Category Archives: Blog

For the birds

You know how every so often a series of coincidences will start to freak you out a little bit? Like, “Why is everyone talking about Scooby Snacks all of a sudden?” or “What is up with all these references to the use of Splenda in everyday kitchen magic?” One such series happened to me yesterday.

Apparently, the universe wants me to pay more attention to birds. So I’m giving them a blog post.

First, one of my Twitter peeps, A.B., turned me on to this site called Myths Retold where this dude takes old stories from mythology and retells them in crude English vernacular. They’re pretty funny, but fair warning, the language can get pretty foul. I read this one, which tells the story of how Tereus, Procne, and Philomela got turned into birds.

Then I drove up with the family to see my mom in Payson and we were playing “Which radio station is playing the least crappy music right now?” and came across three bird-related songs in a row. “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Furtado, followed by “Broken Wings” by Mister Mister (I KNOW!) and then “Down in a Hole” by Alice in Chains. If you’re wondering how that last song relates to birds, there’s a lyric in there that goes like this: “I’d like to fly/but my wings have been so denied.” SO denied, dude. I commented on this odd string of songs to my wife and she said, “Oh, yeah?” and I thought that was going to be the end of it—but it was only the beginning.

We drive up to my mom’s house and the first thing she says is, “I’m so glad you’re here! I need help refilling the bird feeders.” And she wasn’t kidding at ALL, because the birds were lurking in the trees and staring at us with tiny black Hitchcock eyes, waiting for us to get their grub on. She has four different bird feeders and different mixes of seed; one feeder just has this nasty stuff called suet inside, and it’s supposed to attract titmice (horrifying name there) and nuthatches. The nuthatches are kinda neat. They look like this:

The birds are going crazy in the trees while we’re filling up the feeders. They’re fighting over branches to perch on and chirping angrily at each other.
“No, I’M gonna eat first!”
“No way! You fell out of the nest!”
“Oh yeah? Your mom was a dodo!”
“So? Your mom was a titmouse!”

The deck in Payson is surrounded by shaggy-bark juniper and cedar trees. There are a couple of regular seed feeders, one that’s full of black flax seeds, a suet feeder, and a hummingbird feeder. All of’ ’em get love.

Once we were finished filling the feeders, I set up my computer on the deck there and enjoyed a beautiful day of writing while the birds swooped in for seed.

I saw a rufous sided towhee. They look like this and they’re darn pretty. I also saw a white crowned sparrow, which is a bit prettier than the common house sparrow I see all over the place. (And I love the picture at that link because the sparrow is nomming on a tasty bug of some kind.) There were black-headed grosbeaks and lesser goldfinches, and the hummingbird visitors were all broad-tailed hummingbirds, though I’ve seen other species there in the past.

I finished up that female POV short story and sent it off to my editor. We’ll see if it passes muster.

Today marks exactly one month until I’m officially published! Can you hear my squee? :)

Release dates all settled now

Quick update: As expected, the release date for Hammered has been moved back as well, to July 5. I’m very sorry to delay the story a bit for everyone, but the reason for it is to help introduce Atticus to the widest possible audience. Barnes & Noble will have spiffy little cardboard display thingies (Alas! They are properly called book dumps) for each book now.

Apologies to book bloggers and readers who have been following along and waiting so patiently! The final, settled release dates are May 3 for Hounded, June 7 for Hexed, and July 5 for Hammered.

I first learned that Hounded‘s release date would be moved on February 23. A couple of weeks later I learned about Hexed. And now, on March 30, I learn about Hammered. I am not sure why it seems to take two weeks to make these moves, but I’m kind of enjoying not knowing. It is a delicious mystery that allows me to craft dramatic explanations. I imagine people in trench coats and pork pie hats making deals in posh restaurants, trading code phrases and surreptitiously handing over briefcases full of non-sequential unmarked bills. I tend to dwell on the code phrases.

“The carpet is smoother under the refrigerator,” one trench coat says. The reply is quick and biting.

“It’s shag carpet, you dumbass. There’s nothing smooth about shag carpeting.”

The identity of his contact thus confirmed, the first trench coat nods and says, “Right. So there’s this guy who wrote some books about a Druid living in modern-day Tempe. Can we get him a spiffy cardboard display thingie?”

Second trench coat replies, “We call them book dumps. But let’s order a bottle of something French and pretentious and have them slaughter a hog for us before we talk business.”

You can see why it might take two weeks in a situation like that. If I got to wear a trench coat and order pretentious French things at lunch, I’d take my time too. :)

I’m sure the truth is much more prosaic and entirely safe for hogs. It probably involves polite emails and contracts. Contracts make everything last longer, including gum, which is why I always chew a contract along with my Juicy Fruit.

