Gadzooks, I haven’t blogged for a while! In case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to…

Mostly, I can’t tell you. Mostly.

I finished a short story for an anthology that hasn’t been announced yet. I signed a contract for another project I can’t tell you about. And there are a couple of other things in the works that I won’t be able to announce for months.

But I can tell you a little about HUNTED, book six of IDC, which is what I’m working on right now! But first I’m going to back up a bit.

I finished TRAPPED in mid-March and then wrote very little for two and a half months apart from some outlining. At that point, I’d been writing pretty  much non-stop for three years; I was a wee bit fried and I was also dreadfully behind in my work for school. I needed to catch up, so I did. After school was out and I went to Phoenix Comicon over the Memorial Day weekend, I threw myself into writing TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW, the novella coming out Sep. 4, and also a short story called “The Chapel Perilous” for an (announced) anthology called UNFETTERED coming out next year. That was June. Then I started in on HUNTED, and whoa. It’s a tough one. Things that I’ve been setting up since HOUNDED are triggering and the doo-doo in which Atticus is wading is pretty darn deep. There was a string of chapters where I was a mess and telling my laptop “I’m so sorry!” and hoping that my surviving characters would hear me. I call them The Crying Chapters. But, fearing that maybe I was having issues (I mean, more than normal), I sent them to my editor and she confirmed they are The Crying Chapters. Those are going to be difficult to edit, but I’m past them for now and moving on.

Today was a pretty cool day because something unexpected happened. An old character walked into the story and introduced a new character, and neither was in my outline. Wauggh! I’m off script! Watch out!

This is honestly an excellent development. The Hammers of God walked into HEXED like that, which allowed me to create deadly beards and make fun of extremists. Those are two of my favorite things. When you combine them you get neck beards. Why? Because neck beards are extreme and can scare people unto DEATH.

So, the old character was Leif Helgarson, who, believe it or not, was not going to appear in the book at all save for a mention in one chapter. I was glad to have him back; I missed some of the wordplay he typically engages in with Atticus. And the new character he introduces is a villain. A VILLAIN, I SAY. I will tell you one thing about him and give some clues about what he is by telling you what he is not.

1) His initials are W.D. —no relation to WD-40.
2) He isn’t a vampire, werewolf, demon, or member of the Fae. He’s not an angel. Not a human. Not a god. He’s not a Timelord, nor is he a neck beard. And before you ask, he is not a bowl of beans. Beans are often villainous, I agree, but I’m not sure they’re right for my series. I may have to face reality and accept that I will not be the first UF author to feature a bowl of beans as a villain. Several other authors are already working on it in any case, so I’m tardy to the party and will have to watch as everyone else cashes in on the latest trend. 2013 will be the Year of the Beans and I will be left out.

HUNTED is about halfway complete now and when it releases next June this blog post will make a lot more sense.  Excepting, perhaps, for that bit about the beans. If you spent a half second or so thinking that bowls of beans would be the next big thing in UF, I apologize. I was just bein’ silly. :)

Grateful to you as always for reading. Peace n’ carrots,
Kevin

Say hello to book 4.5 in the Iron Druid Chronicles, TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW:

Two-thousand-year-old Atticus may have outwitted and outfought everyone from Odin to Bacchus, but in this eBook original, he’s about to discover what comes around when you go around messing with gods.

Six years into the training of his apprentice, Granuaile, the Morrigan pays Atticus an unexpected visit and insists that he come with her at once. He must leave his apprentice behind, along with his Irish wolfhound, Oberon—and he must also leave his sword. The Morrigan has always taken extreme pleasure in pronouncing the Druid’s mortal danger and imminent doom, so the fact that she won’t reveal the purpose of their journey makes him very nervous. Of course, any time the Celtic Chooser of the Slain drops in unannounced, it’s never good. When she does let slip that she’ll be saving his life in the near future, Atticus is left to wonder . . . will he soon be giving his legions of enemies something to crow about?

Heh! The above text is the “back cover copy,” which I think is kind of funny since there is no back cover for this. But I’ll tell you a bit more: This novella is important to the series. In fact, it is part of the series. It wraps up loose ends from both HAMMERED and TRICKED, tells the story of how Atticus got the recipe for Immortali-Tea, and sets the stage for events that happen in books five and six (TRAPPED and HUNTED, respectively). Both of those books allude to events that happen in this novella. TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW will also include the first chapter of TRAPPED, which has been revised slightly from the version printed at the end of TRICKED.

As of today, now-ish in fact, it should be available for pre-order on your favorite eBook platform for $2.99. It’ll download to your device on the release date, September 4. This will be available in the US and Canada and also in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK’s affiliated territories. Very sorry—that’s all the countries that have bought rights so far. (If the UK/ANZ e-retailers don’t have it up today, please be a tiny bit patient, they’ll get it done.)

Though this is a digital-only release, you don’t have to have an e-reader to read this! You can read it on your computer. You can get free apps from Nook, Kindle, the iBook store, or whatever platform you dig that will allow you to purchase and read the novella on your computer screen, and I hear quite a few people read books on their smartphones these days, because you can get free apps for that functionality too.

TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW will also be available on audio in the United States and Canada only. It’s read by Luke Daniels and I believe the price is $10. I, for one, can’t wait to hear Luke’s voice for Odin. :)

I’m kind of excited about the possibilities for shorter fiction in the digital realm. The market for short fiction in printed form was shrinking even before the digital revolution, but now e-readers are making short fiction a viable market for authors again, and as a storyteller I think that’s awesome. Some stories don’t want to be full-length novels, but without a method to sell a few copies, many authors would never take the trouble to tell those stories.

I took the trouble a few times and just gave them away for free. If you haven’t read them already, there are three Iron Druid short stories out there. One of them, “Kaibab Unbound” is a bonus short story bundled exclusively with the e-book version of HOUNDED. (I will get around to printing it in a collection someday, but for now that’s the only place to find it.) However, you can get the other two stories free on my Short Stories page: “Clan Rathskeller” is set about ten months before the events of HOUNDED, and “A Test of Mettle” is from Granuaile’s POV, set during the events of HAMMERED while Atticus is off in Asgard.

Many thanks in advance for checking out TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW and spreading the word to all your friends who have enjoyed IDC—since it’s not a full-length book I think many people are unaware it’s coming out. Let ’em know, will ya?

Happy Doggies & Beer,
Kevin