Writer's Grove

From Kevin: I’m very pleased to welcome author Nicole Peeler to the Writer’s Grove. If you haven’t read her Jane True series (which begins with Tempest Rising) I heartily recommend you add it to your list—it’s for your own good. :) Without further ado, here she is!

Howdy y’all! My name is Nicole Peeler and I write Urban Fantasy, just like Kevin does. In fact, I blurbed his book! It’s great, he’s great, and I was thrilled to invite Kevin to join us at the League of Reluctant Adults. Because if he ain’t a reluctant adult, I don’t know who is.

One thing Kevin and I have in common is that we don’t write the typical kickass UF heroine. Indeed, Kevin’s protagonist has a wang, which means he’s a HERO. As for my heroine, she’s not exactly kickass, at least to start. Rather, she’s half-selkie. Which means she’s part seal-shape shifter. And let’s be honest, folks. Just how tough can a seal be?

That about sums it up, doesn’t it? Seals are soft and sweet and the victims of clubbings. They rarely, if ever, are known to club back. Unless you’re a penguin, that is. Then they’re DEATH IN THE WATER.

So besides not being naturally all that intimidating, seals are, as we see in the example above, rather plump. Now, weight in Urban Fantasy is rarely an issue, simply because I can’t think of a single Urban Fantasy heroine who isn’t built like a brick shithouse, a la Red Sonja:

Now don’t get me wrong. I love a foxy lady, and I’m particularly drawn to the long and lean variety, probably because I am of the plump and short genre, myself. But must women really have walnut-cracking asses to be kickass?

I guess it depends on your definition of “kickass.” For some, it means just what it appears to mean: the ability to kick someone’s ass, probably using your spiky, spiky Glamazon boots. But I wanted to play with that definition by honoring the sort of women who are kickass in real life, and yet rarely, if ever, let the soles of their shoes come into contact with another person’s gluteous maximus.

Those women are the ones who get ‘er done, despite being vulnerable. These women are our teachers, like my mom, who at five foot nothing teach emotionally disturbed teenagers ten times her size. Or the women, like my sister-in-law, who nurse in my rough hometown and go to work despite seeing the abuses we heap upon each other as a species. These women are our soldiers, our police officers, our firefighters, and our social workers who, despite not having Red Sonja’s physique, still have Red Sonja’s bravery. And that’s real bravery, people.

Superheroes are supposed to do heroic things: they were drawn that way. But when “real” people do heroic things, now that’s something to stand back and applaud.

So while I never specify exactly what size my Jane really is, she describes herself, variously, as “built for comfort, not for speed,” “cushy,” and the like. She’s definitely short and, while she’s fit from all her swimming, she’s no Twiggy.

But does that mean Jane can’t be kickass? I guess that’s up to my readers to decide. What do you think?

Nicole Peeler is a professor of English literature and creative writing at Seton Hill University, in Greensburg, PA. She also writes urban fantasy novels for Orbit Books. Her third novel, Tempest’s Legacy, just hit shelves in January.

For those American readers interested in Nicole’s fiction, Orbit Books is offering her first book, Tempest Rising, as this month’s Orbital Drop, downloadable on multiple platforms for only $2.99. Click here for more details.

Gadzooks! Several spiffy things have happened recently, so I’m just going to list them very quickly:

1. I got a Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly for HOUNDED! Apparently this was a much bigger deal than I realized, and it surprised the heck out of me. I’ll do a “Stuff They Never Told Me About Publishing” post on it soon.
2. John Ottinger III gave me a very kind review on his blog, Grasping For the Wind! (It’s quite a good blog, by the way, lots of content there.)
3. There’s also a pretty lengthy interview with John on his site as well that might give you a chuckle or two.
4. Minotauro, an imprint of Planeta Group, has bought World Spanish rights for The Iron Druid Chronicles!
5. The release date for HEXED has been pushed back to June 7. As of this moment HAMMERED is still coming out June 28, but don’t be too surprised if that winds up getting pushed back two weeks as well.
6. Nicole Peeler will be guest posting here soon! I’m very excited about this! Hope you are too!
7. Guess what! Brilliance Audio now has a 5-minute sample of the audiobook up! Have yourself a listen!

