Writer's Grove

I do stuff when I feel like it. Usually I feel like it when I have reached an arbitrary number of readers going clickity-click on social media sites. I have 3,000 Likes on Facebook (thanks to Mindi and Pete Young!) and 1,692 birdies on Twitter. Those look like good numbers to me. So I should do some stuff! Or rather, give stuff away!

Here is the stuff I’m giving away to two Sausage Fest Contest winners: 1) A Sausage Fest pint glass 2) A Sausage Fest T-shirt in your size 3) A signed Sausage Fest poster and 4) An early, signed author’s copy of TRICKED. Aw yeah!

Wanna know why this is the best contest EVAR? It’s because you get to EAT YOUR ENTRY—after you take a picture of it. If you think about it, you really can’t lose! You get tasty nom noms and you might also win bonus book-related stuff from that Kevin guy. Best. Contest. EVAR.

So here’s how you enter: Cook something tasty with sausage in it, take a digital picture, and then email it to me with a caption. The caption should include a luxuriously written description of the food pictured, followed by your name. You can use a fake secret agent name if you want. I’ll post all entries into a gallery on my author Facebook page. It should look nummy like this:

One person will win in a Random.Org drawing, so you don’t necessarily have to be a great chef or anything. You could give me a sad picture of biscuits and gravy with one nugget of sausage in it and still potentially win. But one person will win because that person is frickin’ awesome. They’ll make a beautiful dish, take a beautiful picture, and write an amazing caption. And everyone will salivate.

I suggest that the sausage be plainly visible in the picture. Don’t just take a picture of a bun and some lettuce and tell me there’s a patty hidden underneath. We are celebrating sausage in all its tubular, greasy glory. It should be the focus! And yes, soy/tofu sausage is perfectly acceptable. We just won’t tell Oberon.

Also consider composition. Will there be drinks? Will there be origami? Dogs photobombing? Will there be playful visual double entendres?

Mostly I want you to have fun and enjoy entering. I hope you’ll experiment and create something tasty for yourself and the family. Become a gourmet foodie for a while. Life’s too short not to do something like this once in a while, you know?

Okay, let’s give this until February 29. That way you have a couple of weekends to work with. Please email entries to kevin @ kevinhearne.com. Have fun!!!

Oh, one more thing: I don’t have my author copies yet and probably won’t get them until April, so you’ll still have to wait until April to find out what happened to the widow and if Leif is going to make it…you just won’t have to wait until April 24. :)

Hello, Spiffy Person! I know that Egon said Crossing the Streams would be very bad, but this is different. This is very good. “Crossing the Streams” is a gnarly multi-author book giveaway! And it’s international!

I, and over a dozen other speculative fiction writers–mostly novelists, but some comic writers as well–have thrown in together to create something lovely for you.

Here’s how it works:

Each individual author involved is running a contest on his/her own site. The specific details vary from author to author; the contest I run on my site might be very different than the one on Ari Marmells’s site, or Paul Kemp’s site.

However, each contest has a few details in common. Specifically, each of us will select two winners from the contest on our own site. Each of those winners will receive one signed book, free, from the author whose contest they won. So, for instance, if you win here, you’ll win one of my books. If you win on Paul’s site, you’ll win one of his, etc.

But… that’s not the big prize. Once the contests have ended, all the authors involved will get together and choose one single “super-winner” from all the entries on all our sites combined. This one lucky individual will receive a signed book, free, from each and every one of the authors involved.

Yep. Somebody out there’s going to win over a dozen free books.

You can only enter each author’s contest once, but you may enter multiple contests. So you could enter here, on Matt’s site, on Jason’s site, etc. Heck, you can enter on everyone’s site, if you want. (And even if you aren’t selected as the “super winner,” you might win more than one of the individual contests. You never know.)

You can find a complete list of the authors involved, as well as links to their sites, below. But first…

How to Enter Mah Contest

Again, these are just the rules for my contest. The rules for entry on other authors’ sites might be very different.

But for me, it’s really simple. Leave a comment (and NO ectoplasmic discharge) about your favorite Ghostbuster or your favorite quote from any of the Ghostbuster movies.

