February Events-Signed Books Available.

I've got a couple of appearances coming up in February. First, next Monday, Feb 4, at 6pm Mountain Time I'll be a guest on Dungeon Crawlers Radio. You can find out more about the show and stream old episodes here. I've been listening to some of their archived episodes and can assure you they are full of geeky goodness.

My next convention appearance will be Mysticon in Roanoke, VA, the weekend of Feb 22-24. I don't have my final schedule yet, but this is going to be a pretty crazy con with big guests like Orson Scott Card and Peter Davidson. Read more about this here.

Finally, I just recorded a reading for Gail Z. Martin's Ghost in the Machine podcast. I'm not certain yet of the date this will be scheduled, but I'll let you know as soon as I know. You can find out more about Gail's podcast here.

War Upon the Heavens! First draft finished!

After racing through the first 50,000 words in November, December was distraction central, between car problems and multiple plumbing issues at our rental house, not to mention that every third night we were supposed to go to some holiday party or event. I kind of stopped counting, but I think I came in well shy of 20,000 words for the month. Things were more normal in January, but the last few weeks I've been trying to figure out the closing chapters. You know the expression "painting yourself into a corner?" The last chapters of a novel feel very much like this. In the opening chapters, it's easy to put words on the page because everything is new and fresh and the possibilities are endless. But, by the last four or five chapters, the possibilities shrink. You might think that having fewer options about what you need to be writing would increase productivity, but for me, this is the point in the process where writing stops feeling like creation and starts feeling like work. On every page, I confront choices I made earlier in the novel and have to decide if I'm going to write as if what's already written is canon, or whether it's time to go with a new idea. If I make choose the latter, that means big chunks of what I already have on paper are going to have to be tossed out in the next draft. I sometimes feel like the more I write, the more I'm unwriting.

Enough whining. I'm done! The first draft is 99028 words long, spread out over 21 chapters. I'm currently calling the novel "War Upon the Heavens," since that's a newspaper headline that Dorothy writes when she's breaking the story that the US is building a fleet of airships. But, it may be a bit melodramatic even for me. Fortunately, I have time to hunt for more inspiration.

The biggest challenges I anticipate in the next draft is that the balance of scenes set in Kansas versus scenes set in Oz feel off to me. Right now, it takes a full third of the book before the characters make it to Oz, and it's the middle of the novel before they actually arrive anyplace a person with only casual familiarity to Oz might recognize. Trying to figure out what to cut from the opening is going to be tough, though. I'll probably have to solve it by beefing up the second half, so that the Kansas chapters are only a quarter of the novel.

My other big, big, big challenge is giving Dorothy a more satisfying emotional story arc. Right now, a major driver of her actions is a thirst for revenge, a functional but not terribly complex motivation. She doesn't really grow emotionally over the course of the book. I have a little "moral of the story" wrap up at the end where she finds a little happiness, but it feels tacked on at the moment. I know what I'm going to aim for in the next draft, but weaving it into the plot in a way that doesn't hurt the momentum of the story or muddy the clarity of her motivations is going to be tricky.

I'm going to take a little time away from this project before I start the second draft. My next project is to do a final edit on "Empire of Angels," the Bitterwood prequel novel. My goal is to really hit that hard in the coming week. It's vaguely possible I can actually finish it in a week. All I'm doing is reading it out loud and making sentence level changes, but it's been years since I've touched the book, and it's difficult to know how much I'll be able to resist additional tinkering.

Once that's done, I'm still deciding what my next priority will be. Tackling the next draft of the Oz novel is something I'd like to do sooner rather than later. But, I also have another superhero novel, The Adventures of Cut-Up Girl, that I'm really, really eager to get to. So, I might go ahead and write the first draft of that, then return to Oz after a few months. It's possible that the intervening time will help me approach the next draft feeling fresher. But, it's also possible that I might lose momentum. It's a tough choice. I guess I'll do an update here when I figure it out.

