Photo contests are spiffy because everybody likes looking at the entries afterward. We’ve done the Iron Pet contest and Nerdscapes and we even did this one where we took pictures of sausage, but I don’t want to repeat myself so we gotta do something else. I’ll give you one guess what we’ll do. But first I will point you to the blog post title.

The Rules:

1) You’re required to have fun!
2) Send your entry as a jpeg to kevin@kevinhearne.com. Entries sent via Twitter or Facebook will not be counted. Include your name in your email. If you want me to call you Sparkly Puffypants that’s fine, I just want to give credit for the photo so that in case you win I can say HEY SPARKLY PUFFYPANTS, YOU WON!
3) Your still life must have a beer and a book. Anything else is a bonus.
a) Wine doesn’t count. Nor do wine coolers or harrrrrd likker! or whatever. This is a Beer & Book still life.
b) Yeah, you should probably be 21 to enter. Because you might have to acquire beer.
c) This isn’t about beer snobbery, though! If you have a Pabst or whatever that’s totally cool. This is about art and life and enjoying them. Don’t feel like you have to find the One True Beer or anything. (On the other hand, a quest for the One True Beer sounds pretty fun.)
c) The book must NOT be one of mine. I already know you read my books or you would have no interest in entering this contest. I—and everyone else—would really like to see what’s your top recommendation right now outside of Atticus n’ Oberon. :)
d) You can use a hardcover, paperback, or ebook. If the latter, then please set your ereader screen to the cover of the book so we can clearly see what you’re reading. The cover/title/author need to be visible.
e) Totally cool to have other books in there besides the one you’re focusing on, but again, please, no Iron Druid stuff. Seriously. And of course you can have dogs and lizards and weeping angels and whatnot.

Ready for my examples, which often pale compared to the entries you guys send in…? Here’s the first one:

That’s Jamaica Red Ale with The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough. Also my Twenty-Sided Dice Fez and a bottle opener from Ommegang Brewery in New York. Can’t recommend Jason’s work enough; in fact, if you look closely, you’ll see I wrote the blurb at the top of the cover. It comes out July 30, so I’d say pre-order that puppy now and prepare to have your shit blown up. Greatest sci-fi I’ve read in years!

Okay, here’s one with my ereader. I rock a Nook SimpleTouch.

That’s Oberon Ale from Bell’s Brewery in Comstock, Michigan. There’s also something cute and fluffy there and IT’S SO FLUFFY but I can’t for the life of me explain why it’s in my house. The book is Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig. I’m about to dive into that because I read his first book starring Miriam Black (called Blackbirds) and really liked it. Chuck’s a lot of fun to follow on Twitter if you’re not already doing so (@ChuckWendig) and his blog is balls rad too.

Deadline for entries is Sunday, June 9. I’ll post ‘em all up on my Facebook page each day as they come in and you can like the heck out of ‘em and get giant lists of beer and books to try out. And maybe win stuff. :)

I’ll pick two winners by somewhat arbitrary standards of coolness but generally skewing toward photographic quality. Between my two example pics, the second one would win in my eyes because it’s in a bit sharper focus. I’ll also pick three winners randomly, so you have a chance of winning no matter what. I’ll announce winners on June 10.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with! And as always, thanks for reading!

When audio rights to the Iron Druid Chronicles were first sold to Brilliance Audio, they bought North Amercian rights only, which means they could legally sell the English recordings only in the United States and Canada. Due to a rather large mistake, they told their distribution peeps they had World Rights, so they pushed it out in the UK and Australia and…yeah, the whole world. We were selling copies in South Africa. I didn’t find out about it for close to a year because I don’t check overseas vendors, and on the one hand, I was like, “Cool, people dig it in that country with the posh accent! Nice!” But on the other hand, it’s unwise to let people overreach on contracts. So I asked my agent to send Brilliance a polite wtf, and they politely said oh crap we didn’t mean to do that, and they took it down overseas.

