Writer's Grove

This post is actually about coffee for the most part. But I promise the tea will be there at the end. Regardless, it is a post about pouring hot water over stuff that grew in the ground and enjoying the result, and there will also be some bits about Druids and comic books and the real-life location of Third Eye Books & Herbs.

MAGIC BEANS ARE WORTH IT

Well, I don’t know if I would give my cows away for a few magic beans like that kid Jack did. I’d need cows first and I’d probably grow too attached to them. But good coffee beans are now something for which I might fork over a few extra green pieces of paper.

What qualifies as “good”? AN EXCELLENT QUESTION, which you probably didn’t ask but I’ll attempt to answer with the caveat that your mileage may vary and that’s cool. I’m just sharing my geekout here and not saying it’s better than yours.

1. I dig single origin beans over blends. With single origin you’re getting what the earth’s offering up at a particular place; the flavors and aromas and so forth are specific to the soil, elevation, and climate. And, provided you’re snagging stuff through a distribution model focused on reducing or eliminating middlemen, you’re supporting the farmer(s) a bit more directly. More on that next.
2. If it’s available where I’m buying beans, I like to grab the ones that are Fair Trade Certified at a minimum but Direct-to-Farmer if possible. The way that coffee gets to most Americans is that they’re bought in huge lots by middlemen who blend and dilute try to squeeze every penny they can out of the transaction so that the farmers get paid the least and you get the lowest quality coffee for the maximum price. Fair Trade Certified helps a bit with that but it’s still not the best deal; the farmers sell their crop pretty much all at once for pennies per pound and have to live on that for the whole year. There’s a new model, however, called THRIVE, where the farmers are not paid up front but rather as the beans are sold to the consumer. The farmer gets paid more per pound that way and also gets paid throughout the year—part of the money I pay goes directly to him. I like it because there’s a picture of the farmer who grew the coffee right on the package. See?
I bought those beans from a roaster in Colorado called Brewing Market, which is based in Boulder. They order the beans from Franklin Garbanzo in Costa Rica (the guy on the left) or whoever, roast ’em, and then they pay him when I buy ’em. The middlemen can suck it.
3. Roasting is important, and I have discovered that for my particular palate (everyone’s is different) I gotta have a light roast. Not medium, and definitely not dark. You get burned beans in medium and dark roasts and that jacks up your cup real quick. Plus there’s more caffeine in light roasts. It has taken me a while for my brain to overcome the relentless marketing power of the mermaid, but I can’t escape the conclusion anymore that Starbucks coffee is burnt shit. That’s not a criticism of the beans themselves—it’s a criticism of how they roast it (too much), grind it (so fine and fast that the heat generated by the electric grinder burns the beans more), and brew it (very quickly with water that’s too hot). The only way I can handle any of their stuff—and I’m talking what they call a “light” roast, which is really medium—is by pouring cream and a blizzard of Splenda into it. Completely undrinkable otherwise. But if I get a light roast and make the coffee myself, taking my time with the pour and using a coarse hand-grind, I can (and do) enjoy it black. IT’S SCIENCE. Chemistry, rather, in a Chemex.

CHEMEX IS MY JAM

It takes me about twenty minutes to make about 3 cups of coffee now and I’m so glad I learned how to slow down and enjoy the process. The craft of making it is as enjoyable as the delightful finished product. I have Chuck Wendig to thank for introducing me to the procedure. He wrote this blog post and so I figured, heck, let’s give it a try, and wow. Coffee became this whole new world for me. And for my wife.

My wife ingested her caffeine through other delivery systems than coffee prior to the Chemex. Nineteen years o’ marriage and she never drank the coffee I brewed except to try it and declare it awful. Now she steals my coffee in the morning. I think it’s awesome. I asked her how it was different and she replied, “It doesn’t taste like ass now.” Or something like that. I might be paraphrasing.