March 1 was quite a big day for me. I rushed to pick up Kid from school and we skipped merrily across the parking lot, dove into the Wee Car and motored to the bookstore with Metallica goading us on.

“Friendly Bookseller!” I cried upon my entrance. “Where is The Wise Man’s Fear? Lead me to it, I beg you, for I have been waiting for years!”

She had no idea what I was talking about. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is a rabid nerd like me. She started to do a computer thing, but I knew I could find it myself. I was just hoping they’d have a giant display thingie somewhere near the front of the store and they could hand me a copy right away. Beckoning to Kid to follow, we sallied forth to the SciFi/Fantasy section, where all the treasures of many worlds are kept…and there wasn’t a single copy on the shelves.

I whimpered. I gibbered. Kid laughed at me.

BUT in days of yore I used to work in a bookstore, and I knew that they might not have stocked everything yet on a release day. So I went in search of a hand truck sitting around somewhere on the sales floor, and THERE IT WAS, waiting to be shelved!

“Victory is mine!” I shouted. And there was River Marked, as well, by Patricia Briggs! “O frabjous day!” I cooed, picking it up and tracing the tats with my finger. Kid laughed at me again and then went off in search of a book she wanted. I traveled back to SciFi/Fantasy to see if they had mah buddy Jaye’s new book in stock, Green-Eyed Demon, and they did—I scored the last copy!

One of those rolling Gollum laughs bubbled out of me as I looked at the books in my hands. “Yes, Precious!” Kid snagged her book and we sped home to “Master of Puppets.” Hell yeah. We staked out our respective territories on the couch, the dogs each picked a lap to sit on, and there was bliss.

I know I’m a few days late with this, but here’s photographic evidence of my recent fantasy purchases:

Can you tell how excited I am by these releases?

I’ve already read The Wise Man’s Fear, and I agree completely with Paul Goat Allen and what he says in his review. No spoilers or anything from me; if you haven’t read Rothfuss yet, you must begin with The Name of the Wind.

I’ve been a fan of the Mercy Thompson books for a while now and Jaye cracks me up, so I have two more fabulous reads ahead of me. But I also have extra books to give away. See, I pre-ordered both The Wise Man’s Fear and River Marked months ago and then completely forgot about it. So I went to buy them on release day, and then my pre-ordered copies arrived a few days later. Brilliant, eh? Rather than return them, I’ve decided to share the joy. I’m giving away my extra copy of The Wise Man’s Fear to a lucky commenter. This will be U.S. only, and I’ll run it until midnight of Wednesday, March 9, with the winner announced March 10. If you’d like to win River Marked, head on over to The League of Reluctant Adults blog and leave another comment under my post there (which will be up on Monday, March 7). If you’re not sure what to comment on…why not share what you’re reading until my book comes out on May 3? :)

THE WINNER OF THE WISE MAN’S FEAR IS SARAH! CONGRATS! Please send me your addy and I’ll get it in the mail to you. Thanks to all for entering!

Lately I have been getting broad hints from the universe that it does not want me to party upon the release of HOUNDED. Various conflicts and miscommunications—actually, a saga full of them—have forced me to change the date yet again. These are circumstances beyond my control, and if you are the least bit frustrated, I’m very sorry! I assure you my own frustration was such that I may have inadvertently choked a teddy bear. But this new date is solid now. Confirmed twice. I ain’t changin’ it no mo’. The teddy bears are safe, and I thumb my nose at the forces of chaos that don’t want me to party. I WILL celebrate my debut, damn it! :) So here is the new, final info on my launch party, also updated on my Events and Appearances page:

MONDAY, MAY 9, 7 p.m. at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ. Only a few short miles away from Rúla Búla on Mill Avenue, where we will raise our flagons afterward and debauch ourselves in whatever way seems best. There won’t be any Monday Night Football, so I know you’ll be free! I look forward to seeing you there!

