Writer's Grove

Friends, I have stuff to shout about. Lots of fun things happening. Ready? First up, the novella anthology Death & Honey, featuring cover art by Galen Dara:

Isn’t that gorgeous? Rhett Walker from Lila’s story is on the left, the hero of her Shadow series, and then there’s a Very Good Boy Who Deserves a Snack, Oberon, because my novella is an Oberon’s Meaty Mystery called The Buzz Kill, and on the right you see Wren from Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series. 

As you might guess from the cover, each novella will involve bees somehow. Ebook and audio preorders aren’t available yet but I’ll holler when they are. Right now you can preorder a limited print edition that’s signed by all three of us and numbered (or even lettered) and it will include additional illustrations inside by Galen Dara, the cover artist. They’re going to have Galen illustrate each story, so you’ll see more Oberon and maybe Starbuck too and who knows what else? This cover and interior illustrations are exclusive to the print edition. The ebook & audio edition will have a different cover and no interior illustrations but the stories inside will be the same!

If you go check out that link above, you can read the first 1K words of each novella. The Buzz Kill is set in Tasmania a few months after the end of Scourged and it’s my favorite. Starbuck is a bit more verbal and he starts to give Oberon some gas. Hope you’ll enjoy!

But that’s not all!

I wrote a new Granuaile and Orlaith story called “The Waters” and it’s included in this new anthology called RESIST, the proceeds of which go to benefit the ACLU. So you get twenty-seven stories from sci-fi and fantasy’s best, and the ACLU gets some funding to protect civil liberties. Good deal all around. You can get RESIST in ebook or print; I am pretty sure that this is through Amazon only, however, or Humble Bundle. A quest: Get the print edition and then collect the signatures from all twenty-seven authors! This is pretty much available now-ish; I believe it releases Nov. 1, so your preorder will arrive very soon (or right away if you read this after Nov. 1)

Cheap Farm Bois

Coming Feb 5: the trade paperback edition of Kill the Farm Boy! If preorder links are available for it now at your favorite retailer then yay! They might still have only the hardcover edition available at the moment, and of course we’d love it if you snagged it now, but wanted to give you a heads-up. You can get caught up on that before the second book comes out in April. Here’s the trade paperback cover:

No Country for Old Gnomes

This is just about wrapped up on our end; Delilah is working on copy edits now, and it’ll be in your hands on April 16. If you preorder now you’ll earn five billion karma points and our undying gratitude. This book has everything: Goth gnomes! Dirty halflings! Clean halflings! Gryphons! Kobolds! A religion based on cabbage! Hot Nut Pudding! And a heck of a lot more. You can read the preview goodies here and preorder.

So—besides all that stuff coming, I’m of course working on more stuff for later! Right now I’m 80K words into my first draft of A Blight of Blackwings, the sequel to A Plague of Giants. This is my epic fantasy trilogy called The Seven Kennings, and if you haven’t tried it out yet, I’d be honored if you did. 

I also need to finish an Owen and Slomo story called “First Dangle” for audio; I’m writing that to add on to “The Chapel Perilous,” since that’s the only Iron Druid story Luke Daniels hasn’t recorded yet.

And speaking of Iron Druid, I’ll be starting a new series in that universe after I’m finished writing A Blight of Blackwings! More details on that coming in February; I’ll be sharing pics and such from my location scout.  

And right now, sharing pics on my Instagram is all I’m doing on the social media front, so hop over there if you feel like it. I’ll return to Twitter and Facebook in February after A Blight of Blackwings is finished. Hope you’re well and spiffy, that you’ll vote and enjoy some peace & tacos.

Many thanks to everyone who came to see me and Delilah on our tour for Kill the Farm Boy. We had such a lovely time meeting y’all and hope you’re enjoying the book. Please spread the word to friends and family if you are—word of mouth is still five billion times more powerful than the Internet!

But speaking of the Internet, we’ve updated the Tales of Pell site with some goodies like a fan art page—we’d love to see yours if you’re inspired to draw/paint pics of our heroes. Please don’t hesitate to share with either of us! We also have the cover and preorder links for the next book, No Country for Old Gnomes, which will be out April 16! Check it out!