Why is Chemex so spiffy? The filters do a damn good job of filtering. You get a smooth cup without mud in it (as you do with a French press, for example), and as long as you’re not using a dark roast, the bitterness is simply gone. But making it is as fun as drinking it. First, there’s the bloom—you wet the grounds and let ’em bubble up and start releasing all these fabulous aromas that get lost when you just drown them in boiling water from the get-go. It looks like this:

And then you do the first big pour and that releases bonus smells too. You have to do several pours before you get it filled up to the bottom of the wooden handle thingie. It’s about 20 ounces altogether. In between pours you can be making a cheese-and-chive omelet for yourself and some sausage for Oberon, or whatever.

You know what else I love about this process? The glass beaker and everything kind of reminds me of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman at the very beginning of their illicit activities in Breaking Bad.
JESSE: Yo, Mr. Hearne, why don’t we just throw some Folgers crystals up in this bitch and get it done, right?
KEVIN: No, Jesse, we will use science to craft a product that’s superior in every way.
JESSE: There ain’t no science to it, Mr. Hearne! You just pour hot water on the shit and make fat stacks. Bitches want their caffeine.
KEVIN: They’ll like it more—and pay more—if you take the time to do it properly. Try it my way, okay?
JESSE: drinks coffee made in a Chemex, eyes grow three times normal size. HOLY SHIT, MR. HEARNE!
KEVIN: Fat stacks, Jesse. Fat stacks. 

Aw, yeah. Finished product of Buesaco beans from Nariño, Colombia, roasted by TONX (more on that below), brewed in a Chemex and poured into my SAXON CODPIECE mug:

ROASTERS ON THE INTERNETS

You might have an awesome local roaster in your area. I recently found one that I’ll share in a minute and couldn’t be happier. But if you don’t have a great roaster in your neighborhood, the glory of internet commerce can still get you awesome beans.

There’s a subscription service called TONX. They get their beans from all over the world, single origin stuff, then they roast it and ship it to you every two weeks or once a month, depending on how much you want. Included with each bag is a little card explaining where the coffee came from, what the growing conditions were, and maybe a bit about the farmers and so on. Different origins every time. The world in my mailbox, twice a month. I love it. If you’d like to try out the service for free, here’s a link. If you wind up subscribing through it, I think they give you $5 off your first order and give me some free beans too.

THE COFFEE (AND TEA) IN THIRD EYE BOOKS & HERBS

Some of you may already know that I do my best to anchor my books in the real world as much as possible. Rúla Búla, for example, is a real Irish pub on Mill Avenue and it truly does have the best fish and chips. Atticus’s bookstore, however, Third Eye Books & Herbs, was necessarily a fictional establishment for which I needed a real-world location. I used my cousin’s comic shop, Ash Avenue Comics, as that location. It’s just south of University Drive on Ash, one block away from all the glory of Mill Avenue and a tad northeast of the neighborhood where Atticus and the widow MacDonagh live.

Something interesting happened last year.

Behind my cousin’s shop was a place called Cartel Coffee Lab. It was in the same building, just a different suite. Turned out they were doing very well because they knew their business and wanted to expand into his space, and my cousin Drew wasn’t opposed to the idea since he could move to another location about 500 feet north, pay a bit less in his rent, and still be on Ash Avenue. So he did, and everybody won. Cartel Coffee Lab smashed through a wall, made a much cooler space for themselves, and now their real-life front door is the fictional front door for Atticus’s shop. Cartel also made the nifty instructional video on how to use a Chemex at the bottom of Chuck Wendig’s blog post.

So after I read Chuck’s post and saw that video, it kind of clicked for me. THREE KINDS OF CAT SHIT! PEOPLE ARE BREWING THINGS IN ATTICUS’S SHOP! GOOD THINGS, TOO! I had to go, so I did, and took some pictures. Ready?

First up: This is the exterior of Atticus’s shop (now Cartel Coffee Lab, the one on the left). It’s changed since 2008 when I first wrote HOUNDED. A bit more paved than it used to be, and that palm tree, wtf, I don’t remember that being there! Anyway, big glass window and glass door, like in the novel. Atticus’s tea station/counter would be right there at the window and the books would be deeper in the space, sheltered from the sunlight. You can see the flat roof there, which Atticus uses to escape in book 3, I believe…?

Turn the camera a bit to the right and you’ll see my cousin’s new place, still Ash Avenue Comics, and still the best selection of trades you’ll find in AZ. :) His name is Drew; stop in and say hi and tell him I sent you.

