World Book Day Giveaway winners!

Rafflecopter makes running blog giveaways ridiculously easy by integrating a random number generator into the plugin, allowing me to pick the winners super quickly and easily. So that’s what I’ve done – I’ve picked the winners, easily.

First Prize – Alex Aguilar

Second Prize – Sam Kamens

Third Prize – Sandee Barry

Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who entered! Don’t forget to enter the March is for Monsters giveaway where you can win a Kindle Fire!

I’ll have a StellarCon report coming before too long, then I’m off to Chattanooga for SETC for the rest of the week.

Happy World Book Day!

I’m not an official book-giver-away-er-er (I just made that up), but I do have books, and I’ll give some of them away today. I just made this up when I saw that it was World Book Day, so there’s no notice. Sorry, I’m a bit of a flake. It happens. Here’s the Rafflecopter Giveaway!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

March is for Monsters starts NOW!

I know it’s really still February, but I’m starting the giveaway early. Today through Friday, you can get Monsters Beware free on Amazon.

Yesterday you could get Love Stinks, the newest Bubba the Monster Hunter story, free right here. Today it’ll cost you a buck on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

And now you can get entries into the March is for Monsters giveaway! You can win a Kindle Fire, or autographed books!

As always, there’s other cool thriller and horror freebies over on Epic Kindle Giveaway!

And it now seems that I signed up for a table for StellarCon, which I completely forgot about, so I’ll have a table and will be around to sign stuff and sell books all weekend. Stop by and say hello. Did I mention that Patrick Rothfuss is the Guest of Honor? Did I mention that Patrick Rothfuss has written two of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever read and that I’m totally a fanboy of his? Did I mention that I ordered his books in hardcover for the express purpose of getting them signed this weekend, regardless of the fact that I’ve already read them electronically? I might be a little excited to meet him. In case any of you were wondering, we writers still have our favorite writers that we get all squee over, and Rothfuss is one of mine. So I’m more than a little excited.

I’m less excited about going to the dentist tomorrow, but I totally need a cleaning, and I think I need a filling, and I need to get both of those things done this month while I still have dental insurance. The dental insurance plans that I’ve seen suck – they’re something like $80/month, with a max annual coverage of $1,000. If I’m going to have to pay almost a grand a year to have insurance, and that insurance only pays a grand in benefits, then I’m still screwed. So I’d not going to have dental insurance after this month, so I’m trying to get anything done by the end of March, when my coverage ends.

Hope to see you at StellarCon,or if not there then at SETC next weekend, or at MidSouthCon the end of the month!

Epic News

I’ve joined forces with Scott Nicholson (although according to a comment recently, I may actually be Scott Nicholson, since no one has ever seen us in a room together, but I assure I am not Scott Nicholson, nor could I play him on TV. I’m much too fat these days. But I digress, which makes me more Peter David than Scott Nicholson, but that’s a whole ‘nother post) in his promotional site The Epic Kindle Giveaway. This is a collection of thriller and horror writers all tweeting, facebooking and cross-promoting our Amazon freebies. This should hopefully bring some additional exposure to my work, and some more Twitter followers and more subscribers to my mailing list.

You are signed up for my mailing list, right? I’m still learning how to use MailChimp, but I managed to get out a promo newsletter last week about The Chosen, and some of you obviously enjoyed the reminder, because I sold twice as many copies of that novel the day after the newsletter went out than I had the rest of the month. So that was effective.

I’m also learning to use HootSuite to more effectively manage my Twitter and Facebook feeds, which will become increasingly important as some of my other ventures get off the ground later this spring. I like the interface, and I’m learning how to schedule tweets and posts so I don’t have to be at my computer all the time, which is nice. These tools will let me jam all my promotion and social media time into a shorter window, so I can write in bigger chunks. And that’s the whole goal, right?

This weekend was pretty good on that front. As my days at the job are dwindling, I decided to burn an extra vacation day and not work any more full weeks in the office, so I took Friday off. Friday I got 3,519 words in across two projects, Paint it Black and the Cindy Slaughter book. Saturday I did 4,170 words on three projects – Paint it Black, Cindy Slaughter and mostly on the new Bubba story. And yesterday I got 2,685 words in on the new Bubba story and Paint it Black. I haven’t titled the Cindy Slaughter book or the new Bubba story yet, hopefully I’ll finish the story tonight and have it available for purchase before the end of February.

Yes, I know it’s tight. Thank god for Leap Year. I also still have revisions on Genesis that I’m working on, and I’d like to have that finished soon after getting the Bubba story out the door.

This weekend is StellarCon in High Point – I have three panels, a reading and a signing, so there’s plenty of chances for folks to come by and say hello. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by.

And here’s a little more of my music to write by – The Dirt Drifters. I’m loving these guys right now.

Photos for Friday

Photos for Friday

I’m in a play right now called Almost, Maine for Ballantyne Community Theatre, a fledgling theatre company here in Charlotte. We have our last two performances this weekend, so I thought I’d put up a few photos from dress rehearsal to give you guys a little of the flavor of the show.