Out in Arizona we have this thing called “October Break” during the school year—I’m sure many other districts have something similar—so I packed up my wee family and we headed for the trees.

A popular misconception about Arizona is that it’s all cactus and snakes, but that’s only the southern bit. About an hour and a half north of Phoenix you get into some serious trees. And if you go to Sedona, as we did, you get some supremely pretty red rocks to go along with your trees. I mean, lookit:

Sedona is also home to these things called Vortexes. They’re supposed to be, um…well, I’m not sure. It has something to do with electromagnetic energy and maybe magic and definitely lots of New Age stuff. You can buy crystals and prayer wheels and drums and all kinds of goodies for your personal head trip in town, and then go out to nature and commune with your god(s) and natural avatar(s) of your choice. Personally I like to commune with nature unassisted and unfiltered, but selling people stuff to assist their spiritual journey is a big business in Sedona. They have many stores devoted to it. Or, as the Chief in Police Academy said, “Many, many, many, many!” This is just one of them, which we visited for the fun of it:

It had aura photography! Vedic and Buddhist literature and figures! Lots of pretty rocks and crystals that were supposed to unblock your chakras! Astrology goodies! Wiccan goodies! 31 flavors of Tarot or something like that! And my nerdy Iron Druid moment was this: the super-nice lady who helped us in this store was Polish, and I found myself hoping she was a witch. She seemed to be into the chakra/Vedic thing, though, so I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to ruin it—I really wanted her to be a Polish witch I met in Arizona so that my fiction would be that much closer to truth. That’s turbo silly, I know. I’m incorrigible that way. Anyhow, I scored a neato bust of Ganesha while I was in there BECAUSE IT’S COOL THAT’S WHY, and he’s watching me type this now with a tiny smile around his broken tusk. Soon we will have a beer together.

But back to the break! Off we went to enjoy nature. Oak Creek is daaaaaang beautiful. I haz proof! Lookit:

But wait! There’s more! This is one of those shots where I’m pretentiously trying to show off my composition skillz:

Of course, since there were all these beautiful trees around, I had to hug a few of ’em and let ’em know they’re loved:

My kid loves the water so she enjoyed our time down by the creek. Here she is in all her blue-haired glory checking out the waterfall upstream from a deep, slow pool:

‘Twas a lovely escape. But now we’re home again and I’m in between contracts, so I get to be super duper creative. My second contract ends with HUNTED, and though that’s not finished quite yet because we still have editing to do, I don’t imagine I’ll get that back from my editor for a while so I’m outlining stuff for the future. I have the Star Wars novel to outline first—that’s actually under contract—and then I need to get going on other goodies. More Iron Druid, for one thing, and an epic fantasy project that I’ve had on the back burner for a long time is just about ready to move to the front. When I have more information about how those are going I’ll let you know, but thank you again for reading my books and spreading the word—that’s the only reason I get to write more. :)

Peace and hugs for you and your trees,
Kevin

It’s time for us to have some fun together to celebrate the upcoming release of book five of the Iron Druid Chronicles! Are ya ready kids?

WHAT YOU CAN WIN: Five people (5) will win all five books in the series, signed, and postal gods willing, you would actually get TRAPPED before its release date. PLUS a very limited-edition pint glass emblazoned with the logo of Atticus & Oberon’s Beer Bonanza. Three winners will be chosen randomly, and I’ll pick two because of their excessive cuteness or badassery. I do have to keep this contest U.S. only—my apologies to the many spiffy readers I have in Canada and overseas.

HOW TO ENTER: Send me a picture by Samhain/Halloween of your pet “reading” any one of the first four books. Dog, cat, fish, lizard, horse, cow, whatever. HAVE FUN WITH THIS.  Detailed rules:
1) You can be in the picture too. In fact, if you’d like to be reading the book to your pet, and they simply look attentive while you’re doing it, that’s acceptable too.
2) It doesn’t matter which book in the series you’re reading, just so long as the cover is visible in the picture.
3) Having your pet look at an e-reader won’t have the same visual impact, so we do need to use a paperback here. If you’d rather not buy one you can probably score one at your local library.
4) Send your picture as an attachment to kevin (at) kevinhearne dot com by Oct. 31. I’ll periodically post them to a gallery of entries on my Facebook author page so we can all enjoy the overdose of cute. (If you haven’t “liked” my author page yet, you can find it at http://www.facebook.com/authorkevin)
5) Please give me your name and the name of your pet(s) and where you’re from. When I post the pic on Facebook it’ll be your first name only, so it’ll read something like “Bartholomew from Alabama reads HOUNDED to his poodle, Fluffy.” If it’s just your pet in the picture that’s cool, I’ll just write “Fluffy from Alabama loves HOUNDED” but I still need your name in case you win. :)
6) If you don’t have a pet, I’m sure someone you know does. :)

Here’s a sample entry with three adorable wolfhounds! Note that this is not actually an entry—it’s just an example of what you can do. You don’t have to compete against this one.

HAVE FUN EVERYONE! CAN’T WAIT TO SEE ‘EM!

Sometimes it’s good to go AFK for a while and hang out with some other peeps who know a wee bit about the writing biz. Recently I’ve enjoyed hanging out with some local authors who make me laugh. Since I’ve enjoyed them so much, thought you might like an introduction:

Beth Cato is West Siiiiide where I’m East Siiiiide and we usually try to meet halfway somewhere. She’s quite prolific with published short stories and poems and has some other projects brewing. If you’d like to check out her work, here’s a free story called “Cartographer’s Ink.” Beth is also insanely good with baking stuff—she’s inventing her own recipes now. She gave me some White Chocolate Orange cookies and OMG NOM NOM NOM.

