Dragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection... Linkorama!

Behold! The Dragon Apocalypse has arrived! After a few technological obstacles, I've finally got the book live at most major book buying websites.

The Dragon Apocalypse is literally a labor of love. When I finished my Bitterwood saga a few years ago, I wanted to write something completely different in tone. Bitterwood was so dark and, well, bitter. I wanted to write about characters who were having a little fun with their lives, who actually enjoyed the grand adventures they undertook. I wanted the book to be funny, though not a parody. I also knew I wanted to write a love story, where I could explore a more redemptive and optimistic force than the revenge and hatred that had run through the struggles in Bitterwood. I also wanted to try something stylistically daring, writing the first two books in a first person voice with a single POV narrator who could give the tale a bit more attitude and edginess than I could allow myself in a third person voice. And when that narrator, Stagger, was taken off the playing field by events in the second book of the series, I switched back to third because I needed an objective voice to bring you Sorrow, the witch who drives the events in the last two books, and a character that I consider to be one of my best creations. She's both serious and funny, cruel and kind, introspective yet utterly blind to many of her own faults. She's ruthless in her goals, but also noble, and willing to sacrifice her body and sanity to serve the greater good.

One other thing other thing I'd like to note about the novel. Many, many years ago, before I'd written a single word of this series, I pitched the overall idea to my publisher. The key to any good pitch is to get to the heart of the matter in as few words as possible, so I used just four: "Bad girls, big dragons." I actually forgot about that pitch while I was writing, but when I look at the final battle, it strikes me that nearly all the major players in the effort to save the world from the dragons are women. Infidel, Cinder, Sorrow, the Black Swan, and Gale Romer are calling the shots and fighting on the front lines. One of their major goals is rescuing a male protagonist who's been captured. There's not a damsel in distress to be found. But there's nothing artificial about the all-girl cast at the end of the series. They were simply the best, most competent characters to arise from the pages of the plot.

This book has everything. It's a love story, a comedy, a ghost story, a philosophical debate, and an epic adventure that spans twenty years and literally takes the characters to Hell and back. What more could you possibly want in a book?

So... link-o-rama time!

First, Amazon. On this page you can buy either the ebook or the print edition.

Next up, Barnes and Noble. Only the ebook is showing at the moment, but the print edition should link in any day now, and you can also walk into any book store of your choice and have them order a copy of the print edition.

Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords will round out the ebook venues. Between one of these vendors, the ebook should be available worldwide. I know that Amazon UK has the book live because I'm already making sales there. The print edition is going to be available in the US, the UK, and the rest of Europe via Createspace. Alas, no distribution in print to the rest of the world at the moment. If you are outside North America and Europe and need to get your hands on a print copy, drop me an email and I'll see what I can work out if you're willing to pay for international shipping.

That's it! Thanks for your attention.

Dragon Apocalypse versus Brothers Karamazov

While formatting Dragon Apocalypse, I noticed that the collection was about 460,000 words. I wondered how it stacked up to some of the other long books I'd read, and happened to have The Brothers Karamazov sitting on the bookshelf beside me. I looked it up, and it weighs in at a mere 360,000 words. This surprised me, since when I read The Brothers Karamazov I was under the impression it contained all the words, ever. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful book, an enduring literary classic, and there's a good reason it sits next to me.  I keep many of my favorite books on a shelf beside my computer so I can glance over at them when I'm writing and remind myself of why I'm putting myself through the headache of creating a book.

That said, Dragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection is, let's face it, an inarguably larger book than The Brothers Karamazov. Just look at the photographic proof!

Plainly, my book is vastly superior in size.

Of course, you'd have to be a pretty shallow person to judge the worth of a book purely by the fact that one author has gone out of his way to bring you dozens of fascinating characters, settings, and plotlines, while the other author lacked the vision and imagination to keep going for another 100,000 words.

There's also the argument that number of words doesn't matter. It's how you use them. So, here's a perfectly objective chart comparing the literary merits of each book:

This chart was created by a Piedmont Laureate Emeritus, so you know it's accurate.

Look, I'm not saying you should skip reading The Brothers Karamazov in order to read Dragon Apocalypse. Both are fine books! You should really read them both. But start with Dragon Apocalypse. It's got dragons. And apocalypses.

