First, I’d like to thank all of you who bought copies of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”. The novella is now unavailable until I sell it to a traditional publisher, so I hope you’ve enjoyed it!
Second, I was asked recently to put up a page for my works in progress and my upcoming publications, so I’ve done that: 2010 Publication Schedule. It’s linked at the top of the page and in the inner sidebar, so hopefully people will be able to find it when they go looking, in the future.
Third–and I know this is what you’re all really here for–I’ve posted a teaser chapter for DEMON HUNTS, book five of the Walker Papers, due out in June 2010! Enjoy! :)
I was going to make a posting saying “Look, so I’ve got about ten copies of THE FIREBIRD DECEPTION and about twenty-five copies of THE PHOENIX LAW, and I’d really kind of like to move them out of my closet and into somebody’s bookshelf. If you’re interested, I’ll sell ‘em for $5 each, plus S&H (which would be $7 for 1 or $13 for both) and yes of course I’ll sign them, let me know in comments or email me.”
Only, because those are the second and third books in the Strongbox Chronicles, and because I don’t have enough copies of THE CARDINAL RULE left to sell any, I went to Amazon so I could get a URL to point people at used copies, and instead found this:
Kindle editions of THE CARDINAL RULE, THE FIREBIRD DECEPTION, and THE PHOENIX LAW, all available as of Monday, February 15th.
And then I went to Barnes & Noble.com and discovered they will be available as of Monday, Feb 15 there, too!
Possibly this makes the physical book offer somewhat moot. However, look: they’re cheap on the Kindle and they’re really fun, fast reads, and I practically guarantee you’ll like them. Anybody know how to launch a massive e-book campaign to get people to go buy those? :)
ETA: All sold out of my copies of the Strongbox Chronicles! Thanks!
a story of the Old Races
“Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was and is an experiment in direct-market story sales and sustainable income models for writers. Commissioned in June 2009 by some fifty contributors, the planned 7500 word short story grew to a 23,000 word novella centered around Janx and Daisani, two of the most popular characters from my Negotiator Trilogy. It’s also a sequel to the online short story Five Card Draw, and part of a longer sequence of planned short stories and novellas.
For a minimum $10 buy-in, patrons received exclusive access to the novella in September 2009. A second opportunity to become a patron for the same minimum $10 buy-in is now available through the month of February, 2010. At the end of February, “Hot Time” will be off the market until such a time as it finds a traditional publisher.
Cover art by Lanny Liu.
February 28, 2010:: “Hot Time” is no longer for sale. Thanks to all who bought it!
an excerpt from “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”:
She was too young, even for a man with no age, but she caught his eye. Slim, dark-haired, with long fingers caught in the skirt of a shapeless dress, she was clearly not a child of wealth. She no doubt belonged to the riverboat upon which she stood, a shabby thing that had seen better days. Even so, in the fire’s light they both bent toward beauty.
It was her gaze, fixed on the sky, which arrested him. Others watched the fire, drawn in by its glow and movement, but she looked upward as though she could see what soared above the smoke. That was quite impossible: even knowing who danced there, Daisani could barely see them himself, but the girl watched as if she knew. Such seeing eyes were enough that he might have gone to her then, despite her youth, but tonight; tonight Chicago was burning.
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Drive Thru RPG has gotten together with approximately one zillion game designers and they’re offering an unbeatable package: Donate $20 to Doctors Without Borders through them, and get $1400 worth of RPG downloads in exchange.
Furthermore, DTRPG are matching $5 and $10 donations, if you can’t afford the $20 download donation. The fundraising drive has brought in a mind-boggling $93,500 so far (I don’t know if that includes the matching funds or not, but I’m not sure it matters: it’s a hell of a lot of money), and I’m sort of expecting it’ll break $100K before morning.
If you’re at all inclined to donate through them, let me sweeten the pot just a little: I will send advanced copies of DEMON HUNTS, book 5 of the Walker Papers, to the first dozen people who donate and email me their receipt (to cemurphyauthor@gmail.com).
For a time frame, I expect to get copies of DEMON HUNTS around mid-April, so if that’s correct you’d be getting the book about a month, perhaps slightly more, before it comes out in the bookstores.
Edited to add: A dozen people have now emailed me their receipts for their donations to Doctors Without Borders via Drive Thru RPG. In fact, a few more than a dozen have emailed me, so I will throw in a baker’s dozenth book.
The 13th book will be a name drawn from a hat after DTRPG shut down their fundraising efforts, so if you decide to donate through them, go ahead and email me the receipt and I’ll put your name into the hat.
You guys are all extremely, extremely cool. Thank you for participating in this. *beams*
Love, death and war…
The Morrigan goddess represented all three to the ancient Celts. Journey with our authors as they tell stories of love, war, hatred, revenge and mortality – each featuring the Morrigan in her many guises.
Re-visit the world of Deverry, and of Nevyn, with a previously unpublished tale by Katharine Kerr, watch the Norse gods meet their Celtic counterparts with Elaine Cunningham, meet a druid who dances for the dead with C.E. Murphy and follow the path of a Roman centurion with Anya Bast.
These are but a few offerings from the stories collection in The Phantom Queen Awakes. If you are searching for a rich blend of dark fantasy, then this is a collection perfect for you.
The Phantom Queen Awakes stories:
Rising Tide: Ruth Shelton
Kiss of the Morrigan: Anya Bast
I Guard Your Death: Lynne Lumsden Green
Gifts of the Morrigan: Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
Cairn Dancer: C. E. Murphy
Washerwoman: Jennifer Lawrence
The Raven’s Curse: Sharon Kae Reamer
Ravens: Mari Ness
The Lass from Far Away: Katharine Kerr
The Trinket: Peter Bell
The Dying Gaul: Michael Bailey
The Children of Badb Catha: James Lecky
The Plain of Pillars: L. J. Hayward
The Silver Branch: Linda Donahue
The Good and Faithful Servant: Martyn Taylor
The White Heifer of Fearchair: T. A. Moore
She Who is Becoming: Elaine Cunningham
N.B.: The Phantom Queen Awakes will be released 14th February 2010 in the US.