But they couldn’t just buy World Rights and carry on—because while we didn’t know what was going on over there, we wound up giving UK territory rights to Orbit in the meantime, so once the audiobooks came down, they didn’t go back up. Notice that we only gave UK rights to Orbit…not Australia and New Zealand, also known as ANZ. That’s because the paper books of 1-3 were published by a third publisher, Harper Collins. Harper Collins never wanted audio rights, so at that point nobody had the rights to sell audio in ANZ. We couldn’t give ANZ audio rights to Orbit UK because audio is a subsidiary right and Orbit doesn’t publish books 1-3 in ANZ.

Still with me? Because I might have lost myself. To recap things to this point: Brilliance has NA rights for 1-3, Orbit has UK rights but no recording, and nobody has ANZ rights. Except consumers in the UK and ANZ did have access to the NA audiobooks for a while due to an error. You can imagine the emails I was getting for a good year or so there. I didn’t have any good answers for people who wanted to know where Atticus and Oberon went. I didn’t know when or even if things would eventually work out.

So: The second book contract for books 4-6 comes along, and we do things differently. North American rights are sold to Random House, not Brilliance. Luke Daniels continues as narrator, it’s just a different audio publisher. In this contract we don’t do CDs because it’s a dying medium. So if you’re waiting for CDs—I get emails about that too—I’m very sorry, they’re never coming. Everything will be digital only going forward.

UK and ANZ audio rights for books 4-6 were all given to Orbit UK, and Harper Collins was out of the picture. But we still had this situation where no one had ANZ audio rights for books 1-3, and Orbit understandably didn’t want to publish books 4-6 if 1-3 weren’t available there. GAH. So Brilliance did us a solid and stepped up to buy ANZ rights for 1-3 since they made the Worldwide Mistake earlier. Truly very cool of them—they didn’t have to do that.

OK. Awesome. We finally have a situation where Orbit can consider developing audio overseas, and so they’re doing it! YAY! But UK publishers in general—not just Orbit—tend to like doing their own versions of audiobooks—and the same is true of US publishers. If there’s a UK audiobook out there they want to publish here, they’ll probably record their own version for US audiences. Very common. So Orbit UK is recording books 1-6 with a different narrator named Christopher Ragland—solid dude—and they’ll all come out pretty quickly leading up to the release of Hunted in late June. Hounded is out now! I’m turbo happy that we can finally get you audio of the Iron Druid Chronicles overseas!

But there’s a coda for ANZ: Because of the bizarre rights situation, ANZ will have access to the Brilliance recording of Luke Daniels for books 1-3 and the Orbit recording of Christopher Ragland for books 4-6. And no, I can’t fix that so you get all Luke or all Christopher. Sorry. I know that a change in narrators isn’t ideal but hopefully it’s better than nothing.

As bureaucrats on trial are fond of saying, “Mistakes were made.” If we had a TARDIS and could get all timey-wimey and re-do contracts we would, but alas. We’ll just have to travel through time in a linear fashion and deal with it.

The final situation for books 1-6:

North America: Luke Daniels
UK: Christopher Ragland
ANZ: Luke for 1-3, Chris for 4-6.

Keep in mind that only Hounded is available in the UK at this time of this post, but the others are in the pipeline and will be released soon. Same goes for ANZ—if it’s not up yet, it will be soon. Happy listening wherever ye may be; I hope you enjoy the stories!

Here’s my schedule of panels—please come out and see me! I will also have a table somewhere with a schedule on it and you can come on by and have me sign stuff. You can bring your own books or there will be a book vendor at the con who will have ‘em in stock.

• Author Chair Dancing: Friday 3:00pm – 4:00pm (With Scalzi, Priest, Sykes, and Dawson. This will be fun.)
• The Unfettered Panel: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy: Friday 4:30pm – 5:30pm
• Different Approaches to Non-Traditional Fantasy: Saturday 1:30pm – 2:30pm
• Kevin Hearne Spotlight: Saturday 3:00pm – 4:00pm
• Historical settings or What was it like when . . . ?: Sunday 10:30am – 11:30am
• Keeping Urban Fantasy Alive: Sunday 12:00pm – 1:00pm

I like how I’m on a panel that actually calls me a Master of Fantasy. I should give  a cookie to whoever thought up that title. I also think I should wear a robe to that one. With a hood.

