Writer's Grove

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 

My ultra-spiffy publisher, Del Rey, has signed me up to write six more books, and I couldn’t be more thrilled! Many thanks to all my readers for their support; you’re the reason I get to keep writing.

Three of the books will finish off the Iron Druid Chronicles as I’ve always planned (books 7-9) and the other three will be a bit epic.

Also included in this deal is another IDC novella called THE GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB, which is finished and will be released in the US/Canada and the UK and affiliated territories as an e-book original in 2013. It’s set four years before the events of HOUNDED so there’s no Granuaile, but we get plenty of Atticus and Oberon as they get lured to Egypt by a priest of the crocodile god, Sobek!

Random House Audio Publishing Group will continue to produce audio for the US/Canadian market and Luke Daniels is the man, never fear. Release dates for audio are always the same day as the publishing date.

I don’t have publishing dates for the books yet—I have yet to write them and I need to finish my Star Wars novel before I can get busy with these. However, I can now tell you the title of the seventh Iron Druid book: SHATTERED.

Oh yeah: These will all be hardcover. (Eeep!)

I’ve been informed that TRAPPED will also be making an appearance on the New York Times bestseller list, so a gazillion thank-yous for that as well, and for the very kind words that some of you have sent me.

May harmony and an excellent beer find you. :) Cheers!

Since a few people here and there have said unto me, “Verily, I can’t read your frickin’ blog, laddie,” I have redesigned it a bit—or rather, I should say I had some talented people redesign it for me. The primary goal was to improve readability so that you’re not dealing with white text on black background, and the secondary goal was to keep it lookin’ kinda Druidic. Hope you dig it.

Thanks to Emily and Adam Beu at Two Birds Creative in San Francisco for all the spiffiness. Emily is a former student of mine and I’m so proud of her. :)

While I was at it I switched up my Twitter avatar as well. It seemed like a good time to allow Atticus to rest for a while and let everyone enjoy a nice otter.

In case you missed the news, huge congratulations are in order for Luke Daniels, the kickass narrator of the Iron Druid audiobooks, for winning Audible’s Narrator of the Year! I have always been amazed by Luke’s ability to give all those characters their own voice, and it’s awesome to see him get the recognition he deserves!

Many thanks to those of you who have already read (or listened to) TRAPPED in the past week. Some of you read so fast that you’re already asking about the next book, and unfortunately I can’t write as quickly as you read. To answer that question, the next book, HUNTED, comes out June 25, 2013. But you’ll most likely have a couple of Iron Druid goodies to read before that to tide you over. In case you’re interested, read on…

“The Chapel Perilous,” a short story set in sixth century Wales, takes you back to a time before Atticus was the Iron Druid and was ready to take on almost any duty if it would hide him from Aenghus Óg. That will appear in May in an anthology called UNFETTERED, which boasts a stunning lineup of authors including Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Terry Brooks, and many more. Do go check it out—it’s not only full of great stories, but the proceeds go to a good cause.

I have another novella coming out in the spring as well, though I don’t have a publication date yet. It’s called THE GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB, and it takes Atticus and Oberon to Egypt, where they run afoul of a priest of Sobek, the crocodile god. It’s set four years before HOUNDED so there’s no Granuaile, but the Widow MacDonagh makes a cameo appearance. This will be digital only like TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW, but there will be an audio version of it too. I’ll give you the publication date and the US cover when I can, but for now, I’ll leave you with the UK cover:

Hey everyone,

You may have heard by now of Worldbuilders, the charity run by fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss. In a nutshell, it’s this: You donate $10 to Worldbuilders, all of which goes to Heifer International—an organization that helps families in developing nations directly with goats, chickens, heifers and other sustainable sources of food—and you get a chance to win signed books by your favorite fantasy authors. For every $10 you donate, you get another chance to win. And regardless of  whether or not you win some goodies, the cool thing is that hungry kids get to eat.

