Author Erin Lale Participates In Operation Ebook Drop

Online, August 10, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Author Erin Lale is supplying free copies of her books to our troops deployed overseas through Operation eBook Drop, a program powered by online ebook platform Smashwords. Operation eBook Drop enables authors and publishers to supply books to US and coalition troops who are deployed in places such as Iraq where normal ebook channels such as the Amazon Whispernet don't reach. The program accepts both fiction and nonfiction books.

Lale recently supplied Operation eBook Drop with her novel The Loribond, the first in her seven book science fiction series Punch. Punch is published under the imprint of the Time Yarns shared world, which will be publishing two anthologies of multiple authors' works in 2012. Lale says, "Punch is designed as a transmedia experience, intended to blur the lines between what is a book and what is a film, graphic novel, or music video. That's why it's only available as an ebook; paper isn't the right platform for this story."

Fellow hard science fiction author Ralph Ewig, a rocket scientist at SpaceX, recently reviewed the Punch series, saying, "for readers who particularly enjoy the rich complexity of a world as imaginative as it is believable, "Punch" is a must read."

Lale says, "Part of the inspiration for the Punch series was that when I was a little kid, I used to wonder about the scars on my dad's face from his experiences as a POW in Korea, which he tried to hide with a beard and would never talk about. I was left to wonder, and my imagination took over. Eventually these back-brain imaginings combined with some of my personal issues and my love of science fiction and produced Carla Punch. So I wanted to give back to those who take the same risks he took every day. I don't support the wars, but I do support the troops, and I thought giving them a science fiction novel would be a great way to do that."

Lale will be promoting the Time Yarns universe at the World Science Fiction convention in Reno August 17-21 2011. Rather than the usual publisher booth or author reading, Lale will be reaching the majority of WorldCon convention-goers by appearing onstage in the Masquerade with a prop and costume from the Time Yarns movie she is filming as a universe trailer and from some of the video transmedia elements which appear in the Punch series. Lale says, "Performance art is part and parcel of a transmedia experience, too, and it's great to be able to put Time Yarns into the context of one of the most traditional of sf fans' performance art customs. Time Yarns is not your granddaddy's shared world: it's a universe made for fans to have fun in."