A year-end post of sorts…

I’m about to engage in some serious plotting. I have two books to finish by next December—Star Wars and SHATTERED, so that’s my plan for 2013. I will disappear for a wee bit and greet you again in the New Year. I hope your Winter Solstice is a happy one, along with any other holiday you choose to celebrate around this time. May you find harmony and peace with your family and marshmallows in your hot chocolate.

What happens when you get a group of today’s best urban fantasy authors to write about the shady supernatural underbelly of  carnivals? CARNIEPUNK is the answer. It’s dark urban fantasy written by a whole lot of people who make me squee.

The big cover reveal was on Monday, but in case you missed it, here it is to the left. The blood splatters are perfect; though I cannot speak for any of the other authors, I know that my story is the bloodiest one I’ve written so far. More about my story below—first, lookit all these awesome authors in the anthology with me! (alphabetical listing)

Rachel Caine is the New York Times bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series!

Delilah S. Dawson is an artist and an associate editor on CoolMomPicks.com. She lives with her family in Atlanta, where she is currently writing the next Blud novel.

Jennifer Estep is the New York Times bestselling author of the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series for Pocket Books and also writes the Mythos Academy young adult series.

Kelly Gay is the author of an urban fantasy series featuring Charlie Madigan. A two-time RITA Award finalist, she resides in North Carolina.

Mark Henry is an adult urban fantasist, comedic horror writer and unrepentant smart-ass. His work has been translated into garbled slurs by notable alcoholics. He lives on the fringe of Seattle society with his saintly wife and assorted hairy monsters.

Hillary Jacques is an up-late, Alaska-based author of speculative fiction. Her romantic urban fantasy Night Runner series is published under pen name Regan Summers.

Jackie Kessler writes about demons, angels, superheroes, supervillains, and, in her semi-secret identity as a YA author, Riders of the Apocalypse. She lives near Albany, NY, with her Loving Husband and Precious Little Tax Deductions.

Seanan McGuire is the New York Times bestselling author of the InCryptid series and the October Daye series, which earned her the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2010. The Newsflesh trilogy, published under the pseudonym Mira Grant, earned her the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2011.

Kelly Meding was born and raised in Southern Delaware and discovered Freddy Krueger at a very young age, and has since had a lifelong obsession with horror, science fiction, and fantasy. She writes the Dreg City urban fantasy series and the superhero-based MetaWars series.

Allison Pang, a biologist in a former life, spends her days in northern Virginia working as a cube grunt and her nights waiting on her kids and cats, punctuated by an occasional husbandly serenade. Sometimes she even manages to write. Mostly she just makes it up as she goes. She loves Hello Kitty, sparkly shoes, and gorgeous violinists.

Nicole D. Peeler resides outside Pittsburgh to teach in Seton Hill’s MFA in Popular Fiction. When she’s not in the classroom infecting young minds with her madness, she’s writing manga and the Jane True urban fantasy series.

Rob Thurman is the New York Times bestselling author of the supernatural thriller All Seeing Eye, the gritty urban fantasy Cal Leandros series, the Trickster Novels, and standalone thriller-suspense novels.

Jaye Wells is a USA Today-bestselling author of urban fantasy novels about magical vampires and junky wizards. She loves to travel, drink bourbon and do things that scare her. Jaye lives in Texas.

Pretty awesome, right? Ideally with an anthology you get some authors you already know and some that you don’t. Part of the fun of it is the opportunity to discover new writers for cheap. Well, I’ve read the work of almost everyone in this lineup and can assure you that you’re in for one heck of a collection.

This project started, believe it or not, with goofing around on Twitter. Hillary Jacques is one of my favorite people in the world and we were riffing one night on how you can attach the suffix “punk” onto a word and create a new subgenre of fiction. Since we already have cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, splatterpunk, and more, what was left? A lot of our ideas were simply silly, but once Hillary threw out “Carniepunk!” I said, hey…I’d actually like to write some of that! Carnivals are damn creepy. The lights and bright colors and barkers try to sell you a good time but it’s all illusion, and you walk through them just knowing that you’re a sucker but hoping that you, at least, won’t be fooled like everyone else. Or as badly. So that tension between reality and illusion seemed a perfect place to set some urban fantasy, and we thought that plenty of authors would jump at the chance to mess around with that setting. Sweet potato casserole, we were right!

