Just had a completely glorious time at San Diego Comic Con. Met many spiffy readers, including one who looked like Granuaile come to life, and lots of wonderful writers, which makes the fanboy in me go squee.

I met Max Gladstone (Three Parts Dead), Wes Chu (The Lives of Tao), and Liesel Schwarz (Conspiracy of Alchemists) for the first time, and they were all lovely people. Got to spend lots of time with Diana Rowland, whose White Trash Zombie series is one of my favorites, and her friend, Roman White (a director) was highly amusing as well. I met Ty Franck (who loves tequila) and Daniel Abraham (who does not), who together form the super-writing duo known as James S.A. Corey, and let them know that I absolutely dig The Expanse series. Got to spend some time with Jason Hough, on whose debut, The Darwin Elevator, I have had much to say and will say some more soon.

BUT TODAY IS A DIFFERENT THINGIE ALTOGETHER.

See, I have a book coming out tomorrow, the 23rd o’ July. It’s called CARNIEPUNK, an urban fantasy anthology full o’ stories about spooky midways and dangerous doings amongst the carnies. It’s available for pre-order (or outright order, depending on when you read this) wherever you snag your books, and it looks like this:

And heck yes, there’s an audio version!

The lineup of authors is pretty freakin’ awesome. In fact, lookit: Whilst at SDCC I got to sign some advance copies with none other than Rachel Caine, celebrated author and awesome person! My complete shock at being in such august company should be clear from this picture:

My story is an Iron Druid tale called “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” (Did you see what I did there?) and it’s set two weeks after the events of the novella Two Ravens and One Crow. Atticus, Granuaile, and Oberon visit Granuaile’s hometown in Kansas and run into a rather ghoulish operation amidst Oberon’s dreams of a poodle named Noche, and I hope you find it entertaining.

It’s also my fervent hope that you’ll discover some new writers to enjoy in this anthology. That’s always the attraction of anthologies to me: I know I’m going to love the stuff by authors I already know and I get excited about discovering some new ones. Here’s the full lineup, presented in the order they appear in the book:

Rob Thurman ~ “Painted Love”
Delilah S. Dawson ~ “The Three Lives of Lydia”
Kevin Hearne  ~ “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street”
Mark Henry ~ “The Sweeter the Juice”
Jaye Wells ~ “The Werewife”
Rachel Caine ~ “The Cold Girl”
Allison Pang ~ “A Duet with Darkness”
Hillary Jacques ~ “Recession of the Divine”
Jennifer Estep ~ “Parlor Tricks”
Kelly Meding ~ “Freak House”
Nicole Peeler ~ “The Inside Man”
Jackie Kessler ~ “A Chance in Hell”
Kelly Gay ~ “Hell’s Menagerie”
Seanan McGuire ~ “Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid, and the Open, Lonely Sea”

As always, thank you so much for reading and for spreading the word to your friends! Happy tales!

What happens when you get a group of today’s best urban fantasy authors to write about the shady supernatural underbelly of  carnivals? CARNIEPUNK is the answer. It’s dark urban fantasy written by a whole lot of people who make me squee.

The big cover reveal was on Monday, but in case you missed it, here it is to the left. The blood splatters are perfect; though I cannot speak for any of the other authors, I know that my story is the bloodiest one I’ve written so far. More about my story below—first, lookit all these awesome authors in the anthology with me! (alphabetical listing)

Rachel Caine is the New York Times bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series!

Delilah S. Dawson is an artist and an associate editor on CoolMomPicks.com. She lives with her family in Atlanta, where she is currently writing the next Blud novel.

Jennifer Estep is the New York Times bestselling author of the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series for Pocket Books and also writes the Mythos Academy young adult series.

Kelly Gay is the author of an urban fantasy series featuring Charlie Madigan. A two-time RITA Award finalist, she resides in North Carolina.