I do want to talk a bit more about the UNFETTERED panel on Friday. I’ll be joined by Brandon Sanderson, Terry Brooks, and Peter Orullian, and there will be 250 Con-Only editions of UNFETTERED up for grabs prior to that panel, featuring short stories by each of us. (I think they’ll be available at the Mysterious Galaxy booth.) If you snag one, you can get us all to sign it. :) My story is called “The Chapel Perilous,” and it follows Atticus on an adventure in sixth century Wales associated with the most Holy Grrrrail.

If you’ve never been to a Comic Con before, they’re tremendous fun. And what’s cool about Phoenix is that  you get almost all the artists and all the cosplay you’d get in San Diego but you don’t have the crushing crowds. It’s still a big con—35K isn’t wee by any stretch—but it’s not wall-to-wall armpits wherever you turn. Come on out, even if it’s just for one day! The people watching is the best!

Rock on—

But I’d like to put a few upcoming books on your radar. They’re all available for pre-order wherever you buy books, and hell yes I’ve pre-ordered them myself. Going in order of release date:

Tempest Reborn by Nicole Peeler is the sixth and final book of her series, coming out soon on May 28. Jane True is a selkie—not your normal badass, and in fact she’s a reluctant fighter, which I love—and these books are full of mythology and fun. Peeler gets me laughing out loud several times per book. Her first one, Tempest Rising, is on sale for cheap as an eBook, so there’s very little risk in giving her a try and if you like ‘em you can mow through the whole series before the month is up! I feel I should offer up a horrid pun here…um. DIVE INTO ADVENTURE WITH A SELKIE

Jason M. Hough is going to have three books come out this year, bam-bam-bam, the way I did back in 2011. Same publisher as me and they’re giving him the same support, which should tell you how much they believe in him. I am also supporting him however I can because I’ve already read these and it’s the most entertaining sci-fi I’ve read in years. I want Jason to do well for entirely selfish reasons: If he sells enough books then he gets to keep writing them, and I cannot wait for this guy to write more books.

The Darwin Elevator comes out July 30; The Exodus Towers on August 27; and The Plague Forge on September 25. Here’s what I wrote about the first book:  ”The best part about alien stories is their mystery, and Jason M. Hough understands that like no other. Full of compelling characters and thick with tension, The Darwin Elevator delivers both despair and hope along with a gigantic dose of wonder. It’s a brilliant debut and Hough can take my money whenever he writes anything from now on.” Yeah, I’m completely sold.

If you’d like to meet me and Jason, we’ll be in San Diego together on his release day, July 30, at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego at 7 pm.

Unstoppable force of nature Jaye Wells is launching a new series called Prospero’s War after the conclusion of her successful Sabina Kane series. The first book, Dirty Magic, doesn’t come out until January 21, 2014, so if you pre-order now you will get an awesome surprise next year. As you can probably guess by the cover, this series has quite a bit to do with alchemy and potions and a protagonist who wishes everyone would stop playing around with that dangerous shit. Well, I thought it was five kinds of cool and I wrote a blurb for it as well: ”Kate Prospero is my new favorite heroine—imperfect, haunted, driven, and dangerous.”

So there you go! Please give ‘em love! I have a book coming out at the end of June, but I’m sure you guys knew that already. :) If you can’t make it to one of my tour stops then you can order a signed copy from The Poisoned Pen now, I’ll sign ‘em before I go on tour, and they’ll ship it to you on release day. Rock on!

But hiding on the other side of that coin are the bookstores where events are to be held. Holding a signing is not without its own set of economic risks and headaches. And again, since most people are probably unaware, I’m sharing some basic math in the interest of being helpful, to foster understanding of why a bookstore might not wish to hold events sometimes, and appreciate those indie stores who go out of their way to hold lots of events every year.

Bookstores generally buy books from publishers for 60% of the cover price—or, if you want to look at it a different way, at a 40% discount. Let’s break down a paperback and a hardcover sale and eventually get around to what this means for touring and events.

Most paperbacks are $7.99, unless you have one of those slightly larger ones that are $9.99 and annoying to hold, but let’s go with the $8 example. On an eight-dollar book, the bookstore “keeps” $3.20. That’s if it doesn’t give you a discount or a coupon or anything.

On a $25 hardcover—and I know hardcovers vary somewhat in price, but the math is super easy at $25 so let’s just go with it—the bookstore keeps $10 if it doesn’t discount.

So right there, without going any further, you can see that any rational business person would prefer to sell hardcovers to paperbacks because they make almost three times as much money per unit. To put it another way, a bookstore has to sell three paperbacks to equal one hardcover sale. That has a profound impact on signing events.

Depending on the author, the book, the day of the week, the time of the event, and even the weather, signings tend to draw anywhere from one person to a hundred. Really big authors will draw more, of course—they’ll have seven-hour lines and maybe bathe in Courvoisier afterward—but most signings draw fewer than a hundred people in a big city. Seriously. Plenty of signings are below fifty.

Let us, however, for the sake o’ easy math, say we sell fifty books at each signing. A bookstore would make $160 if those were paperbacks, and $500 if those were the aforementioned $25 hardcovers—provided they haven’t discounted anything. But wait! They don’t actually get to keep all that!

Say you have two employees in the store. Just two. The event lasts two hours, often three, and sometimes the events go past closing time so it’s not like we’re always talking normal business hours here. The employees are paid, what, I don’t know, maybe $10 an hour? I’m afraid to ask, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more or less, honestly, and there are taxes and health insurance and OMG, but I’m trying to keep this simple. So two employees at $30 for three hours eats up $60 of that money. Then there’s the overhead for the bricks and mortar—lights and computers and things. And sweet deity of your choice, they pay credit card companies 8-10% per transaction! And they have marketing costs to advertise the event—signage and newsletters to subscribers and website gurus to do webby things and all the goodies they have to do to coax fifty people in a metro area of one or two million to show up. Thus, if you’re a paperback author selling fifty copies and only bringing in $160 minus a buttload of expenses for the bookstore—even less if they give the customers any kind of discount—there is so little margin there that it’s hardly worth the time and effort to do all that. In fact, there’s a very real risk that the bookstore will LOSE MONEY on the event if the turnout is low, and as I hope I have intimated clearly, turnout is often low. Or you’ll have 75 people show up but only 40 copies get sold because 35 people inexplicably believe it’s polite to show up and not buy anything—they’ll bring in copies they bought elsewhere and contribute absolutely nothing to the local store that has gone to the trouble and expense of hosting the author.

I know my math is very basic and the devil’s in the details, and I know some indie stores have figured out how to do events well and come out ahead. They build massive mailing lists and do a ton of events and become a vibrant part of the city’s culture. The Poisoned Pen, for example, my local store, does more than 300 events a year. But many stores—especially in smaller cities without a giant mailing list—can’t shoulder the risk of a paperback event and have to turn some authors away. (Yes, even ones that sell pretty well.) And the vast number of indie bookstores that have closed over the past decade demonstrates that figuring out how to do events well (or how to sell paper books, period) is easier said than done.

With hardcover numbers, of course, there’s much more room for error. And that’s why bookstores would vastly prefer to host a hardcover author than a paperback one. At a hardcover event they can pray for a good night whereas with a paperback event they’re praying to break even.

There is probably a desperate plea in here to support your local independent bookstore—yes, please do that if you are lucky enough to have one!—but that’s not why I wrote this post. I wrote it to help people understand why it’s not so simple for me (and most authors) to come visit you wherever you are. There are not only economic limits to what authors can do but limits to what bookstores can do as well. It’s not that authors despise smaller cities or certain regions of the country or tiny island nations, and it’s not as if bookstore owners are actively trying to deny their communities access to authors. It’s that book signings are risky undertakings even in major cities, and everybody has to pay bills. In truth, the only reason you will ever see a signing by someone who isn’t a gigantic superstar is that bookstores love bringing authors and readers together. It’s never a sure thing that a signing will work out but they take the risk anyway and hope it will turn out okay. That’s why I love indies.

