The Year of the Dragon!

I wish I could say I was clever enough to have arranged for my Goodread's Greatshadow giveaway to have purposefully ended yesterday so that I could announce the winners today at the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Dragon. On the other hand, I'll take the serendipity of the development as a good omen.

I'm going to be doing my best to be making this my own personal Year of the Dragon. I'm still tapping out chapters on my first draft of Witchbreaker and am already daydreaming heavily of books that follow it. I pretty much wake up thinking about dragons and go to sleep thinking about them. Perhaps I even dream of them, but I seldom remember my dreams. Perhaps my slumbering thoughts are devoured by nocturnal dragons. Imagination would be an appropriate diet for a primal dragon of nightmares. Hmm. I could totally turn that into a book.

Back to Greatshadow: One week from tomorrow, the book hits shelves. I'm weirdly nervous about it. I mean, this is my fifth novel to see print, and at any given time there's at least one or two anthologies in bookstores that contain a story by me. I've reached a point where it's entirely possible for me to go in and out of a bookstore without looking to see if my books are in stock. But, there's something different about Greatshadow. I've taken some real gambles with the book in terms of style and subject matter. I feel like I should take some gambles with selling the book. I just want to go stand in the isles of bookstores and shove copies into the hands of anyone who makes eye contact and say, "Here! Read this book!"

Which, actually, is kind of what I'll be doing on February 10 at 7:30 at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. I'm having a book launch for Greatshadow. I'll read a little from the opening, take some questions, then sign books. Also, I'll be bribing the audience with dragon cookies. (Did you know you can buy dragon-shaped cookie cutters? I didn't until quite recently. Is this a great country or what?)

Anyway, back to the giveaway: I launched the giveaway hoping I might interest a few hundred readers. Some of the other epic fantasy novels that had drawings going on had 400-500 entries. I told myself I'd be completely satisfied if I got 300 entries.

I wound up with 807 entries. Yowza. I'll give thanks to both Gerard Miley's cover art and, of course, the positive energy that flowed throughout the universe as the Year of the Dragon approached.

The winners are:

Cristen Ferguson
Heather Fourman
Brandi O'Bannon
Randy Smith
Ambereen Khan
Norma Navarrete
Melissa Alles
Margaret Scheiner
Ashley Keith
Donna Montgomery

Congrats, all! I'll have these in the mail to you tomorrow!

Goodreads Greatshadow Giveaway!

At last! I arrived home yesterday and found a case of Greatshadows! I was starting to worry I wouldn't see any actual copies of the book before it turned up in bookstores. With the release date only a little more than two weeks away, I'd hoped to start giving away copies weeks ago, but better late than never!

For advance readers who were promised copies last month, be patient, I'll start mailing out those copies next week.

For anyone who would still like to get their hands on a free advance copy, I'm pleased to announce my first ever giveaway through the worlds largest website for book reviews and recommendations, Goodreads. Ten copies will be given away through Goodreads from readers who sign up for the give away by January 23. This particular giveaway is limited to US readers; I'm investigating arranging a giveaway in other countries, so if you're one of my international fans, stay tuned!

If you're not a member of Goodreads, signing up is easy and free. To enter the drawing, visit Goodread's Greatshadow page.

Tune in to The State of Things!

Tomorrow (Wednesday 1-11) I'll be a guest on The State of Things on my local NPR station, WUNC. The show broadcasts live at noon, though I think I'll be on during the third segment of the show, probably closer to 12:40. The show also rebroadcasts each night at 9pm, and can be streamed live from the WUNC webpage. Archives of old shows can also be found there.

I'll be talking about my two latest releases, Burn Baby Burn and Greatshadow, telling the stories behind the stories. Tune it tomorrow!

Nobody Gets the Reviews!

Back in 2000, when I sat down to write Nobody Gets the Girl, I was unaware of any stand-alone, original superhero novels that had been written since the 1930s. Prose superheroes had a good run in the pulp era, but once comic books and superheroes became almost synonymous the only superhero novels published in recent decades were either liscensed stories featuring comic book properties like Batman and Superman, or else the shared world Wild Card novels.

Nobody hit book stores as part of an early wave of independent superhero novels, but, in 2003, you could have collected all these novels onto a single smallish bookshelf. But, in the last few years, superhero novels have experienced a grand awakening, facilitated in part by the ease of self-publishing on Amazon. Now, dozens of new ones turn up each month, more than I can keep track of.

