Category Archives: mental flotsam purge

mental flotsam purge

Mental Flotsam Purge #2

I have been graced with my first pro review of Hounded! It’s from John Ottinger, who gives it five stars (squee!). “A must read for fans of Celtic and urban fantasy. Hilarious and fun!” He says he’ll have a full review up on his blog in March—which I can’t wait to see—but what he wrote in January sure did make my day. Very grateful!

In pursuit of our own happiness, a modest proposal: Let the pizza delivery guys deliver beer. The happiness this will bring to me and all like-minded Americans should be one of those famously self-evident truths. But there’s an economic reason to do it, too—there might be a state budget crisis or two we can solve here! Beer delivery equals more tax revenue, guaranteed, without raising taxes. How? Well, pizza joints jack up the price of beverages anyway. If a six-pack costs them $7, they’ll charge $10-12 (or more) to deliver it. 9% of $12 is more than 9% of $7—boom, you just increased revenue without raising taxes. And people will pay it—yes, I will pay it! Because $2 a bottle is still cheaper than what I’d pay at the ballpark or in any bar, and the convenience is simply awesome. You can curtail abuse of this in the statute—food must be ordered, for example, or only one six-pack per customer. I don’t see a downside here—pizza companies will enjoy more profits; states will enjoy increased revenue; people who run out of beer in the middle of a game won’t be out driving to get more at halftime, and people who are drinking at home are obviously not out on the road after drinking at the sports bar. I’m not a legislator (thank goodness), but surely this can be crafted to work for everyone’s profit and public safety. Who will lead the way? I am fairly certain it won’t be my state…damn it.

Got some work done on my epic this weekend (see the progress bar on the right; it was at 5430 but I scrapped that and started over, so I wrote 7K), and I’ve finally come up with a name that I like, but I think I’ll keep it a secret for now…we’ll see if anyone wants to publish it before I trumpet its nimi (that’s Finnish for name—I keep coming up with excuses to use Google Translate).

My tree has been getting lots of hugs on behalf of people who have pre-ordered Hounded, and I’ve mailed off quite a few signed bookplates. If you’d like to get in on this deal (there’s one place in the UK selling the whole series for $5.99 each and FREE shipping to the US), then head on over to the HOUNDED page, click on any red link you like, pre-order and send me an email! Part of this deal is that my dogs get hugged when you pre-order. It’s in the contract. Have you seen my dogs?

I can haz pre-order hugz?

That’s Sophie on the left and Manley on the right (named after the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins). They are regularly loved and petted, but they are delighted by the BONUS love they’re getting as a result of all these pre-orders. (I think I may have given them an extra snack or five as well in the fulsomeness of my joy.)

I have cats too. Their names are Huckleberry and Lucky (Lucky because we saved him from CERTAIN DEATH), but they are quite adamant on the point that they not be photographed. Or maybe it’s just that the dogs follow me around and thus they keep hiding from me. The cats will only be hugged by your special request, because it takes some effort to chase them down.

After hearing about it for years, I have finally given myself the gift that is The Big Bang Theory. Nerds are so awesome—but especially Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

Currently I’m hammering out details for a couple of appearances. One will be the launch party for Hounded at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on April 19—the date is pretty solid since that’s my release day, but I’m still working on the times. I will also be at San Diego Comic Con in July—specific time and location to be determined. Soonish, I’ll have an extra page up on the site called Events & Appearances, and I’ll update that every time something concrete comes in.

I just saw Black Swan and oh my goodness. It’s not a movie to see with your parents, but if you’re a creative person and you have little creative neuroses (or big ones) it’s a powerful, moving film full of questions for artists of all kinds. Natalie Portman definitely deserves the Oscar for this one. And my flotsam is hereby purged…

mental flotsam purge

Dude. 2011 is looking AWESOME.

I’ve just kinda come to the realization that 2011 is going to be a banner year for entertainment. It’s like all the creative minds in North America are trying to release something before the great (zombie/Mayan/pasta) apocalypse of 2012. Let’s take a QUICK look at the first half of the year—and this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, just the stuff that pings loudly on my personal radar:

January: Bloodshot by Cherie Priest. The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie.  Tempest’s Legacy by Nicole Peeler. The Warlord’s Legacy by Ari Marmell.

February: I don’t know, because I’m going to spend the entire month marking off the days until we get to…

March 1! The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss! Gimme! In the theaters, I’m going to see Sucker Punch, a movie full of imagery that nerds will love. Dragons? Check. Robots? Check. Hot girls with samurai swords? Check. Mechanical suits? Hell yeah. Also coming later in the month is River Marked by Patricia Briggs and Ghost Story by Jim Butcher.

