The Breathless Pause reveals the charm of her personality through a selection of her poems and wise meditations. Adventures by Leaflight contains some children’s stories that have appeared before along with a series of new ones that were never previously published.

I think my late father, Oliver, would have been very proud of what Moyra has achieved as a writer in the last few years. She has produced a body of work that has inspired the devotion of thousands of fans around the world. These books have made the world a better place; they have opened doors on to other levels of reality; they will live on and inspire others in the future. I have personally witnessed the amount of scholarly research that went into each of the historical novels, as well as some of the psychic experiences that helped to make them more than they appear on the surface. I speak on behalf of the whole family when I say that Moyra’s intense appreciation of life and of the natural world has opened our eyes to the beauty of the cosmos, and her books can do the same for her readers.

Volume 21 in Alan Burt Akers extraordinary saga of our hero from Earth, Dray Prescot, is now published and available from all the best bookstores online, such as Cyberread.com and Mobipocket.com. A Fortune for Kregen may take a few days to appear on some other sites, like Fictionwise.com. The next title, A Victory for Kregen, will appear next week.

Here is the blurbette:

Fame and fortune may await the winners of the life and death game called Jikaida, but for Dray Prescot his triumphs seemed only to bring infamy and misfortune. An Earthman transposed to the distant world that circles the twin suns of Antares, Prescot had to find a way out of his Jikaida City exile – for his homeland needed him in its hour of danger. But it seemed that fate now would place him in an even more terrifying game – a treasure hunt played out in the illusion webbed catacombs of a haunted valley where desperate men came to find fortunes at the risk of their followers lives and their own sanity.

The wonderful and exciting saga of Dray Prescot of Earth and of Kregen continues apace with book twenty, A Sword for Kregen. This is the second book of the “Jikaida Cycle” by Kenneth Bulmer writing as Alan Burt Akers, and sees Dray taking part in Kazz-Jikaida and Death-Jikaida in Jikaida City.

The back-of-the-book blurb:

The most popular game among the many peoples of Kregen, world of Antares, is one that resembles chess, called Jikaida. Jikaida is a battle of wits and war game pieces that suited well the tension charged atmosphere that enveloped Dray Prescot. For reconquering Vallia was assuming the aspect of such a game – move versus countermove, horde against horde! Then Dray Prescot found himself no longer in control of just a game – he had become a living chessman on a real-life board at the dreaded arena of Jikaida City. There every move was accompanied by bloodshed and behind every game might hang the fate of a city, an island, or even a nation!

About Dray Prescot (from the preface by Alan Burt Akers):

Dray Prescot presents an enigmatic picture of himself; reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported by the Scorpion agencies of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, and the Savanti, the superhuman yet mortal people of Aphrasöe the Swinging City, to the demanding and fulfilling world of Kregen orbiting Antares, four hundred light years from Earth, where he has made his home.

He is a man above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, brooding and dominating, with enormously broad shoulders and superbly powerful physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and indomitable courage, he moves like a savage hunting cat, quiet and deadly. He has struggled through triumph and disaster and has acquired a number of titles and estates, and now the people of the island of Vallia, which has been ripped apart by ambitious and mercenary invaders, have called on him to lead them to freedom as their emperor.

His story, which he records on cassettes, is arranged so that each volume may be read as complete in itself. There have been many questions about the role of Prescot on Kregen and particularly about the nature and purpose of his antagonists. I am firmly convinced he does see far further ahead than perhaps he is given credit for. His words inspire our belief, particularly in what he has to say about the Star Lords. He implies they are not as malefic as at one time we might have been led to believe.

Whatever the outcome for Dray Prescot, we are aware that he is conscious that he struggles against a far darker and more profound fate than is revealed in anything he has so far told us.

Title number 19 in the epic and amazing saga of Dray Prescot is now available from all good ebookshops. A Life for Kregen by Kenneth Bulmer, writing as Alan Burt Akers, is the first volume of the Jikaida Cycle, chronicling the history of Dray Prescot on the fascinating world of Kregen four hundred light years from Earth. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported through the agencies of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, and the Savanti nal Aphrasöe to the terrible yet beautiful world of Kregen under Antares, where he has struggled through disaster and success to make a home.