UK, Australian and European release dates to follow.
US: $20 + shipping
Happy New Year!
I’m guest blogging over at Temple Library Reviews about some of the differences between writing comics and novels. Thanks very much to Harry for inviting me to come play at his review site!
As reminded by several persons, THE PRETENDER’S CROWN has been nominated for the 2009 David Gemmell LEGEND Award for Fantasy. It’s on the long list, which is incredibly flattering, and it would be even more flattering to make it to the short list. My understanding is that voting between now and March will winnow the list down, so if you’ve any inclination, here’s the voting page.
And here’s this year’s publication schedule:
February: THE PHANTOM QUEEN AWAKES (anthology with a story of the Morrigan)
May: DRAGON LURE (anthology with a post-Negotiator-trilogy Janx story)
May 29: RUNNING WITH THE PACK (anthology with a Regency werewolf story)
June 1: DEMON HUNTS (book 5 of the Walker Papers. Birthday release date!)
August 31: TRUTHSEEKER (book 1 of the Worldwalker Duology)
Faith Hunter has given me permission to go ahead and post the story snippet I wrote up a couple days ago. She and I are now discussing the possibility of sometime in 2010 actually collaborating on a novella which would be set outside both characters’ timelines/real worlds–in other words, pure fanfic, except written by the authors themselves–to put up either as a commission like I did with “Hot Time”, or simply sell as a direct market piece. People should respond to this post and let us know if you’d be interested in buying a crossover story.
In the meantime, a teaser:
There was something weird about crossing the city lines into New Orleans. Not just that the Big Easy was by anybody’s standards–in fiction, anyway–the center of all things supernatural in the States. It was bigger than that, a nasty jolt that wrenched everything a couple steps to the left. Even the city’s aura looked different from inside than it had from a few miles out, and I had absolutely no clue why.
The exciting thing about my life was that I’d probably find out.
For all my traveling around as a kid, I’d never gone through New Orleans. N’awlins, the way the natives said it. I loved that sound, like it was a word to be rolled around in and licked off the skin. So I did what any tourist would do upon arriving in the heartland of American Weird.
I hit the French Quarter.
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I have, over the past couple days, read Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock books, SKINWALKER and BLOOD CROSS.
They’re the most enjoyable urban fantasy I’ve read since I started writing it myself, so basically they’re the best urban fantasy I’ve read in ten years. This is not *only* because Joanne Walker and Jane Yellowrock would get on like a house on fire, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s not just that they’re wonderfully well-researched–which, given that Jane is a skinwalker (ie, shapeshifter) of Cherokee descent, was exceedingly likely to run up against my own research and my own ideas on how I’d do things and clash, but didn’t. It’s not only that the world is well-developed with hints of interesting things around the corners. It’s not just that the writing style, which is invariably one of my problems with urban fantasy, didn’t once catch me out. It’s not just that Hunter’s knack for description makes me want to weep in despair. It’s all of those things put together to make a couple of really great stories, and this is how much I liked them:
They made me want to write Joanne Walker-Jane Yellowrock crossover fan fiction.
In fact, I may have even started a lil’ story that I sent to Faith, which I will perhaps post if she says it’s okay. :)
Anyway, the point really is that if you like the Walker Papers at all, I cannot imagine that you would not thoroughly enjoy the Jane Yellowrock books. SKINWALKER is out, and BLOOD CROSS is out on January 5th (which surprised me, I had no idea I’d gotten an early copy!), so basically you have exactly enough time to dash out, buy SKINWALKER, read it, and make sure your local bookstore will be ordering BLOOD CROSS for release day when you can buy it and make Faith’s numbers look good so there will be more Jane Yellowrock books. :)
Over on Magical Words, the group writing blog I’m a part of, we’re running a book give-away contest this week. Head on over to participate in my contest–for which the prize is a signed copy of one of my books, or a copy of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”, the Old Races novella I wrote this summer which has only been available to subscribers. While the novella will be available again to buy in February, this is your one and only chance to possibly win it for free. (And I’ll also send the winner one of the Ireland 2010 calendars that I did, if you take the “Hot Time” option.)
The contest ends Wednesday, December 30th, and the winner will be announced New Year’s Eve.
Merry Christmas Eve, everybody!
A reader emailed me a writing question a few days ago, and gave me the all-clear to use its answer as a blog post, so I’m going to give it a shot. The question (and its surrounding commentary, which I thought was relevant) follows:
I know that some authors find rewriting easier (in some ways) than the initial creative process. Me, I can whip something out of nothing without breaking a sweat. But whenever I try to approach the highly necessary rewrite of my recent novella, I get almost immediately overwhelmed by the minutiae of things that need tending to. I am pulled this way and that, trying to keep track of the myriad of details that need to hover simultaneously in my forebrain–and I end up just fiddling with the niggling little grammar nits, polishing word choice, questioning whether that adverb is really necessary, and reassuring myself that all the independent clauses are safely sequestered within their parenthetical commas.
Consequently, the real work–that is, deleting scenes and rewriting the whole cloth of large sections–goes undone because of these distractions of questionable value. Sometimes, I think I might be better off deleting the damned thing and starting over from scratch.
So, my question: In your subsequent drafts, how do you keep the story from getting in the way of your rewriting?
Answer behind the cut.
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