Mark Henry is an adult urban fantasist, comedic horror writer and unrepentant smart-ass. His work has been translated into garbled slurs by notable alcoholics. He lives on the fringe of Seattle society with his saintly wife and assorted hairy monsters.

Hillary Jacques is an up-late, Alaska-based author of speculative fiction. Her romantic urban fantasy Night Runner series is published under pen name Regan Summers.

Jackie Kessler writes about demons, angels, superheroes, supervillains, and, in her semi-secret identity as a YA author, Riders of the Apocalypse. She lives near Albany, NY, with her Loving Husband and Precious Little Tax Deductions.

Seanan McGuire is the New York Times bestselling author of the InCryptid series and the October Daye series, which earned her the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2010. The Newsflesh trilogy, published under the pseudonym Mira Grant, earned her the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2011.

Kelly Meding was born and raised in Southern Delaware and discovered Freddy Krueger at a very young age, and has since had a lifelong obsession with horror, science fiction, and fantasy. She writes the Dreg City urban fantasy series and the superhero-based MetaWars series.

Allison Pang, a biologist in a former life, spends her days in northern Virginia working as a cube grunt and her nights waiting on her kids and cats, punctuated by an occasional husbandly serenade. Sometimes she even manages to write. Mostly she just makes it up as she goes. She loves Hello Kitty, sparkly shoes, and gorgeous violinists.

Nicole D. Peeler resides outside Pittsburgh to teach in Seton Hill’s MFA in Popular Fiction. When she’s not in the classroom infecting young minds with her madness, she’s writing manga and the Jane True urban fantasy series.

Rob Thurman is the New York Times bestselling author of the supernatural thriller All Seeing Eye, the gritty urban fantasy Cal Leandros series, the Trickster Novels, and standalone thriller-suspense novels.

Jaye Wells is a USA Today-bestselling author of urban fantasy novels about magical vampires and junky wizards. She loves to travel, drink bourbon and do things that scare her. Jaye lives in Texas.

Pretty awesome, right? Ideally with an anthology you get some authors you already know and some that you don’t. Part of the fun of it is the opportunity to discover new writers for cheap. Well, I’ve read the work of almost everyone in this lineup and can assure you that you’re in for one heck of a collection.

This project started, believe it or not, with goofing around on Twitter. Hillary Jacques is one of my favorite people in the world and we were riffing one night on how you can attach the suffix “punk” onto a word and create a new subgenre of fiction. Since we already have cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, splatterpunk, and more, what was left? A lot of our ideas were simply silly, but once Hillary threw out “Carniepunk!” I said, hey…I’d actually like to write some of that! Carnivals are damn creepy. The lights and bright colors and barkers try to sell you a good time but it’s all illusion, and you walk through them just knowing that you’re a sucker but hoping that you, at least, won’t be fooled like everyone else. Or as badly. So that tension between reality and illusion seemed a perfect place to set some urban fantasy, and we thought that plenty of authors would jump at the chance to mess around with that setting. Sweet potato casserole, we were right!

My story is called “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” and it’s set a couple of weeks after the Iron Druid novella, TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW. (In the series chronology this would be 4.6.) Atticus, Granuaile, and Oberon take a break from Granuaile’s training to pay a surreptitious visit on her mother in Kansas. But the small-town carnival there is hiding a rather big secret of the ghoulish kind…

I do hope you’ll give this a try. I truly think you’re going to dig this collection and discover some new writers who will rock your socks. You can pre-order now, in fact, at all the usual places, and that helps out so much. The book will come out July 30, so just after you’ve read HUNTED at the end of June and you’re wondering what to read next, this will come along, give you another Iron Druid story, and introduce you to so many great new writers! I’ve provided links below in case you feel like pre-ordering, and if you order a copy from The Poisoned Pen I’ll sign it for ya! (They ship anywhere!) Their number is 1-888-560-9919.

Amazon
Barnes & Noble (link not up yet but will be soon!)
Powell’s