If you can’t wait until the 9th and you buy the book earlier (hopefully at Changing Hands, it’s a lovely place and it’s good to support your local indie bookstores) I’ll still sign it! Just come on out, I’d love to say howdy!

Oh, and I got my first review on Amazon yesterday. (Scroll down a bit to see.) It’s very kind! O frabjous day! :)

This might be something of a gamble, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say you haven’t seen a still life with a satyr before. And after you see the masterpiece below, you STILL won’t have seen one, because this isn’t technically a satyr. The model maker says it’s a satyr—a Shadowhorn Satyr, to be exact—but come on. Satyrs are human above the waist and goatly below the waist. This guy has a human torso, but that’s it. That head ain’t human at all. So in my book, it’s not a satyr, but a minotaur with a goat’s head instead of a bull’s. It needs a different name, right? Minotaur is a combination of Minos (the creature’s mythical home) and tauros, the greek name for bull. So we’ll do the same thing for this critter. We’ll take the location—Tempe (Look! It’s a Greek name already)—and combine it with the Greek word for goat, katsika. So this technically a Still Life with a Tempekatsika…and I am undoubtedly the only one who cares.

OK, so what you have here is a Tempekatsika (satyr) guarding my pretzel and a flagon full of Dixie Blackened Voodoo. It’s a dark lager with a distinctive taste; drinking it is an adventure. And if you look carefully, you will see the glowing eyes of my possessed pretzel glaring balefully at the camera. It kind of looks like it can protect itself, but since I have a badass Tempekatsika nearby, there is no need. Let’s take a closer look at the guardian of my repast, shall we?

Okay, so, now that you’ve seen something you probably wish you could unsee, I’m going to make it worse and show you a picture of a Conspiracy and give you Remarkably Few Details. My Alaskan friend, Hillary Jacques, was in town recently and we took the opportunity to confab over a certain Supa Sekrit Projekt. There are others involved in this Conspiracy—nine, to be exact—but we are not yet ready to reveal its nature. Still, this Important Meeting deserved to be memorialized—it will be history someday—so we had a Passing Ruffian snap a picture of us, for which service he demanded five ducats. I applied a Photoshop filter to it for TWO reasons: 1) it disguises the precise nature of the tubes and gadgets behind us, which is part of the Supa Sekrit Projekt, and 2) it put a neat little Rorschach pattern on the vast plain of my forehead. Behold: This is what it looks like when you plot to take over the world. Muah-ha-ha-ha!

Cheers, friends! I think the Rorschach pattern on my dome is a tree. Or maybe it’s a partially eaten serving of cotton candy?

Lots o’ book news today, but here’s the big one first: Hounded will now be released on May 3 instead of April 19! Sorry to make you wait a wee bit longer—but it’s only two weeks! I promise this has nothing to do with things like last minute revisions or printer problems or anything like that. No, this has everything to do with cardboard—and it’s a good thing!

You know those little cardboard towers/doodads/thingies you see sometimes in bookstores and they’re all full of one particular book and you kinda can’t miss ’em because they’re often in your way? Well, they’re going to put up one of those for Hounded in fine Barnes & Noble stores across the country! That is spectacular news if you normally shop at Barnes & Noble: It means that you will have zero problems finding my book, because my display will practically tackle you and demand that you purchase a copy forthwith! The admitted downside here is that you will have to wait an extra two weeks to be tackled.

Release dates for the sequels remain unchanged: Hexed will still come out on May 24, and Hammered releases on June 28. Three books out in two months. Crrrrazy!

But wait! There’s more! If any of you are up Chicago way, turns out that Del Rey (my spiffy publisher) is going to be an exhibitor at C2E2 for the first time! And they’re GIVING AWAY copies of Hounded! Like, MORE THAN TWO COPIES. Closer to TWO HUNDRED. It’s March 18-20, so if you haven’t made plans to go yet, why not? Besides scoring a free copy of my debut, you could meet Chris Hemsworth, the guy playing Thor, because he’ll be there in all his bronzed, muscled glory! (Somewhere on the east coast, Amalia just swooned.) And Garth Ennis will be there (talented comic dude)! And Sam Trammell, Kristen Bauer, and Brit Morgan from True Blood! It’s a good time!

