We’re doubly delighted to make Lin Robinson’s FLESH WOUNDS available to readers–decades after these slices of “noir” were cult classics in hip urban weeklies all over the west. Not just because of the lacerating and penetrating nature of the writing, but because of the perfect marriage of the content with format: an exciting new kind of eBook Adoro is pioneering.

“Flesh Wounds” was originally a weekly outburst the San Diego cultural review “Revolt In Style” and expanded (including the creation of Jessica Creager’s great artwork) for the Seattle “Scroll”. Much of the work in the eBook collection first appeared in the Seattle “Stranger”,San Diego “Reader”.SF Bay Area’s “East Bay Express”, and the Seattle music mag, “Voltage”.

A cult item at the time (Hunter Thompson first dubbed it “yuppie noir”, a name that stuck), “Flesh Wounds” was resurrected and an online, blog/RSS serial, but now appears in an exciting and innovative eBook format for any Windows computer, with a low price enabled by the magic of download.

This is dark stuff, set in prisons, asylums, bloody street corners, gruesome crime scenes. But there is a faint glow of redemption about it, the aspiration that keeps all of us elevated above the mess of flesh that lacerates us before it kill us.

Check it out on the FLESH WOUNDS BOOK PAGE, and don’t miss the ultra-cool video with music by Moderan.

We were happy that Grayson chose us to host his blog-based serial of SKY SEEDS, and even happier that he has wrapped up this thrilling story so we can offer it in a cross-platform eBook format.

SKY SEEDS drew a lot of commentary while in serial form: nice to see a science fiction story featuring hispanic youth, fascinating the way it rewrites history as an analog of cock-breeding, a humorous romp through the hyper-universe as Ben Ochoa and his Tijuana street punk gang use transport portals not only to get educated, but for inter-planetary smuggling and carousing.

It’s a YA book of “big press” quality, but publishers were scared off by the fact that these street toughs actually cursed and had sex and did drugs and stabbed people. Fine: leaves us the proud publishers of a great read for kids and adults alike.

Check out the synopsis, character sketches, and chapterrs on the SKY SEEDS BLOG PAGE.

Another book from Lin Robinson, our most prolific author.  This one’s a novel and we don’t know whether to call it a mystery, action, sports or travelogue. Set in Mazatlan, Mexico, SWEET SPOT follows Mundo Carrasco–national baseball hero turned journalist–through the riot of Carnival a step ahead of getting whacked by whoever brutally killed the mayor.  And it all seems to revolve around the beautiful, amoral Mijares whose aloof allure has drawn Mundo into working for the city governement and things are starting to shake down and if Mundo is quick on the basepaths, he’s not going make it safe to home. Mundo is a very likeable character, whose sage journalistic out-takes open each chapter.   Likewise his women:  Mijares to die for (and very likely will), Palomina the ballerina turned stripper who wants to be a Queen, and Luz, who wants to save Mundo’s soul for better or worse. And another female lead: the sexy beach town Mazatlan itself, amid it’s annual orgy of flesh.   It’s a nice portrait of a pretty place that drags with it the very unpretty reality of Mexican politics. Take a look at the excerpt and video on the SWEET SPOT BOOK PAGE.

These are exciting times at Adoro Book Works, the little press that probably could and may yet. Adoro was founded with the idea of innovating ways in which literature reaches readers. Our initial offerings were mostly paperback books: we did that in creative ways, but mostly at the back end of the business. Now we’re launching things closer to our original intentions and forging some alliances that you will read about as they come into focus over the next six months.

Our more immediate directions are linked: we have contracted to put up some hyperliterature–”books” designed to be read online using cyber technology to select and direct reading. We are sort of re-inventing the serial novel–blog-written, RSS-driven, and involving reader choices and browsing in the reading.

Our investigations there produced some work we think you will find very interesting, and there are more to come very soon. See our current collection of three browsable serials at our CYBERLIT imprint and await some exciting new additions by end end of June.

An important part of “bloglit” is not so much clicking to sites that generate serials, but the RSS feeds. You can click to get weekly episodes or chapters of any work you like delivered to your desktop, Yahoo/MSN account, MySpace site, or other locations: you can read the short chapters regularly like a comic strip or the old newspaper and radio serials.

Our explorations into these fields–bloglit, RSS, serials, etc.–also turned up some more conventional serial novels, which we decided to include in our new direction, hastily re-naming the imprint from “Adoro HyperLit” to “Adoro CyberLit”. One such serial is already available on the CYBERLIT page, what might be called a “YA and up” contemporary SF work by Grayson Moran.

But our collections of blog writing (”blit”, as some are calling it) are far from the whole story. By the end of summer we will have launched several ebooks, based on this work and others. And not, as you might expect, ordinary ebooks. We think we will be showing you some new and different ways to read and are currently pushing to develop more innovative forms of delivering writing.

Meanwhile, our existing paperbacks, including our little poetry books, are still available as we move into new modes. We hope you share our pleasure at these new developments and will take a look at the work available on the CYBERLIT page, perhaps subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorites.

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about just who and what Adoro is all about.

It’s complicated.

It’s basically experimental, an attempt to do some innovative things and stretch the envelope of what a small, internet-based press can accomplish in regard to penetrating the traditional market and producing books of notable quality.

(Not that we don’t like having a little fun…)

We are a coalition of several small publishers, staffed by experienced editors, designers, and marketers.

That’s about all at this point. By late fall we hope to have moved much further along our trajectory and invite you to stay tuned.

To those who have asked about submissions:

Sorry, but Adoro is not open to submissions at this time. We are small, working on getting established and don’t wish to get swamped at this point, nor to cause long waits for authors.

Until further notice we are searching for writers to invite, rather than seeking submissions.

We will be more active on this network once we have titles in print.

Thanks for your interest.

Adoro means “I worship” or “I love” in Spanish, Latin, and Italian. Hence, “Adoro Books”

Also Ad Oro, roughly translated from Latin, means “Going for the gold…”

We think of this is the Olympics sense, not sheer greed. But we’re not adverse to making a buck…