Anyway, if you’ve pre-ordered any of the books, those are the real release dates now. Some booksellers are better than others about updating their sites to reflect this. Thanks again for your patience n’ understanding!

Switching Teams

Since I’m not a “trained” writer, but rather a self-taught novelist, I never took the class where the teacher made me write outside of my comfort zone. I always “wrote what I knew” and “wrote what I wanted to read,” because I figured doing that well would be challenging enough without adding any extra obstacles.

But now I’m outside the ol’ zone. There are no sports. What I’m wearing suddenly matters. My beer is wondering what the hell I’m doing with that wine cooler in my hand. For reasons my conscious mind does not want to explore too deeply, I’m writing a short story from the first-person point of view…of a woman.

Now, maybe it’s not that big a deal for you, but it’s undiscovered country for me. I have plenty of female characters in my books, but they’re all filtered through my main character’s POV, and he’s male. I’m comfortable inhabiting his headspace. But the head of this new character is really different. I feel challenged, horrified, ebullient, seductive, empowered, and depressed all at once. Thinking like a woman is hard. Has anyone else tried switching teams like this? Is there a trick to it? How did it go?

Not sure how this one is going to turn out yet. If it goes well, you’ll be able to see the results at the end of June. :)

The Bonus Content

I generally look upon the traditional vs. self-published ebook debate as I would upon a pit of esurient alligators: once you get in the middle of it, you’re gonna get your ass chewed. I’ve been carefully avoiding the topic as a result, since I’m rather attached to my ass and would like to keep it a while longer.

Still, I thought I’d point out something that folks might start to see more of from the Big Six: bonus content. The Big Six aren’t going to be lowering their prices down to ninety-nine cents anytime soon. They might occasionally run limited-time specials on certain titles (like Orbit is doing right now with Nicole Peeler’s debut, Tempest Rising, sellin’ it for only $2.99), but they can’t afford to lowball everything and still pay the editors and spiffy cover artists and the utilities and such. So how do they compete? By giving ebook buyers a little extra bang for their buck. Del Rey is doing it with the ebook edition of Hounded, bundling two bonus short stories along with the novel for the same price.

One of those stories, “Clan Rathskeller,” is already up on my Goodies page for free. It’s gonna stay free for EVAR. The version being packaged with Hounded is only slightly tweaked in terms of some phrasing, because writers just can’t leave stuff alone until an editor says “ENOUGH!” but if you read the free version you’re not going to miss anything in terms of content. The other story, “Kaibab Unbound,” is a really neat little yarn that delves more deeply into Atticus’s relationship with elementals and his official duties as a Druid. Plus, there are naked witches! (Or, if you prefer, nekkid witches.) It takes place two weeks before the events of Hounded, so you get to see what Atticus’s life is like before his world goes kablooey.

I have no idea if the bonus content is going to make a difference in my sales or not. But I imagine that providing extra value in the ebook format is one strategy (among others) that traditional publishers will employ to compete against people offering their books for less than a buck. I doubt anyone knows yet whether it will be an effective strategy; all I’m saying here is you can expect to see more of this until publishers figure out if it does work. If it doesn’t, then bonus content will be rare; if it does, it’ll become de rigueur.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the appeal of bonus content—would it make you more likely to buy an ebook, or would it make no difference?

Good Show Sir!

One of my favorite websites these days is Good Show Sir, a UK site dedicated to the absolute worst sci-fi and fantasy covers. The best bit about it is that the content is generated by random people snapping pictures of bad covers that they find in used bookstores. You can contribute too: take your camera phone next time you’re in a used bookstore and have a blast.

I am inordinately proud to have contributed to the site today. My submission of Red Flame Burning, which I found at Bookman’s in Mesa, is now up on the site, and I’m delighted that it’s rated as quite a good show indeed. When you submit, you get to have some fun imagining what the art director told the artist, or make some other pithy comment. And then, of course, people get to make all sorts of comments after that and pile on.

Want a practice one? Here’s the cover for In the Cube, a novel of FUTURE BOSTON!

See, apparently, in future Boston, several things have happened: mullets are back, Bill Belichek’s game plans (or something else equally valuable) are being stored in the Cube, and said Cube is guarded by a woman equipped with a Shoulder Mounted Assault Beaver. Also, there are no more bras.

Do you have a favorite bad cover—maybe one lurking on your own bookshelf, gathering dust?

You Are the Rub Upon My Wings

Dudes. Once in a while, I cook. If you are like me, then you like a chicken wing now and then, and you like some decent heat but not so much that it destroys flavor and burns a hole in your stomach. And what you don’t like so much is the royal mess of buffalo wings. Sometimes the sauce is everywhere, makes the wings kinda mushy, and ruins with its texture what should be a tasty repast. So I’ve recently discovered the joy of wings with a dry rub on ’em instead of slippery sauces, and I’m here to share the love.