Oh no, I ain’t done yet. There is MORE. There will be a couple o’ freebies packaged with the e-book version of Hounded—whether you get that from Kindle, Nook, or whatever. Two short stories, both of them featuring Atticus n’ Oberon, will be bundled with that particular e-book purchase. One is “Clan Rathskeller,” which I already have up for free on my site, but the e-book version will be slightly revised; and another is called “Kaibab Unbound,” which will be available exclusively with the digital copy of the book. “Kaibab Unbound” takes place two weeks before the events of Hounded, and gives you a glimpse at the lives of Atticus n’ Oberon before everything goes kablooey. Warning: Contains Witches.

MEANWHILE! The lovely people at Brilliance Audio are gearing up to start recording Hexed. The extremely talented Luke Daniels has finished lending his voice to Hounded and soon there will be samples to enjoy! If you’re an audiobook fan, all three books will be released simultaneously with the print versions, and they’re available now for pre-order.

Whew. That’s all for now. :)

Dr. Nicole Peeler (also known as Nicole Peeler) asked me to whip up a blog post for her students about my experiences with author branding since I’m a newb to publishing, so OF COURSE I said yes. The fact that she threatened to shiv me in my sleep if I refused had no bearing on my decision to do it RIGHT AWAY; I want to make it clear that I’m doing this because I genuinely want to help aspiring authors. In fact, I have a wee series going called “Stuff They Never Told Me About Publishing,” and in the first post I talked a little bit about the author platform thing. Curiously, I now feel the need to expand upon that at length…

The truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I am deeply jealous that you get to take a class with Dr. Peeler. (She will give me chocolate for that later.) I’ve been told I need an author platform, and I’ve been reliably informed that I need an author brand, but neither of those terms has been defined for me and in my befuddled mind they’re sort of interchangeable. I seriously need to take Dr. Peeler’s class. So here’s what I was told to do by Del Rey: “Blog and tweet.” Okay, sure. What about? “Just be yourself. Look at what other authors do. Take advantage of social media.” And that was the sum of my instruction (or at least it’s all I can remember now—this conversation took place in October of ’09). I thought said instruction was a bit dangerous and bordering on irresponsible, because if I knew anything about how to be social I wouldn’t be a nerd. Still, I gave it my best shot, because if you get an opportunity to be published by the people in very tall New York buildings you don’t do things half-assed. So I started a blog, got myself a Twitter account, joined Goodreads, and created a Facebook author page. Then I sat down with a piece of paper and one of those really nice gel pens and tried to figure out what it meant to be myself. Those two minutes were the most introspective moments of my life. Here is what I discovered:
1. I like beer.
2. I am socially awkward.
3. If you don’t believe number 2, I’m 40 years old and I still collect comic books.
4. I like to make art and design jokes—usually absurd visual ones.
5. Once in a while I can’t stop myself from geeking out or being silly.

It’s not a very impressive list, is it? “Bugger me,” I thought, “if that’s all I’ve got, I’m bloody doomed.” But I didn’t have any choice. I had to go forward. So out of that list emerged some of my regular features. My “Still Life” series was inspired by all of those, and then I decided I’d kinda document what happened to me along the way and share my experiences with other aspiring writers (I won’t technically be published until April 19, so yeah, I still count myself as aspiring, and it’s taken me twenty years of trying to get on the shelves—I’m by no means an overnight success and I EMPATHIZE with the struggle to learn the craft).

I’ve been blogging and tweeting now for about a year and a half, not really sure if I’m doing it right, and then last month, BLAM, my editor surprised me by writing a really complimentary post about my social media efforts on Suvudu. I was flabbergasted. Like, WHOA. Did I go and build myself an author platform or brand or whatever? And did I do it using these things called channels? I guess I did. I don’t feel like I have a legion of followers or anything, but maybe they’ll start to show up and say howdy once the books come out. Here’s the funny thing: my most popular post by FAR is this one I did in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep; I was only half-conscious and loopy as hell. I get hits on that post all the time, though, and it’s nothing but pure silliness.