So what’s next? Well, in February, I’ll be publishing Death & Honey with Delilah S. Dawson and Chuck Wendig. That will include a novella from each of us, and mine will be an Oberon’s Meaty Mystery called The Buzz Kill. More on that once we have cover art and a solid publishing date, but The Buzz Kill is set in Tasmania a few months after the events of Scourged. Delilah’s story is called Grist of Bees from her Shadow series, and Chuck’s is Interlude: Tanager from his Miriam Black series.

But from now until then I’m writing A Blight of Blackwings, the second book in The Seven Kennings trilogy, following A Plague of Giants. I have about 200K words to write in six months, so I’ve gone on hiatus from Twitter and Facebook until it’s done. I’ll still be posting on Instagram so you can see me there, and I’ll be sending out my newsletter once a month too. And of course you can always reach me via email if you need something (using the address on the Say Hi to Kevin page). So I won’t be inaccessible, but I also won’t be massively distracted by shouty stuff while I have twelve POVs to weave together (that’s one more than A Plague of Giants, for those of you keeping score at home).

Once I get A Blight of Blackwings finished, I can formally announce and begin working on a new series for y’all set in the Iron Druid universe. Excited to get started on that I after I catch us all up with Abhinava Khose and Gondel Vedd and the rest of gang in Teldwen.

Oh yeah: In case you’re looking for a spiffy gift for yourself or your friends, Worldbuilders Market has signed Iron Druid comics and so much more!

Hope your summer’s been treating you well and I hope you’re registered to vote in November. Peace & love & tacos, friends.

Today, friends, you can snag A Plague of Giants in paperback, if case you were waiting for that. And the ebook price has come down as well from its previous premium, so if you haven’t tried out my epic fantasy yet, I hope you’ll take this opportunity to dive into The Seven Kennings trilogy. I’m turbo grateful to those of you who have already given it a shot and sent me kind words about it, and I’m spending the back half of this year working on book two.

In less than a month, I’ll be doing a wee tour with co-author Delilah S. Dawson for Kill the Farm Boy, our humorous fantasy that pokes fun at Chosen One narratives and more. We hope to see you on that tour, of course, but understand if you can’t make it. You can still order double-signed copies from any of the stores listed below or Barnes & Noble or Worldbuilders Market. Here’s where to find us:
July 17: The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, 7 pm
July 21: Upstart Crow Trading in San Diego, CA, at 10 am, with NYT bestseller Victoria Schwab
July 23: Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL, at 7 pm, with audiobook narrator Luke Daniels
July 24: Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC, at 6 pm
July 25: Fox Tale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA at 6:30 pm
We will of course also sign any of our other books on tour!

If you preorder Kill the Farm Boy in the US you can enjoy this spiffy giveaway from the publisher where they send you some goat buttons and yeah, you’ll want the buttons once you read it.

And whoa dang, the second book in the Tales of Pell, No Country for Old Gnomes, now has a cover! Are you ready for gryphons? Gnomes that come in both regular and goth? Sinister halflings? Kobold bards and carnivorous mermaids? Beard magic? You’re going to love this book. And we are so thrilled with the cover art! Illustration by Craig Phillips, design by Scott Biel, the same brilliant team who worked on Kill the Farm Boy.

If you like laughing and free stuff, then I HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU. Delilah S. Dawson and I wrote a hilarious sendup of Chosen One narratives called Kill the Farm Boy that is full of puns, flipped tropes, and an entirely justifiable obsession with cheese. There is also a very sassy goat. If you preorder it anywhere (indie store, online, whatever) in any format (hardcover, ebook, or audio) and take a pic of your receipt or screenshot your confirmation, you can snag a fun batch of buttons! (This is US only, sorry.) Head on over to our Tales of Pell site and check it out—it’s easy!  And oh, don’t miss our Pellish name generator—a great name will go a long way while you’re adventuring. This is the first book of three standalone adventures and we hope you’ll giggle as much while reading it as we did writing it.

