Tag Archives: Comic Con

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—

Blog, Nerd Cred

Phoenix Comicon Day 2

Oh, my, what a day! Great time with fabulous people!

I’ve long been a rabid fan of Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series as well as her urban fantasy for Del Rey, Bloodshot. So I geeked out a bit (okay, a lot) that I not only got to meet her, but hang out with her a bit. I was on two panels with her today, The Big Idea and Urban Fantasy Authors. And I HAVE PROOF!

Gadzooks! I'm sitting next to Cherie Priest! Squeeee!

Cherie was so kind as to sign a copy o’ Boneshaker for me. Sam Sykes was a wee bit upset that I didn’t ask HIM to sign Boneshaker for me. I’m not sure why; he didn’t write Boneshaker.

That's still Cherie. I promise it's not Gail Carriger.

The Big Idea panel was quite a bit o’ fun—admission was free with a sacrificial can of Coke Zero. John Scalzi was a bag full o’ spiffiness, as were all the other panelists. Here they all are:

John Scalzi, James Owen, Janni Lee Simner, Sam Sykes, Cherie Priest, Kevin Hearne, Jordan Summers

But enough of these people who write things! I know what you really want to see—people in costumes! There were some fabulous ones there and I ran out of space on my memory card before I could get all I wanted. I’ll share a few here and then provide a link to my Facebook album of the Comicon, where you can check out plenty more.

Dr. Strange!
Supergirl & Power Girl
Live long and prosper!

There’s plenty more in the album, so go check it out right here.

Blog, Nerd Cred

Phoenix Comicon Day 1

SO MUCH FUN!

And I only got to stay a little while. I had dinner plans with friends so I had to jet out of there at 5 pm, but wow, what a good time! Tomorrow I’ll have a proper camera and lots more time to spend, but there’s still plenty to show n’ tell!

GEEKOUTS: I got to meet Robert J. Sawyer! And John Scalzi! While I was in full fanboy mode, I may have drooled on Mr. Scalzi when I asked him to sign Old Man’s War for me. Both authors were super nice. Also met some other spiffy authors whose work I’m ashamed to say I haven’t yet read: Aprilynne Pike, Jordan Summer, Gini Koch, and Janni Lee Simner.

SCUTTLEBUTT: Heard some film/tv stars might be selling their autographs for as high as $65. Letting you all know now: you can have mine for free. Always. I can’t imagine a universe in which I’d charge someone money to watch me scribble on a piece of paper.

COSTUMES: I didn’t nearly as many pictures as I would have liked—and again, these are going to be kinda low quality since my camera phone doesn’t rock very hard. In general, though, I saw some really cool stuff—lots more video game gear than I was expecting, honestly, and some of the stuff from manga was really well done but I didn’t know what I was looking at aside from impressive costumes. There was some awesome steampunk going on—I snapped a pic of this one fella with a spectacular hat and goggles, but it didn’t come out all that great so I didn’t include it below. You should be able to click on all these bad boys to enlarge ’em.

Above: fangs and steampunk. Girl to the right was told by several people, including me, that she looked like she stepped off a Gail Carriger cover.

Queen Amidala and her servant thingie. The headgear is really puzzling when you think about it. It’s almost like it’s intended to be a service ladder or something. I’m wondering about the backstory on that now.

These kids were super spiffy and asked me to sign a copy of my book for them. The girl on the right says she was supposed to be something called Gir. I didn’t write down what the girl on the left was supposed to be, except that it was a manga character that started with the letter P. Petaluma? Petsmart? Sorry, I’m rubbish at remembering these things.

OK, wow. The Darth Maul dude went all the way and stained his teeth. The cyborg ladies on a leash were wearing really tall platform shoes and wore some impressive ink as well. Right before this pose, Darth Maul was kind of carrying a girl in either arm, and they were smooshed against him. After he set them down, he turned apologetically to the girl on the left and said, “I may have gotten some makeup on your breast.” Only at Comicon.

More tomorrow. :)

Publishing Stuff, writing

Contest-o-Rama

Art thou an aspiring writer? Then my first advice to you is not to use the “art thou” sentence construction. My second piece of advice is to enter the Suvudu Writing Contest, because it’s honestly the only kind o’ writing contest worth entering. The downside is that it’s only open to US writers, but it’s entirely made of win otherwise. The grand prize gets a professional edit from Betsy Mitchell, editor in chief of Del Rey, with the distinct possibility that they might make an offer for it. Since Del Rey/Spectra doesn’t usually accept unagented submissions, this is your one, fleeting chance to catch their eye with an unsolicited submission! And even if they don’t offer for your book, an edit from Betsy will help you whip your submission into the kind of shape publishers will offer on. You have until March 18 to enter, so start polishing that manuscript you have in your drawer!

Next up: I’d really like you to win a free copy of my debut, and my spiffy marketing dude, Joe, has set up a contest on Goodreads to give away 25 copies in February! Thing about that is, you have to be a member of Goodreads to win. He’s also going to give away copies on Facebook through the Del Rey Spectra page—but of course you need a Facebook account for that. I’ve decided to run a contest here so you can get yourself eligible for those contests there. I’m giving away an ARC of Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot and Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s The Fallen Blade. These are both slightly used—I’ve read ’em, loved ’em,  and I think you will too. So we have two separate prizes here.

You get entered once for “Liking” me on Facebook (there’s a convenient place to do so on my home page). You get entered again for either friending me on Goodreads or becoming a fan on Goodreads. Once you’ve done either or both, please comment below and let me know what you did so that I don’t count random “likes” as contest entries. And yeah, if you’ve already “liked” me before this, that will count, just let me know! Open to US only, sorry, and this will run through Sunday.

Two other announcements that have nothing to do with contests:

1.) The Iron Druid Chronicles will be published in the Czech Republic! Very grateful and excited, since part of book three is set there!

2.) I’m going to be at the San Diego Comic Con in July! Nerds of the world, unite! I’ll be doing a signing there at some point, and we’ll see what else comes up. Obviously I’ll have more details closer to the date, but all three books will be out then, so if you are down that way and you wind up liking Atticus, I’d love to see you there! I’m going to see about arranging something at a bookstore offsite too, so that you don’t have to attend the convention to see me. If I’m SOOPER DOOPER lucky, I’ll be able to arrange a joint signing with another author and we can power the store with nothing but the reflected glow of our combined celebrity! ;) <—Irony.

Best o’ luck! Bloodshot is really good, by the way…5 stars from me on Goodreads! :)