Finally, my goal was to get up this morning and announce to the world all the different links that would allow you to purchase DRAGON APOCALYPSE: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. Alas, when I got home last night, the power was out, which meant I couldn't finish uploading to all the retailers. The power did come back on around 9:00, so I signed in and started uploading... only to have the power go off again, and stay off well into the middle of the night. So, I've spent my morning uploading books to Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and updating the Kindle file after I spotted a few typos created during the formatting process. (For some reason, if the first line of a chapter was dialogue, the opening quote mark was missing.) So, now I'm going to go for a hike, and hope that by this evening I'll have a bunch of links to share.

Full Cover Reveal!

Behold! There is a cover! Artwork by Hugo Award winning artist Julie Dillon!

Dragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection includes all four novels of the series, Greatshadow, Hush, Witchbreaker, and Cinder. As an added bonus, the novel Greatshadow: Origins is also part of the set. I wrote this novella several years before the novel. It was printed in an anthology called Blood and Devotion. Several familiar characters are in the novella, including Infidel, Bigsby, and a Truthspeaker. The basic plot's the same, with a party of holy warriors off to slay the dragon, and a team of mercenaries tagging along planning to grab as much treasure as they can. There's even a few lines of dialogue lifted verbatim from the closing lines of the novella and transplanted into the novel. In comic book terms, the novella is the Golden Age version of these characters, while the novels are the Silver Age.

The book will be available at most ebook retailers very soon. I'm uploading files to several sites today. There will also be a print edition as big as a phone book. I'm chewing my nails waiting for the printed proof to arrive via UPS.

I'll do an update Friday that will hopefully have some links to actually buy this thing. The print edition will retail for $27. The ebook will be a steal at $5.99. You know you want it!

Cover teaser #2 for soon to be revealed new book!

A little larger slice from the cover of my new book. Coming soon! Possibly as early as this Friday! It's big! It's hot! Full cover to be revealed on Wednesday!

366 Update

At the beginning of the year, I set out to see if it were possible for me to write 366,000 words in a year, 1000 words a day on average. My methodology is perhaps a little controversial. I count first draft 100%, but I've also been giving myself partial credit for rewrites, and also giving myself bonuses for getting books into print and a few non-writing activities like cover design. Still, most of my word count is coming from novels, either first drafts or revisions.

I was on pace for the first half of the year, closing out June just slightly over 180,000 words. July, alas, was something of a speed bump, though for a good reason, since I was on vacation for two weeks and not writing during that time. I kept tracking my weekly productivity, but stopped adding it up in July since I was seeing myself slip further away from my goal. Fortunately, in August I started clocking in several weeks in the 8-10,000 word range. Since I just need 7000 words a week to stay on track, I started making up lost ground. Today, I finally decided to do the math and...

YES! I've got 257,092 words written for the year. I've only got a 103,000 to go, and over three months to get there!

The rest of September will probably not yield many high word counts, though I will be getting some bonus points for having a book go live on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc. (Which book? I'll reveal the answer this week! Hint: It's longer than the Brother's Karamazov by 100,000 words.)

Then, in October, I've got a vacation and two conventions. Still, I'll start a project that month that should take me over the top on my word count. I've got several different options.

1. I can revise Cut Up Girl and Big Ape to get them ready for printing.

2. I can write a third novel in that universe and plan on revising all three next year and getting them into print with just a few weeks between release dates.

3. I could write a third novel set in my Nobody Gets the Girl universe. Basically, I have Nobody and Burn Baby Burn as a duology, but I'm finally getting it into my head that more books in a series equals more sales, and I actually have a pretty kick ass idea for one last book to cap off series. But, that pushes back Cut Up Girl and Big Ape even further. On the positive side, the last book in this series, Covenant, is one I've been thinking about for a long time, and I think it would come together pretty quickly. It also is a good vehicle for tackling an ethical question that I've grappled with for a long time. Is it enough in life to simply do no harm? My libertarian and nihilistic ethics have for a long time led me to believe that people can do whatever they want with their lives, as long as they don't hurt other people. But, after years of living with this belief, I can't help but wonder if this philosophy isn't merely selfish, but actively harmful to collective humanity. Of course, I've long believed that if individuals just take care of their own interests, then collectively mankind is better off. But what if I'm wrong? What if the world really is a better place if we're all our brothers' keepers? If Nobody Gets the Girl has a coherent theme, it would be that good intentions are dangerous things, and that some of the greatest harm is done to mankind by people convinced that they alone can make the world a better, safer, happier place. It would be interesting to explore this theme with a more positive spin.