Jenn McKinlay is a NYT Bestselling author of several mystery series. She’s juggling FOUR different series right now, the logistics of which blows my mind. Four different casts of characters…egad! Right now people are really digging her Library Lover’s Mysteries and the Cupcake Mysteries.

Sam Sykes is the author of The Aeon’s Gate trilogy (from Pyr) who mocks me constantly with his long, flowing locks. Within two years he will look like Legolas and I will not. His third book, The Skybound Sea, just released a week ago. Following him on Twitter @SamSykesSwears is good for a minimum of one “WTF?” per day and a laugh or five.

Usually writers only get to see each other at conventions and it’s tough to get in more than a few minutes with each other, so I’m really glad I get to see these folks more often. Why is this good? Several reasons:

1) There is always beer.
2) Writers do not ask the same questions of each other that non-writers commonly ask us. For example, a writer will never ask another writer if he/she wears pants while writing. We already know the answer. As a side note, the frequency with which writers hear this question points to a seismic shift in the American Dream. It used to be people wanted middle-class stability with a big-screen TV and maybe a Kegorator, but now they just don’t want to wear pants. I thought for sure this would be addressed by our current presidential candidates during their respective conventions, but oddly, neither had a word to say about it. A third party—say, the Pantsless Party—could go far in this environment. They could win it all with one simple question: “Are you still wearing pants?” Holy crap this post has gone off the rails. Another side note: When/if you meet me, you should never be afraid to ask me a question, even if you’re fairly certain I’ve been asked the question before. I sincerely do not mind; as a teacher, I’m quite used to it. :)
3) In addition to beer, there is sake. And yes, Jenn McKinlay can keep up with Sam and me.
4) We tell stories (go figure), but the kind that are probably not interesting to anyone else but writers. They are tales of convention shenanigans and so on; we never get to tell them or hear them anywhere else.
5) There is no number five. Because I said so.
6) We always congratulate each other for remembering to wear pants because we crave affirmation.

Anyway. Peace and carrots. I do believe that rather soonish I’ll have another announcement thingie to make about a project I’ve been sitting on for a while. In the meantime, many thanks to you who have read TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW and said nice things about it. Very glad you enjoyed it!

May your dreams be free of guilt ferrets,
Kevin

Behold! People who call themselves experts on Internet thingies say people like lists! And so I have made one for you! Now with even MORE exclamation points!!!!

I should probably insert a disclaimer here that this might not actually include all the cool things in September. It will just include things that I think are cool. But ONWARD.

1. CHEW, a monthly comic by John Layman and Rob Guillory. For my money it’s the best comic on the shelves today. Many people agree: it’s won an Eisner Award (kind of the Oscars for comics) for both writing and artwork. Soon to be a TV show. Issue #28 comes out Sep. 12. You can easily snag the trade volumes and catch up. Please catch up so we can geek out about it together, okay?

2. STORMDANCER by Jay Kristoff. It’s Japanese steampunk! Patrick Rothfuss blurbed it. Scott Westerfeld blurbed it. Even I blurbed it! This bad boy is coming out on Sep. 18 and it is Sofa King cool. But they don’t let me put things like “Sofa King cool” on the back covers of books. So here’s what I wrote instead:

“Kristoff’s debut is a lyrical triumph of chainsaw swords and thunder tigers that steampunk fans and mythology buffs will devour.”

Swank, right? Look, it’s beautifully written world you can get lost in. There is a girl, a griffin, and lots of blood. Preorder now and thank me later. :) And of course Jay is an amusing dude to follow. He’s on Twitter as @misterkristoff and you can find him on Facebook too.

3. There’s a book that came out earlier this year but I’m just reading it now so it makes the list. It’s called CALIBAN’S WAR by James S.A. Corey. It’s the sequel to LEVIATHAN WAKES, which I also really enjoyed. My favorite character so far in this book is a grandma named Avasarala who’s an intelligence guru for the UN defense forces. According to her, her job is “to keep civilization from blowing up while the children are in it.” She does it with a rather foul mouth behind closed doors but then looks so sweet in public, eating her wee pistachio nuts. I love it.

4. Are you a Browncoat? If so: Do you only wear the shirt that says “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” or do you have other shiny doodads proclaiming your disdain for the Alliance? Here is something shiny for you: a Serenity keychain. Or if that doesn’t fire your rockets, there are so many other pretties at thinkgeek.com I would begin to doubt your nerdhood if you didn’t find something you loved there.

Lately I’ve been re-watching Firefly with my daughter and enjoying her reactions. She likes Kaylee the best. And she loves it when they swear in Chinese. She makes me go back and play those bits over and over so she can swear in Chinese too. Okay, I admit it: I practice with her. I sure hope we’re not saying anything TOO heinous.

5. You know what this list needs? A shameless plug! Unsurprisingly, I happen to think TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW is pretty cool. It’s an Iron Druid novella that’s available now at your favorite eBook retailer thingie in the USA, Canada, UK and affiliated territories, as well as Australia and New Zealand. The audio version, narrated by Luke Daniels, is also available in the US/Canada only, through sites like Audible and iTunes.

It’s set six years after the events of TRICKED and gets you all set up for TRAPPED. Some people die and some people get nekkid. More details here, but all the details are in the novella itself. :) Hope you have fun!