Three other things:
1) Here’s an interview I did with Luke Daniels on April 3 at the one and only Rúla Búla Irish Pub in Tempe, AZ. (The fish and chips are really super good.) It’s 13 minutes and we talk about how he develops voices (especially for the Morrigan and Oberon) and much more!
2) I’ll be at Creative Ink Festival in Burnaby (Vancouver) BC from May 18-20 and there’s still time for you to sign up. You totally should! I’ll be teaching goodies about developing voice, doing critiques and talking fantasy, and author CC Humphreys is offering a master class on Writing a Novel from First Inspiration to Final Draft! Come see us and learn stuff!
3) FOLKS IN THE UK! I will be at London Comic Con May 25-27! This is my first ever appearance in the UK. Obviously they are rare! I do not know when/if I will be there again, so if you can make it to see me, please do! I will happily sign ALL THE THINGS. Be not afraid! I am not doing anything outside of the con, sorry; the con is paying for my travel arrangements so of course they very reasonably expect me to be there and not elsewhere.

The year’s moving fast, isn’t it? We are just three weeks (or less depending on when you read this) from the release of Scourged! I’m excited! You might notice the exclamation points! If you have preordered audio, ebook or print from anywhere, reminder that my US publisher is doing a giveaway if you upload your receipt or a screenshot of said preorder! That’s open until release day, April 3, so if you haven’t preordered, you can do so now and get in on that! If you’re behind on the series, it’s a great time to catch up and finish the whole thing!

Places you can find me this year—please see full details on my Appearances page:
March 23-25: WonderCon in Anaheim!
April 3: Phoenix, AZ! With audiobook narrator Luke Daniels!
April 4: Boulder, CO!
April 5: Houston, TX!
April 6: Huntsville, AL!
April 7: Doylestown, PA! With Chuck Wendig and Fran Wilde!
April 10: Toronto, ON, for Canadian peeps! Just signing stock at Bakka Phoenix Books and running away with a five-gallon bucket of poutine, but place an order with them and they will either ship or hold for you to pick up!
May 18-20: Creative Ink Book Festival in Vancouver!
May 25-27: London, UK! Holy crap! Details coming soon.
July 17: Phoenix, AZ! This time to sign KILL THE FARM BOY with Delilah S. Dawson!
July 19-22: San Diego Comic Con!
Sept 6-8: FanX in Salt Lake City!

Writing-wise, I’m currently working on A Blight of Blackwings, sequel to A Plague of Giants, and also writing The Princess Beard with Delilah, third book in the Tales of Pell. By the way, we have a website for that now and you should check it out! Especially the About Pell page. There’s a fun name generator to help you figure out where you would fit in there.

Other things: I’m mostly on Instagram these days if you’d like to follow me there as @kevinhearne. You will see pics of my dogs, booze, fountain pens, books I’m reading, cities I visit, and a serial fiction piece I’ve been writing about yeti and rum, which I’m about ready to wrap up before starting a new one. My yeti hunting partner, Avery, is becoming quite popular among readers, it seems.

Looking forward to spring and to seeing y’all if the travel gods are kind to us. Hope you enjoy Scourged! My mom called last night to tell me she loved it (she read an early copy) so you know with that totally unbiased review it’s gotta be good, right?

Soon! So sooooon—yea, April 3!— thou canst enjoy the final volume of the Iron Druid Chronicles! (Yes, indeed, it’s the last book of the series.) Lots of loose ends wrapped up, obviously, and lots of causes from previous books have their effects here. What I’m very happy about is how the novellas and short stories tie in—not only the stories in Besieged, but Grimoire of the Lamb and “The Chapel Perilous” and so on. If you’d like a series chronology for a re-read, I have that on my Goodies page, and I am pumped for you to enjoy Scourged!

Because you’ve been so amazing in supporting this series, Del Rey is doing a spiffy giveaway for readers who preorder Scourged in hardcover, ebook, or audio! (It’s US only though, because this is my US publisher doing this for the US market.) Until release day, April 3, preorder wherever you like—an indie store, online, wherever!—and upload a screenshot of your receipt on this page right here and fill out the form, and we’ll send you and Iron Druid Fan Kit!