I’ve donated two signed sets of the Iron Druid Chronicles to help out. One set is in the general prize pool, so you have a chance to win it—or any number of other fabulous books—for as little as $10. But if you’d like to make ULTRA HONKIN’ CERTAIN that you get a signed set of the series rather than just a chance to win it, you can bid on the other set at an auction. Again, all money from the auction goes directly to Heifer International. And here’s why you might want the set that’s up for auction: They’re not merely signed. Each one also has a unique sketch of one of the characters and a little message from them. Here’s what I drew in each book:
HOUNDED: Perry! First time I’ve ever drawn him. And what I have him saying is kind of an inside joke that you won’t understand unless you’ve read book two. :)
HEXED: The Morrigan!
HAMMERED: Leif Helgarson!
TRICKED: Oberon!
TRAPPED: Atticus!

So HERE IS THE LINK to Pat’s blog, where you’ll see all the author-donated books and find links to the general donation page. You can also click through to his other recent blog posts and see all the other books and goodies you can win or bid on, because there are a buttload of them on there, donated from publishers and independent spiffy people and so on.

And, in case you’d rather go straight there, HERE’S THE LINK to the Iron Druid auction with the specially signed/illustrated books. The pictures that they show there are from the first set, not the illustrated set, so don’t panic. :) As of this writing I believe the auction is open for about one more week.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and if you can spare it, thank you for donating to this worthy cause. Hope you win!

Happy reading, everybody! TRAPPED is now available wherever you like to get your books (except the release date in the UK/Australia is Thursday). Very excited for you to see the binding process for Druids and meet the dark elves and the dwarfs of Nidavellir! Those are the parts I geeked out about while writing it, anyway… :)

It’s a heck of a day in general for sci-fi and fantasy releases. Jim Butcher’s new one, COLD DAYS, is out today, and I’ve also been waiting for THE FRACTAL PRINCE by Hannu Rajaniemi. And of course, the legend himself, Alan Dean Foster, has the third book of his latest series out, THE SUM OF HER PARTS. It’s a great week to be someone who enjoys reading, basically.

Wee reminder: If you’d like a signed copy of TRAPPED—or any of my books—you can order ’em from The Poisoned Pen by calling 1-888-560-9919. They ship internationally.

If you’re one of the people who has a ticket to Atticus & Oberon’s Beer Bonanza on Saturday, I’ll see you soon! Tacos and beer and Druids and probably some ill-advised shots of tequila!

If you don’t  have a ticket but you’d like to say howdy and ask me stuff and take a picture and whatnot, I’ll be at The Poisoned Pen at 2pm on Sunday, Dec. 2, and I’ll sign darn near anything. But LOOKIT! You can also win shiny pretty things by showing up! First up is a print of Atticus and Granuaile by watercolor illustrator Cody Vrosh. Granuaile is pictured here as a new Druid, brandishing one of two different staffs she uses in TRAPPED:

Would you like your own copy? You can snag one from Cody directly here!

You’ll also have a chance to win a framed poster of the glorious map of Yggdrasil illustrated by the peerless Priscilla Spencer, signed by both Priscilla and me:

If you’d like your own copy of that—she has ten of them signed by both of us, I believe, and more signed by her—you can do that right here, and please see my previous post on her awesomeness and some background info on the map!

Last but not least, in case you’d like a spiffy new wallpaper for your computer, I have an ultra-hot n’ sexy one for you right here—click, download, and set as desktop. I got it courtesy of my homies at Del Rey, who modified the cover of TRAPPED for me. Thank you all for reading!

I’m one o’ those people who likes maps in books. For me it’s an essential part of losing myself in the world. But since I’m writing an urban fantasy series set in the modern world, there hasn’t been much call for maps…until now! I have a map in TRAPPED and it’s so cool! I loves it, Precious! It was drawn by the amazingly talented Priscilla Spencer and I couldn’t be happier with it. Here it is—click to embiggen:

Norse cosmology is fascinating stuff and sometimes contradictory. If you do a Google image search on Yggdrasil you will see a surprising number of variations on which realms are actually included in the Nine and where they are located. So I’m just piling on here.