My story is called “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” and it’s set a couple of weeks after the Iron Druid novella, TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW. (In the series chronology this would be 4.6.) Atticus, Granuaile, and Oberon take a break from Granuaile’s training to pay a surreptitious visit on her mother in Kansas. But the small-town carnival there is hiding a rather big secret of the ghoulish kind…

I do hope you’ll give this a try. I truly think you’re going to dig this collection and discover some new writers who will rock your socks. You can pre-order now, in fact, at all the usual places, and that helps out so much. The book will come out July 30, so just after you’ve read HUNTED at the end of June and you’re wondering what to read next, this will come along, give you another Iron Druid story, and introduce you to so many great new writers! I’ve provided links below in case you feel like pre-ordering, and if you order a copy from The Poisoned Pen I’ll sign it for ya! (They ship anywhere!) Their number is 1-888-560-9919.

Amazon
Barnes & Noble (link not up yet but will be soon!)
Powell’s 

My ultra-spiffy publisher, Del Rey, has signed me up to write six more books, and I couldn’t be more thrilled! Many thanks to all my readers for their support; you’re the reason I get to keep writing.

Three of the books will finish off the Iron Druid Chronicles as I’ve always planned (books 7-9) and the other three will be a bit epic.

Also included in this deal is another IDC novella called THE GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB, which is finished and will be released in the US/Canada and the UK and affiliated territories as an e-book original in 2013. It’s set four years before the events of HOUNDED so there’s no Granuaile, but we get plenty of Atticus and Oberon as they get lured to Egypt by a priest of the crocodile god, Sobek!

Random House Audio Publishing Group will continue to produce audio for the US/Canadian market and Luke Daniels is the man, never fear. Release dates for audio are always the same day as the publishing date.

I don’t have publishing dates for the books yet—I have yet to write them and I need to finish my Star Wars novel before I can get busy with these. However, I can now tell you the title of the seventh Iron Druid book: SHATTERED.

Oh yeah: These will all be hardcover. (Eeep!)

I’ve been informed that TRAPPED will also be making an appearance on the New York Times bestseller list, so a gazillion thank-yous for that as well, and for the very kind words that some of you have sent me.

May harmony and an excellent beer find you. :) Cheers!

Since a few people here and there have said unto me, “Verily, I can’t read your frickin’ blog, laddie,” I have redesigned it a bit—or rather, I should say I had some talented people redesign it for me. The primary goal was to improve readability so that you’re not dealing with white text on black background, and the secondary goal was to keep it lookin’ kinda Druidic. Hope you dig it.

Thanks to Emily and Adam Beu at Two Birds Creative in San Francisco for all the spiffiness. Emily is a former student of mine and I’m so proud of her. :)

While I was at it I switched up my Twitter avatar as well. It seemed like a good time to allow Atticus to rest for a while and let everyone enjoy a nice otter.

In case you missed the news, huge congratulations are in order for Luke Daniels, the kickass narrator of the Iron Druid audiobooks, for winning Audible’s Narrator of the Year! I have always been amazed by Luke’s ability to give all those characters their own voice, and it’s awesome to see him get the recognition he deserves!

Many thanks to those of you who have already read (or listened to) TRAPPED in the past week. Some of you read so fast that you’re already asking about the next book, and unfortunately I can’t write as quickly as you read. To answer that question, the next book, HUNTED, comes out June 25, 2013. But you’ll most likely have a couple of Iron Druid goodies to read before that to tide you over. In case you’re interested, read on…

“The Chapel Perilous,” a short story set in sixth century Wales, takes you back to a time before Atticus was the Iron Druid and was ready to take on almost any duty if it would hide him from Aenghus Óg. That will appear in May in an anthology called UNFETTERED, which boasts a stunning lineup of authors including Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Terry Brooks, and many more. Do go check it out—it’s not only full of great stories, but the proceeds go to a good cause.

I have another novella coming out in the spring as well, though I don’t have a publication date yet. It’s called THE GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB, and it takes Atticus and Oberon to Egypt, where they run afoul of a priest of Sobek, the crocodile god. It’s set four years before HOUNDED so there’s no Granuaile, but the Widow MacDonagh makes a cameo appearance. This will be digital only like TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW, but there will be an audio version of it too. I’ll give you the publication date and the US cover when I can, but for now, I’ll leave you with the UK cover: