We had such a good time at the release party for TRICKED, which we called “Atticus & Oberon’s Sausage Fest,” that I’m going to do it again!

Some things are the same: It’s limited to 100 people, you’ll get a signed copy of the book and a special souvenir pint glass, and I’ll be coming around to talk to you. But there will also be some important differences, so here they are:

1) This time around, it’s going to be called Atticus & Oberon’s Beer Bonanza. That’s because I’m buying two kegs and you can have all you want until we drink ’em dry. Once the kegs are gone (or if you’re not a fan of beer), it’s cash bar. The beers are Dos Equis Lager and Smithwick’s.
2) Um, yeah. It’s kind of an over-21 sort of party. Apologies to my younger readers! And make sure you arrange safe, sober transportation home.
3) It won’t be at Rúla Búla this time due to a scheduling conflict. The date is Saturday, Dec. 1, and that coincides with the Tempe Festival of the Arts, during which they close down Mill Avenue and 250K people roam around. It’s a great time to visit Tempe and Rúla Búla—and I highly recommend it!—but it’s also impossible to arrange a private party at Rula Bula that day.
4) We’re having this in east Mesa at a place called Nando’s Mexican Cafe. I’ve attended parties there before and it rocks. There’s indoor and outdoor seating. There will be an all-you-can-eat taco and enchilada bar. You won’t go away hungry or thirsty.
5) Last time a poster was included in the price. This time you get a T-shirt in the size, style and design you want. There are two designs to choose from and each design comes in either a men’s T-shirt or a women’s T-shirt—the latter tends to be a bit more form-fitting. If you want to order extra T-shirts, you CAN! If you’re attending the party, you can buy all the extra shirts you want for the smokin’ hot deal of $8 each. I’m trying to arrange it so that you can order T-shirts without coming to the party. If I can arrange that, those will be $15 each including shipping anywhere in the US. No international shipping, sorry! Here are the two different designs, which I should mention were both designed by the amazing Emily Beu at Two Birds Creative in San Francisco:

6) The party will be from 4-7 pm instead of 3-6 pm. The likelihood that Nando’s will try to get you to leave at 7 is as close to zero as I can imagine.
7) The tickets are a bit more expensive this time. I don’t make money from this but I don’t want to get hosed either, which kind of happened to me last time because I forgot that PayPal takes a hunk of every transaction. Live and learn, Kev! Anyway, the tickets are $40. To review, here’s what you get for that:

• A signed copy of TRAPPED, and I’ll come around to visit with you and personalize it. Plus it’s probably mandatory that we take a silly picture or two, don’t you think? (Books come from The Poisoned Pen, so you’re supporting indie bookstores too. If you want to buy extra copies there and have me sign ’em for friends I’d be delighted, of course)
• The opportunity to meet my mom! I only mention it because last time she was kind of the hit of the party. :)
• A pint glass with the Beer Bonanza logo on it
• A T-shirt with either the Beer Bonanza logo or the Guilt Ferret design
• All-you-can-eat tacos and enchiladas
• Beer until it’s gone (If everyone drank the same amount, it would work out to three beers each) and the opportunity to try some really high-grade tequilas if you weren’t going to use those brain cells anyway
• You’re automatically entered in a drawing for a signed, framed poster of the map that appears in the front of TRAPPED. And it’s not just signed by me; it’s also signed by the artist, Priscilla Spencer, who is five kinds of brilliant. Gotta be present to win it! :)

So, when are tickets on sale? Tickets go on sale at 9am EST on Saturday, August 4 on my site’s STORE page. Limit two per household. It’s a PayPal thing but remember that you do NOT need a PayPal account to buy tickets. They provide a link where you can pay using a credit or debit card. Only 100 tickets will be sold. If you don’t get a ticket but would still like to come to the shindig and say hello, just come at 7:30 and I’ll be on the patio. The Poisoned Pen will have copies of the series to buy and all that.

Hopefully the Internet Gods will be on my side and everything will go as planned. Thank you in advance, I do hope you can come and I can’t wait to meet you!

Well. It’s been a while. Back to it!