That may sound like we are sending you a kit to assemble an Iron Druid Fan with some model airplane glue, but I assure you it’s not. Here’s what you get:
1) A paperback copy of Hounded that you can give to a friend to get them hooked on the series (which will be complete at that point and bingeworthy) or keep for yourself
2) A spiffy Scourged bookmark
3) A super turbo spiffy exclusive print of the full cover art, pictured above, signed by me and perfect for reminding you, should you put it on your refrigerator, that you need more sausage. Or whiskey. Or both!

I’m so grateful to y’all for reading the series and spreading the word. I know my tour only visits a few places and you might not be able to make it, but if you’re able to catch me somewhere I’d love to see you. And if you’d like a signed copy, well dang, The Poisoned Pen and The Tinker’s Packs will ship anywhere in the world using copies I’m going to sign on release day. (Your preorder from them will get you the Iron Druid Fan Kit too if you upload your receipt.) Here’s where I’ll be if you can get there:
April 3: The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, AZ, 7 pm.
April 4: Barnes & Noble, Boulder, CO, 7 pm.
April 5: Murder By The Book, Houston, TX, 6:30 pm.
April 6: Barnes & Noble, Huntsville, AL, Bridge St Town Centre, 7 pm.
April 7: Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, PA, 4 pm, signing with awesome authors Chuck Wendig and Fran Wilde!

I try to visit new places every tour and Huntsville and Doylestown are new! Hoping that folks in the surrounding region can make it to those; I know Doylestown in particular is reachable from quite a few places, and it’s on a Saturday AND Chuck and Fran are amazing, so that’s worth a road trip!

Also: No formal signing, but I will swing through Toronto and sign stock at Bakka Phoenix Books the week of April 9 (preorder a signed copy from them if you like and they’ll call you when it’s ready), and I’ll be at Creative Ink Festival in Burnaby, BC from May 18-20, so YAY CANADA!

Right now I’m working on A Blight of Blackwings, the sequel to A Plague of Giants. Thanks again for reading, & I hope to see you!

Peace & tacos—
Kevin

That was a nice break! Seriously nice. Had some lovely holidays with the family and doggies. But I’m back to tell you about some spiffy things, starting with these books out now: The Raptor & the Wren by Chuck Wendig and The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander. Chuck’s Miriam Black series is one of my favorites and this is the fifth one with only one more to go (which he finished writing yesterday), so it’s a great time to dive in if you haven’t started yet. Miriam has this thing where she can predict the time and method of your death once she has any physical contact with you. Tends to make her antisocial. She also has another thing with birds, as the title might suggest. Go grab it!

I feel confident saying Bolander’s book is like nothing you’ve ever read. It’s brilliant stuff. I read an early copy and HECK YES I bought a finished copy because I want to read it again. Here’s what I said about it: “Bolander’s skilled prose always leaves me agog, but days after finishing The Only Harmless Great Thing, I’m still swimming around in its depths with a sense of wonder. It’s beautiful and sad and relatable and unremittingly, crucially defiant.” Hie thee hence and feed your brain, my friends!

Other spiffy stuff: I have a book coming out called Scourged on April 3. It’s the ninth book of the Iron Druid Chronicles, so if you’re the type who likes to have complete series and binge read, now’s the time to start! Preorders are available now and are the bestest, most wonderful thing you can do for authors (link roundup below). I’ll be touring just a few cities and the last two dates are not confirmed yet but here you go—hope to see you at one of these, and if you can’t make it, you can order signed copies from these stores to be shipped to you:
April 3, The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, AZ, 7 pm
April 4, Barnes & Noble, Boulder, CO, 7 pm
April 5, Murder By The Book, Houston, TX, 6:30 pm
April 6, Barnes & Noble, Huntsville, AL, 7 pm (to be confirmed)
April 7, Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, PA, 4 pm, with Chuck Wendig and Fran Wilde!