Lots to think about. Lots to write. 103,000 words to go. Forward!

Something big is coming....

Big Ape isn't my only big news this week. I've also just finished uploading files for another big project that will go on sale before the end of the month. And by "big," I'm talking about a book with a print edition 790 pages long, containing just shy of half a million words. Cover art is by Hugo-winning artist Julie Dillon! Here's a close up of  part of the cover. More will be revealed soon!

Big Ape Update: 88,693 words, first draft finished!

Every novel I've ever worked on hits a part in the middle where I find myself utterly discouraged. I really can't win, no matter how things are going. If the words are flowing easily, I find myself worried that what I'm writing is too trite and simple. Maybe it's flowing because I'm rehashing old, tired ideas, not putting anything fresh or original on the page. The flip side to this problem is that the words aren't flowing at all, and I'm convinced that what I'm writing is too weird and strange to ever be of interest to anyone. I'm aware of my tendency to follow my characters places it's probably not wise for them to go.

In Big Ape, I encountered a little of both. Originally, I had planned for one of the primary villains of the book to be called Bad Mother. She had an army of robotic crime babies. But, her most lethal, city destroying weapon was a 300 foot tall robotic doll called Big Baby. The problem: My first novel features a 300 foot tall robotic doll with a gun for a head, called Baby Gun. Now, it might seem like it should have been obvious to me that I was repeating myself before I even started typing. But, the thing is, Bad Mother rose up organically in my imagination as a female, tech genius supervillain. There are surprisingly few female mad scientists in comic books, and I felt like I needed to balance the gender scale a little. And, honestly, I just love typing the words "crime babies." And once I had an army of robotic babies on tap, well, the logical progression was Big Baby. And, once you have a Big Baby, of course I have to have him trashing a major American city, while my Big Ape protagonist uses a growth ray to grow to an equal size to fight him and... and... then, in the middle of the fight, finally, oh yeah, Baby Gun. I've done this before.

But, so what? I've written about dragons in 8 different books. Is it completely forbidden for an author to repeat himself?

Sigh.

In the middle of the chapter, I knew Big Baby had to go, which also meant that Bad Mother probably wasn't going to make the cut either. So, losing the villain mid-novel... kind of a problem. But, a problem that I solved, I hope, with an even more insane villain named Technosaurus. He's a sixty-five million year old survivor of a race of intelligent dinosaurs who... I should say no more. You'll have to read the book. Let's just say that robotic dinosaurs aren't quite as satisfying to write as crime babies, but they get the job done.

Once I had my villain problem solved, though, I ran smack into a "character going someplace I didn't plan for them to go" problem. Big Ape is a fairly light-hearted character with a sense of humor and an instinctual drive to do good. He has a dark side, though, and a tragic past that gives him depth. But, about two thirds of the way into the book, I put him into a situation where he faces a temptation to do something that might cost him a lot of reader sympathy. And, it seems like I would be the final arbiter of whether or not he made the right choice, but that's not always how writing works. The character wanted to do the wrong thing. Needed to do the wrong thing. The wrong thing was the only possible choice he had given his history and the stresses he'd been under in the story to that point. So, I wrote the last third of the book with the character fully aware of his transgression, and me grappling with whether or not I could forgive him for his transgression. Ultimately, I think it gives the character depth, but I still have the sinking feeling that a lot of readers will be pissed off by the character doing such an unheroic thing. Then again, literature is full of heroes who fail moral tests. King Arthur couldn't control his lusts. Big Ape is still a good guy, he just has flaws. Flaws are important in a character, right?

I guess we'll find out.

At this point, I'm undecided about my next move. I could go back and start revising Cut Up Girl and Big Ape. Or, I could launch into yet another novel first draft, and give myself some distance from Big Ape before I start revising. I'll definitely make my choice by early October. Until then, stay tuned!