Category Archives: Suvudu

Blog, Nerd Cred, Suvudu

San Diego and next April

So, the Glorious Geekout and All-Nerd Hootenanny is going to happen next week in San Diego. It will be my first huuuge Comic Con and I’m turbo-excited because I mostly get to walk around and be a fanboy. Not many people know who I am yet, and since I won’t be cosplaying, all eyes will slide off me and land on somebody’s tights nearby. I will be just another nerd in the herd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Patrick Rothfuss.

IF you are going or IF you know someone who is, here’s my schedule:
Friday, 11-noon, signing and giveaway at Random House booth #1515. Del Rey is giving away copies of HOUNDED, and I’m giving away my neato-schmeato bookmarks. I think Del Rey will probably help me give those away whenever, so please do stop by and say howdy whenever your schedule allows.
Friday, 8pm, Room 23ABC, Del Rey/Spectra panel with Kim Harrison, Harry Turtledove, and EDITORS! For one hour, you can ask us stuff and we’ll answer! Though that is pretty much how I operate all the time. What makes this special is that it’s okay to squee whenever you like, especially if Patrick Rothfuss walks in. We understand and support squees. You will be safe there.
Saturday, 4-5 pm, signing and giveaway at Random House booth #1515.

See? I won’t be that busy. Much of the rest of the time I’ll be boppin’ around doing my own thing, but I’ll also be doing some interviews and such, which will appear on Suvudu at some point along with a ton of other zany Comic Con content, so definitely bookmark the site and visit early and often!

Next: Progress continues on TRICKED. Wanted to let you all know that it’s now scheduled for publication April 2012, not May as originally reported when I announced the new deal with Del Rey. This is not because I am suddenly writing faster. This is because Del Rey is going to be speeding things up on their end, so major kudos to them! I’m delivering in August, and they’re getting it on the shelves in April. Nine months is pretty fast in this industry from what I understand. It takes six months just to get their poo together with online retailers and get an ISBN assigned. The cover artist needs time to work his magic, and I can tell you they’re already working on it though the book isn’t finished yet. Then there are several rounds of content editing, followed by copy editing, typesetting, proofreading, and presumably some beard grooming. It’s a Whole Lot of Stuff, and I thank you in advance for being patient. I also want to thank you again for your enthusiasm for the series and telling your peeps about it; it’s because of you I get to write more as fast as I can. :) Hope to see you in San Diego, or failing that…somewhere else!

May your sausage be fat and your pint glass full—

Suvudu, writing

Lots o’ lovely news!

Completely, utterly thrilled to announce that The Iron Druid Chronicles will be published by Klett-Cotta in Germany! Not only do they have the coolest griffin logo I’ve ever seen, but they also publish fantasy titans like Tad Williams and—wait a second. I want to try something. Here goes: Klett-Cotta also publishes J.R.R. Tolkien, Patrick Rothfuss, and…me. *eep!*

Whoa. Since a thunderbolt from the literary gods has yet to destroy me for associating myself with Tolkien and Rothfuss in the same sentence, the only possible conclusion I can draw is that the literary gods don’t read my blog. As such, I am completely free to say heinous things like “I can’t stand Charles Dickens!” or “My life would be better if I hadn’t read Dostoevsky at such an impressionable age!”

I’m very grateful to Klett-Cotta, of course, and I am excited for a former exchange student of mine who helped me by translating some passages in Hexed. (You can see and hear her awesome work on the Goodies page; the phrases are read by another German exchange student currently at my school). She was hoping she’d be able to read the books in German, and now her wish will come true. In one of those cosmic coincidences, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the German language lately, because I’ve recently rediscovered Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke himself wasn’t German—he was born in Prague—but he’s one of the premier poets of the German language, and what he has to say about the nature of creativity in Letters is just as inspirational to me today as when I first read it twenty years ago. What I’ve been wondering is what’s been lost in translation. I suspect that German readers will get the best of it, but still, it’s an amazing work in English.

Other news: I have a light little end-of-year thingamabob posted up on Suvudu now. If you click on over and read it, you will be confronted with (among other things) an excessively cute puppy and an excessively drunk miniature dwarf.

The other, other news: Though I still don’t have a date yet, there should be a free short story coming soon on Suvudu. It might be really soon…I’ll let you know.

Tech news I figured out five years or so after everyone else: If you register an email address with Gravatar.com, then use said email in the comment field, you’ll get a cool little avatar to show up alongside your comments! It’s not really important AT ALL, but neither is much of what we do in the name of Cool.