For example: In some versions of the cosmos, Hel is a realm separate from Niflheim rather than a territory within Niflheim. In some versions Muspellheim is left out entirely—very odd since Muspellheim plays a key role in the end of the world. In yet other versions there is no distinction betwixt Nidavellir (land of the dwarfs) and Svartálfheim (land of the dark elves). So you could look at my map and compare it to any other one and say HEY YOU DID IT WRONG in all caps, but quite honestly, there’s no agreement that anyone has done it right. Where the sources do tend to agree are on the following points:
1) Yggrasil has three bigass roots and these are fed from three different sources on three levels or planes: The Well of Urd in Asgard (at the top), the Well of Mimir in Jötunheim (in the middle) and the Spring of Hvergelmir in Niflheim (way down there).
2) There’s an abnormally large dragon lizard thingie called Nidhogg nibbling at the root by the Spring of Hvergelmir. And there’s a buttload of rivers (in this case, eleven) flowing from the spring.
3) Also: Ratatosk! An eagle at the top! And some rather confused hinds who have somehow become arboreal and frolic amongst the branches on their hooves!
5) Five of the realms are pretty solid in terms of their location; it’s the other four that get people squabbling. The Fab Five are Asgard, Vanaheim, and Álfheim at the top, and Midgard and Jötunheim below them.
6) Jormungandr, the world serpent, circles Midgard. You can see that Priscilla got extremely clever and represented Jormungandr with the knots.

I’ve included Muspellheim as a land o’ fire to south of Niflheim, the land of ice. Hel is included as a territory of Niflheim—you can see the gates to it in the back (sometimes Niflheim is left out!); and Svartálfheim is a subterranean realm, the entrance to which also lies in Niflheim. The reason for these and other choices should become clear as you read TRAPPED and continue with the series.

If you dig maps & mythology like I do—or if you know someone else who does—you may want your own poster of this. We’ve got you covered! You can order a 12×18 poster of it directly from Priscilla! She has only ten (10) signed by both her and myself—hurry if you want one of those—and a virtually unlimited supply of posters signed only by her or unsigned.

Also: Don’t be surprised if a couple of these signed posters get donated to Worldbuilders, Patrick Rothfuss’s charity. You can win them by donating there.

Also, too: If you come to my signing for TRAPPED at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale on Sunday, Dec 2, at 2 pm, you’ll be automatically entered in a raffle to win a framed poster signed by both of us.

Hope you enjoy! Not just the map, though. The book too. :)

I thought I would share a wee bit of math here since it’s not something I figured out myself until after I was published. It simply never occurred to me to think of it this way, so in the interest of being helpful to people who may be in the same boat now: There is no economic reason for most authors to tour. In fact, bookstores often lose money on author appearances too, but for now we’ll focus solely on the author’s side of things. Apologies in advance for the length. Here we go…

I’m in Arizona. Let’s say I want to visit people in Boston because I have yet to visit Massachusetts and there might be a few people out there willing to come see me. Cool! First, I have to plan my visit months ahead. The bookstore needs time to get the appearance on their calendar and send out emails to their newsletter subscribers and so on, doing what they can to publicize the event locally, and they also need to order copies of my books. But once the date and time is set, I have to pull out my credit card.

Round-trip flight to Boston from Phoenix: $365 according to Orbitz
Hotel in Boston: $100-$200 depending on where you stay
Rental Car or Taxi: That will cost a nice fat stack
Food: Should probably eat some
Transportation to the airport: Necessary and not free

So let’s say we’re super-duper cheap and manage to do this whole thing in one day & night for $500 just to keep the math simple. Can I write all this off on my taxes? Heck yes. And I will. But it’s still $500 out of my pocket right now, and of course that write-off is a deduction on taxable income, not a credit. I won’t get it all back by any means. So what’s in it for me?