I often get people asking me what I’m reading or if I have any suggestions. So here’s what I’ve either just finished reading or is shortlisted in my To-Be-Read pile:

Starting in the front left: EVEN WHITE TRASH ZOMBIES GET THE BLUES by Diana Rowland. I love these books and it’s not just because the covers are hilarious. The words inside are pretty hilarious too! Angel Crawford has her flaws as a human being (and as a zombie) but she’s also completely endearing and aware that she has problems. You can’t help rooting for her as she tries to solve them. If you haven’t given these a try yet, start with MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE. I saw Diana at San Diego Comic Con and did my best not to fanboy all over her. She’s so awesome. She has this whole other series about demons that I haven’t tried yet, but I’ll get to them soon.

Zipping to the back: THE NIGHT SESSIONS by Ken MacLeod posits a world where humanity has basically kissed religion goodbye…but the robots haven’t. Interesting premise to me on several levels, so I’m looking forward to trying this out. I haven’t read anything by Mr. MacLeod before.

Back up front in the center: THE QUANTUM THIEF by Hannu Rajaniemi. I just recently finished this and I have to say it was SO weird and SO awesome but DAMN. It’s not a light read. He’s doing new stuff here and it’s deep immersion in a bizarre world. I had to put it down to think about it several times. But I always came back, because I did in fact keep thinking about it and needed to know what happened next. I can’t explain half the things that happened in that book, but I finished it and liked it…which makes it the strangest book I have ever read. Usually if I don’t understand something—say, a calculus textbook—I just give up and won’t read it. But I never wanted to give up on this. I actually liked all the stuff I didn’t understand. Both as a reader and a writer, I want to know, HOW DID HE DO THAT? So yeah. This isn’t a “safe” read, but I’d say it’s one of those high-risk, high-reward things. I’m going to read it again because I know I missed a ton of stuff the first time around. And the sequel, THE FRACTAL PRINCE, is coming out in September. I’m excited!

Up in the back on the right: CALIBAN’S WAR by James S.A. Corey. This is the sequel to LEVIATHAN’S WAKE, which I enjoyed very much, so I’m looking forward to this.

Bottom right: TEMPEST’S FURY, the fifth book in the Jane True series. I’ve been a fan of Nicole Peeler’s books since I discovered book one, TEMPEST RISING. Jane True drops these one-liners every so often that get me laughing so hard I can’t stop. I wake up my dogs. My wife. My child. They give me dirty looks and I point at the book by way of explanation, helpless to stop, tears running down my face. So yeah. I like these books, and at some point around book three Nicole’s editor heard about it. If you look really closely at the cover for book five, you’ll see a little something I told her:

My blurb may require some explanation: Jane True is not a telepath and she does not routinely have hot bloody sex, much as she may wish for it. But she is a heroine who’s abruptly thrown into a supernatural world and has to make the best of it, and discovers along the way that she’s a bit stronger than she thought.  So there you have it. I’m on page fifty of this one now and digging it! Hope you all are reading something spiffy and if you’re not, I hope this gives you a starting point.* Cheers!

*None of these was provided to me by my publisher or any other publisher…I bought them all because this really is the sci-fi/fantasy stuff I like to read. :)

It’s official: I’ll be at New York Comic Con October 11-14!

I only mention this in case you were looking for reasons to go and in case giving me a fist bump there might make you smile. :) I can assure you now that I would be delighted to meet you!

Know what’s cool? NYCC isn’t sold out yet! It will be soonish…they have apparently sold out the past two years, but right now you can still get tickets.

I don’t have my schedule yet and I don’t know if I’ll be doing anything offsite. What I can be certain of is that I’ll be at the Del Rey booth for a signing or five and I’ll probably have at least one panel. I should be relatively easy to track down if you’re into tracking. I don’t run very fast, either, and I tend to like people, so your chances of chatting for a bit are really quite good. If you’re at all able to come, I hope you will; next summer I’m touring up the west coast, so this will be my only visit to NY for a while.

Aside from meeting spiffy readers, I’m looking forward to meeting some authors who are kinda based on the east coast and don’t roam me-wards very often. There were a couple of authors in San Diego I wanted to meet but never did…the scheduling gods, you know. I think I must have chapped their hide when I failed to take in my car for the 30,000 mile checkup or whatever it was, and so they punished me. I never got to see Rachel Caine or Rob Reid and now I am sad. Hopefully I can appease the scheduling gods before October and I’ll get to meet everyone.