OK, so, inside Cartel Coffee Lab, you get this nifty menu. Basically you pick the beans you want, then you pick the brewing method. If you don’t want a Chemex, that’s cool, they’ll do an Aeropress for you or a V60 or whatever. What they won’t do is burn the shit out of your coffee like Starbucks. You will notice (on the right) that you can also get tea there, so yeah! I have fulfilled the promise of the blog title: You can actually buy tea now in the real-life location of Third Eye Books & Herbs. Life imitates art; so very trippy. :)

Check it out. When you order a Chemex they serve it up in beakers (yay lab equipment!) and you can then pour it into your cup. Good times!

Here’s a picture of their roaster. They roast on-site throughout the week and don’t do much on the weekends. All their beans have the date o’ roasting on them.

I really love their Yirg Z. I’ve been buying bags and sending ’em to my homies as gifts, and that’s what I drink when my TONX beans run out. (I always run out about 3-4 days before the next bag arrives and need something to fill the void, and now I’ve found it—beans from a local roaster occupying my fictional Druid’s business space!)

So there you go. Extended geekout complete. Whatever you drink or how you drink it, I hope it’s nom! The earth gives us some pretty awesome stuff, huh? Cheers!

Hey everybody,

I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend. It’s a free event full of authors from many genres, plus there are vendors selling sausages and other things that aren’t sausages but we won’t talk about those.

What’s cool about the festival is that they try to make it easy for you to meet the authors you’d like to see. After every panel there’s a signing in an autograph area nearby and you can snag a book there if you want or bring your own. I’ll also have a separate signing from 4-5 on Saturday at the Poisoned Pen booth, and they will have all my stuff there if you’d like to pick some up, or again, bring the books you already have. I’m happy to see you either way—just come see me! Here’s my schedule:

Saturday, 1-2 PM: Author Banter with Elizabeth Bear, Jonathan Maberry, Weston Ochse, Sam Sykes. Integrated Learning Center room 150. Autograph thingie right afterward.
Saturday, 4 PM: Signing and assorted shenanigans at The Poisoned Pen booth #270. Come say hi!
Sunday, 11:30-12:30 AM: Living a Double Life: Making Time to Write with some other spiffy authors.  Integrated Learning Center room 140. Autograph thingie right afterward.

If you’d like to catch me elsewhere this year, I have all the events listed on my Events and Appearances page. It’s always spiffy to meet my readers. Hope you can swing by one of them!

Woohoo! It’s all solid now so I’m sharing!

Before I list the dates, please understand that I have limited time and resources and cannot fly everywhere. I can just sorta-kinda get to your region and hope like heck you can maybe arrange to visit since I’m giving you plenty of notice. (Maybe draw a sausage or a poodle on your calendar?) Sorry that I can’t add any more stops—travel is turbo expensive and this is all the budget can handle.

If you can’t possibly make any of these dates or catch me at any of my other appearances this year (I’ll be in Chicago, New Orleans, San Diego, and Atlanta, for example) you can still get a signed copy of SHATTERED two different ways: You can order one from The Poisoned Pen or you can order a signed copy through Barnes & Noble while supplies last. Either place will happily ship it to you.

Of note (to me, anyway): This will be my first time visiting Minneapolis, Boston, and Toronto as an author! I’ve been meaning to visit the midwest for some time now and I am glad that I’ll be able to swing by Chicago and Minneapolis this year to say howdy. Haven’t been to Boston since the mid-nineties, and Toronto will be an entirely new thing. (I am so going to catch a Blue Jays game. Maybe Geddy Lee will be there and I can die from the reflected awesome.)

June 17-29: SHATTERED tour!
June 17, 6:30: The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ
June 18, 7:00: Murder By the Book in Houston, TX.
June 19, 7:00: Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY.
June 20, 7:00: Barnes & Noble at HarMar Mall, Roseville (near Minneapolis) MN.
June 21, 6:00: University Bookstore in Seattle, WA.
June 22, 4:00: Powell’s Books in Beaverton (near Portland), OR.
June 23, 7:00: Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge (near Boston), MA.
June 24, 6:30 or 7, will finalize soon: Bakka Phoenix in Toronto, Ontario, Canada!
I’m spending a few days in Toronto and then squeezing in one last stop…in Colorado!
June 29, 3:00: Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch (a bit south of Denver), CO.