Another book I wrote with Delilah S. Dawson will be out on July 17. It’s called Kill the Farm Boy, a sendup of Chosen One narratives and epic fantasy in general.  It was so much fun to write and I think you’ll have a blast reading it. We just got finished writing the sequel, No Country for Old Gnomes. Preorders are available for this too (see below)!

Right now I’m working on A Blight of Blackwings, the sequel to A Plague of Giants. Online I’m mostly goofing around on Instagram and Mastodon these days, so please follow me there and say howdy. Why there? Facebook has changed their algorithm so I hardly reach any of my followers and Twitter is largely doom-laden dolor interspersed with cute animal pics and it gives me anxiety that the animals are doomed. Anxiety in general, I guess; I’ve been much happier during my time away from it so I think it’s best to keep Twitter at a distance. I’m going to reply to mentions as I can and tweet about books once in a while, but I’ll be consistently playing on Instagram and Mastodon, so I hope to see you around there.

Many thanks for reading my books and just being a fine human. I hope you are well and happy and have drinks, tacos, and doggies in easy reach.

Here are the promised preorder links for one bajillion points of good karma:

Scourged: Amazon B&N iBooks Books-A-Million The Poisoned Pen Powells
Kill the Farm Boy: Amazon B&N iBooks Books-A-Million

It’s time for both thanks and giving. So, addressing those in order:

Thanks for being kind and loving doggies and caring about the planet and each other. I see you doing that and it’s important and I’m grateful to you.

Thanks for reading and for telling your friends about my books. All of them, of course, but turbo thanks to those who have been reading A Plague of Giants and saying nice things, because starting a new series is always a fragile, uncertain enterprise. It was wonderful to see folks on tour—if you came to see me, thank you so much! And leaving a review on Amazon, believe it or not, is super helpful—true for all books and all authors. (Algorithms kick in when you get certain numbers of reviews, making your book more visible.) So thanks.

Thanks to those who have preordered The Squirrel on the Train and/or the hardcover edition of Hounded (pictured here). Squirrel will be out on Nov. 30 and I hope you enjoy! If you’ve somehow missed the announcement, book 9 of the Iron Druid Chronicles, Scourged, will be out April 3, and you can preorder that now from any indie, online, or chain store you like.

But let’s get to the giving, shall we? I donate books every year to Worldbuilders, a charity that benefits Heifer International in a specific way: It collects signed books and other goodies like games and fantasy-based jewelry such, lets folks buy the equivalent of a raffle ticket for $10 each, and then pretty much everybody wins. (Right now as I write this there are 1,734 supporters for 3,768 prizes, so, yeah, your odds of winning are GREAT.) You win signed books and rare stuff, and Heifer International gets the money to help hungry folks around the world eat in a sustainable manner. They give families chickens or goats (or something that will work where they live) and then they’re able to eat and sell the eggs or goat milk or whatever. Their annual drive is going on right now, so if you have the means, maybe send them a Hamilton? Also, you can get signed books from me (and other stuff) from The Tinker’s Packs and that money goes to Worldbuilders (and thus Heifer International) as well.

Thanks for giving. Love and doggies, peace and tacos and whiskey to you and your family.

I’m gonna disappear from the Internet for a while now; I tend to just hunker down through the winter and the time away is good for my mental health. I’m working on two books right now: A Blight of Blackwings, the sequel to A Plague of Giants, and No Country for Old Gnomes, the sequel to Kill the Farm Boy, which I’m co-authoring with Delilah S. Dawson. We should have cover art for you soon on that and I might pop in briefly to say HEY LOOKIT THIS and then disappear again.

I’ll be back in the new year, and I have two comic cons on the west coast I’ll be attending if you want to come say hi: Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and WonderCon in Anaheim, both in March!

