Shiny Covers!

They didn't tell me they would be shiny! I just got what they call sales proofs in the mail—these are what the sales folks take around to bookstores and say, "See, if you're going to judge a book by its cover, then THIS ONE WINS!"—and the title that was previously white text is now foil stamped and embossed! I had no idea they were going to do that until my editor told me they'd gone ahead and done it. My scan doesn't do it justice, but you'll get the idea:

As Patrick Rothfuss would say, click to embiggen

Well, my peeps at Del Rey outdid themselves with these covers. I love 'em! They are going to gleam on the shelves! Ginormous thanks to authors Ari Marmell, Kelly Meding, and Nicole Peeler for reading the book before the awesome cover existed and saying something nice about it. That truly means the most, because they didn't have to read it or say anything nice, yet they did.

Now here's a better look at the cover for book two in the series:

I really dig this one because you can see Atticus's tattoo much better; it wraps five times around his biceps and then falls down the top of his forearm, but you can't see that in the pose for Hounded. This cover has a couple more touch-ups to go before it's finalized, but it's 90% there and they needed to get a proof out for the sales team. I think it looks spectacular as is! Hope you dig 'em too.

Still Life with Fantasy and Fruit #8

I'm on my October break—which means a week off from school—and having a WHOLE! WEEK! to read and write and run errands during normal business hours sounds like a swim in milk chocolate right now.

My copy edits for Hammered are going to arrive today, so of course I'll be diving into that, and I'm hoping to finish up my outline for book six this week, which is currently wearing the tentative title of Hunted.

My outlines are about 10-15 pages. I'm making them longer and more detailed than I used to because I saw the advantage of it while writing Hexed; the detailed notes I'd written on Hexed allowed me to crank it out in five months, and it was also far easier to edit/prettify than Hounded or Hammered, neither of which had detailed outlines. So I've learned quite a bit about myself as a writer—I can write as a pantser and as a plotter as well—but wow, the job sure gets done more efficiently when I plot. That doesn't mean I slavishly follow the outline, either—I change things as I go, especially the order of events. I'll probably post my Hexed outline after the book comes out so people can compare what I'd planned against what actually got written.

Here's what I plan to read this week:

Still Life with Fantasy and Fruit #8

We have three miniature fruits here alongside a giant variation of another. Miniature Clementine oranges, a wee watermelon, and a petite pumpkin frame Scott Westerfeld's dieselpunk Behemoth, while huge table grapes called Pristines nestle against the steampunk succulence of Cherie Priest's Dreadnought.

I loved both Leviathan (Westerfeld) and Boneshaker (Priest), so these sequels are going to be delightful returns to worlds I enjoyed on my first visit. I especially love that Dreadnought is printed in brown ink like Boneshaker was.

In other news, Suvudu is starting their Villain Cage Match! TODAY! You can go vote now for who should fill in the last few slots in the bracket here.

And when the first round starts, one of the matchups will be introduced by Yours Truly! The bracket is public now, so I'm not going to be spoiling anything with this: I've written up the White Witch from the Chronicles of Narnia (Seed #5) vs. Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica (Seed #28)! I hope you'll follow along and join in the fun by voting! These Cage Matches are the coolest thing ever...it's a chance to feed the Nerd Inside. So say we all.

A bulleted list of updates

•I have publication dates for all three books now:
HOUNDED, April 26, 2011
HEXED, May 24, 2011
HAMMERED, June 28, 2011

•In super-duper-happy-mega-big-jumbo news, I'm getting ultra-spiffy, full-color, finished-art ARE's (Advanced Reader Editions)! Normally ARE's are sent out with generic covers on them; they say the author's name, the title of the book, and then there's a nice houndstooth pattern or some diamonds or whatnot to look at, nothing more. Full-bore ARE's are supposed to indicate the publisher is really behind the book, thinks it will do well, etc. so I'm extremely grateful and lucky to have the coolest editor evah. But it also means I'll get to see some cover art a bit sooner than I thought! If you cannot feel my excitement pouring through the pixels at your eyeballs right now, then you are extraordinarily stable to the point of Stoicism! Squeeee! There. That did it. You're excited now too!