Download Bitterwood for free!

There's a few big news items on the Bitterwood front.

First, I'm working with the extremely talented Dave Thompson to produce Bitterwood as an audio book. I listened to the first segments today and I'm thrilled with Dave's reading. It's still going to be several weeks before the audio book is ready, but when it is it will be distributed through Audible, Amazon, and I-Tunes. I will, of course, publish further announcements as the release draws closer.

Second, the cover above is one I created myself, since when I first started ebook publishing I was unsure of whether or not I'd make enough money to justify paying for the rights to the paperback cover. The book did pretty well, however, and I would have made my money back many times over. However, since the book was selling with my DIY cover, I still didn't see a reason to pay for the rights on the original cover. However, that's going to change when the audio book comes out. To give it the best possible chance of success, I'll be shelling out the dough to place that cover on the audio edition.

And, as long as I'm opening my wallet for that, I'm also going to pay to use the cover on a new ebook edition of Bitterwood. But not just any old edition: I'm going to put together an omnibus edition of the entire Dragon Age collection: Bitterwood, Dragonforge, Dragonseed, and the prequel short story "Tornado of Sparks." And, as an added bonus, this collection will also include the never before seen fourth Bitterwood novel, Empire of Angels. I wrote Empire of Angels after I wrote Bitterwood, but before I wrote Dragonforge and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years before the events of Bitterwood, it tells the story of the first dragon to escape into the wild as human civilization begins to collapse following the rise of Atlantis. I was never able to interest a publisher in it, mainly because it's kind of short, not even 70,000 words long. As an early novel, I was also still learning how to plot, so the story's structure is a bit more linear than what I would craft today. But, it tells the origins of Hezekiah, Jazz, Gabriel (the angel from Dragonforge), the dragons, and the city of Atlantis, so it should be of great interest to serious Bitterwood fans. I plan to release this at the same time the audio book comes available.

To whet the appetite for the audio book and the Complete Bitterwood, I've decided to try something a little radical: Today, I made Bitterwood completely free to download at Smashwords. If I could, I would change the price at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but they don't allow me to set the price to free. It's possible they will price match Kobo or Apple once the free price filters through from Smashwords to those distributors, but there's no guarantee. I know some authors who get Amazon to price match quickly, but others have their price set at free on other channels and never get Amazon to budge.

But, even if  you use Kindle, no sweat! You can download the mobi file from Smashwords. In fact, you can download the novel as mobi, epub, pdf, or even just read it directly in your browser, all completely free! Just click here. Spread the word! The price is never going to be better than this!

Tornado of Sparks now available on Nook!

Nook readers, I'm pleased to announce the Nook publication of Tornado of Sparks! This is a prequel to Bitterwood, a short story set 15 years before the main plot of the first book. It's the tale of the wizard dragon Vendevorex when he first comes to the court of Albekizan. His mysterious powers are tested when he is ordered to kill a family of human trespassers. The repercussions of the events shown in this story echo throughout the Bitterwood Trilogy.

The story is downloadable right now, though when I checked earlier the cover still wasn't showing on the website. Hopefully that will synch up soon.

I intend to get the story onto other ebook platforms as well, though nothing else is quite as easy to use as the Kindle and Nook publishing platforms and sometimes take a while to show up. If you want to read this story and aren't using Kindle or Nook, drop me a line.

Witchbreaker Giveaway on Goodreads, Signing at Purple Crow, Illogicon

Three bits of Witchbreaker news: First, there's currently a giveaway going on at Goodreads. The drawing ends tomorrow at midnight, so act fast. Click this link to be taken to the entry page.

Next, Purple Crow Books in Hillsborough has graciously agreed to host a signing for Witchbreaker. It's scheduled for January 29th at 7:00pm. There will be dragon cookies! Purple Crow Books is a great little independent bookstore that really showcases local authors, so I'm tickled to finally have a formal signing there.