I confess that I made another list back in October ’09 when I sat down with that paper and extremely nice gel pen, but I never wrote it down, because that list was about things I would never write down. What you won’t see on my blog or my other channels (Look! I’m using the correct terminology now!) are comments about political or religious issues. You will have to decide for yourself what’s right for you and your brand—I’m certainly not an authority on what you should or shouldn’t do—but I will share my reasoning behind that decision.
1. I’m a public school teacher, so in many ways the decision makes itself. As an employee of the state, I’m not supposed to talk about such things. Make a First Amendment argument if you wish, but in practice, public school teachers don’t get to say what they want.
2. Apart from number 1, as writer of fiction—specifically urban fantasy—I’m supposed to be providing people with an escape from whatever’s stressing them out. My observations of human behavior indicate that many people get stressed out when confronted with ideas that don’t match their own. So why would I risk stressing them out (or pissing them off) when I’m supposed to be entertaining them?
3. These days, it seems like you’ll offend half the country no matter what you say. I’m sure some readers will like you MORE if they know your views agree with theirs, but some readers WON’T BUY YOUR BOOK if they know your views contradict theirs. In terms of raw practicality, the readers who like you more are not going to shower you with the remainder of their disposable income, but the readers who actively decide not to buy your book based on a comment you made are depressing your bank account. If I am ever going to earn the money I need to pay tuition for Dr. Peeler’s class, I can’t afford to offend people by spouting off on this issue or that.

So what can you take away from this? Well, um, you’re kinda on your own in terms of marketing yourself. Did you SEE all that stuff my publicist is doing to create my author platform/brand thingie on multiple channel doodads? Nope, you didn’t, because it ISN’T THERE. My publicist sends out review copies to people who request them and he was nice enough to arrange my launch party for me. He might be doing other things on my behalf—I’m still over a month away from publication, so maybe he’s planning a party around the base of a volcano that erupts champagne—but if so he hasn’t told me yet. I’m extremely grateful for everything the publisher does for me—good reviews are invaluable, and the fact that they let me post on Suvudu is HUGE!—but the simple truth you need to know right now is that no one will ever build your platform or your brand except you.

If you need to know other simple truths later, feel free to contact me. No, wait, that’s not worded strongly enough. The fact is, friends, I desperately want you to ask me questions, because if you don’t then Dr. Peeler will confiscate my spleen. Email me at kevin@kevinhearne.com or simply comment below. I hope (for my sake as well as yours) that this was somewhat helpful; I wish you all the best and look forward to picking up your book in the store someday.

Gotta thank Neil Gaiman for tweeting about this—as he said, there’s not enough formal zombie poetry. I couldn’t agree more! A poet named Roz Kaveney posted 14 sonnets on her LiveJournal page, which she collectively calls “A Shamble of Zombies”—here’s the link, they start at February 3. Check ’em out!

SEE? They are magnificent! Roz Kaveney is the world’s premier zombie sonneteer! I could not hope to match that—would not dream of trying. But I would like to contribute to the world’s burgeoning store of zombie literature, so I offer this zombie sestina instead:

In this gray dawn after the apocalypse,
We fight and scratch to do naught but survive
As shambling horrors seek to rip our flesh
And moan at the smell of succulent brains
(Still thinking inside our skulls for a time—
Until they are fed, or we are undead).

If my children were to rise undead
It would be my personal apocalypse;
I would resign the remainder of my time
And no longer would I scramble to survive
In a world where my kids want to eat my brains
And suck on the hot juices of my flesh.

I could bear the consumption of my flesh
If I knew I would not return undead
And thoughtlessly eat the thoughts in people’s brains.
The death of thought is the true apocalypse,
For we hardly think now; instead we survive
On instinct and huddle against the time

When we must end, only to start a damned time
Of shambling and groaning for tender flesh.
Can art or music or poetry survive
This howling chorus of the undead?
The Louvre burned in the apocalypse
And Britney ate Lady Gaga’s brains.