•Whoa! I got my first fan mail! A relative of my alpha reader wrote me a very nice note after he finished reading HEXED. Completely made my week. Here's a snippet:

The last fight scene was epic! I could picture it exactly--it was very easy to follow what was happening...I've read other books where I just get lost in the various battle sequences and I just end up skipping pages.  Boo to them.  You, sir, know what you're doing.  Kudos.

Wasn't that sweet? He said a lot of very nice things, but that bit made me all warm and fuzzy inside because fight scenes are extremely difficult for me to write. I count that as  high praise indeed. Thanks, Mike R!

•Possessed by whimsy, a couple of my friends are doing a parody of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video with me. We are all giant men. We won't be wearing spandex or leotards because we're trying to induce laughter rather than vomiting. Can't wait to get it all shot and edited...we did the first part today, and it was quite a hoot!

•Getting into The Scarlet Letter with the kids at school. The Romantic writing style is a bear, but the story is first-class soap opera, man. And Roger Chillingworth is the most cold-blooded villain ever. Dude  creeps me out. I've had nightmares, because he just never gives up. And it's funny how some adults have heard we're reading it and they're instantly down on it. "HATED IT!" they say. Well, it's only because they're still having nightmares about Roger F-ing Chillingworth. I mean, if you give Darth Vader, Freddy Kreuger, and Roger Chillingworth each a planet of people to make miserable, first one to make 'em all go insane wins, Roger F-ing Chillingworth will win. He is a master of mental torture. Puritan Guilt: It's What's For Dinner!

Where did the time go?

It's been almost a week since my last post...I've been busy. School, you know. I'm finishing up The Crucible and about to start The Scarlet Letter. O, the calamities of Puritan drama! They'll be begging for the Age of Reason soon.

But I was rather productive over the long weekend. The typeset pages of HEXED arrived and I finished a read-through, finding far fewer errors than I did for HOUNDED, so that had me feeling happy. Still, I found a tiny sequence where I wasn't quite sure what was happening...I almost couldn't believe I'd written it. Funny how time away from a manuscript can bring out little things like that. So I have some very minor tweaks to make—probably less than 30 words—and then that will be finished.

I also finished outlining book five, which is (at this moment) titled TRAPPED. My earlier idea for that book's title was TEMPTED, but I decided that made it sound either like a romance novel or some sort of Food Network book about desserts. Romance and desserts are awesome, of course—especially together, isn't there a subgenre called Calorie Erotica?—but that's not the vibe I'm going for.

And hey, cheers to my followers in Australia—I think I have a couple, right? You'll be pleased to hear that I got my contract from Oz today, and the publication dates for all three books are just one month behind the US release, so you'll get HOUNDED in June, HEXED in July, and HAMMERED in August of 2011! I'm very excited about this and so happy that HarperCollins/Voyager decided to pick up the series!

Must go back to school now to announce the freshman football game. My play-by-play kung fu is the best in the East Valley. ;)

One Hundred Plus Three

Not sure if there's some sort of numerological significance to this, but today marks my one hundredth blog post and my third novel accepted by Del Rey!

I have been smiling so much about that last bit that people have begun to fear me. They swerve out of my path and refuse to make eye contact, frightened that I might be happy at them.

I'm incapable of turning down the wattage, however, because at this time last year I didn't even have a book deal yet (The deal happened on Sep. 25, 2009), and now—11 months later—Del Rey has accepted HOUNDED, HEXED, and HAMMERED!

And starting about eight months from now—April 26, 2011—people will finally get to read my books! The trick, I am told, is to make them aware of my existence between now and then. I hope I can manage somehow.

My release schedule—April, May, and June of next year—means readers will get to sink their mental teeth deep into the series right away. It also means I'm in a really weird place right now...the sort of place they never tell you about, and by they I mean all those people who write about the writing life...you know: writers. I've written three urban fantasies, but I'm still a few months away from having a cover or early reviews or any of those other shiny things writers like to gush about. And don't get me wrong—I'm going to gush about my cover(s) and my (hopefully kind) early reviews, etc.—but in the meantime I'm a writer without any books to point at. It's a funky state of being; I should probably take notes.