I am turbo grateful to the indie stores that have let me come by so far and to those who will be hosting me this summer, and super-turbo grateful to the readers who take the trouble to come out and see me and support those stores. I do wish I could see everyone—and I think most authors of a sociable bent would feel the same way—but yeah, for innumerable reasons, it’s just not possible. Like the famous eHarmony cat lady, I love my readers, I want to hug you all and I want you in a basket, so please don’t feel slighted if I (or another writer you dig) can’t make it to your neighborhood soon. We totally would if we could.

1) For a limited time, the eBook of HOUNDED is only $2.99 in the USA! If you’ve been wanting to get some friends or family hooked on IDC so you can trade Oberon quotes with them, here’s your chance! Kindle, Nook, whatever…it’s $2.99 until May 3!

2) My next big public thingie is Phoenix Comicon May 23-26. Incredible lineup of authors and other famous peeps there. But kind of blown away that there will be a hardcover, con-only special edition of UNFETTERED available, featuring stories by Terry Brooks, Brandon Sanderson, Peter Orullian, and myself. Only 250 copies will be printed, and we’ll all be there at the con—in fact, there will be an UNFETTERED panel!—so you could have a signed, turbo-rare edition if you want. Ain’t gonna lie: I WANT.

3) I don’t consider myself a guru of writing wisdom or anything—if I was a genius, I would have figured stuff out a lot sooner than I did. But I said a few things on Twitter yesterday in an effort to render what assistance I can. I collected it on Storify and if you’re an aspiring writer I hope it helps! Speaking of Storify, I really dig it. I’ll be collecting more Twitter conversations, blog posts and the like there, so if you’d like to give me a follow you won’t miss any of my shenanigans. You can go through and check out past Stories too.

4) If you want to say hi and get a signed copy of HUNTED this summer, there are OODLES of ways to do that. First, check out my tour dates—I’m visiting California, Portland, Seattle, and a couple o’ places in Colorado and would love to see you! If you’re not nearby one of those places, however, you still have options! First is a special early release shindig on Sunday, June 23, at 5 pm at Nando’s Mexican Cafe in Mesa. No reservation needed—just show up! $15 gets you a book and a drink and we’ll hang out. Extra copies for friends are $8.50. If you’re on the east coast or out of the country, you can preorder a signed copy from The Poisoned Pen by giving them a call or using their website. I will sign all preordered copies before I take off for the tour, and they’ll ship it to you wherever you are, military addresses included!

5) There are still ten tickets left for Atticus & Oberon’s Elevator Ride! It’s a Taco Hootenanny in Encinitas, CA at the end of July with me and new sci-fi genius Jason Hough. You’ll get signed copies of both our books, a pint glass, lots o’ food and lots of love when you hang out with us!

6) If you missed it, I have an Iron Druid novella coming out May 7 called GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB. Atticus & Oberon go to Egypt! FUN!

In writing news, I’m about halfway through the first draft of book seven, SHATTERED, and hope to have it finished before I go on tour for HUNTED. We’ll see!

Art by Gene Mollica and design by Dave Stephenson.

This is an eBook novella on sale at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks, etc., for $2.99. It’ll be available in the UK, Australia, and affiliated territories too, albeit with a different cover, and I believe (but haven’t confirmed) that it will be on audio too in the US & Canada. Keep checking with Audible on that. Pre-order is now available for Kindle, Nook, and iBooks, and should appear on the Kobo site as well in the next day or two. Thank you in advance for reading!

Oh yeah: There’s a preview of HUNTED included in the back!

So what’s this about? Here’s the “back cover” copy Del Rey wrote up:

When he’s not vanquishing villainous gods or dodging demons, two-thousand-year-old Druid Atticus O’Sullivan can be found behind the counter of Third Eye Books and Herbs in modern-day Tempe, Arizona, literally minding his own business. But when an evil sorcerer—and amateur shoplifter—snatches an ancient Egyptian tome of black magic, The Grimoire of the Lamb, Atticus is not sheepish about pursuing him to the ends of the earth . . . or at least to the Land of the Pharaohs.
 