I use a chipotle rub—chipotles are dried, smoked jalapenos, so they’re flavorful and fairly mild in terms of heat. Get yourself two or three dried chipotle peppers and crush ’em up, then mix with a half teaspoon of the following: garlic powder, onion powder, salt, cumin, and coriander. Add a full teaspoon of paprika and pepper to taste. Melt  some unsalted butter—enough to coat a pound o’ wings—and then brush that onto the wings once you wash n’ pat ’em dry. Then you slap on your rub, deposit the lovelies on your grill (medium or medium high heat), and bam! You have tasty, crispy wings with no Sauce Apocalypse. You can pick up your beer glass without smearing it with orange goo. You can use one napkin instead of fifteen. And you can text without destroying your keyboard. It is the future of wings, my friends, and it is here! Enjoy.

Urban Fantasy (Might) Got Back

From Kevin: I’m very pleased to welcome author Nicole Peeler to the Writer’s Grove. If you haven’t read her Jane True series (which begins with Tempest Rising) I heartily recommend you add it to your list—it’s for your own good. :) Without further ado, here she is!

Howdy y’all! My name is Nicole Peeler and I write Urban Fantasy, just like Kevin does. In fact, I blurbed his book! It’s great, he’s great, and I was thrilled to invite Kevin to join us at the League of Reluctant Adults. Because if he ain’t a reluctant adult, I don’t know who is.

One thing Kevin and I have in common is that we don’t write the typical kickass UF heroine. Indeed, Kevin’s protagonist has a wang, which means he’s a HERO. As for my heroine, she’s not exactly kickass, at least to start. Rather, she’s half-selkie. Which means she’s part seal-shape shifter. And let’s be honest, folks. Just how tough can a seal be?

That about sums it up, doesn’t it? Seals are soft and sweet and the victims of clubbings. They rarely, if ever, are known to club back. Unless you’re a penguin, that is. Then they’re DEATH IN THE WATER.

So besides not being naturally all that intimidating, seals are, as we see in the example above, rather plump. Now, weight in Urban Fantasy is rarely an issue, simply because I can’t think of a single Urban Fantasy heroine who isn’t built like a brick shithouse, a la Red Sonja:

Now don’t get me wrong. I love a foxy lady, and I’m particularly drawn to the long and lean variety, probably because I am of the plump and short genre, myself. But must women really have walnut-cracking asses to be kickass?

I guess it depends on your definition of “kickass.” For some, it means just what it appears to mean: the ability to kick someone’s ass, probably using your spiky, spiky Glamazon boots. But I wanted to play with that definition by honoring the sort of women who are kickass in real life, and yet rarely, if ever, let the soles of their shoes come into contact with another person’s gluteous maximus.

Those women are the ones who get ‘er done, despite being vulnerable. These women are our teachers, like my mom, who at five foot nothing teach emotionally disturbed teenagers ten times her size. Or the women, like my sister-in-law, who nurse in my rough hometown and go to work despite seeing the abuses we heap upon each other as a species. These women are our soldiers, our police officers, our firefighters, and our social workers who, despite not having Red Sonja’s physique, still have Red Sonja’s bravery. And that’s real bravery, people.

Superheroes are supposed to do heroic things: they were drawn that way. But when “real” people do heroic things, now that’s something to stand back and applaud.

So while I never specify exactly what size my Jane really is, she describes herself, variously, as “built for comfort, not for speed,” “cushy,” and the like. She’s definitely short and, while she’s fit from all her swimming, she’s no Twiggy.

But does that mean Jane can’t be kickass? I guess that’s up to my readers to decide. What do you think?

Nicole Peeler is a professor of English literature and creative writing at Seton Hill University, in Greensburg, PA. She also writes urban fantasy novels for Orbit Books. Her third novel, Tempest’s Legacy, just hit shelves in January.

For those American readers interested in Nicole’s fiction, Orbit Books is offering her first book, Tempest Rising, as this month’s Orbital Drop, downloadable on multiple platforms for only $2.99. Click here for more details.

Quick updates

Gadzooks! Several spiffy things have happened recently, so I’m just going to list them very quickly:

1. I got a Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly for HOUNDED! Apparently this was a much bigger deal than I realized, and it surprised the heck out of me. I’ll do a “Stuff They Never Told Me About Publishing” post on it soon.
2. John Ottinger III gave me a very kind review on his blog, Grasping For the Wind! (It’s quite a good blog, by the way, lots of content there.)
3. There’s also a pretty lengthy interview with John on his site as well that might give you a chuckle or two.
4. Minotauro, an imprint of Planeta Group, has bought World Spanish rights for The Iron Druid Chronicles!
5. The release date for HEXED has been pushed back to June 7. As of this moment HAMMERED is still coming out June 28, but don’t be too surprised if that winds up getting pushed back two weeks as well.
6. Nicole Peeler will be guest posting here soon! I’m very excited about this! Hope you are too!
7. Guess what! Brilliance Audio now has a 5-minute sample of the audiobook up! Have yourself a listen!