In financial terms it’s pretty small taters. It’s standard throughout the industry for authors to get about sixty-four cents per mass market paperback, and quite honestly, not a lot of people attend book signings. There are authors out there who will draw a couple or few hundred people, of course, but I’m not one of them. Most of the time authors will sell 30-60 copies at an event, depending on the city and the day of the week and the weather. Let’s say for easy math purposes, however, that Boston rocks hard and I sell 100 copies. That means I make $64.00. (I’d need to sell 800 copies to break even!)

My hypothetical visit to Boston, therefore, with a cheap estimate of costs and a generous estimate of sales, would put me in the hole $436. Clearly, the math tells me I cannot visit every place I’d like to go. It’s simply not possible if I would like to continue to do things like pay my mortgage and feed my kid and avoid calls from bill collection services. And the same holds true for the vast majority of authors.

“But wait!” a random straw man interjects. “Doesn’t your publisher pay for all that stuff anyway?” Nope. Publishers have budgets and bills to pay too. And airlines don’t give them discounts on author flights. The economics don’t work out in their favor either. Tours are simply not good for the bottom line—unless you’re one of the very, very few superstars who can sell hundreds of hardcovers at each event. That’s not me and that’s not most authors. That’s dudes like Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin. Publishers do pay for some tours, of course, but that’s for mondo huge bestsellers, and people might erroneously assume that it’s like that for all authors. It’s definitely not.

The reason I bring this up is that I recently announced on Facebook that I’d managed to get an appearance arranged in Cleveland. The comments immediately began to fill up with very sweet people urging me to come to their city in Florida or Wisconsin or California or wherever. And that’s when I realized they probably didn’t know what they were asking. They probably didn’t realize that I can’t afford to go wherever I want. Most of my appearances—and most author appearances, honestly—happen only if someone subsidizes them, either a convention or a conference or a publisher.

Here’s how the Cleveland thing happened: Nicole Peeler (who is a ridiculously smart professor in addition to being one of my favorite authors) invited me to come teach for a wee bit at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, which is about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. The university is flying me out there for the gig, but of course while I’m there on their dime I’m not going to be doing anything else but what they want. Still, I thought, maybe I can get something arranged out there for readers since I’ve never visited that part of the country. So I asked Seton Hill to schedule my return flight out of Pittsburgh a day later, and they were cool with that. Awesome! I got a hotel room in Pitt for my extra night and then set about trying to find a place in Pittsburgh to have an event. That turned out to be far more difficult than I anticipated. For various reasons that are no one’s fault, I couldn’t get a store to host me in Pittsburgh. My publicist in NY stepped in to help by finding a spot in Cleveland—Rocky River, actually, which is just to the west of Cleveland.

So now I’ll be driving a rental two and a half hours to Cleveland (probably uphill in the snow both ways!), and it’s definitely not for the money. I mean, if Cleveland rocks like the hypothetical Boston scenario above, I might break even on my rental car since the flight was taken care of. But I’m not worried about that because I’m not doing it for the economics anyway. Instead, authors who aren’t mega best sellers tour for these reasons:

1) Writers are full of neuroses and foremost among them is a desperate need to be loved.
2) People who read books are really cool and who wouldn’t want to meet cool people?
3) We cling to a hope that maybe the appearance will pay dividends down the road, as in spiffy people might spread the word about our books to their friends. Maybe we’ll break even on the trip in some distant future and there will be chocolate.
4) We like to get off our asses and away from the computer for a while.
5) Some readers would actually like to meet me and chat and I want to make them happy.

There are probably more reasons than that. I simply can’t think of them right now because I haven’t had my coffee.

