ZappTek is partnering with today's hottest writers to bring you the best in cutting-edge fiction for your reading enjoyment. Legends brings the full reading experience to the iPhone and iPod touch. Learn more about Legends and be sure to return often (or subscribe to our feed) to keep up-to-date on new Legends, author news, articles and much much more.

Writing Fiction: A Short Course by Michael A Stackpole
New York Times Bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole brings you another in his series of How-To writing books, like 21 Days to a Novel and The Secrets: Serial Fiction.

Writing Fiction breaks fiction writing down into eight concise and information-packed lessons. You’ll learn about everything from Characterization and Plotting, to writing good dialogue and the ways to get your readers engaged from that very first page. Stackpole also provides quick and easy solutions to problems that trap most writers. If you want to write, and write well enough to have readers clamoring for your work, Writing Fiction is a must.

Bonus: Also included are four short stories (Tip-Off, Least of My Brethren, The Cards Call Themselves, and No Rest for the Wicked) which would sell for a total of $9 if purchases separately.

Swords of Raemllyn #5 — Beasts of the Mist by Robert E Vardeman
Legends brings you BEASTS OF THE MIST, #5 in the heroic fantasy SWORDS OF RAEMLLYN series by Robert E Vardeman & Geo W Proctor.

Sold into slavery! Davin and Goran rely on false friends and are forced to crew a merchant ship doomed to sail into the dark source of soul-devouring beasts lurking in the gray mists of Raemllyn’s seas.

BEASTS OF THE MIST chronicles a perilous journey through seas of magical beasts, enchanted lovers and all with a kingdom’s fate in the balance.

Be sure to read books 1, 2, 3 and 4 — To Demons Bound, A Yoke of Magic, Blood Fountain, and Death’s Acolyte. Forthcoming: all 9 books in the Swords of Raemllyn series.

Better to Rest by Dana Stabenow
Legends brings you: Better to Rest by the Edgar-award winning, New York Times best-selling author Dana Stabenow.

1941. The Japanese invade the Aleutians and the Americans rush to Alaska to defend the territory. One cold Arctic night a C-47 crashes into a mountain outside Newenham. Fifty years later, a glacier calves and the wreck is rediscovered, wakening old memories of old times and old crimes, and a motive for murder in the present day.

The fourth in the series featuring Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell, Bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, drunk shaman Moses Alakuyak, and bartender slash magistrate Bill Billington.

“…Campbell makes an engaging hero, one who bids fair to become as popular as Kate Shugak, the heroine of Stabenow’s other, long-running series.”—Publishers Weekly

“No one paints a more vivid picture of the Alaskan outback…[and] the touch of romance and other personal problems add a humanizing effect to an already rich police procedural.”—Painted Rock Reviews

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Dana Stabenow
Legends brings you: Nothing Gold Can Stay by the Edgar-award winning, New York Times best-selling author Dana Stabenow.

A gold prospector is shot at a remote mine and his wife disappears into the Alaskan Bush. The wife is the obvious suspect but then more bodies turn up, and Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell and Bush pilot Wy Chouinard find themselves on the trail of a serial killer whose victims go back not just years, but decades.

The third in the Liam Campbell series featuring Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell, Bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, drunk shaman Moses Alakuyak, and bartender slash magistrate Bill Billington.

“Nonstop incident and matchless local color.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Has the vivid descriptions, rich characterization, and compelling plot that distinguish her [sixteen] Kate Shugak books, with the added advantage of extra sex appeal.”—Publishers Weekly

So Sure of Death by Dana Stabenow
Legends brings you: So Sure of Death by the Edgar-award winning, New York Times best-selling author Dana Stabenow.

Fishing vessel Marybethia is adrift and afire off Alaska’s southwestern coast, with all aboard dead. Was it an accident, or murder? The second of the Liam Campbell mysteries, featuring Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell, Bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, drunk shaman Moses Alakuyak, and bartender slash magistrate Bill Billington.

“Every time I think Dana Stabenow has gotten as good as she can get, she comes up with something better.”—Washington Times

“Compelling. Fast-moving. Stunning. Vivid. A series to watch.”—Booklist

“Exciting—a mystery that’s still thickening when most authors would be calling it a day.”—Kirkus Reviews

Promoting Your Book Online by Dana Stabenow
Legends brings you: Promoting Your Book Online by New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award winning author Dana Stabenow.

In 2008 the economy crashed and the publishing industry tumbled down along with it. Author Dana Stabenow, faced with an author tour that consisted of two bookstores, one magazine ad, and a television interview for the seventeenth novel in her Edgar Award-winning mystery series about an Alaskan Aleut PI, decided to pick up the promotional slack by creating an Internet promotional campaign on her own.

On its first week of publication six months later, Whisper to the Blood hit the New York Times best-seller list. This is the story of how she got there.