Here be the blurb:

The world Kregen circles the twin suns of Antares, far distant from the skies of Earth. Yet Kregen is the ground on which the Earthman Dray Prescot must stand and fight for all he holds dear. For Prescot is the unwilling battle arm of the mysterious Star Lords who contend for that planet with the powerful Savanti. Yet Prescot’s ambitions are his own, for he has inherited the remnant of a shattered empire and must fight to bring hope and freedom to all its peoples. By his side stands his princess, Delia of the Blue Mountains, and a band of stalwart companions of many races and species. But arrayed against him are flying armadas, armed hordes, the wizardry of a super scientist, and, most shocking of all, the fury and steel claws of his own daughter, Dayra!

Adventures by Leaf Light and other stories is a book of short magical fantasy stories for children by Moyra Caldecott. Some of the stories were published previously in paperback, but many have never been published before in any form. It is available immediately from Mobipocket.com and Cyberread.com, and will appear on Fictionwise.com and other good ebookstores over the next few days.

The book is also available in paperback from Bladud Books (our paperback imprint), and you can get it from Adventures by Leaf Light and Other Stories”>Amazon.com or by special order from all good high street book shops anywhere in the world.
Here is the (rather short) blurb:

Eighteen beautiful, insightful, moral, magical stories for children with Imagination — and their parents. Many have never been published before, and will be a treat for all fans of Moyra Caldecott.

Multi-Dimensional Life is the autobiography of Moyra Caldecott. But it is more than an account of her life — it is about the experiences, inspiration and motivation for her writing. For each major work of fiction in her time as a prolific author of historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction, Moyra Caldecott gives an account of the development of the ideas that led to the writing of the book. Multi-Dimensional Life will be of interest to all struggling writers of fiction, as well as fans of Moyra Caldecott’s work.

Multi-Dimensional Life is available in ebook format from all the usual ebookstores, such as Fictionwise.com, and in paperback (published by Bladud Books) from Amazon and all good bricks and mortar bookshops (probably to special order — just quote the ISBN 978-1-84319-549-8).

Here is the blurb:

In more than thirty published books, some of them continuously in print for thirty years, the novelist Moyra Caldecott has transported her readers through ancient history and into other worlds. Her writing is a manifestation of her lifelong quest for meaning and wisdom. Now, for the first time, she reveals the many levels of her own life as a writer and the extraordinary events and experiences that have inspired her life and writing.

The eighteenth book in the thrilling saga of Dray Prescot, Golden Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers, in which Dray must build an army to fight the evil that seeks to overwhelm the empire, is available now from Cyberread.com and Mobipocket.com. It will appear in most other ebookstores over the next few days.

Here is the blurb:

When you’re down there’s no place to go but up. That’s the way the brave think and if there is anyone on two worlds braver than Dray Prescot, he has yet to appear. Prescot, who had been a seaman and soldier on distant Earth, and now, on Golden Scorpio’s fabulous planet, was claiment to the fallen throne of a conquered empire, would never give up. Single-handedly, if need be, he would be a deadly threat to the enemies of Vallia. But as he set out on a liberation mission incomparable in the history of two worlds he knew he would never be alone…

The seventeenth book in the saga of Dray Prescot, Captive Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers, in which he faces his darkest hour, has been published today. Captive Scorpio is available immediately from Cyberread.com and Mobipocket.com, and will appear over the next few days at the many ebookstores dotted around the internet, including Fictionwise.com.

Here is the blurb:

Dray Prescot, Earthman of Kregen, that wonderful world circling the twin suns of Antares, had risen high in the empire of Vallia, but luck could not always sustain him. When, at last, all the forces opposed to his lands, his princess, his emperor, and to him personally, converged, it was to produce the darkest hour of his long career. For treason struck at the court, while rebel armies marched from the backlands, the war fleets of enemy nations were aloft, and the uncanny wizardry of a master scientist launched a spell of doom for all Prescot held dear. With his back to the wall, Dray Prescot faced that time of peril with unflinching will… until the cruelest blow of all was struck: his warrior daughter Dayra rode in the vanguard of his foes!