BUT VERY EXCITED! YAY NY! MAN-SQUEE!

Saturday! This was the busy day for me. So busy I didn’t get many pictures taken…eeek!

We had an Urban Fantasy panel at 10:30 and that was cool; The League of Reluctant Adults was well represented…five of the eight panelists were Leaguers! We did a little autographing after that, and then I had an interview with a blog called Comic Book Therapy. Not sure when that will be up, but when it appears I’ll let you know. I also found time to sit with Priscilla the Ultra Talented, she who makes glorious maps, and signed two dozen prints she had made of the map that will appear in TRAPPED. If you are so inclined to snag a print from her once you see it in November, I will be providing a link to do so.

The Weta booth area was ultra shiny. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of the trolls that will be in The Hobbit. But have you seen Thorin Oakenshield’s map, complete with silver letters?

Another signing at the Random House booth at 3. Much happiness and joy there. My cousin Drew, who owns Ash Avenue Comics in Tempe, stopped by to say hello. And so did Diana Rowland! Squee! She signed my copy of EVEN WHITE TRASH ZOMBIES GET THE BLUES—and if you haven’t read her White Trash Zombie books you’re kinda missing out.

I exited and wrote a bit of HUNTED (coming in 2013!) and then headed on down for drinks by the bay with some Random House folk.

When you have drinks by the bay with Random House folk and people give you shots called Liquid Cocaine that are half Jägermeister and half Goldschläger (THANKS, GERMANY!) and yeah they give you three of them and maybe some beer chasers, the brainstorming for future writing projects can get a little loopy. Somehow we got fixated on writing mysteries featuring a private dick called Saxon Codpiece.

SAXON CODPIECE in THE BAGGAGE HANDLER

FOUL BALLS: A SPORTS MYSTERY featuring SAXON CODPIECE

And so on. I cannot explain this other than to say we thought those were bloody hilarious at the time.

Anyway, I’m back home now and after the doggies mauled me coming in the door they sat on the couch for a post-mauling nap. Have you seen my doggies? Manley is the pug and Sophie is the Boston terrier.

Can you guess how I started my day? That’s right, I went to Upstart Crow and got myself a Mexican Mocha! Nom nom nom! But this time when I went there were spiffy people to meet me there. These were people who wanted to say howdy but couldn’t make it to the con itself, so they brought some books with them, I signed ’em, and then we had a lovely time chatting together out on the patio while birds sang to us. Look! I has proof!

I didn’t spend too much time on the floor; I have this book called HUNTED due at the end of August and I really need to write all I can, so for much of the day that’s what I did. But I was a good boy and took a few random cosplay pictures as I walked around. Behold!

You know, you see a lot of the new Jokers based on Heath Ledger these days, and it may be easier to pull off in many ways than the old school ones. But Holy Wax Replica Batman, this one guy really nailed the old-school comic book Joker better than I’ve ever seen. I mean, his FACE! It’s perfect! The eyebrows! The jaw! The damned smile! Honestly this guy was kinda scary because he made the Joker real:

One of the coolest bits about Comic Con is that you can randomly run into legends. I happened to run into sic-fi legend Peter Hamilton at the Random House booth:

My wonderful editors took me out to dinner at Roy’s or Ray’s or something. Honestly I didn’t pay that much attention because on the way in my eyes were traumatized by the sign for another restaurant called Tequila in that execrable Papyrus font. DAMN YOU PAPYRUS FOR RUINING TEQUILA FOR ME!

We entertained ourselves and probably annoyed our waiter by complimenting all the food using largish words in the completely wrong way. He’d come by and ask how the appetizer was and we smiled and told him it was “perspicacious and stoic.” The beer we tried was “extremely bouffant” and the main course was “flippant yet sonorous.” For dessert I had a WTF moment. I ordered this one thing because once I read the menu it was sort of like a dare. It was called an “Almond Joy?” with the question mark being entirely intentional. Apparently you’re supposed to order it and sound like a Valley Girl: “I’ll have the Almond Joy?” But check out the description:

Okay, WTF! I thought there was only one form of coconut and it’s called A COCONUT. And what in nine hells is chocolate soil? Why would a chef ever offer to soil a plate? I had to order it just to see. So it turns out I was partially right: there was only one form of coconut on the plate and it was coconut; it did not vary from coconut at all. But they were not kidding about the chocolate soil. It had the appearance and texture of soil and it fucking tasted like soil too. I paid them to serve me dirt. WELL PLAYED, SIRS.