News I can use: Almost time for Winter Break. Looking forward to making progress on book four; I’ve had to leave it alone for a week or two because of finals and I need to get back into the groove. The Kid is looking forward to baking cookies with Grandma and the dogs are looking forward to anything that falls on the floor.

Suvudu, writing

Platform Building with a Pug

There’s a pretty cool post over at SFWA by Victoria Strauss about gettin’ published: It’s not a crap shoot. She addresses three assumptions made by grumbling, rejected writers, and while I urge you to click over and read her original post, I’d like to piggyback on those assumptions based on my own recent experience.

1) First assumption: All manuscripts are on equal footing in the marketplace. As she says, that’s completely untrue, and I’m not talking about anyone’s writing but my own. The two books I wrote, submitted, and had rejected before I wrote Hounded were not all that great, though I thought they were okay at the time. Only with experience and hindsight did I see that they deserved to be rejected. Yet I don’t regret writing them; I learned a lot in the process and they got me to a much better place in my craft. If you’re on submission right now, write the next book while you’re waiting; it’ll probably be better than the one you’re shopping around. (It worked for me.)
2) Second assumption: The industry doesn’t want new writers. Not sure how anyone can believe this one. I just read a great debut by Mark Hodder called The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack. And my fellow inductees into The League of Reluctant Adults, Sonya Bateman and K.A. Stewart, came out with their debuts this year. I’m obviously a new writer, and there are plenty more on deck…so I think that one’s wishful thinking, whoever thinks it.
3) Last one: No one wants a writer without a platform. Strauss says this assumption is more true for nonfiction writers than fiction…and she’s right. I’m still trying to build my platform; I wrote and sold my book without knowing what a platform was. In fact, I’m still not sure about the whole platform-building thing, since I’m such a newb to this aspect of the business. What I probably need is some help from my pug, Manley (named after the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins). Come on: How can you not follow a guy who has the devotion of a pug like this?

Manley likes laser pens and long walks in the dog park.
My write-up of Baltar vs. The Mountain That Rides is up on Suvudu on Monday! Don’t forget to vote for Baltar! :)
Suvudu

HOUNDED cover revealed!

Though I suppose I could be accused of bias when I say “I LOVE IT!” it’s true nonetheless. The cover for Hounded is awesome; Del Rey has captured Atticus perfectly!

When Tricia & Mike (my spiffy editors) told me that Advanced Reader’s Editions were on their way, they made one request: have someone take pictures of me opening the box. They know I’ve been waiting to be published a long time, and to see my book bound and printed for the first time would be, in the words of our vice president,  “a big f#%!ing deal.” I agreed readily, not knowing what torture it would be…

The box arrived on Friday; I arrived soon after. BUT NO ONE WAS AROUND TO TAKE PICTURES. I couldn’t open it! I could have gone to a convenience store and made the clerk take pictures—I was thinking such things—but not seriously, because I wanted my family to be around when I opened it; they’ve been waiting a long time to see the book too. I had to wait three hours for my wife to get home, gnawing on my fingers the whole time, staring at the Box of Joy that I could not open.

It taunted me with its Random House return address and its priority overnightness:

Do not be alarmed by my strange expression in the next picture. I’m petting the box and purring, see. Well, okay, be alarmed if you’d like.

Purrrrrr.
The Box of Joy finally surrendered its happy contents to me:

….Words fail. All I can say is that there’s nothing like a dream coming true, and I couldn’t be happier.
   Below is my photo of the ARE cover. I apologize for the wee bit of glare. Also, the icons on the charms aren’t really coming through on this picture—all you see are black squares—but you’ll see them “for reals” with your naked eye, and they’re sublime. I’ll have the cover art file later, but for now enjoy the ARE:

If Atticus looks at you like that and draws his sword, APOLOGIZE. It doesn’t matter for what, just tell him you’re sorry and you’ll never do it again!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it lots more: Del Rey has been completely lovely to work with. Tricia and the art dept. deserve mad props for this cover, and for the Hexed and Hammered covers as well. They brought Atticus to life and they incorporated my suggestions beautifully; I will build them a shrine and make offerings of gummi worms and beer.
And whoa—Hounded is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Borders.com, and BN.com! They don’t have the cover image up yet, but in case you’re really itching to get a head start on buying the books you need to read in April, now you can!
In other news—yes, I have other news!—my Cage Match write-up of Gaius Baltar vs. Feyd Rautha-Harkonnen should be up sometime today on Suvudu.com, so I’d love it if you went over there and took a gander. And, should you be so inclined, please vote for Baltar! Not only is he a completely awesome villain that you love to hate, as long as he wins, I get to keep writing!
I wish you peace, if you’re into that sort of thing. Otherwise, may you be swept suddenly into a world of intrigue and learn a rune-based magic system in only three days to prevent a demon apocolypse.
Suvudu