The reason they never told me about this place is that there truly aren't many writers who have debuted in this fashion. From what I understand, I'm only the third to do so for Del Rey. I don't know if other publishers do this or not...so maybe I'm the third, period. Naomi Novik began her wonderful Temeraire series this way, and Stacia Kane just got finished releasing her first three Downside novels last month.

I've been told my blog posts will start poppin' up on Suvudu. Maybe it will even be this one—if so, hello there, nice person who clicked on a curious link! I should probably warn you that I will not simply be writing about my books. I tend to write about beer and miniature dwarfs and things of importance to nerds, and I do my best to post twice a week. I also like to interview other authors because I'm sort of a fanboy and easily impressed by smart people (my interview with Gail Carriger will go live a week from today, August 31). Browse through my archives to get a sense for it—I have 99 other posts here to enjoy! And if you say hi in the comments to let me know that you're now aware of my existence, I'll repay you by introducing you to Sigurd Kneecapper on Saturday—plus an awesome microbrew! :)

Upcoming Stuff

Well, this is weird...I'm going to blog about stuff I'm not currently blogging about. It's not terribly brilliant as far as posts go, but school starts tomorrow and I must obsess about that for a bit. So here are some things to which we may all look forward:

1. On August 31 there will be the special treat of my latest 3:2 Interview with the amazing Gail Carriger, author of Soulless, Changeless, and the upcoming Blameless!

2. Sometime soon I might get to see some preliminary cover art for my books! I don't know when I'll get to share that with you all, probably deep into the fall sometime, but I have it on good authority that someone is working on it.

3. Also in the works for later is a full-on website—that definitely won't go live before I get my cover art, though. I'm planning on uploading some sound files of the foreign-language passages in my books, especially the Polish and German in HEXED and the Hebrew in HAMMERED—the Icelandic, too, if I can find someone to do it for me. And there will be pictures of my character sketches, early attempts at a map for Asgard, and other goodies.

4. Speaking of sound files, don't know if I've mentioned it before, but there will be unabridged audio versions of all three books from Brilliance. I cannot WAIT to hear who they get to do these books! Besides speaking English with the western American accent, he'll have to pull off passable versions of Irish, Tamil, Polish, Icelandic, and Russian accents as well, then actually speak several passages in Irish, Polish, German, Icelandic, Hebrew, and Russian like a native speaker. Whoever does it will probably  hate me by the time he's through. But I will make it all better by soothing his sore vocal cords with beer.
5. Speaking of beer (because you should whenever you can), there are more Still Lifes with Dwarfs and Beer ahead. I think I may have found that Smoked Porter Hillary was telling me about, cannot wait to try it...but I have to wait until the weekend.
6. On October 9, if anybody can make it to Payson, Arizona, I'll be speaking at 10 am on genre fiction, how to break into the biz, that sort of thing. It's targeted toward aspiring writers and I'm excited that I might be able to help—because I was an aspiring writer too, until just recently. Don't have a venue quite yet, but I'll post it as soon as I know.

Hope everyone is doing well!

A Deal is Made, a Book is Finished!

Happy dancing abounds, for Harper Voyager in Australia is going to publish Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered! I hope all the Aussies and Kiwis really like the books and make me come down there. ;-) The plan is to release them simultaneously with the US editions, so that'll be April, May, & June of next year.

Today I also finished Hammered—or my first draft of it, anyway. This makes me happy because I'm still a month out from my due date. I'm going to read it all through with a critical eye and make some minor revisions suggested by my alpha readers, then I'll send it off to my beta reader and my agent. Delivery to Del Rey will follow shortly thereafter.

