I want to thank all who voted for Atticus in the Suvudu Cage Match. You know and I know that he would have won had it truly been ON. But according to Rolling Stone, Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle has sold more than 33 million copies worldwide, and my Iron Druid Chronicles…hasn’t. His readers simply outnumber mine by a magnitude that makes my brain hurt, and they don’t know what Atticus can do. The fact that Atticus kept it even marginally close is testament to your spiffiness!

Since my readers are awesome and drink beer and laugh at sausage jokes, I want to do something to reward you: below is a wee excerpt from TRICKED, the last part of Chapter 2. There’s nothing spoilery: It’s just Oberon’s bath, and you can imagine the shenanigans he’ll get into with a new role model like this one…

If you’d rather wait for the book, I totally understand! Read no more! But in case you’d like to enjoy it now, please enjoy it now, and thanks again for your support!

Much love & my flagon raised to you,
Kevin

(P.S. The little carat marks that Oberon usually has around his speech may or may not show up…the blog is funny about that stuff. I think you’ll figure it out, though.) :)

Leaving the binoculars behind, I bound my shape to an owl and flew south to my hotel. It’s not pleasant flying in rain like that, but I had to get out of there. Once safely in my room, I greeted my wolfhound, Oberon, who’d been watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on TV. Then I took a cold shower and tried to think about teddy bears and baseball and those little bouncy air castles you can rent for kids’ birthdays—anything but the Morrigan.

Since it’s always better to clog up someone else’s drain with dog hair than your own, I thought it would be a good time to give Oberon a bath as well. He hadn’t had one for a while and I didn’t know when we’d have an opportunity like this again.

“Hey, Oberon,” I called, filling up the tub for him, “it’s time for your bath!”

<It is?> He sounded doubtful. <Do you have a decent story?> Oberon wouldn’t sit still for baths unless I told him a story—a real story about historical figures. He never settled for faery tales.

“I’m going to tell you the true story of a man named Francis Bacon.”

<BACON?> He came running so fast that he couldn’t negotiate the sharp turn into the bathroom very well, and he slammed into the door awkwardly and then splashed into the tub, soaking me after I’d just finished drying off.

<Oh, this is going to be great! I can tell I’m going to like this man already. He had to have been a genius with a name like that. Was he a genius?>

“Yes, he was.”

<I knew it! I have an instinct for that kind of thing. But I hope this story doesn’t end with him chopped into bits and sprinkled on a salad. That would be tragic, and a story about bacon should be uplifting.>

“Well, Francis Bacon was quite inspirational to many people,” I said, pouring water on Oberon’s back. “He’s the father of modern empiricism, or the scientific method. Before he came along, people conducted all their arguments through a series of logical fallacies or simply shouting louder than the other guy, or if they did use facts, they only selected ones that reinforced their prejudices and advanced their agenda.”

<Don’t people still do that?>

“More than ever. But Bacon showed us a way to shed preconceived notions and conduct experiments in such a way that the results were verifiable and repeatable. It gave people a way to construct truths free of political and religious dogma.”

<Bacon is the Way and the Truth. Got it.>

As I shampooed Oberon’s coat, I explained how to craft hypotheses and test them empirically using a control. And then I stressed safety while I rinsed him off.

“It’s best not to experiment on yourself. Bacon practically froze himself to death in one of his experiments and died of pneumonia.”

<Right! Bacon must be heated. Knew that already, but thanks for the reminder.>

I love my hound.