Very much looking forward to seeing you all and taking silly selfies. Please bring plenty o’ friends!

I have something beautiful to show you that is seriously a geekout of the highest order.

Background first: I’ve been a fanboy of T.S. Eliot’s for many years—you may have caught some of my allusions to his works in the series—and I used to teach “The Wasteland” to juniors and break down all the hidden stuff in there for them. The kids were always blown away; they never realized that poetry could do that, that you could pack so much meaning into a single work, especially since they were accustomed to lyrics with such depth as “It’s getting hot in here/so take off all your clothes”. While preparing myself to teach that poem, I read a lot of the source material Eliot used, including From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston and other works that spoke of the quest for the Holy Grail. The old stories about the Grail quest are full of seriously crazy shit, ranging from a mild WTF to Dear Gods Below I’m Afraid To Go To Sleep Now. The bit that always made me shiver and scream a little inside was whenever the grail knight got to the Chapel Perilous.

Monty Python made fun of it a bit in their movie—remember Lancelot saving Galahad from the Castle Anthrax?

Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril.
Galahad: I don’t think I was.
Lancelot: Yes you were. You were in terrible peril.
Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.
Lancelot: No. It’s too perilous.

There are many versions of the old Grail legends, but the oldest we have—the closest to the “original” tales,  though even they were written down hundreds of years after the actual events—feature Gawain. Lancelot, Galahad, and all those other dudes showed up in later iterations of the tale, and those later tales got steadily more Christianized. The earliest Grail knights were Gawain and Percival.

When Shawn Speakman invited me to contribute to the Unfettered anthology, I saw my chance to tell a story of Atticus’s past rooted in Grail legend and marry it to my series mythology. The story is basically one big geekout for me and, as it happens, something of an origin story for Atticus. We learned in Hounded how he came to possess Fragarach, and we learned in Two Ravens and One Crow how he learned the recipe for Immortali-Tea, but what makes him the Iron Druid is his cold iron amulet and the silver charms on his necklace. The ideas for those come to him in “The Chapel Perilous,” as well as his inspiration to teach language to animals (such as Oberon). Now that Shawn has returned US rights to the story to me, I can let y’all snag it separately for cheap.

“The Chapel Perilous” is now available semi-worldwide through Amazon and B&N, and will be available through iBooks and Kobo as I can manage. I say semi-worldwide because it is not available separately in the UK & Commonwealth countries, nor Australia & New Zealand. That is because Unfettered, which contains “The Chapel Perilous” among many other spiffy stories, will be published by Orbit UK in those countries in February, and Orbit understandably would rather not have the competition. I only have the rights to publish on my own in the US and markets where English is not the primary language. Fret not, UK and Australian peeps: Unfettered is one hell of an anthology and well worth it.

To sell it online I needed a “cover” for it, so I approached Galen Dara, Hugo-award winning artist, to see if she’d like to take a shot at bringing the story alive. And oh my, did she come through! I described Atticus and Apple Jack coming upon the Chapel Perilous in the rain and she painted something haunting and beautiful and perfect. I love it so much. Here it is:

Galen will sell you a print of that if you like—just contact her online. I have a print and it is My Precious. And I stress that it’s not just because that’s Atticus in sixth-century armor; this painting represents anybody’s quest, because a quest can often be a lonely thing in the rain, you know, and I love that we have both death and salvation waiting for the questing knight, a gloomy and forbidding forest but with paths through it that lead to the light. I see doom and hope and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.

Anyway. My geekout is that I’ve contributed in a wee way to the Grail legends that I love so very much and that Galen has so perfectly given a visual representation to a vital part of those legends. Hope you enjoy the words and Galen’s painting. Here’s the final cover, and again, the story’s available for ninety-nine cents or its equivalent in those places that aren’t being served by Orbit UK:

HANDY LINKY-POOS:
The Chapel Perilous for Kindle
The Chapel Perilous for Nook 

Holy cow. 268 entries and arguably the best mugshots ever taken! I want to thank you all for your creativity and time. I hope you had fun, which was honestly the point! The full gallery is quite a hoot, and here’s a link if you haven’t seen it. It was so difficult to pick only five winners—so difficult that I couldn’t actually do it; I picked six, and we’ll still have five random winners on top of that!