I've kept tabs and posted plenty of updates on the writing of Hammered for my own curiosity, so that I could go back at a later date—say, this one—and see if anything interesting emerged. I'm going to take a more in-depth look at my archives later and see if I can make a fancy chart, but the first thing I've noticed is that this one took a bit longer to write. It's to be expected, really: I knew when I finished Hexed I'd probably never write that fast again. From the first typed word to final delivery in New York, it took me only five months. Hammered is already pushing six months and it's still not ready to deliver...but it will be soon. The takeaway here is that I wrote two novels in 11 months. I didn't know that was possible for me until I did it. :-)

Also, I'm getting very excited because next week I get to meet my agent and editor in person for the first time! Here is what I know about them so far:
1. Evan is male.
2. Tricia is female.
I think we'll have plenty to talk about, don't you?

Alphas & Betas & Editing

This is about alpha and beta readers, not werewolves. Rarr! Sorry. It's also about all the fixin' that needs to be done before a book appears on the shelves.

Nobody writes perfect, golden prose on their first draft. Or even their second or third. I could be wrong...but I doubt it.

Every writer's different on how they approach these things, but it's fairly common to have some sort of feedback during the writing process. An objective pair of eyes can catch inconsistencies and let you know whether what you've written A) makes any sense and B) if you're entertaining. I use two alpha readers who look at each chapter as it's finished and one beta reader who looks at the whole novel only. These three people all look at the book before my agent or editor sees it.

So hey, shout-outs to my alphas, Alan and Tawnya: They catch all sorts of good stuff and let me know when I've made a factual error. For example: "Kevin, blue spruce trees don't grow in Europe. Dumbass."

Calling me a dumbass wasn't really part of the original comment—I simply felt like one. And I'm grateful to my alpha reader for checking on these things. I should have taken the time to research that, but I was probably in a character/plot groove and didn't want to pause to make sure I named the right species of tree. A good alpha reader will call you on stuff like that, and it's hard to find good alphas. Who'd want to read a novel in spastic spoonfuls, sometimes weeks apart, and nitpick instead of simply enjoying the story? Such people are a rare breed.

My beta reader, Andrea, is my Politically Correct filter. (Sometimes I put things in there just to set her off. It's funny when she gets into a snit.) She also finds inconsistencies in tone that occasionally creep in during the course of writing, and she suggests that I flesh out a character here or maybe leave out something there. Since she reads the whole book in a sitting or two, she spots larger issues rather than tiny ones.

After the alphas and beta are finished and I've made changes according to their suggestions, I send it off to my agent, who may/may not have plenty to say (there was a lot for Hounded, but he had me deliver Hexed to Del Rey as is) and only then do I deliver it to my editor. This means my editor is probably seeing my fourth or fifth draft, but I go ahead and call it my "first" draft in terms of my computer files.

Then we go back and forth with changes until she says heck, this is pretty good, I'll accept this. At that point everybody takes a few minutes for a happy dance. To give you an idea of quantity, there were five rounds of changes for Hounded, only three for Hexed.

But wait! We're not finished! Next the copy editor gets hold of it and lays down some Grammar Fu with a green pencil. He/she will also catch lots of factual issues, ask great questions, point out inconsistencies, and I can make changes there as necessary.

After that it goes to typesetting, and the only changes I can make then are minor spelling/punctuation doodads. Inserting/deleting passages is probably not a good idea at this point, because it costs money.

Finally, it's finished. Only after months of work will it go out to the general public. The author's name is on the cover so he/she gets all the credit, but quite a few people are involved with any publication. (I didn't even mention the cover artist and all the people in marketing and publicity. That'll be a blog for another day.) So to my alphas and beta and my agent & editor(s), thank you, and cheers.

Copy Editing Day

Today I am supposed to receive the copy-edited manuscript for my second book, Hexed. I'm incredibly excited about this—so much so that I might indulge in excessive superfluous exclamation points!!!!!!

You might wonder why.

Why would any sane person want to see their written work all marked up by a stranger 3,000 miles away?

Because there will be a title page with my name on it that the publisher made up all special just for me. There will also be an ISBN number assigned specifically to my book. It's all proof that my dream of getting published will be real someday...in just a wee bit over a year from now. *tiny groan*

April 26, 2011...*another tiny groan.* It's a long time to wait. Nineteen months and one day after the deal was struck, Hounded will finally hit the shelves. That is a bit longer than most deals, but since it's going to be followed in quick succession by Hexed in May and Hammered in June, the extra time is built in there for me to actually write two books.