I will select two winners using Random.org. And of course, everyone who enters is also in the running for the random “super-winner” selection.

Entries must be received between February 1st and February 29th, 2012.

Easier than tying your shoes, my friends!

Prizes: My two winners, and the super-winner, may choose any one of the following prizes.

A signed copy of: 

Hounded
Hexed
Hammered
Tricked (this one will get shipped after its release date of April 24)

The Rest of the Gang

As I said, there’s over a dozen of us involved in this. You can find names and links below. Please click and enter and noodle around their sites a bit. You might find you want to buy some o’ their stuff, and if you went ahead and did it then we’d feel like savvy marketers and give one another cookies. I’m in this for the cookies, see. :)

I wish you the best of luck and sincerely hope you’ll find some new authors to appreciate!

Ari Marmell
Aaron Rosenberg
Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell
Nathan Long
Scott Oden
Joshua Palmatier/Benjamin Tate
Matt Forbeck
Jason Bradley Thompson
Elaine Cunningham
Paul S. Kemp
Eugie Foster
Keith Baker
Jon Sprunk
Steve Savile
Howard Andrew Jones

Haven’t written an update in a while…suppose I should do that. I’ve been putting it off because some things are on the distant horizon, but I suppose some are close enough that I can mention now.

The first bit of news is that Del Rey has put together a pretty spiffy package to lure new readers: all three Iron Druid books, plus the bonus short stories and a preview of TRICKED, together for $19.99! So yeah. $4 off the regular price plus extra goodies! You could buy like a half a Starbucks with the savings! This is coming out March 5, but you could pre-order now or begin your long campaign to convince your friends to buy it. If you’re bold, maybe even a bit saucy, you can simply confiscate their e-reader and purchase it for them when they’re not looking. Heh!

Here’s the link for Nook and here’s the link for Kindle. The descriptive sales copy amuses me to no end. I swear I didn’t write it, but I do confess to approving it. A corollary to “If someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!” would be “If someone describes you as a god, you go ahead and LET THEM!” Also, I learned from the copy that my imagination smashes things. My imagination is the Incredible Hulk. Or the honey badger. It just doesn’t care. I need to buy a beer for whoever wrote that.

Other stuff: I finished an Iron Druid novella called THE GRIMOIRE OF THE LAMB and my editors have it. Set four years before the events of HOUNDED, Atticus and Oberon have a harrowing adventure in Egypt, running into Bast and a priest of Sobek with OCD. I still don’t have a release date for it yet, but I’ll share as soon as I know. What I do know at this point is that it will be digital only, not print. Why? Because it’s easy and there’s very little risk to the publisher. As soon as you talk print, you’re not only talking about paper and ink, you’re talking warehousing and distribution and returns and so on. And the market for printed short fiction outside of anthologies is pretty wee. One thing that e-readers have done is make short fiction viable again, and I, for one, am glad. I have three other Iron Druid stories in various stages of completion, and if it weren’t for the digital platform, I wouldn’t even be thinking about them.

At the end of this month—not so far away—I’ll be having a contest thingie. It’s an international one, which I don’t often do, and it’s also in conjunction with, um…twelve other authors? Thirteen? More than I can count, clearly. The idea is that you’ll get introduced to a bunch of authors you may not have heard of, and the fans of those authors will get introduced to me. It’ll be on throughout the month o’ February, so check back soonish.

Hope you’re well and warm and fuzzy.
—Kevin

Today we have a very special beer to pour into a very special glass. The beer is “imported from Vermont,” which makes it sound exotic somehow. (Hear that, everybody in Vermont? Your neighborhood is exotic.) The brewer of Hill Farmstead Anna—Shaun Hill—is something of a world-renowned chap who lives in the exotic realm of northeast Vermont. Anna is a honey saison brew that I can’t wait to try. Hill Farmstead crafts many small-batch, interesting beers. Thoughtful ones, too, like Phenomenology of Spirit.

The glass into which I shall pour the honey saison is emblazoned with the logo for Atticus & Oberon’s Sausage Fest. I’ve received many requests to sell these, and after looking a wee bit into setting up something on my website, it appears that it will take far more of my time and energy than I can afford. Instead, I’ll set up a shop with Cafe Press, so you can put the Sausage Fest on a shirt or hat, glass or shooter, whatever you’d like, and they’ll handle all the shipping and stuff and I can concentrate on writing.