Still Life with Fantasy and Fruit #11

March 1 was quite a big day for me. I rushed to pick up Kid from school and we skipped merrily across the parking lot, dove into the Wee Car and motored to the bookstore with Metallica goading us on.

“Friendly Bookseller!” I cried upon my entrance. “Where is The Wise Man’s Fear? Lead me to it, I beg you, for I have been waiting for years!”

She had no idea what I was talking about. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is a rabid nerd like me. She started to do a computer thing, but I knew I could find it myself. I was just hoping they’d have a giant display thingie somewhere near the front of the store and they could hand me a copy right away. Beckoning to Kid to follow, we sallied forth to the SciFi/Fantasy section, where all the treasures of many worlds are kept…and there wasn’t a single copy on the shelves.

I whimpered. I gibbered. Kid laughed at me.

BUT in days of yore I used to work in a bookstore, and I knew that they might not have stocked everything yet on a release day. So I went in search of a hand truck sitting around somewhere on the sales floor, and THERE IT WAS, waiting to be shelved!

“Victory is mine!” I shouted. And there was River Marked, as well, by Patricia Briggs! “O frabjous day!” I cooed, picking it up and tracing the tats with my finger. Kid laughed at me again and then went off in search of a book she wanted. I traveled back to SciFi/Fantasy to see if they had mah buddy Jaye’s new book in stock, Green-Eyed Demon, and they did—I scored the last copy!

One of those rolling Gollum laughs bubbled out of me as I looked at the books in my hands. “Yes, Precious!” Kid snagged her book and we sped home to “Master of Puppets.” Hell yeah. We staked out our respective territories on the couch, the dogs each picked a lap to sit on, and there was bliss.

I know I’m a few days late with this, but here’s photographic evidence of my recent fantasy purchases:

Still Life with Fantasy and Fruit #11

Can you tell how excited I am by these releases?

I’ve already read The Wise Man’s Fear, and I agree completely with Paul Goat Allen and what he says in his review. No spoilers or anything from me; if you haven’t read Rothfuss yet, you must begin with The Name of the Wind.

I’ve been a fan of the Mercy Thompson books for a while now and Jaye cracks me up, so I have two more fabulous reads ahead of me. But I also have extra books to give away. See, I pre-ordered both The Wise Man’s Fear and River Marked months ago and then completely forgot about it. So I went to buy them on release day, and then my pre-ordered copies arrived a few days later. Brilliant, eh? Rather than return them, I’ve decided to share the joy. I’m giving away my extra copy of The Wise Man’s Fear to a lucky commenter. This will be U.S. only, and I’ll run it until midnight of Wednesday, March 9, with the winner announced March 10. If you’d like to win River Marked, head on over to The League of Reluctant Adults blog and leave another comment under my post there (which will be up on Monday, March 7). If you’re not sure what to comment on…why not share what you’re reading until my book comes out on May 3? :)

THE WINNER OF THE WISE MAN’S FEAR IS SARAH! CONGRATS! Please send me your addy and I’ll get it in the mail to you. Thanks to all for entering!

Launch Party Changed

Lately I have been getting broad hints from the universe that it does not want me to party upon the release of HOUNDED. Various conflicts and miscommunications—actually, a saga full of them—have forced me to change the date yet again. These are circumstances beyond my control, and if you are the least bit frustrated, I’m very sorry! I assure you my own frustration was such that I may have inadvertently choked a teddy bear. But this new date is solid now. Confirmed twice. I ain’t changin’ it no mo’. The teddy bears are safe, and I thumb my nose at the forces of chaos that don’t want me to party. I WILL celebrate my debut, damn it! :) So here is the new, final info on my launch party, also updated on my Events and Appearances page:

MONDAY, MAY 9, 7 p.m. at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ. Only a few short miles away from Rúla Búla on Mill Avenue, where we will raise our flagons afterward and debauch ourselves in whatever way seems best. There won’t be any Monday Night Football, so I know you’ll be free! I look forward to seeing you there!

If you can’t wait until the 9th and you buy the book earlier (hopefully at Changing Hands, it’s a lovely place and it’s good to support your local indie bookstores) I’ll still sign it! Just come on out, I’d love to say howdy!

Oh, and I got my first review on Amazon yesterday. (Scroll down a bit to see.) It’s very kind! O frabjous day! :)