It will be bearable, of course, because the day will eventually come. I get to wake up every day and know I'm twenty-four hours closer to my goal. Eventually I'll get to see my covers and do a little dance. I'll get to hear the reader of the audio version attempt to do all the accents in the books (Irish, Polish, Tamil, Russian, Finnish, Mandarin, Icelandic, and German) and grin until my face hurts. And maybe, in the interim, I'll get some good news from overseas, or some news about dramatic rights. It could happen anytime, and that makes waiting more fun.

As far as progress goes, I've taken a step backward, but I think it's more of a course correction. I've been writing about these vampires recently and not digging it at all. I wrote about four thousand words, had this huge imbroglio set at University of Phoenix Stadium, and it didn't feel right. So I highlighted the lot of it and pressed Delete. It wasn't really a subplot; it was more of a derailment, a complete tangent, and it's better that I wait on the vampires until I can develop them properly in their own story. Hammered isn't about vampires. It's about Ratatosk and Yggdrasil, Thor and Odin, and How to Tempt a Frost Giant.

O frabjous day! There shall be many words to cuddle, plus hot chocolate with marshmallows! I raise my mug to you, and hope you have some lovely words to cuddle up with too.

Serendipitous surprises

I love it when something cool happens in the writing process that I didn't plan ahead of time. Just like a reader enjoys being surprised (most of the time) by what happens in a book, I like to be surprised while I'm writing it. It's a large part of what makes writing enjoyable. The characters take on a life of their own and do things I never expected, and sometimes these surprises turn out to be major plot points.


When I'm planning a book I write chapter by chapter outline that contains the major events of each chapter, nothing more. It's a guideline with lots of room for detours. Sometimes the detours are lengthy.


For example, in Hexed I had a priest and a rabbi walk into a pagan bookstore as a joke and it turned out to become a major subplot of both that book and Hammered. 


Right now, as I'm writing Hammered, a trip to Asgard that I thought was going to take one chapter has now taken four. And because of the way things have developed, there is going to be a vampire problem that I never outlined at all, but I can't wait to write it. Jesus was to make a cameo appearance in chapter four, but now he's going to be pushed back to chapter nine or ten because of other events that have developed in the meantime.


After the book is finished I like to compare the outline to the finished product. All the events of Hexed I had outlined are in there, but they're in a different sequence than I originally planned and there are several bonus events that crept in, like the priest and rabbi subplot.


25K on Hammered now. And if anyone knows a reliable Hebrew speaker, give me a shout; I need to translate a couple of sentences for the book.

Spiffiness

March 1, I have decided, is a spiffy day. Behold:

1) My editor told me my revisions were spiffy and formally accepted HEXED a month before it was due to be delivered. I don't think it'll ever get old to hear that I've written an acceptable novel. :)

2) I inserted an allusion to Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Chapter 4 of HAMMERED. Any day in which one alludes to Sheriff Buford T. Justice is a spiffy day.

3) I have rediscovered Apples n' Cinnamon oatmeal after a long hiatus. I wonder why I ever left.

4) Jerry Reed's "East Bound and Down" is now stuck in my head and it's not that bad. I could just as easily have something abominable stuck in my head, like a Disney song or something from Spongebob Squarepants. Instead, I'm stuck with a spiffy chase scene song with banjos. Banjos are good on March 1.

Kinda Sorta Firm Publishing Dates!

Today I got the word on when my books will be coming out! I've known for a long time that they'd be out sometime in 2011, and I've known that they'd be published back-to-back-to-back (that's b2b2b if you wanna use publishin' jargon), but I didn't know any more than that. Now I can give you a clearer picture:

HOUNDED in May 2011

HEXED in June 2011

HAMMERED in July 2011

Hopefully everyone will have enough time to save up $7.99 plus tax by then. :) Once I get firm dates I'll post that too, but it will probably be a few more months. I can, however, practically guarantee that it'll be a Tuesday!