IF YOU ARE A WINNER BELOW, PLEASE EMAIL ME ONCE MORE WITH YOUR NAME AND MAILING ADDRESS SO I CAN SEND YOU YOUR GOODIES.

My picked winners, in no particular order:

This one’s by Jennifer. Love the Tullamore Dew and drinking horn and a lovely axe and what looks like TREASURE PILLAGED FROM THE ROMANS and a nice furry hat.

Next up:

Congrats to Terry! Dude. I want action figures to perform this action for me every morning. Robot minions who make me my coffee. YEAH.

From Cori, who lives somewhere cold: This is beautiful AND random. WIN.

Kathleen knows how to vacation. She went to Mexico on a tequila tour in search of small craft-brewed tequilas. Kathleen also knows how to set up a photo. Holy crap. Hot chocolate with marshmallows and a shot of tequila? NOM NOM NOM

Diana gave us this beautiful Irish Wolfhound shot. This is Liam, a rescue hound like Oberon and Orlaith. What a sweetie!

Another doggie pic that I couldn’t resist from Julie. Look at that expression! I’m told the patient pup got some bacon. :)

Okay, random winners! What I did was type in 268 to Random.org and let it randomize the numbers. When you send me your photos I organize them according to number in order received, and then I just use the first five numbers that Random.org gives me. If it gives me the number of a photo that already won, I move down to the next one. First five numbers were 121, 189, 45, 230, and 207, which correspond to the pics below. So if you see your pic here, you’re a random winner and please email me your shipping info!

If you’re a sci-fi & fantasy reader, Phoenix Comicon is rapidly becoming THE event to attend. I mean, LOOKIT THE AUTHORS.

Patrick Rothfuss!
Charlaine Harris!
James S.A. Corey! (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
Delilah S. Dawson!
Sam Sykes!
Chuck Wendig!
Myke Cole!
Brian McClellan!
Stephen Blackmoore!
Jaye Fucking Wells, holy shit!
Jason Hough!
That Kevin Hearne guy!

These are just the ones I already know about based on Twitter conversations and such. There will be even moaaar, never fear! I wanted to give you all a heads-up now because 1) YOU SHOULD COME; 2) Full four-day memberships are only $60 until April; 3) It’s seriously a good con, with great TV/Film and comics presence in addition to the author conclave; it’s not too big like SDCC but it’s juuust right to get maximum talent without maximum crowding; and 4) Tacos and tequila!

Whilst going through my closet and garage as a sort of New Year’s ritual—out with the old, you know—I ran into some pretty cool stuff. You know, this n’ that. And all of that stuff added up to the point I figured I should give it away in neato little grab bags o’ swag. I actually have real bags you can grab! Should you win, you’ll get a random sampling of the goodies listed below:

*Four Third Eye Books & Herbs T-shirts, 2 large and 2 small. These are extremely rare—I only made 20 for my friends and my editors.
*Signed copies of HUNTED.
*A few bonus signed copies of THE DARWIN ELEVATOR by Jason Hough.
*Audiobooks on CD of HEXED. Couldn’t believe I still had any of those.
*Extra author copies of various volumes of IDC from England and Australia, which are slightly different from the US versions, almost impossible to get hold of in the US, and pretty cool. I’d sign ’em for you.
*Some neato books that I enjoyed reading and am ready to share with others. I might send you one and write a brief review on the title page. So it wouldn’t be signed by the author but it would be signed by this author.
*Signed Oberon bookmarks.
*Atticus n’ Oberon pint glasses!
*You will definitely score Cheetos or something. I want my grab bags to be all that AND A BAG OF CHIPS.