Who’s the badass? Why, that’s a Pureblood Warpwolf howlin’ for some honey saison. He’s got a Death Howler spray attack and has an animus that allows you to ignore enemy defensive buffs. Whoa. It just got awful nerdy awful fast, didn’t it?

Hope your holidays were filled with warm fuzzies and that your new year will be full of trips to exotic locales like Vermont!

Oh, my. Cover artist Gene Mollica has surpassed himself. This is so badass! Behold:

WOOOO! No hidden face. No glaring off-camera. Just straight up I’m-gonna-liquidate-your-401K! I love it!

Apart from Gene’s masterful work, huge kudos also to my editor, Tricia Pasternak, and Dave Stevenson, the designer, for their vital contributions. (For the official cover reveal at Suvudu and to see what Tricia has to say about it, I direct thee there.) I really appreciate them consulting me along the way and tweaking this until I was happy. And they also said it was okay for me to make a wallpaper for your desktop to give everyone around you a shiver of awesomeness! The wallpaper is cropped a smidge wider and you can see more of the beautiful knotwork of Atticus’s binding:

Tricia and Dave wanted to give books 4-6 their own look, slightly different from the first three, and so they started by asking me two questions: What would be a good setting for book four’s cover? What does Atticus’s magic look like?

Much of the book takes place in the Navajo Nation, which is a large chunk of northeastern Arizona, as well as bits of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. I’d made a scouting trip up there in order to write the book, and I still had some pictures on me. Tyende Mesa, which is located about ten miles or so southwest of Kayenta, has about five or six buttes jutting up from it—very distinctive. I sent them this picture of two of the buttes:

If you look on the cover right behind the blurb from SFF World (really nice of them to say, by the way) you’ll see the silhouette of these buttes. Gene actually used the picture! Woohoo! I also sent them a suggestion for layout because I’m a nerd like that and I like to draw a wee bit. There’s a passage in the book where Atticus and Oberon are tracking something near those buttes, so I thought that would make an interesting tableau. I sent them this sketch:

They chose a much more dramatic pose, of course (and thank goodness!), and I’m told Oberon might make an appearance on the back cover (I’m crossing my fingers), but Gene kept the buttes and also the tracks. They cropped the tracks out of the cover, and I had to crop them out for the wallpaper too, but they’re in the full illustration so I went ahead and geeked out about that.

As far as what Druidic binding looks like, I referred them to the way Atticus describes it to Granuaile in HEXED. In our normal vision we’d see nothing, but in the magical spectrum we’d see Atticus outlined in a soft white glow and then his bindings are seen as Celtic knotwork of various patterns, depending on the binding. I said these would originate from his hand and take shape from there, and wow, I’m still grinning at what a fantastic job Gene did with that! I hope you like it as much as I do! I love it!

And I suppose I should mention that TRICKED is now available for pre-order at your Indie bookstore, as well as B & N and Amazon and wherever else you buy books, and pre-ordering is one of the nicest things you can do for an author. It makes a difference!

Very happy holidays to you from me, and a Happy Solstice from Atticus!

For my birthday, I went up to a cabin in the woods with no cable and no internet. This was in Pine, Arizona, where there are many pine trees, as one might imagine. There was plenty o’ snow on the ground too. ‘Twas chilly.

I went up there with The Confederacy of Nerds because we like to escape the Man once in awhile—who wants us to be normal and not so unbalanced—and really get our geek on.

Tooth got us started in sterling fashion: “There might be no Internet, but there’s a good phone signal. I’m pulling down four megs on my 3G out here,” he said. “Fuck it, I’m streaming Netflix.” He pulled an adapter out of his ass and hooked his cell phone up to the TV so we could have Star Trek and Lord of the Rings playing in the background while we geeked out on other stuff. I didn’t even know this was possible. Perhaps most astonishingly, he did all this while wearing an orange sweater. I swear I’m not making that up.

