All Around the Web

Whew! A busy couple of weeks! In addition to attending Balticon and ConCarolina's, I've been furiously pounding the keys on Witchbreaker. It's finally turning into a real novel! I made a few bad choices with character personalities on the first draft that left me with an important protagonist almost completely devoid of charm. I spent a lot of the first draft just keeping him off stage so I wouldn't have to write about him. This time around, I've tried an unusual approach for a James Maxey character: I've made him an actual nice person, motivated by a desire to live up to a code of knighthood. What the...? How did he slip into the book? Luckily, he does have a dark secret, a big one. And he does get to fight a dragon buck naked in his first scene. So maybe he's not such an unusual character for me after all.

But, Witchbreaker is still half a year away from bookstores. The book I should be talking about is Hush, hitting stores this month, June 26! I'll be launching the book with a trio of appearances. June 26, I'll be in Cary at the Barnes and Noble along with Lisa Shearin, Kelly Gay, Tony Daniels, Mark van Name, and David Drake, as part of their annual speculative fiction panel. The fact that's the day by book hits bookstores is a felicitous bit of timing! Later that same week, at Hillsborough's Last Friday street festival, I'll have a table in front of Purple Crow books from roughly 6-9. Then, on July 10, I'll be at the Barnes and Noble in Greensboro.

Hush had its first review yesterday, by Nick Sharps at Elitist Book Reviews who describes the book as "the most original and colorful fantasy world I have encountered in recent memory." Alas, he didn't like it quite as much as he liked Greatshadow, though he says he's looking forward to Witchbreaker. He notes that the supporting cast, mainly the Romer family, felt a bit underdeveloped. In retrospect, I agree. I introduced some characters in Hush solely for the purpose of having them on stage in Witchbreaker, where their stories become more central to the plot. Hopefully as the series unfolds their more leisurely character arcs will become increasingly interesting.

Also yesterday, I'm part of a pair of blog posts at lucreid.com discussing the art of writing 10,000 words a day. Not to spoil the articles, but the answer is pretty simple. If you want to write 10k words a day, and you can write 1000 words an hour, you have to be willing to put butt in chair for 10 hours and type like a maniac. This is why I hardly ever manage the feat, though I did crank out 16k words from Tuesday through Thursday this week. There really are no shortcuts.

Finally, I've got some air time at the latest The Future and You podcast from Stephen Euin Cobb as he interviews guests from last weekend's ConCarolinas. Listen here!