Finally, I should also mention that I'll be a guest at Illogicon in Raleigh next weekend, January 11-13. I'm on about six panels and have a reading on Saturday, so I won't be terribly hard to find if you come to the con. Last year's Illogicon was great, with excellent turnout for a first year con. If you feel a deep-seated need to come hang out with a bunch of geeky smart people (and who doesn't?), this con will be the place to be next weekend.

The Next Big Thing: Witchbreaker

Gail Z. Martin answered some questions about her next book on her blog last week and forwarded those questions on to other authors so they could have a crack at them. Since Witchbreaker hits stores next week, this seems like a good excuse to talk about it.

What’s the title of your next book?


Witchbreaker: Book Three of the Dragon Apocalypse
If you found yourself in a lift with a movie director you admire and had the chance to pitch your book to them, what would you say?

Witchbreaker is the story of Sorrow Stern, a young witch on a quest to find the legendary queen of witches, who forms an uneasy alliance with an amnesiac knight called Slate, who may or may not be Lord Stark Tower, the infamous Witchbreaker.

If this happened to your work, which actors would you choose to play your characters?

I never really think about my books as movies, so I haven’t given this a lot of thought. You would need a time machine to make this happen, but I would say that Sorrow would be well represented by a young Sinead O’Conner. Slate looks a bit like Robert Irvine from the Food Network. I’m sorry I don’t know more current celebrities. I go to maybe three movies a year, and usually two of them are animated.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Without naming names, some years ago I was romantically involved with a woman who had experienced a very traumatic event when she was young and saw how, decades later, those events had left her living in a very different world than most people. She was acutely aware of injustices that others were blind to. This had the negative affect of creating a sense of paranoia and isolation and a slow, seething anger that never quite went away. But, it also had the positive aspects of giving her a tremendous amount of empathy for the suffering of others, and a steely stubbornness to stand up for her beliefs and not whittle her values away with compromises that most of us make without a second thought because we don’t want to live our lives in a constant state of confrontation.

Sorrow’s character draws heavily from this mold. Her father was a judge who hung his own mother after she was accused of being a witch. Sorrow rebelled by becoming a witch herself, but her hatred isn’t directed directly at her father, it’s directed at the religious and political institutions that empowered him. So, Sorrow’s life mission is to overthrow that system. She’s one woman against the world, fighting to make it a better place even though everyone she meets keeps insisting that the world isn’t so bad. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for characters locked into a lifelong battle against forces more powerful than they will ever be.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

A few months. I started the book around last Christmas and turned in the final draft in July. The last few years have been pretty productive for me. With Greatshadow coming out last January and Witchbreaker coming out in December, I’ll have written quickly enough to see three epic fantasy novels released in a single year. I don’t like to keep my reader’s waiting!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Terry Pratchett is the closest comparison, though my books are less overtly humorous and a bit more weighted toward action.

What makes this book uniquely yours, a reading experience that no other author could provide?

My Dragon Apocalypse novels are kind of their own little mini-genre, medieval superheroes in epic battles against dragons, with a carefully balanced blend of action, humor, romance, and philosophy. I write about the moral questions that fuel my curiosity, but do everything I can not to be preachy and to make sure that the plot moves forward on every single page. I try to take characters who are pretty difficult to like and lead the reader to a deep understanding of why they are who they are, so that even if you sometimes roll your eyes at their bad choices, you’re still left loving them. I won’t claim that no other author can do these things, since obviously they can. But, the way I mix these elements is fairly distinctive. I think that, even if my name were stripped from my novels, a reader could still recognize me by my style and my approach.

How has this book helped you grow as a writer?