After dinner I went to the Penguin party because they were very kind to invite me. I got to meet authors Amber Benson and Myke Cole and Kat Richardson, all fabulous people. Kat is in The League of Reluctant Adults and I’ve wanted to meet her for a good while; she has a giant smile and we talked about how awesome her covers are. (Have you read Kat’s books, by the way?) And then I was entertained by Erica, who works for Penguin and I think may have been hired because she is the world’s leading expert in giving Anton Strout shit. Now, many people give Anton shit because, like a mushroom, he thrives on it, but Erica is a virtuoso at slinging it Anton’s way. At some point Myke Cole got up and took a picture of us with his phone and his flash lit up our eyes with the fires of hell:

If I ever run for office this picture will resurface because it looks like we are planning some seriously evil shenanigans. In truth our plans were rather tame: We planned to have another drink. Except for Anton. He planned to sit there while Erica gave him shit. Heh! Anton has a new series launching this fall, the Spellmason Chronicles, starting with ALCHEMYSTIC, so I’m looking forward to it.

Today (Saturday) I have my urban fantasy panel and I’ll do my best to take pics! More later!

WOW what a day!

There was joy. There was pain. There was Comic Con.

First—update from Preview Night: I got to meet Patrick Rothfuss again. For those of you who have followed me for a while, it is no secret that I consider him to be the finest storyteller walking the planet right now. (If you have never heard of him, I suggest you find The Name of the Wind immediately. You’re welcome.) He also happens to be an excellent human being. I met him last year and fanboyed all over the poor man. This year I managed to keep my shit together…but just barely. He has actually read the first three of my books and I gave him a copy of TRICKED. He wanted to give me something back. So I said I would trade it for a Crazy Eyes picture. Suffice to say you would not pick either of us up if we were hitchhiking:

I started my morning at Upstart Crow, which is a spiffy little coffee shop & bookstore in Seaport Village, just on the other side of the Hyatt. I discovered this place last year. Here is what they have: THE BEST COFFEE EVAR. They have this thing called a Mexican Mocha. It’s a mocha, you know…with spices. And it’s amazing. They hand-grind their chocolate, which I never realized was something that people did. OH LOOK THEY HAVE A SPECIAL JAR FOR IT.

By the way: You can’t get Mexican Mochas at Starbucks.  You can’t get them, um…anywhere else I’ve ever been. They’re amazing. BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

Ask my editor. I bought her one and brought it to the convention center. She is something of a coffee connoisseur and so I needed validation. I said, Tricia, you need to try this Mexican Mocha. It will change your life. And she tried it. And then she promptly turned into Galadriel for a few minutes. Not the scary blue one that was terrible as the sea. I mean the shiny happy one who gives strange dwarves three hairs from her head. That’s what this drink does for people. It turned me into Brad Pitt for like four seconds. And I’m talking about the sexy young one from A River Runs Through It.

After that I hit the floor. I got a signed copy of Alchemy from David Mack. I got signed copies of a special con-only foil cover of CHEW from John Layman and Rob Guillory. (If you like comics and you’re not reading CHEW…why?) Look, I has proof:

I also got to visit Cody Vrosh, an artist who did some fan art featuring Atticus and Oberon a while back. Beautiful watercolor and ink stuff. I’m going to have him do one of Atticus and Granuaile soonish. But he was turbo kind enough to give me a signed print of his first one so I could geek out:

I failed miserably at getting anything from Mattel. The line was insane. I tried three times and couldn’t get in. The aggressive bald man with a mustache at the end of the line did not want anyone else to fork over their disposable income and told everyone to move along, nothing happening here. So I moved along, and one guy tried to SELL me his spot in line, and to that guy I say, Dude. I will not leave this earth with that on my balance sheet. I will never pay to wait in a fucking line. There is some shit I will simply have to do without.