Unfortunately, Atticus already has enemies in Egypt—including cat goddess Bast, who wants her own book of mischief back from the Druid. In the streets of Cairo, she sends a feline phalanx after Atticus and his Irish wolfhound, Oberon. With fur still flying, Atticus must locate the sorcerer’s secret lair—where he will face killer crocodiles, spooky sarcophagi, and an ancient evil Egyptian who’s determined to order the sacrificial lamb special tonight.

It’s set in 2005, four years before HOUNDED. Aenghus Óg hasn’t found him yet, Granuaile isn’t bartending at Rúla Búla, but we do get a cameo from the widow MacDonagh. Hope you dig it—please share and spread the word! Rock on—

Del Rey has approved a special event on Sunday, June 23, two days before the release date of June 25 for HUNTED! Get thee to Nando’s Hideaway in Mesa, 6715 E McDowell Rd, at 5 pm, and bring $15. The Poisoned Pen bookstore will give you a copy of HUNTED two days early and I’ll sign it, and they’ll also give you a drink ticket. That ticket will get you any draft or bottled beer or a house margarita, tax and tip included. You’re welcome to hang out and have more drinks, of course—heck, have dinner! I’ll be hanging out there until people get tired of having fun. I’ll have time to roam around and chat after I’m finished signing books and I’m looking forward to it, BECAUSE TEQUILA. No reservations needed. Just show up and bring your friends! Okay, Straw Man has all-caps questions for me and I have answers.

Straw Man: DUDE WHY YOU DO THIS?

Well, I’m going on tour for HUNTED, starting in Redondo Beach on June 25 and going north to Seattle, then across to Montana and back down to Colorado. I’m driving the whole way and it will take a while. I won’t have a chance to do anything for my hometown peeps until the middle of July, and that’s too long to wait, so The Poisoned Pen arranged this.

Straw Man: DUDE WHY NOT HAVE IT IN A BOOKSTORE?

Because there are Rules. Primarily it’s unfair to other bookstores to sell books early. But publishers occasionally grant permission for special events like this one, and to make it a special event you have to have it somewhere besides a bookstore.

Straw Man: CAN I JUST BUY THE BOOK? CUZ I DON’T DRINK, YO.

Nope, sorry. My personal definition of “special event” includes the consumption of alcohol. But if you don’t drink, you’re in luck! You’ll be surrounded by people who do, so your ticket won’t go to waste! Plus, in all seriousness, Nando’s needs to be considered here, since they’re the reason we’re able to have a special event in the first place. You can also just get a soda or iced tea with the drink ticket if you like.

Straw Man: CAN I BUY EXTRA COPIES?

Within reason, sure. If you want a couple of extra copies for friends in addition to the one you get with your ticket, that would be fine. But we do need to make sure we have enough for everyone who shows up.

Straw Man: DUDE WHERE YOU TOURING?

Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM: Mysterious Galaxy in Redondo Beach. 2810 Artesia Blvd, Redondo Beach, CA, 90278.
Wednesday, June 26, 7:30 PM: Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park. 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025.
Thursday, June 27, 7 PM: Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma. 140 Kentucky Street, Petaluma, CA 94952.
Friday, June 28, 7:30 PM: The Avid Reader in Davis. 617 Second St. Davis, CA 95616
Sunday, June 30: Eugene, OR (Tentative. No venue yet, still working on it.)
Monday, July 1, 7 PM: Powell’s Books, Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton (near Portland). 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd. Beaverton, OR 97005
Tuesday, July 2, 7pm: University Bookstore in Seattle. 4326 University Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98105.
Sunday, July 7: Billings, MT (Tentative. No venue yet, still working on it.)
Monday, July 8, 6:30 pm: Old Firehouse Books in Ft. Collins, CO. 232 Walnut St., Fort Collins, CO 80524.
Wednesday, July 10, 7 pm: Broadway Book Mall, 200 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209

Straw Man: DUDE HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE EAST COAST? OR THAT BIG PART IN THE MIDDLE?

Yes, and I’ve actually made several trips back there in the past couple of years. (I’ve been to NY, DC, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Lexington, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, and Dallas.) Sorry you missed me! I haven’t done the west coast at all, however, aside from San Diego Comic Con, so I’m addressing that on this trip. I’ll get to other parts of the country again at some point, and I keep my Events & Appearances page updated when news comes in. Check back there…I’ll be in Houston and San Antonio later on.