Anyway, the point: I’d love to visit your town because I love to travel and see the country and meet people, but I can’t afford to do very much and neither can my publisher. And I hope this doesn’t come across as a woe-is-me sort of thing or a complaint; it’s merely an explanation of How Things Are for darn near everyone and maybe a wee plea: If I don’t come to your neck of the woods, please do not take it as a personal insult. I basically go where I’m invited or someplace near me because math says that’s all I can do. If you would like to see me (or any other author) in Florida or Wisconsin or wherever, the easiest thing to do is to convince either a geek convention or a writer’s conference to invite me as a guest. In a sense, you might have more power to make it happen than I do.

Bookstores, by the way, lose money on author appearances more often than you would think—or make such a slim profit that it’s barely worth their time. The reasons why are for another post. But like authors, they do it anyway because they like readers and they want people to enjoy reading.

I’m not touring at all for TRAPPED; I’m having a single signing locally at The Poisoned Pen on December 2. I will tour, however, in support of HUNTED next summer. It will be the west coast, basically, with stops in Montana and Colorado on the way back. I’m driving the whole way and Del Rey is being super nice and helping out. If you’re on the west coast and would like to see when I’ll be in your neighborhood, the dates are on my Events and Appearances page. Store locations and times will get cemented later, but those dates and cities are pretty solid.

If you made it all the way down here, thanks so much for reading it all! Hope it helped you understand the touring biz.

Occasionally the calendar rolls around to the bit where I have to do some obligatory promo in case people have yet to hear that TRAPPED is coming out November 27. So here we go:

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ATTICUS AND OBERON! YAY!

If that was news to you then I feel totally validated for writing this! But I feel like I should provide something more for people who already knew that…hmm. I know! I can help you escape all the holiday Doorbuster sales with a single phone call!

You can snag some signed copies for all the geeks you love—and not just copies of TRAPPED, but any of my titles. And this applies internationally, too. An independent bookstore near me, The Poisoned Pen, will ship signed copies anywhere. Call them toll-free at 1-888-560-9919 and say hey dude, I’d like to order x number of signed copies of these titles and they’ll get it done. If you want them personalized “To Buffy” or “Fifi” or whoever, that’s cool too, just let them know, and I’ll head over to sign them! (And The Poisoned Pen offers signed copies by Diana Gabaldon as well, in case you’re a fan of hers.)

Apart from getting signed copies and giving the gift of Oberon, ordering from The Poisoned Pen means you’re supporting a local business instead of a giant corporate kraken from the sea. So there’s no downside here.

If you’re local and you can spare the time, I’m having a signing for TRAPPED on Sunday, December 2, at 2 pm at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. I’ll be talking a wee bit and taking questions, and you can win a signed print of the map that appears in the front of the book as well. (It’s signed by the amazingly talented artist, Priscilla Spencer.) Would love to see you! Please come by if you can!

Other promo news: Audible now takes audiobook pre-orders, so you can snag TRAPPED from them now if you’d like (US/Canada only). Last time I looked they didn’t have the narrator posted there, so let me reassure you that it’s still Luke Daniels. He’s already recorded it.

Other, other promo news: I want to put this dude on your radar. His name is Jason Hough (pronounced like Huff). His series, the Dire Earth Cycle, comes out next year. His publisher—full disclosure, also mine—pitches it as Firefly-meets-Scalzi. I pitch it as the best thing I read in 2012, period. I scored an early copy and it wasn’t long until I was talking to the book. That’s how you know a book is really good, right? You start yelling at it because you’re fully involved. Here are a few choice things I shouted at various characters in his first book, THE DARWIN ELEVATOR:
“Shit! Watch out! It’s going to eat your ass! GET OUT OF THERE!”
“Oh, you’re a dick. You’re just a dick. I hope you receive a humiliating injury to your groin.”
“He’s PLAYING you and you need to wake the fuck up!”