Now there is naught of the sublime in brains
For those who remain in this cold, gray time:
If Neil Gaiman survived the apocalypse
He is not writing, but protecting his flesh
From snow-covered legions of the undead
And noshing on jars of old marmite to survive.

Fear of undeath is why we struggle to survive;
Fear is all that lives now in our brains,
Fear and despair and monotone song of undead
Who shamble and rot and wait for the time
When they can sink their brown teeth into our flesh
And complete the zombie apocalypse.

Though my sons and I yet survive, the undead
Apocalypse has already claimed our brains
And our flesh will shamble too in time.

Generally I’m a mild-mannered fella and not given to moments of rebellion; I’m closer to J. Alfred Prufrock than Randall Patrick McMurphy, if you know what I’m sayin’. But that doesn’t mean I don’t long to stick it to The Man when I have the chance. In this case, I have denied him my dollars.

Until recently, we had one of those bundle deals where you get high speed Internet(s), phone, and cable TV all on the same bill. The bill, I noticed, kept getting bigger. So a couple days ago I called the company and cancelled both my TV and my phone. I’m keepin’ the Internet so I can blog n’ stuff. :) Now my family will read more and get called less by people we don’t know. Already I am snuggly in my quiet bliss. My daughter is reading a book RIGHT NOW instead of having her brain liquefied by the Disney channel. And The Man will be denied about a thousand dollars of my money this year. Purrrrrrr.

BUT THEN, in a CRUEL TWIST o’ FATE, The Man got me back. “Ha!” he sneered. “You like to read, do ya? Then I’m going to force Borders into bankruptcy and they’ll CLOSE A BUNCH OF STORES! Try to read now, you elitist fancy pants!”

In sooth I am sad. I know Borders was a hot mess (and may remain so), but damn I loved going into their stores. They smelled good. Paper and glue and ink and coffee from the cafe…heaven. Even if it was a disorganized heaven where I had a minor snit one time because I couldn’t find one of Kelly Meding’s books, it’s still about the only kind of store I like visiting.

The very idea of fewer bookstores drives me to melancholia. There are lots of things we could do without instead. How about fewer gun shops, or fewer payday loan centers?

I raise my cuppa hot chocolate with marshmallows n’ schnapps in a toast: To bookstores! And to sticking it to The Man.

The Renaissance Festival comes to town every year around my daughter’s birthday, and it has become a family tradition to attend and let her enjoy the glories of being a fairy princess. I enjoy many other glories: the stunning impracticality and ineffable beauty of the costumes, the smell of leather and paper in the journal shop, a beer in my hand, and random role-players seeking to recruit us to a Horde of Evil Minions Who Will Overthrow the King. I like to buy a frozen chocolate-covered banana and then just walk past the role-players while holding it. They can’t resist commenting on it; I’m like a walking straight line given to them by the gods of comedy.

Throughout the fairgrounds there are stages with a rotating schedule of entertainments. Of these, there are only two we make sure to see every year: The Wylde Men and the Birds of Prey show. The Wylde Men are a couple of goofy dudes who wind up rolling around in a mud pit; they do “slow motion” fight choreography and pepper their dialogue with bad puns, and for me it’s a guaranteed laugh.

The Birds of Prey show lets me see raptors up close that I’d never see otherwise. They had a red-tailed hawk, a Harris hawk, an augur buzzard (BEAUTIFUL, don’t let the name fool you), an eagle owl, and a King vulture, among others. Loved it.

Their eagle owl had been stung by bees and lost his right eye. He was still beautiful in flight and healthy otherwise. All the birds in their care were either injured and couldn’t return to the wild, or else were mal-imprints, meaning they’d imprinted on humans instead of their own kind. Either way, they wouldn’t make it on their own anymore, so these fellas take care of them for educational purposes.

I ran across a woman who offered to do a one-card Tarot reading for me. That was fun. Based on the card I picked, she said I’d have something fairly big happening in 8 weeks regarding a contract. Well, um, yeah, I have this publishing contract and I’ll be debuting in April! I know it’s fairly safe and easy to say “something will happen in 8 weeks” but I was mildly impressed that she had the stones to add the contract thing in there and be on target.