Fortunately, there is someone out there who is keeping track of these things: Eric Searleman and his website SuperheroNovels.com. And, while his focus is on new releases, I'm honored to report that he today published a review of Nobody! My favorite line from the review is his description of my protagonist, where he captures the fan-boy geek at the core of the character: "The guy is an invisible horndog. And if you think about it, that pretty much describes most of the men who attend the San Diego Comic-Con. They’re all invisible and they all want to sleep with sexy superheroes."

And, as long as I'm talking about reviews for Nobody, a second one also turned up last week at a blog called JohnnySaturn.com. It's just a brief mention on his way to talk about other stuff, but he does say "that this is the best superhero prose I’ve read since August Grossman’s 'Soon I Will Be Invincible.'"

Not a bad way to kick off 2012!

Witchbreaker, 20941

I've started the third book of the Dragon Apocalypse, Witchbreaker. (It was originally titled Sorrow, but this was a downer of a title.) December is a horrible month for writing, since it seems like every week has two or three evenings where we are going to some holiday gathering or another. I'm not complaining about these events; I like hanging out with my friends and family! But, it does tend to shred up my "free" hours.

Making matters worse, I caught the flu near the beginning of the month, and spent many of my days off sleeping 18 hours a day. I actually had to use three sick days for, you know, being sick. That sucks! Sick days are ordinarily a valuable secret weapon in any writer's arsenal, especially when under a deadline. Fortunately, my actual deadline for this book is July. If I produce 10k words a week through January and February, I'll have a 100k first draft with plenty of time for rewrites.

Witchbreaker follows the young witch Sorrow, who is introduced in Hush. In that book, she taps into the elemental spirit of a dragon, giving her tremendous power, which she intends to use to destroy the Church of the Book in revenge for it's centuries long campaign of wiping out all witches. Unfortunately, the magical forces she's accessed are so strong she's lost control of them, and her quest to destroy the church instead becomes a quest to save her own life. She's joined in this quest by an unlikely ally--a five-hundred year old amnesiac super-warrior who may or may not be the legendary Witchbreaker, the famed knight who almost single-handedly vanquished the once mighty kingdom of witches. Sorrow needs to find the immortal Queen of Witches so she can learn to control her powers. The possible Witchbreaker wants to find the Queen to kill her. But, at least on the finding the Queen part of the job, their are benefits to them working together.

This book builds to the most important battle with a primal dragon yet, one that will forever change the balance of power among the dragons and place all of mankind in the crosshairs of destruction.

And, you only have to wait until January 2013 to read it!

Coming soon: News about new appearances I'll be making once Greatshadow is released. Cons! Classes! Discussion panels! Book launches! I'm going to have a busy start to 2012!

The first six chapters of Greatshadow, now available on Goodreads!

Want to get a headstart on The Dragon Apocalypse? Interested in seeing what all the fuss is about? My publishers have graciously supplied me with a preview of the first six chapters of Greatshadow, now available as a download from Goodreads!

Most standard previews Solaris provides are just one chapter, but I lobbied hard to get a six chapter preview because the first six chapters form a more or less complete story arc, introducing most of the cast and building to the books first big dragon battle in chapter five, and revealing Infidel's secret origins in chapter six, as the stage is set for the most dangerous mission of her life. Goodreads only allows the preview in epub format for download, but even if you don't have an epub compatible reader, you can still read the whole excerpt online!

Enjoy!

Final Greatshadow Cover

Behold! The final cover! The back text reads:

The warrior woman known as Infidel is legendary for her superhuman strength and skin tough as chain mail. She’s made few friends during her career as a sword-for-hire, and many powerful enemies. Following the death of her closest companion, Infidel finds herself weary of life as a mercenary and sets her eyes on one final prize that will allow her to live out the rest of her days in luxury, the priceless treasure trove of Greatshadow.

Greatshadow is the primal dragon of fire. His malign intelligence spies upon mankind through every flickering candle, patiently waiting to devour victims careless with even the smallest flame. The Church of the Book has assembled a team of twelve battle-hardened adventurers to slay the dragon once and for all. But tensions run high between the leaders of the quest who view the mission as a holy duty and the super-powered mercenaries who add power to their ranks, who dream only of Greatshadow's vast wealth. If the warriors fail to slay the beast, will they doom mankind to death by fire?

Greatshadow is the first book in an exciting new adventure series from a master of dragon fantasy.

Greatshadow is now available for preorder on Amazon! But, for followers of my blog, if you're willing to write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, and don't want to wait until January 31 to get your hands on a copy, drop me a line at nobodynovelwriter(at)yahoo.com. I have ebook editions available now, and will soon have a small supply of actual books.