April: The River of Shadows by Robert Redick, coming out on the 19th, same day as…Hounded, my debut! Also coming out—Rage, by Jackie Morse Kessler, sequel to Hunger.

May: The movie Thor. See what happens when Marvel and Hollywood get hold of Norse mythology! And at the end of the month, my second book, Hexed.

June: Now you’ll see what happens when I get hold of Norse mythology! Book 3 of The Iron Druid Chronicles, Hammered, releases at the end of the month. The Thor in this book is quite different from the one you’ll see in the movie.

July: Another Kind of Dead by Kelly Meding. And there’s this movie franchise, maybe you’ve heard of it? Harry Potter comes to an end.

What are you looking forward to in 2011?

mental flotsam purge

I say it’s my birthday

Today I turn the big 4-0.

It’s on a Thursday, though, and like Arthur Dent, I never could get the hang of Thursdays. Oddly, I don’t feel like partying. I feel like I should get to work. It’s as if a wayward dungeonmaster dropped off a package this morning, and inside was the Cowl of Frickin’ Seriousness or the Cloak of Plodding Diligence. I’m wearing it now, and it has magically grafted itself onto my sternocleidomastoid. It won’t come off until somebody throws cake at me.

But nobody throws cake anymore. I haven’t seen anyone throw cake since 1976, and that’s damned peculiar if you think about it, because cake throwing is (if my nostalgia-colored memory serves) an exercise of almost unbridled joy. You get the satisfaction of throwing something messy at someone else, the entertainment value of wayward crumbs vectoring off mid-flight, and if you do it correctly there’s the pleasant chore of licking dollops of frosting off your fingers afterward. And then you duck, because once you throw cake, chances are someone will throw it back. These people in Las Vegas still throw cake, but the problem is that they’re in Las Vegas and I’m not:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fYJVttpEs[/youtube]

Perhaps I will be ambushed by a bakery today. One can always hope. :)

Newsy things: I will have something of mine up on Suvudu.com on December 15. It’s the beginning of several somethings that will appear on that site. There will be a short story, available for free download, though I don’t have a date yet, and there will also be a behind-the-scenes look at developing the cover for Hounded before the end of January (I think).

Today’s subversive thought: Cake Fight Club. Talk about it.

mental flotsam purge

Mental Flotsam Purge #1

I’m currently marveling over the fact that there’s a British actor by the name of Benedict Cumberbatch. I love that name. I think it’s my new favorite, honestly. For many years, my favorite name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, but that’s a fictional name courtesy of Douglas Adams. Benedict Cumberbatch is a real dude. He’s now starring as Sherlock Holmes for the BBC.
Here is a silly one-verse parody I made up in the car while driving to work…can you guess the Zeppelin tune?

There’s a barmaid who’s sure

All that she pours is gold
And she’s pulling the next draught
For Kevin.
I’m a fan of old spellings. “Draught” scores about four million style points over “draft.”  Draught beers taste better to me than draft beers because they’re spelled deliciously.
My next write-up of Gaius Baltar’s adventures in the Suvudu Cage Match will appear Monday morning. He’s taking on The Mountain That Rides from George R.R. Martin’s series, A Song of Ice and Fire. I’ll desperately need your help for Baltar to win…the fans of Martin’s series are legion. Round up your kids and all your laptops and vote for Baltar! :)
Benedict F***ing Cumberbatch. That’s a seriously epic name. It’s right up there with Bilbo Baggins.
The sound of my dishwasher is oddly comforting to me. I am wondering if it was designed to mimic the pulsing whoosh and hiss of the womb.
Many folks doing NaNoWriMo, and I wish them the very best; I hope something publishable comes out of it. I cannot yoke myself to that particular plow, because it seems (and I stress the SEEMS because I don’t know, having never done it) to prize quantity over quality. I do recognize its value for those who need to discipline themselves to a course of writing, and I’m absolutely positive that it works extremely well for many people; I’m just not one of them. I write somewhat sporadically while school is in session, but always try to get in a couple thousand words a week at minimum. Once I’m off school, I usually write 2-3K per day. Today I’m very pleased to have surpassed 10,000 words on my fourth book. Getting into five digits feels pretty good. What would feel completely awesome though is coming up with a name like Benedict Cumberbatch. Maybe I should just snag a British phone book…