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Huge news: Wolves of the Tesseract 2 Through the Darque Gates of Koth is finally out!
“Claire Jones is more than your average girl: her bloodline ties her to the all-powerful Architect King. Only she can stop the creatures that dwell beyond the known dimensions… and the forces of the enemy have multiplied. Check out Wolves of the Tesseract 2: Through the Darque Gates of Koth.”
I got to spend all weekend at a SF con and hang out a little with one of my literary heroes who inspired me to begin writing my own SF in a round about way. Sold some books, met lots of great people and made some solid contacts! (Timothy Zahn put me in touch with his son who is a pro editor, so keep your fingers crossed there. Maybe something comes of it.)
Though it was a successful con for me, it had lots of downtime–good for networking and writing. I outlined my new short story I’m doing and wrote another 500 words. I’m about a thousand in so far and want to keep it between 10-15k. I guess my goal is to finish it by next week… two weeks tops… also to catch up on sleep. I hope to still be in bed by the time this auto-posts in the morning. I love cons. I hate the travel and hotels.
I got my ego all polished up recently and did an author interview! It’s been something of a banner month for me. Things are crazy busy and I’ve kept a lot of plates spinning in my personal and author life. Lately I’ve spent more time on the business side of writing, though, now that the convention circuit has really kicked off. (In fact, right now, I’m sitting next to super-famous SF writer Timothy Zahn at a Minnesota Science Fiction Convention called Manticon!)
Firstly, You should totally check out my interview over at H. Kates’ website. Number 2, you might even do her a solid (I’m sure I’m saying that wrong) and click to follow her.
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I read William Alton and John Saxon’s A Change in the Wind. This is a sleeper pick for great reads this year. It immediately felt like I was reading something by GP Taylor (Shadowmancer, and others) although more refined. The setup grabbed me right away, too, and felt similar to the plots put out by Hellboy/BPRD’s Osiris Club or Heliopic Brotherhood. The plot is great: historical bad guys consult dark powers to obtain their nefarious goals.
Right from page one it grabbed me. The writing is tense and keeps the narrative flowing. Between the authors’ skill and the quickly unfolding narrative this book gets right into the adventure. It really did beg me to keep reading. Continue reading Review: A Change in the Wind
Almost forgot to do this! (I usually write them the evening prior).
I had a good week at the big statewide comic convention… I got to connect with some friends and buy some cool stuff in addition to selling a bunch of books and meet lots of new people.
I didn’t write much… I started a piece of short fiction that I’m working on, but it may take a bit to complete, and I’m not worried about that. My current focus is on the convention scene and promoting some events I’ll be at (the June 9 multi-author book signing and my upcoming con this weekend: Manticon, a sci-fi convention I’m excited to be at… Timothy Zahn will be there and I’m totally stoked. If I don’t post on monday, it’s because I’m in jail for stalking.)
My goals this week are not for writing: they are to paint the exterior of my investment property so I can put it up for sale by June 1. I’d also like to have something to report on the 3 Maesters Literarium, by then, but it’s out of my hands.
A few weeks ago I started a multi-part series about getting books into bookstore shelves. It was part of an author’s FB thread from my publisher’s private group. One of the authors claimed he did not, and would never, do anything to promote his book… and yet he still held out some kind of hope that it might somehow become a bestseller because fate, or fairy dust, or something like that.
I responded that he could do what he liked but guaranteed he would not have success if he didn’t put in any effort. People with that opinion (that authors can just write a book then let everything else magically work out) are under false pretenses about how the industry works nowadays. He’d cited a fixed income and advanced years, but really, he just didn’t want to do anything but the writing. With no platform, unproven skill, and an adamant denial of how things work in reality, he got so angry with me for suggesting that he use his abundant free time in retirement to try some free methods of self-promotion that he actually left Facebook altogether. Authors can come unhinged pretty easily and I thought he might block me for not agreeing with the echo chamber in his mind, but I thought that was a little cray cray. Whatever. I guess I’ll feel pretty stupid when he calls me out after receiving his Pulitzer… I guess he showed me. Continue reading Self-Promotion for Indie Authors
Eric Borgerson’s When the Eye Sees Itself evokes so many images in its pages. It’s both dystopian and has overtures of cyberpunk. The sci-fi aspect is light but it feels reminiscent of many films and stories to have come out in the past two decades (I’m feeling Hackers, Bladerunner, What Ever Happened to Monday, and so much more). It borrows themes from many and molds them each into fit a narrative that is unique unto itself, telling a story somewhere on the spectrum between Orwell and Heinlein in its approach to politics and human classism. It is disturbingly realistic and certainly cautionary. Continue reading Review: When the Eye Sees Itself
Not much happening this last week… still under crazy workloads that I can’t let slip because of deadlines so I’m burning the midnight oil there and any leftover time is going into a house I’m renovating and trying to flip. It’s so close to being done!
I did manage to start sketching out a few short stories and even wrote an opening scene for one. I may finish it this week. That’s my only real writing goal—I’m prepping for a weekend convention with the rest of my time and trying to get folks to show up to my metro area book event on June 9.
If you are in the MPLS/St.Paul area this weekend, come say hello at the MCBA Comic Convention at the State Fairgrounds.
Inside the Inkwell 