The O’Bryans taught Kasian and Tooth the basics of Warmachine using a couple of army starter packs, and I watched because the mechanics are slightly different—and a bit easier, I think—than those for Hordes. But the models, in my opinion, aren’t quite as cool. I’m not into machines and armor so much—I prefer the organic stuff in Hordes much more. But I can see the appeal of Warmachine.

So then Kasian was like, “I want to try this recipe for Tobacco-Infused Tequila Hot Chocolate,” and we were like, “You’re bullshitting us,” and he was like, “Yeah,” because usually he is, but then he realized he wasn’t, and said, “I mean, no.”

It was AMAZING. But it’s not something you pop in the microwave. It takes a while. But it was probably the most awesomely complex-tasting drink I’ve ever had. Here’s the recipe Kasian found on the Internet. There’s even a helpful video thingie. Kasian used an even different method than the chef dude described to infuse the milk with tobacco: He lit the cigar in the aluminum foil boat, then floated it on top of the milk, and then closed the lid on a large saucepan. We used an eight-dollar Monte Cristo. Here’s wee picture of the aftermath:

So here’s what happens when you take a sip: first you taste the chocolate—that sweet, rich chocolate that never comes out of a mix; then, as it hits the back of your throat, the Patron Silver says, “Hola, Amigo. You are the most interesting man in the world.” You swallow and exhale, and then you taste and smell the cigar smoke and the Fernet-Branca liqueur. It’s incredible. If you have the time to give this a try, I recommend it!

What’s the coolest, most incredible doodad you’ve ever eaten? Or drank?

It’s been a wee while since I’ve finished painting a model, but today I finished painting a couple of them. I have lots of works-in-progress, and mostly they’re the Reeves of Orboros. I also have to paint the Wolves of Orboros, and the Druids, the box of which you’ll see below. The Reeve unit leader and one of her stout yeomen guard my Snakebite.

Have ye had a Snakebite, me hearties? Some people call ’em Black Velvets. Depends on who you’re talking to. But basically, it’s a blend of Guinness and hard cider. The best ciders to use are either Woodchuck or Strongbow. Stay the hell away from that Hornsby’s stuff; if you see any, FLEE. Anyway, fill your glass about half or a wee bit past half with cider, and then hold a spoon upside-down over the glass and pour your Guinness over that. You’ll get the separation you see in the pic. Beautiful & tasty.

Now that you have an idea of the scale, I’ll zoom in a bit on the Reeve leader:

Either I was too enthusiastic with the detail brush or she just got back from the optometrist, where they dilated her eyes. :) Oh well. The armor came out looking pretty good, and I like the wolf’s head on her shoulder. Here’s one of the Reeves—there are six different ones in the unit:

Those double crossbows they have with a BONUS blade to gut you means you won’t be stealing a sip of my Snakebite. They have some beautiful cloaks, the Reeves do, trimmed in wolfhide:

Outside my kitchen window, I have a bird feeder that unfortunately attracts a large number of pigeons. However, it also attracts these lovelies, for which I am (barely) willing to suffer the pigeons:

Aren’t they pretty? Wouldja like to see one giving me a come-hither look? Or a give-me-more-seed look, anyway?

I am not the only one entertained by the birds outside the window. As you might imagine, the household kitteh is rather enamored of their visits. When he cannot watch them, he finds a nice box to sit in, from which he may glare at me and demand more birds to look at:

Hope your Thanksgiving was happy and you’re enjoying lots of leftovers. Especially pie. :)

I usually hit the road in the summer, like many other folks do. These days, however, I mix in a little bit of work with my play. Last summer I went to Colorado and did a bit of location scouting for Tricked. Next summer I’d like to see some places I’ve never seen before, so to that end, I’ve begun planning a trip to the South. I don’t have times yet, but I have most of the dates and places filled in, so if you’re in or nearby any of the following cities—or you’ll be there in the summer—I’d love to see you!

First Stop: Dallas, Texas, June 7

I’m turbo excited because I’ll be at A Real Bookstore with fellow League author Jaye Wells the day after her last Sabina Kane novel, Blue-Blooded Vamp, gets released! PLUS Chelsea and Kristin will be there, a couple of the best book bloggers in the business. Gonna be a party. FLAGONS.

