Suzanne Francis, author of “The Song of the Arkafina” series, has written a very helpful article called “Yesterday Once More—How to Research Historical Fiction“. The title says it all, so I won’t try to summarize it. You can find the article, along with a few other useful essays, at The Long and the Short of It.

Publication dates for the majority of forthcoming ebook titles from Mushroom eBooks have now been confirmed and updated on the Titles page on the main website.

• Challenge of Antares (DP48) by Alan Burt Akers 21 July 2008
• Demons of Antares (DP46) by Alan Burt Akers 9 June 2008
• Gangs of Antares (DP45) by Alan Burt Akers 26 May 2008
• Heart of Hythea by Suzanne Francis 10 December 2007
• Intrigue of Antares (DP44) by Alan Burt Akers 12 May 2008
• Murder on Kregen (DP51) by Alan Burt Akers September 2008
• Omens of Kregen (DP36) by Alan Burt Akers 14 January 2008
• Scorpio Ablaze (DP41) by Alan Burt Akers 10 March 2008
• Scorpio Assassin (DP39) by Alan Burt Akers 11 February 2008
• Scorpio Drums (DP42) by Alan Burt Akers 7 April 2008
• Scorpio Invasion (DP40) by Alan Burt Akers 25 February 2008
• Scorpio Reborn (DP38) by Alan Burt Akers 28 January 2008
• Scorpio Triumph (DP43) by Alan Burt Akers 28 April 2008
• Scourge of Antares (DP47) by Alan Burt Akers 30 June 2008
• Shadows Over Kregen (DP50) by Alan Burt Akers August 2008
• Storm over Vallia (DP35) by Alan Burt Akers 17 December 2007
• Turmoil on Kregen (DP52) by Alan Burt Akers September 2008
• Warlord of Antares (DP37) by Alan Burt Akers 21 January 2008
• Witches of Kregen (DP34) by Alan Burt Akers 03 December 2007
• Wrath of Antares (DP49) by Alan Burt Akers August 2008

We have lost touch with one of our authors, Dennis Radha-Rose, author of The Anxiety Relief Program. His last known address was in Munich, Germany, and he ran a tinnitus and anxiety consultation practice, and the website www.tinnitusconsult.com, which is now expired.

If anyone has any news about Dennis, or contact details, please get in touch at mail@mushroom-ebooks.com.

Many thanks.

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.

After writing yesterday’s post I noticed on the Fictionwise site that Mushroom eBooks titles are marked “Printing Disabled”. I have made enquiries and will report back as soon as I get an answer. In the meantime, it seems that you are limited to eBookAd.com or Cyberread.com for printable PDFs.

We are often asked how to print an eBook. Well here is my attempt at an answer:

You are normally only able to print a PDF file, assuming that printing is not disabled (see below). All the other eBook formats cannot be printed. If you buy your book from somewhere like Fictionwise or eBookAd, you buy the title rather than the format (there is no DRM), which means that you can download any or all of the formats you want at any time. So for one price you can download, say, the Mobipocket to read on your PDA, and the Adobe PDF version to print. If you then decide to buy a new ebook reading device, even years later, you should be able to download the correct files for it from your bookshelf. Fictionwise, especially, will almost certainly support new formats as they are introduced (although the desire is to have less formats rather than more, so roll on the ubiquitous, non-proprietary, universal ebook format).

However, if the PDF file has any kind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) it is likely that printing is disallowed or limited in some way (for example, you can only print 10 pages per day). So if you buy one of our PDFs from Amazon, eBooks.com, or other eBook retailers that sell DRM’d books, it is unlikely that you will be able to print it.

It is worth pointing out that an eBook is meant to be read on a screen of some description, and not printed. It kind of defeats many of the reasons for eBooks, such as saving paper (and trees and forests), or searchability, or adjustable fonts…

Greetings to all who read this Blog.

The Mushroom eBooks Blog will keep you posted with information, news and announcements regarding Mushroom eBooks. I am Martyn Folkes and I am the publisher at Mushroom eBooks. I will let you know about new titles as we publish them, and new authors as we sign them. I will keep you informed about changes in the ebook world that affect Mushroom eBooks or the way that we make the books available to you. I will also try to persuade you to try some of our samplers or even buy some of our books, but I will be gentle and you are free to make a comment if I push too hard.

I hope you enjoy this humble blog and I look forward to receiving your feedback via the Comment feature.