In the past, most of my characters have been loners, since this is kind of the standard template for iconic heroes. Superman, Batman, Spiderman—all orphans who have secrets that keep them from fully connecting with other people. Sorrow certainly fits this mold, but I’ve surrounded her with a supporting cast called the Romers, who are a family of super-powered sailors. They love and support one another, though they have the same squabbles and tensions as any family. Some of the most heartwarming scenes in the book are about the way they relate to one another. This is the first book where I really talk about family in any meaningful way, and I think it gives the book a nice heart. The love and warmth that the Romers show one another is a good contrast for Sorrow’s much more cynical world view.

When will your book be available?
It hits bookstores December 26, so if you happen to receive a Barnes and Noble gift card the day before, keep me in mind. In fact, I’ve been told you won’t even need to wait that long. In theory, the ebook is going to be available on Christmas Day, though I still haven't seen any "preorder" buttons for the ebook yet.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

You know, it’s kind of tough to believe that I’ve answered these questions barely mentioning dragons, because this book is chock full of them. We see some elemental dragons from previous books: Hush, Greatshadow, Abyss, and Rott, and are introduced to some new ones: Abundant, the Dragon of Animal Life; Tempest, the Dragon of Storms; and Kragg, the Dragon of Stones. Hush is trying to persuade the other dragons to join her on a quest to destroy mankind as revenge for what happened to Glorious in the second novel, and the book builds to a big confrontation between all the primal dragons that decides the fate of the world… at least until the next book.

Since Gail was kind enough to pass these questions on to me, I've invited a couple of other authors to take a crack at them. So, next week, please check out the answers from Alex Granados as he talks about his novel Into the Cave at alexgranadoswrites.blogspot.com. Then, jump on over to John Brown's blog as he talks about his new thriller, Awful Intent.

Butt in Air

I've talked about the importance of "butt-in-chair" time if you want to be a writer. There's really no escaping the central reality that, if you want to write a novel, you'll probably be spending a couple of hundred hours sitting in front of your computer pressing keys. The more you keep your butt in the chair, the more you're going to produce. It's a pretty simple equation.

In November, I did pretty well at keeping my butt in my chair, cranking out 50k words on my new novel. Then I hit a wall. I made my way through the first 50k because I knew how the story began, and was able to introduce my three major characters, spend some time exploring the setting, and get in a few action scenes to establish the pace. Unfortunately, I really didn't know how the book ended, and now that I was done with all my introductions, I couldn't move forward because, without knowing how the book would end, any further typing I did would be directionless meandering.

I've been thinking about this book for at least a year, and completely immersed for over a month. My inability to figure out an endpoint was frustrating. I always have some idea of where my books are heading. But, every ending I could think of for this book was too direct. The hero beats the bad guy, the end. Yawn. I needed something a bit less clean.

So, it was time for "butt-in-air." Yesterday, I took a ten mile hike along the Eno, alone. I had my phone full of podcasts to listen to, but found the willpower never to start those up. Instead, I spent five hours in solitude and quiet, utterly bored for most of the journey. The Eno has some wonderful scenery, including a quarry lake with water like a mirror and the ruins of old farmhouses and mills emerging like memories from the hilly landscape. But, it also has lots and lots and lots of roots and rocks, so 90% of the hike isn't spent looking at the scenery, it's spent watching the leaf-strewn ground three feet in front of you so you don't break your ankle.

Under such conditions, the mind wanders. In the quietness, I could begin to hear my characters talking to one another. I could listen in and discover just what the heck it was they were planning on doing, and by the time I emerged from the woods, with sore feet and completely sodden with sweat, I had figured out a satisfying ending for my book. It may not be the final ending; I'm sure it will grow and mutate in the weeks ahead, as my endings always do. But, it's a destination, something I can look forward to reaching, the way I looked forward to reaching the lake when I was hiking.

All those hours of daydreaming will mean nothing if I don't have the willpower to sit down and keep typing. But, sometimes, to make the hours you spend with your butt in a chair count for something, you need to go as far away as you can, not just from your computer, but from your television, your books, even your friends and family, and hunt for the silence where you can finally hear your book.