Of course, that’s not the kind of thing you can put on a book cover. I wrote something a bit more polite for that. Here’s my full blurb for it: “The best part about alien stories is their mystery, and Jason M. Hough understands that like no other. Full of compelling characters and thick with tension, THE DARWIN ELEVATOR delivers both despair and hope along with a gigantic dose of wonder. It’s a brilliant debut and Hough can take my money whenever he writes anything from now on.”

Yes, it’s true. I’m already a fanboy. The Dire Earth Cycle is going to be released back-to-back-to-back, just like my series was. They’re coming out in July-August-September of 2013, and you can pre-order THE DARWIN ELEVATOR now if you like or just click there to learn more about it. You won’t regret it.

As always, thank you so much for reading. Especially the occasional promo posts. You deserve a beer. Cheers!

So this is pretty awesome. No, scratch that. It’s turbo awesome. A composer named Will Musser has composed a theme for Atticus! It definitely has the Celtic feel but it builds and gets more modern as it goes. What do you think? Dig it?

Out in Arizona we have this thing called “October Break” during the school year—I’m sure many other districts have something similar—so I packed up my wee family and we headed for the trees.

A popular misconception about Arizona is that it’s all cactus and snakes, but that’s only the southern bit. About an hour and a half north of Phoenix you get into some serious trees. And if you go to Sedona, as we did, you get some supremely pretty red rocks to go along with your trees. I mean, lookit:

Sedona is also home to these things called Vortexes. They’re supposed to be, um…well, I’m not sure. It has something to do with electromagnetic energy and maybe magic and definitely lots of New Age stuff. You can buy crystals and prayer wheels and drums and all kinds of goodies for your personal head trip in town, and then go out to nature and commune with your god(s) and natural avatar(s) of your choice. Personally I like to commune with nature unassisted and unfiltered, but selling people stuff to assist their spiritual journey is a big business in Sedona. They have many stores devoted to it. Or, as the Chief in Police Academy said, “Many, many, many, many!” This is just one of them, which we visited for the fun of it:

It had aura photography! Vedic and Buddhist literature and figures! Lots of pretty rocks and crystals that were supposed to unblock your chakras! Astrology goodies! Wiccan goodies! 31 flavors of Tarot or something like that! And my nerdy Iron Druid moment was this: the super-nice lady who helped us in this store was Polish, and I found myself hoping she was a witch. She seemed to be into the chakra/Vedic thing, though, so I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to ruin it—I really wanted her to be a Polish witch I met in Arizona so that my fiction would be that much closer to truth. That’s turbo silly, I know. I’m incorrigible that way. Anyhow, I scored a neato bust of Ganesha while I was in there BECAUSE IT’S COOL THAT’S WHY, and he’s watching me type this now with a tiny smile around his broken tusk. Soon we will have a beer together.

But back to the break! Off we went to enjoy nature. Oak Creek is daaaaaang beautiful. I haz proof! Lookit:

But wait! There’s more! This is one of those shots where I’m pretentiously trying to show off my composition skillz:

Of course, since there were all these beautiful trees around, I had to hug a few of ’em and let ’em know they’re loved:

My kid loves the water so she enjoyed our time down by the creek. Here she is in all her blue-haired glory checking out the waterfall upstream from a deep, slow pool:

‘Twas a lovely escape. But now we’re home again and I’m in between contracts, so I get to be super duper creative. My second contract ends with HUNTED, and though that’s not finished quite yet because we still have editing to do, I don’t imagine I’ll get that back from my editor for a while so I’m outlining stuff for the future. I have the Star Wars novel to outline first—that’s actually under contract—and then I need to get going on other goodies. More Iron Druid, for one thing, and an epic fantasy project that I’ve had on the back burner for a long time is just about ready to move to the front. When I have more information about how those are going I’ll let you know, but thank you again for reading my books and spreading the word—that’s the only reason I get to write more. :)

Peace and hugs for you and your trees,
Kevin