Written in no-nonsense prose with plenty of humor, this how-to self-help promotional essay includes simple, sensible suggestions on how to promote your own book, with hot links beneath all the relevant topics so you can click to learn more.

On her website, www.stabenow.com, Stabenow says, “Don’t hamstring your book’s sales performance by kidding yourself that an online presence isn’t essential in today’s publishing marketplace. It is. I’ve been working on mine for fifteen years, since this website in the first of its many incarnations went up on the Internet. Promoting Your Book Online will save you a lot of sweat equity in building your own cyberspace presence.”

Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow
Legends brings you: Fire and Ice by Edgar-award winning, New York Times best-selling author Dana Stabenow.

Broken in rank and transferred in disgrace, Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell arrives in the southwestern town of Newenham to find a body laying beneath the blood-stained prop of a Piper Super Cub. The prime suspect? His long-lost love, Bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard.

“The proliferation of grizzled macho thugs, sexy loner women, and acts of nasty violence might make readers… heads spin, but Stabenow weaves it all into a compelling tale with an assured hand.”—Publishers Weekly

“Full of raucous action, complicated characters, evocative scenery, and inventive plot. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

Nine Slices From The Swords of Raemllyn by Robert E Vardeman
Legends brings you NINE SLICES FROM THE SWORDS OF RAEMLLYN, a tantalizing glimpse from each of the novels in the heroic fantasy series SWORDS OF RAEMLLYN by Robert E Vardeman & Geo W Proctor.

From thief to prince to slave and back, Davin Anane fights for freedom as he loves beautiful women and explores strange, magical lands. Alongside his friend Goran One-Eye, a Challing from another dimension brought to Raemllyn by an evil sorcerer, Davin wins the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk and conquers a kingdom. The adventures of the two freebooters are highlighted in this free sampler, giving you the first chapter from each of the nine volumes. The final three volumes have been published only in the United Kingdom prior to Legends bringing them to iTunes.

Adventure awaits you at every flip of the page when you enter the magical realm of Raemllyn. To battle!

The complete Swords of Raemllyn series:
To Demons Bound
A Yoke of Magic
Blood Fountain
Death’s Acolyte
Beasts of the Mist
For Crown and Kingdom
Blade of the Conqueror
The Tombs of A’bre
The Jewels of Life

The Power & The Glory by Robert E Vardeman
Legends brings you THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Robert E Vardeman.

Nikola Tesla is one of the most bizarre real-life characters of the Twentienth Century. Many biographies have been written about him and his foibles, but they hardly do justice to the man whose inventions laid the foundation for modern society. Alternating current, wifi, radio, these were only a few of his great inventions.

“The Power and the Glory” is an alternate timeline story exploring what might have happened if Tesla’s financial backer and friend George Westinghouse had died, leaving Tesla to the not-so-tender mercy of Thomas Edison—and European governments wanting to use Tesla’s inventions to wage and win a quick war.

With this as a backdrop, follow the redoubtable Nikola Tesla as he works on even more wondrous inventions, battling a man intent on destroying him—and others who want nothing but to enslave him so they can enslave millions.

Little Girl Lost by Michael A Stackpole
New York Times Bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole brings you the fifth Trick Molloy mystery. In this supernatural urban noir thriller Trick races against time to save Adrienne, one of the dancers at Club Flesh. She witnessed the murder of her boyfriend by mobsters, and might know the hiding-place of some seriously incriminating evidence. He has to find her before the mob does, but there’s a problem. She uses magick, she’s good, and she just doesn’t want to be found.

Be sure to read all of the Trick Molloy mysteries; including Such A Nice Girl, No Rest for the Wicked, and The Witch in Scarlet, all available now as Legends in the App Store.

My Top Five Authors, an article by Robert Vardeman
I have been reading science fiction for over 40 years now and my favorites come and go, so it is difficult for me to ever say that I had only five top authors. Recently, the widow of a friend of mine (George Proctor died last year—he and I co-authored the Swords of Raemllyn books making their way back into print here at Legends) tried to use one of his security questions to unearth a password. The question appeared simple: who is your favorite author? So far she has tried more than 20 different names and has yet to hit the magic entry point. It’s sort of like that with me, too. Not that I am dead, mind you, but it is hard to hit a moving target and my favorite authors change over the years.

Continue Reading…

Let Me Call You Sweetheart by Michael A Stackpole
New York Times Bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole brings you a story of an alternate future in which the government won’t let anything bad happen to you. Even if you want it to.

In Let Me Call You Sweetheart, you’ll meet Mark Glace, agent for the government’s most valued alphabet agency: the CEA. That’s the Confections Enforcement Agency. That’s right. Chocolate is bad for you, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep the evil pushers from getting their melt-in-your-mouth wares into your hands. But something is wrong at the agency, and he faces his fiercest enemy—a woman he once loved.