Spock and Kirk Shoulder Buddies

Instead of an angel and a demon whispering advice in either ear, I want a mini-Spock talking to my left brain and a mini-Kirk talking to my right. Spock will give me the logical argument; Kirk will give me the emotional one. While they fight, I will most likely be destroyed by Klingons.

I'm into chapter three of Hammered now, expecting editorial notes on Hexed soon. I'm preoccupied with the magical nature of cold iron vs. regular iron, and drawing sketches of Asgard.

Oh, plus Hemingway and Modernist poetry. :)

Delivery!

I received super cool news today: my super cool agent, Evan, loved HEXED and told me to deliver it without any changes! I'm fairly well gobsmacked because I just assumed I'd be changing something, if not quite a few somethings, before it was ready to send...but I guess I must have learned something after writing that first book, eh?

I know I said I probably wouldn't write again for a while, but I confess that I've already cheated. I've begun HAMMERED with Chapter 3, where Atticus and Jesus have a beer in Rula Bula. And the fish and chips, of course.

Two books down, one to go!

This morning I just finished writing HEXED, the second book in my series. Right now it's 82,256 words, and I'm quite smug.

Of course, once my agent and editor take a look at it, it'll probably change significantly, and the revision process is like that, but it's also entirely enjoyable, just tinkering around the edges. What I'm grooving on is the fact that I managed to bang all of that out in less than five months while still holding down a day job. I didn't know I had it in me!

I'll probably start messing around with HAMMERED soon, but for now I'm going to take a couple weeks or so off from writing and enjoy the sense of completion while it lasts.

Skipping ahead

I just finished writing the epilogue to HEXED. It came to me just before I nodded off to sleep last night, and I wrote a quick, rough version before I forgot it. I polished it up this morning.

It's odd because I haven't finished the actual climax of the book yet. Sometimes I do that, though: I skip ahead in the sequence of events, then go back and fill in the gaps later. Chapter 18 was like that; I wrote chapter 17, then 19 and 20, and only then did I go back and write 18.

I'm at 74K now and I'm going to start the climactic Chapter 21 momentarily. Blood and guts, baby, blood and guts.

Progress Report 2

HOUNDED was formally accepted on Dec. 9, and now it's going to the copy editing stage. I'll be receiving the copy edited manuscript on Jan. 14, and I have to return it with my corrections/amendments by Jan. 27.

I'm at 70,000 words on HEXED, and I'm hoping to finish it up this week. Right now there is coffee to drink and presents to unwrap, and later there is Sherlock Holmes to enjoy. :)

Progress Report

Today I reached 50,000 words on HEXED. I also went through a whole box of tissues because I'm ill, but at least I'm getting some writing done in between the sniffles.

Thank goodness for Day Quil.

Pulchritudinous Poland

I used a five-syllable word in the title just to freak out one of my students. He thinks that words longer than his fingernail should not be allowed. I think that they should be cherished, like the halcyon days of his youth. (I used halcyon to freak him out even more.) Plus, alliteration is always a good time, right?

Right now I love Poland, population 32 million or so. Never been there, but you know, maybe someday.

The reason I love Poland is that it's the first country to buy translation rights to my urban fantasy series. That's right, my first foreign sale is to...POLAND! Not to Germany or Italy or China or even the UK: Poland.

I am grateful to them and of course I hope they enjoy the Polish witches in my series. Malina Sokolowski, the leader of the Polish coven, is one of my favorite characters, and I always delight in writing about her. The Polish coven, as a matter of fact, is quite involved in the plot of HEXED.

I've learned quite a bit about Poland in the course of my research for the novels. The primary thing I've learned is that I have no idea how to pronounce anything in Polish. I look forward to learning much more, of course, and now I'm quite excited to know that my books will have an international audience.

Thank you, Poland!

I'm Halfway Done, Son!

I've reached 40,000 words on HEXED, which means I'm halfway finished! And since this is the second book in a three-book contract, I'm also halfway finished with that, too!

I think this calls for pudding.