Straw Man: DUDE CAN I GET A SIGNED COPY IF I CAN’T MAKE IT TO ANY OF YOUR SHINDIGS?

Absolutely! The Poisoned Pen will be ordering a buttload of copies and I’ll be signing them all before I leave on tour. So if you’re on the east coast or in that big part in the middle or even out of the country, you can order a signed copy from them—all you want, really. They do ship anywhere. I encourage you to do it now if you can, because that way The Poisoned Pen can make a more accurate order and I’ll get everything signed before I go. I’ll be able to sign more once I return, of course, but that won’t be until mid-July.

So there you have it—hope I get to see you if you’re out west, and I hope I can send you a signed copy if you’re too far away to visit in person! Excited for you to read it!

I’m at 30K words on SHATTERED and really enjoying some new characters and their interactions with the old ones. One character who has been around since HOUNDED but hasn’t been developed very much will finally get a backstory and a more significant role going forward.

Much ink devoted recently to an ongoing snit between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster. B&N wants more pie and S&S says no, we can’t afford it. So Barnes & Noble has dramatically cut its orders of Simon & Schuster’s books as a negotiation tactic. AUUGH! Losers include: readers and writers.

I’m not a business guru by any means and I can’t speak to whether this is really awesome business kung fu on the part of B&N, but I am a dude who likes books and who likes to browse to discover new writers. For me, the appeal of a B&N is that I have a huge selection of authors in a wide range of genres to discover. I love walking into a B&N and wondering what cool little gem I will unearth on that visit. And I freakin’ LOVE the booksellers at the two B&Ns I visit most frequently out here, the Dana Park and SanTan locations. But recently, the B&N corporate heads have made some moves that appear to me to be damaging the basis of their appeal—which is browsing. They said they needed fewer books and more games and toys because…I don’t know.  Are people really going to a bookseller to buy games instead of books? Again, their retail kung fu is probably much better than mine, but on its face a new and improved bookstore NOW WITH FEWER BOOKS doesn’t add up the way I do math. I am hoping they change their minds. And I certainly hope we see more S&S titles on their shelves soon.

But!! Maybe there’s a reason. I can conceive of a thought stream that would get us to the conclusion that maybe providing a huge selection to browse isn’t as important as it used to be. I’ve noticed it in my own behavior. I often hear about books now online through Twitter or Facebook—my readers are awesome about sharing what they’re digging (thanks you guys!) and I can go to a B&N or an indie store to get precisely what I want. If they don’t have it in stock they can usually get it in after a couple of days. (And of course people with e-readers can download anything they hear about instantly.) If that’s not just me shopping that way, maybe that justifies the shift; I don’t know. But in general I don’t think any of these adjustments means DOOM! NOBODY READS ANYMORE! Book sales overall are doing fine; it’s where people buy them and in what format that’s changing. The true danger of reducing selection and taking away our ability to browse expansively is that some authors are going to find it difficult to get discovered and develop a following (and thus a career), and many readers are going to have to choose from either carrots or celery when they’d really go for some kohlrabi if it was available.

Reminder: I’ll be heading to Madison, Wisconsin soon for Odyssey Con, April 12-14. It looks like it’s going to be fun and honestly I probably won’t make it to Wisconsin again for quite some time, so if you can come say hi, please do!

And I also hope to be able to give you some publishing dates soon besides the June 25 date for HUNTED and July 23 for CARNIEPUNK. I will have other stuff coming out. :)

I should be able to give you a release date and a US cover soon—the cover Goodreads has is the UK cover—but until I’m allowed to show and tell, I can tell you this:

1) Atticus & Oberon go to Egypt, and heck yes they get into trouble.
2) It’s a bit longer than TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW.

Sorry about the confusion. I didn’t realize Goodreads would be doing stuff like that. I think at one time March 1 might have been a release date, but it’s shifted around quite a bit the way things will in the publishing business. Don’t have any more information I can share right now, but I promise to tell you ALL THE THINGS when I can. Pinky swear!