Well, for a week or two the jury was kinda out. But here’s a brief recap of what’s been going on since I’ve been out gallivanting around and doing a piss-poor job of telling anyone where I am or if I’m alive.
I went to the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Chattanooga for the 19th consecutive year. It was pretty apropos that I essentially ended my career with Barbizon at this conference, since it was at this conference in Norfolk, Virginia in 1995 where I first heard of Barbizon and met anyone from there. A year later in Louisville, KY I was working in the Barbizon booth!
Some of my best friends in the world were there, and my buddy T-Bone bought what amounted to a bottle of Patron to do a round of shots on Friday night. If you ever stay in Chattanooga for anything, I highly recommend the Chattanoogan. The rooms are lovely, and Alan the cocktail server was amazing. Which reminds me, I need to send him a book for taking such good care of us all weekend. We ended up with twenty people outside by the fire pit on Friday night because it was a lovely night and the band sucked. That marked another first for me – we helped get the house band fired because they were absolutely dreadful. The above pic if just a few folks that were part of the toast, but I wanted to commemorate them here. Thanks to Jeremy K for the pic.
Then I came home and turned up with bronchitis. This happens to me once a year or so ever since I caught pneumonia a few years back. My lungs are a little sensitive, and if I try to go too long without reasonable rest (like doing StellarCon then working a week and doing SETC right behind it), I get sick. This was a doozy, too. I ended up flat on my back for a solid week, and barely recovered for the following week. I was sick enough that it was Wednesday of MidSouth Con before I was 100% sure I was going to Memphis. I watched a lot of Supernatural, broke down and went to the doctor, got some antibiotics that kinda worked, got some hydrocodone-laced cough syrup that certainly made me feel better, then went to see John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in concert.
Or at least most of John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in concert. I’d paid a lot of money for those tickets, and there was no way I was staying home, but I only lasted about 2/3 of the show before it got too warm in the theatre and my cough came back with a vengeance. But they were still amazing, and I highly recommend their acoustic set to anyone, especially if you can see them in a converted church that still has the antique Tiffany stained glass windows. But I might be a little spoiled seeing as many shows at Spirit Square as I have. For those of you that have read Back in Black, yes, Spirit Square is a real place, and it’s one of my favorite concert venues ever. If you’re in Charlotte for anything, I highly recommend seeing a show there.
Then I went back to bed for most of a week. Then I tried to get moving again, because I still had a couple days’ worth of my notice to work out, an office to clean, and another con to attend. But more on that later. Now I’m up, I’m healthy (ish) and it’s time to get some writing done!
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.
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!
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.
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.
I got my schedule this morning for StellarCon 36 in High Point, NC. It looks like a jam-packed weekend of geeky fun, so if you’re anywhere in the area, come on over and say hi! Here’s what I’m scheduled for –
Friday – 5PM – 5:30PM – Reading – I think I’ll pull out some Bubba stuff, maybe a little Black Knight stuff, and maybe even a little poetry if anybody shows up to see the reading.
Friday – 8PM – Prop Building – I’m a theatre guy, so I can talk a little about building props, but it’s not really my strong suit. This will be a rare chance to see me on a panel where I don’t talk a lot.
Saturday – 2PM – The Role of the Publisher in Today’s Market – this will not be a chance to see me be quiet. I’ll be the one championing small press and self-publishing. Should be fun. Too bad Mike Stackpole is doing an interview at this time slot, since this is kinda a hot button for him. With Misty Massey, so I’ll be polite at least. She’ll poker me if I misbehave.
Saturday – 6PM – Pushing the Limits in YA Fiction – What issues should YA lit deal with and what should the boundaries be? I feel like YA lit should deal with anything that young adults may actually have to deal with, but I’m kinda silly that way. On a panel with people who know way more about the genre than I do, like A.J. Hartley and Davey Beauchamp.
Sunday – 1PM – Where do you get your Ideas? And other stupid questions. – This oughta be entertaining
So I hope you’ll be able to come out and join me. In other news, I still have need of a minion for a couple of cons coming up this year. It’s not a paid position, but I’ll get you into cons for free. If you live somewhere that I’m going to be, and have interest in attending cons and helping out a scatterbrained author (or maybe two), let me know.
So I’m pretty sure that my editor and I just blew up Paint it Black, Book IV of The Black Knight Chronicles. I sent in my synopsis, and she did exactly what I want her to do – she poked holes in the book and called me on my BS. That, kids, is why I signed with a traditional publisher instead of continuing to do everything by myself. Having someone who’s worked on a ton of books to look at a sketch of a book and say “nothing is happening, where’s the excitement?” Is worth the chunk of royalty percentage I’m giving up. Especially at this point in my career. I’ve got five novels out, and I think I’m just learning to tell a story.
I’m not going to pitch everything I’ve written in Paint it Black, but I am going to blow up a fair bit of it. As I read my editor’s notes on the synopsis, I realized that there were a couple of things that made this book very different from the others in the series, and not necessarily in a good way. There was practically no supernatural stuff going, I was almost 20,000 words in and we hadn’t had a fight scene yet, and there was no Father Mike. These are problems. I love the character of Father Mike, and he needs to be in every book. The characters are vampires, and they fight supernatural bad guys, so there needs to be a supernatural element. And really, I went nearly a third of a book without a fight scene? God, I was doing some serious navel-gazing.
So I now have a totally new direction for the book, and I’m pretty excited about it. There will be supernatural stuff going on – fairies, trolls, vampires, and new monsters. There will be Father Mike. And there will be fighting. Oh yes, there will be fighting.
So that’s my lesson for the week for self-pubbed authors. If you don’t have someone you trust to bounce ideas off of, then go find that person. I chose a traditional publisher to fill that role, but it can be a critique partner, a friend, whatever. It’s usually not a great idea of it’s a spouse but your mileage may vary.
I’ll leave you with a scene from Chattacon, where I spent the weekend chatting with some awesome authors and publisher types, got to watch one urban fantasy bestseller’s phone leap unprovoked to its death in a vat of bourbon, and realized that writers drink even more than theatre folk. I gotta step up my game! And I got hammered on chocolate wine by mute writer with an iPad and an evil, evil soul! Lando says “Playa, please!”
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