THE MUGSHOT CONTEST RULES

*Anyone can enter but I can only ship grab bags to US residents. If you’re overseas and you win, I’ll send you a signed bookmark and a personal note, but no big parcels, sorry.
*Deadline for entries is Sunday, January 19. I’ll post entries as they come in on my Facebook author page for everyone to admire.
*You are required to have fun making your entry. No point to it otherwise.
*Basically you’re taking a picture and sending it to me as a jpeg using kevin (at thingie) kevinhearne.com. If it’s not a jpeg or not sent to that address, it won’t be entered. That picture must be a mugshot…of a mug. The coolest freakin’ mug you can find. And then you need to have something completely weird next to your mug. A beaver. An action figure. A Wankel rotary engine. I don’t care—it just needs to be visually arresting. Artistic. But I should probably stress there shouldn’t be any naked bits. Let’s make this a fun still life. Mugs should have coffee or tea or maybe Irish Coffee in them…something tasty.
*Photoshop filters and such are okay. I’ve done a couple example shots for you. I’m sure you’ll do much better, but this is the kind of thing we’re talking about…

In this one I have Jake, Finn, and Marcelline from Adventure Time ready to go on an adventure with me, next to a mug designed by Chuck Wendig, which exhorts me to ART HARDER. You can kinda see the steam coming up from the coffee, which I think is rad. And the grain of the table gives it some action lines even though they’re just chillin’ there. HOLY HAMSTER CHEESE, THAT WAS FUN! LET’S DO ANOTHER ONE!

Here we have Ganesha, a bottle of Tabasco Reserve, and a lovely floral arrangement next to my coffee. This is my favorite SAXON CODPIECE mug, by the way. I applied a grungy filter to it and now it’s like WHOA THIS IS EDGY SOMEHOW.

Who wins?
I’ll probably pick 3-5 winners because I think they’re gorgeous. Gorgeousness most likely derives from excellent composition, depth of focus, a sense of doge-like “very wow, much awesome,” and spiffy mugs. Then I’ll choose 5-7 more (adding up to 10 total winners) at random, so that everybody who enters has a chance to win regardless of their photography skills. US winners will get a grab bag o’ swag full of random bookish goodies, and international winners will get the aforementioned signed bookmark and note.

Have fun! Get your favorite mug and make some art!

Behold! ‘Tis a brave new turning of the calendar, when we all realize we ate too much and allow gyms to sucker us into membership! And we indulge in other goal-setting activities, of course. So here we go:

In ye olde New Year, I shall read: 

CORMORANT by Chuck Wendig and probably something by James S.A. Corey. I also have a giant TBR pile and feel guilty looking ahead at new releases when the ones I have are already giving me lonely puppy dog eyes. I keep telling myself that maybe I should focus on the TBR pile and avoid the shiny, but I have found this particular flow chart thanks to following author Myke Cole on Twitter, which describes my thought process astoundingly well:

On my laptop with faded keys I shall write:

A Star Wars novel (in progress), an epic fantasy (outlined), and hopefully get a start on book 8 of IDC and a short story too that might stretch into a novella.

Into the wilds of untamed bookstores and electronic commerce I shall release: 

An IDC short story called “The Chapel Perilous” sometime before the first buds of spring. It’s already appeared in the anthology UNFETTERED, but it’ll be available to snag separately on your e-reading device thingie for cheap. I’ll release it worldwide too. More details on that when I have it, so stay tuned.

Book 7 of IDC, SHATTERED, in hardcover, ebook, and audio, on June 17! Paper and ebooks are available for pre-order now wherever you buy your books, and the audio should be up for pre-order sometime in May. Many thanks for pre-ordering if you can spare the time for a mouse click or two; it helps a lot and you don’t get charged for the book until the date rolls around. As always, if you’d like a signed copy (and personalized if you want), you can order one from The Poisoned Pen, an indie store near me that ships anywhere on the globe. Barnes and Noble will also have 500 signed editions, so you might be able to snag one of those if you want to put in an order with them. SHATTERED will be available in the UK/Commonwealth on June 19—audio too.

If I can get another short story finished, that will appear after SHATTERED. Kind of counting on it, actually; it’ll be a necessary story that picks up right after the events of book 7 and lead us into the goodies of book 8. So maybe Octoberish or Novemberish for that. And if I don’t take this opportunity to say that I’ll also release the kraken sometime this year, my daughter will be very disappointed.