A Villain Worth Celebrating

A common complaint about villains in stories and film is that at some point their motivation all boils down to ruling the world. The super-cheesy ones say so plainly with malevolent glee and tack on an evil laugh at the end—“And then I will rule the world! Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-haa!” Mike Myers mocked this tendency brilliantly in the Austin Powers movies. But why do they want to rule the world? Because it’s there?

They’re power-mad, these villains, and we rarely get any idea of what truly motivates them. Take Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, for example—what drove him to hate so much? What was his beef with the Jedi? We never find out. He’s one of the flattest characters ever. He had a cool Halloween mask for a face, a neato double light saber and a gliding motorcycle thingie—but he was completely boring. Darth Vader was (and is) a much better villain, because we know what happened to him and we can empathize a bit with what turned him to the Dark Side—namely, the death of his mother.

But even though Darth Vader is one of the greatest villains ever and rightly deserves his top-ten seeding in the Suvudu Cage Match, I think there’s another villain in that particular tournament of evil that deserves a lot more respect: Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica.

The genius of Baltar is that he’s always able to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing, the best thing for everyone—it’s just a coincidence that it’s also the best thing for him personally. Occasionally, he’s able to convince people—and perhaps us, the viewing audience—that he’s actually the victim. Nothing is ever his fault. He doesn’t have an evil bone in his body.

He sure does have a selfish bone, though.

To my mind, Baltar is the best villain ever because any one of us could become him. We couldn’t become Sauron or the White Witch or the Terminator, or many of the others in the Suvudu Cage Match: they’re all one-dimensional bogeymen, a foil for the naïve hero. But we could (and we do) make choices based on our own selfish desires. Like Baltar, we could descend into corruption in our pursuit of power, fame, fortune, and the sensual luxuries that are supposed to attend them. And we could tell ourselves, all the while, that we are the heroes of our own story; we could even pile on great heaping dollops of this faith or that, as Baltar eventually does, and give our actions the hue of religious righteousness.

If you want to see someone truly go to the Dark Side, Baltar is the one to watch. The villains from Star Wars go there and get symbolically cloaked in darkness, but they, like many other fictional villains, are a bit over-the-top, a bit too cartoonish, and thus they are entertaining more than truly horrifying. Baltar, however, is wholly loathsome and terrifying, because I can easily imagine him in our world today; I think there may be a few copies of him running around right now.

Now through Thursday, you can go vote for Baltar in the Suvudu Cage Match. He’s up against the White Witch from Narnia. I wrote up the prediction for how I think it will go—and if Baltar wins, I’ll get to write more. I think he should win the whole tournament, and with your help, he will! Spread the word, please—a vote for Baltar is a vote for well-rounded villains that we love to hate. While you’re at it, vote on the other matches, too—it’s tremendous fun and a chance to geek out about your favorite bad guys.


If you’re visiting my blog for the first time because you saw my write-up on Suvudu—welcome, and thanks for visiting! Take time to explore the archives, follow me here or on Twitter, and feel free to say howdy in the comments!
Suvudu

A Different Sort of Cage Match

Suvudu will never run a Cage Match like what I saw tonight. I just watched the Cardinals and the Raiders play one of the worst games EVAH. The Cardinals “won” 24-23. It wasn’t a victory for the Cardinals so much as proof that the Raiders Suck More. The Cardinals still sucked; they just Sucked Less. The whole thing was jaw-droppingly bad, except for that one immensely entertaining play where the Raiders fumbled, picked it up, then the referee got in the way and actually stripped the ball out of the running back’s hand, sailed ass over teakettle, and the Raiders retained possession because the ball went out of bounds. That was all just the Raiders and the Ref. The Cardinals weren’t really in that picture. I hope that play winds up on a highlight reel somewhere, because it was hilarious—an instant classic, actually, but they only did two replays on the broadcast. They need to put that thing on a loop!

Someone at the top of the Raiders’ organization must have done some incredibly naughty stuff to deserve karma like this.