I am so glad I didn’t have to do without meeting Shawntelle Madison, the thoroughly awesome author of COVETED and the forthcoming KEPT. If you dig PNR and specifically werewolves, you’d probably dig her books quite a bit. Here’s the two of us, appropriately standing in front of a sign regarding PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS (it’s above Shawntelle’s head):

I also got to meet Scott Sigler and Troy Denning and famous agents and stuff like that. But at the end of the evening we were all standing around this fire outside of Fox Sports Grill wondering why the hell we weren’t roasting s’mores. It was not at all the sort of thing I would have expected when I woke up this morning.

Hmm. You’re probably disappointed in the profound lack of cosplay pictures at this point. I honestly didn’t take many today. But I’ll leave you with one: There was a pretty cool trio of DC comic characters walking around—Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn.

More tomorrow!

WOOHOO I’m at SDCC! Shortly I will go in and buy ALL THE THINGS but first I thought I’d give you a few teaser pics of what I saw on the floor before it opened up to everyone at six. I got in early thanks to my spiffy publisher and got to walk around.

I got picked up from the airport in this hot little number:

Nah. Just kidding. But this and several other Batmobiles were outside the Hilton Bayfront hotel where I’m staying, so naturally I had to go clickety-click. Want to see another one?

So you walk in to the convention floor and WHAM HULK SMASH YOU PUNY NERD FRIEND OF BANNER!

They have ridiculously cool stuff here. Like Wampa hats. I think the Wampa hats are intended for children and I doubt they will fit my giant head but it’s my duty to try one on. They also have sweet replica Jedi stuff if you wanna practice your favorite galactic religion in style:

And yeah they have some coasters that I think are necessary in my life. I just can’t see my wife letting me put them out anywhere. She is wonderful about tolerating my nerdery but sometimes I try to take it TOO FAR and putting Westeros coasters out in our living room would probably earn me a judo chop. BUT. Aren’t these cool?!?

Anyway, you get down to the Random House booth and you see this big poster of Rob Reid’s book that just came out Tuesday called YEAR ZERO. I blurbed it, y’all. It’s funny. Uncle Kevin says, “Read it.” And then there’s a big poster for this other guy who writes a series about an ancient Druid.

Every time I see big posters of my books (which has been, uh, three times now) I feel astounded. Thank you all so much for reading and making my publisher feel that putting up a big poster of my books might be a Good Idea. It’s mind-blowing. Posters like this also make me miss my dad; he knew I was going to be published but never got to see it actually happen.

Biggest dilemma I now face is on Friday. There’s a CHEW panel at 2:30-3:30 and an Epic Fantasy panel at 3:30-4:30. I probably cannot attend them both. I will have to choose, and it’s TEARING ME APART with ultra trembly pathos like in that song by Jewel.

I’ll be going to Upstart Crow every morning for coffee because it’s insanely good. Looking forward to meeting lots of authors and geeking out on them. I’ll update with more pic-filled posts as I go, so check back!

Bacon is the Way and the Truth.

Going to San Diego Comic Con this week! Here’s my schedule:

Thursday: 12-1 pm: Signing HOUNDED at Random House booth #1515

Friday: I am a free agent. However, if you can’t go to the Con and you’d like to see me, here’s your chance. I’ll be at the coffee shop called Upstart Crow at 9 am chilling out. I’ll sign anything you bring, chat a bit, and enjoy life.

Saturday: An urban fantasy panel at 10:30 in room 5AB!!! It’s rather embarrassingly titled “Hot Town: Faeries in the City.” I did not make that up. Super spiffy authors joining me: Kat Richardson, Anton Strout, Jeanne Stein, J.F. Lewis, and Seanan McGuire. Afterward from 12:30-1:30 there will be an official signing thingie in the autograph signing area; all my books will be for sale by Mysterious Galaxy, though of course you’re welcome to come say hi without buying anything.

ALSO Saturday: Signing at the Random House booth #1515 at 3 PM. You can drop by there anytime, by the way, and snag a bookmark or five. I’m leaving TRICKED bookmarks there and I think they’ll have some bookmarks for TRAPPED. They will also be hosting authors there during the whole convention, so make sure you stop by to check out the scheduled appearances.

That will pretty much take care of my public appearances for a few months. Need to get lots of writing done after that. :)