Caught the show of Dextre Tripp for the first time—dude is CRAZY. He juggled a torch, a running chainsaw and an apple. He can do some impressive stuff on unicycles. But then he drenched this rope in gas, lit it on FIRE, and walked up it for our entertainment. He’s been doing it for 14 years.

Much of the attraction of the Renaissance Festival is a nostalgia for a past that never really existed the way we romanticize it now. One of my absolute favorite comic issues of all time—yes, I’m going to say it’s my favorite, period—is issue #73 of The Sandman, a story called “Sunday Mourning.” There’s no action, no asskicking, just beautiful writing and beautiful art by Michael Zulli. Hob Gadling goes to the Renaissance Festival with his new girlfriend and meets Death. Death points out to Hob that the Festival should be appreciated for its current emphasis on enjoying life and not criticized for its lack of historical accuracy. I embrace that sentiment wholeheartedly. But one thing I’d like to see is a return to drinking out of flagons. Conan the Barbarian (again returning to comics), when not slaying soldiers or wizards or monsters, was always drinking out of flagons and wenching. The verb “to wench” has fallen out of favor in modern parlance—and rightly so—but I really think we should make a concerted effort to bring back the flagon. It is the drinking vessel of choice for badasses.

Yes, my friends, do not settle anymore for the polite pint! (And most “pint” glasses are not actual pints, did you know? They hold a single 12-oz. bottle o’ beer, but a pint is 16 oz. The bars are bamboozling us!) Demand a flagon of their finest ale and then plot your campaign of plunder along the coast of Nova Scotia! It’s ripe for pillaging, I tell you, and if my dragon ship weren’t in dry dock right now they’d be toast!

And what if the pub you frequent doesn’t HAVE flagons, you ask? Well then, you must bring your own! Give it to your server and have ’em fill it up. When they bring it back to your table, there WILL be envy among the rest of the patrons. They will ask for their own flagons. Thus you will create demand for flagons, and soon enough, the drinking establishments of the world will supply it. Flagons will enjoy their own renaissance if you help me!

To begin this campaign in earnest, I purchased my own flagon at the Ren Fest. They had wooden ones and pewter ones and some very pretty pottery, but I chose a glass one with a pewter lid and a neato-schmeato wolf running through the trees. The glass, I decided, was necessary to clearly (so to speak) demonstrate to people that YOU CAN DRINK BEER OUT OF FLAGONS, and you SHOULD do so if you wish to recall the halcyon days of Conan and feel turbo manly about it. Here is my flagon full o’ beer—gaze upon its glory and curse the fates that you don’t have one (yet):

I will be the first to admit, however, that flagons aren’t appropriate for all social situations where you wish to get your drink on. Sometimes you need a flask. So I got one of those too, made of a very stable pewter and adorned with a Celtic triskelle in copper and gold:

You will notice that my flask is being guarded by some fearsome trolls. They know treasure when they see it. To give credit where it’s due, my friend Alan painted those trolls—I’m not that good. If you Click to Embiggen you’ll see that he even painted runes on the swords! *boggle* You will probably want to download that picture and make it your wallpaper. It’s a one-shot called “Still Life with Flask and Trollbloods.” I also had an opportunity to purchase a drinking horn at the festival, but I let it pass me by; when one has a flagon and a flask, there is no need for additional vessels!

If you’ve never been to a Renaissance Festival before, I highly recommend the experience. They’re friendlier than carnivals, for one thing. People wear bodices and codpieces and call you lord, and you see more wonderful things than you’d expect (and I’m not talking about the bodices and codpieces). Guys in kilts playing drums and bagpipes—eh, I’ve seen that before. But I’ve never seen a woman bellydance to it until yesterday. That’s a delicious cultural gumbo right there. And I got to watch a smith make a stiletto, plus I played around with a war hammer and threw some axes at an extremely terrified wooden target. It was simply fabulous—and my daughter had a wonderful birthday, too. :)