June 8: Lexington, Kentucky

I’ll be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Woohoo! I’ve heard nothing but good things about this store.

June 9: Nashville, Tennessee

Not sure where I’ll land yet; this is one of two fuzzy patches in the agenda. Do you know a good place?

June 10: Atlanta/Decatur, Georgia 

I’ll be at The Blue Elephant Book Shop in Decatur. Doubtful I’ll make it to Dragon*Con, so this is my stop.

June 11: Charlotte, North Carolina

Come see me at Park Road Books!

June 12: Durham, North Carolina

The book-signing part of this day is a bit up in the air at the moment; I really want to catch the day game between the Durham Bulls and the Toledo Mud Hens, so if you’re in the area, see you at the ball park! And if  you know a good indie store there, tell me!

June 13: Library of Congress, in that place where all the people argue about stuff and monger scandals.

Heck yes you can come! It’s the people’s library, isn’t it? I’ll be speaking there and perusing top secret documents, but I will secretly sign books in secret code as well. It’ll be our secret. I am hoping to meet a CIA cryptanalyst there because I just want to say I met one once. It would be so awesome if he or she slipped me a coded message and whispered, “We’re all counting on you at Langley!” And then I’d go decode it and it would say that in order to save the world, I should make myself a sandwich or something.

If a town near you isn’t on the list, well…I’m truly sorry! This isn’t a publisher-funded tour but rather a Kevin-funded one, and my pockets aren’t terribly deep. I’m just trying to see some country and see some people. Hopefully I will be able to make it to everyone’s corner someday! :)

Other summer stuff: I’ll be at Phoenix Comicon Memorial Day Weekend. Then, July 6-8, I’ll be at InConJunction in Indianapolis. After that is San Diego Comic-Con, July 12-15. I’ll update times and such as we get closer. :) Hope to see you somewhere!

Well, maybe. It’s certainly made of nominations! I’d like to give some high-fives to my homies in The League of Reluctant Adults who have been nominated in the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards! The Romantic Times doesn’t just do romance—they have awards for Urban Fantasy, Mysteries, etc.

FOUR fabulous Leaguers were nominated in the Urban Fantasy Protagonist category! Behold:

Nicole Peeler for Tempest’s Legacy
Jaye Wells for Green-Eyed Demon
Diana Rowland for My Life as a White Trash Zombie
Jeanne Stein for Crossroads

Plus, in the Shapeshifter Romance category:

Molly Harper for How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
Michelle Bardsley for Must Love Lycans

And Michelle Bardsley again in the Paranormal Romance category for Never Again. Woo! Go Michelle!

In other news, thanks to my fabulous readers, Hounded has made it to the semi-final round in the Paranormal Fantasy category in the GoodReads Choice Awards! I appreciate the love very much; thank you! If you’d like to see Atticus and Oberon get into the finals, vote for Hounded before November 20!

If you follow me (or “like” me or whatever the proper verb is, I despise them all because it makes us sound silly) on Facebook or Twitter, you might have already seen these, but I know that there are a few folks out there who only see my blog, either directly or via Goodreads, and I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. I’m talking about some spiffy new fan art.

I have an album of photos on my Facebook page called Fan Art Gallery, and if you’re the artistic type and the spirit ever moves you, you’re welcome to send your Iron Druid stuff to me and I’ll post it there for everyone to admire. I have several pictures of Atticus and Oberon in there and one of the Morrigan as well.

Hailey Stephenson, who is a redhead herself, thought it was high time somebody paid attention to Granuaile. Not Granuaile behind the bar, not Granuaile studying her Latin, not Granuaile possessed by Laksha, but Granuaile in HEXED, in her green nightie that drives Atticus to distraction. BASEBALL! Here’s the line art, first:

I kinda feel sorry for Atticus. How is he supposed to ignore that? How much baseball can one man think of?

Hailey colored it in, too. And she didn’t neglect the freckles or the strawberry lip gloss! You might have to enlarge the picture to see the freckles; they’re subtle, but they are there high on her cheeks, her shoulders, and…elsewhere.

Many thanks to Hailey for sharing her vision of Granuaile with us! Love it!