I shall travel to and say howdy in the following places:

Tucson, AZ in March for the Tucson Festival of Books; Chicago for C2E2 in April; New Orleans for RT Booklovers Convention in May; Phoenix Comicon in June; then a brief tour for SHATTERED that is still being worked out, but confirmed dates are Scottsdale on June 17 and Houston on June 18; my first visit to Canada (Toronto) is likely but not confirmed for June 24; San Diego Comic Con in July; and Dragon*Con in Atlanta in late August. Cannot even begin to work on IDC 8 until after that visit to Toronto; I have vital research to conduct there. :)

Also: I shall drink coffee in the mornings, play Firefly (both the board game and online when it’s out), pet my doggies, and move out of Arizona to a state with more trees for me to hug and a college where my brilliant wife can get her Ph.D. Maybe I’ll take some graduate lit courses for giggles and brain food.

Hope the year ahead for you is full of awesome books and many blessings!

I’m stupidly fortunate to live as I do, with any food I want a block or two away and the means to pay for it in my pocket. That kind of thing gets taken for granted sometimes.

There’s a charity called Heifer International that provides families in impoverished places with things like chickens or goats or other livestock that will give them a sustainable source of food and perhaps provide some income as well. And Worldbuilders, the charity begun by fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss, raises money to send to Heifer International by providing donors the chance to win fabulous rare and signed editions of spiffy books. I’ve donated some books and sent them some money in the past, and this year is no different. This year I sent them a signed set of the UK edition of the Iron Druid Chronicles. The UK edition is trade paperback, so it’s bigger and on fancier paper and you can pet it if you like. It’s my belief that the signed set I sent them is the only one in existence. (If anybody else has managed to collect a signed set of UK copies, let me know!) Anyway, every $10 you donate to Worldbuilders gets you a chance to win that signed set, as well as a buttload of other donations sent in by authors and publishers. It’s pretty rad; I hope you’ll donate and I hope you win something awesome.

I was trying to think of what else I could do (besides send ’em money, which I did) because I don’t have any more full sets of my US or UK books to send as prizes. What I do have, however, is several foreign editions that maybe someone would like. If I sold those, then I could send more money to Worldbuilders and help more families eat.

So I’ve created an eBay account under the super-original seller name of kevinhearne, which I will use to sell some signed foreign editions of my books, all proceeds going to Worldbuilders.

Usually when you get your book translated the contract states that you’ll be sent 3-10 author copies. Sometimes the foreign publishers are really good about sending them, sometimes they’re not. Anyway, I always keep one of them because it’s fun—the Japanese covers just make me giddy—but it’s not like I can read them. And they’d just be collecting dust if I didn’t get rid of them somehow. So here we go: The editions below all start at $20. I hope they’ll sell for more than that because YAY MORE FOOD FOR HUNGRY PEOPLE but I also want to make sure they sell. If you would like ’em, please bid, or if you know someone who might like ’em, please let them know they’re out there, will you? I will continue to add more editions/copies once I see if these first eight go anywhere or as I get them in. (I am waiting for copies from Turkey, for example, and others.)

Signed copy of HOUNDED, German translation

Signed copy of HOUNDED, Japanese translation

Signed copy of HOUNDED, Spanish translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Japanese translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Spanish translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Polish translation

Signed copy of TRICKED, Polish translation

Signed copy of TRAPPED, Polish translation

Thanks very much.

Oberon wanted to share some holiday greetings with you all, so Atticus, Luke Daniels and I made it happen—because how can you say no to that face?

If you click RIGHT HERE you’ll be taken to my Soundcloud page where you can stream Oberon’s message for free—it’s seven minutes and fourteen seconds of good times with a glorious singalong activity! Fun for the whole family!

You’ll also see a button there that says “Share” that will allow you to spread the joy around to your friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google + and Pinterest.

Luke and I hope you enjoy it and we want to thank you all for reading or listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles, which is really about this hound and his human. The next book, if you haven’t heard yet, is due out June 17. It’ll be available on audio too the same day.

May your sausage always be fat and juicy.