Yours in caffeinated joy,
Kevin

Had someone ask on the ol’ social media why preorders are a big deal and it reminded me that it’s not really common knowledge outside the sphere of the publishing biz. I do know other writers have explained it and I probably have before, too, years ago, but it won’t hurt to share the info again. So here goes:

Preorders are super turbo mega helpful to authors. That doesn’t mean you have to do it, or if you don’t do it you’re doing it wrong. Y’all should read and shop however, whenever, and wherever you like. I’m just explaining why it’s helpful. Here goes…

1. About a month from release (which is where I’m at right now, a month until A PLAGUE OF GIANTS is out), bookstores start putting in their orders for new books. They have limited shelf space and on any given week they have hundreds of titles available. They can’t order them all. They order a mere fraction of what’s available, and they have to pick based on what they think will sell. And one of the best predictors of what will sell is what has already sold. Preorders! If people are enthusiastic enough about an upcoming release to preorder it, that tells bookstores that title has some buzz. Some juice. Some moxie. Bookstores are more likely to order a few copies of such titles for their shelves. And that is really the ball game, isn’t it? People who don’t see my book on the shelf can’t pick it up, can’t even become aware of its existence unless they’re already following me. All that work the publisher did on the cover won’t have a chance to work its magic if I’m not in the stores to begin with. Preorders are HUUUGE for that reason; it helps us reach folks who don’t already know about us.
2. Because yeah, the publisher has sales teams pushing their books to bookstores, you bet. But Johnny Salesman covering Territory X has a huge catalog of titles to push and he probably hasn’t read my fantasy novel. He’s got a paragraph about it, a little blurb, and that’s probably about it. He’s also selling the next big cookbook and the next big thriller and so on and those are probably what he’s going to mention in his sales call. Johnny’s not going to do a deep dive into his catalog and magically strike up a conversation about my new release. Unless, of course, he hears from my editor that preorders on my book are really strong. He then gets to tell bookstores that hey, look at this fantasy novel, this thing has legs already. It’s running fast and it’s ready to leap off your shelves! You just gotta stock them!
3. And it works the other way as well: Say five people preorder a book at an indie store before Johnny Salesman arrives, months out. The buyer for that particular indie is going to look at that and say dang, my community is kind of excited for this already. I should probably order a few copies for the store. They might do it based on that alone, or they might ask the publisher’s salesperson for more info about that title. And then the salesperson might go back to the publisher and say, hey, maybe we should throw some marketing muscle behind this title, folks seem to be excited about it. Either way, those preorders helped that author.
4. Ebook and audio preorders help with this too—those count as books!—and of course help sell more in their own formats. That’s algorithmic stuff; sell a certain number of preorders on a site and that triggers a price drop, generating more interest and sales, and perhaps it’ll pop up more often in the “customers also bought” section. Or it might even get bumped to the front page! Ever go to the front page of an online bookseller and wonder how those 20 books or so got front page promo out of MILLIONS available? Well, part of that’s payola from publishers, probably. But the Hot New Releases section or Bestsellers section in each genre is based on what that retailer is already selling. Preorders, in both ebook and print, get titles some extra visibility. Retailers want to sell more of what’s hot and so they put that cover in front of more eyeballs.
5. From a “Yay, career!” standpoint, preorders help an author’s chances of hitting the NYT or USA Today lists, because regardless of whether you preordered six months or two days in advance of publication, those all count toward the first week of sales, and that first week is typically what gets looked at when determining whether to let that author write some more books down the road. Hitting a list is good.
6. From an “O, thank the gods!” standpoint, seeing some preorders means to authors that we can safely buy a taco for dinner. And maybe for breakfast too, because mmm breakfast tacos.

There are some upsides to preordering for readers, too.

1. If you preorder from an indie store, lots of times—like, almost all the time!—they’ll call you when it’s in store and ready to pick up. Which is often a few days before the release. This is the Secret No One Wants You to Know, except for me. For everyone who says they can’t wait, well, you almost always wait less when you preorder from an indie store. The downside, if it is one, is that you pay up front when you place the preorder.
2. If you preorder from an online retailer, they won’t charge you until the book comes out and you can cancel anytime.  And sometimes they ship early too. And if you preordered ebook or audio, it downloads in the night and you get to wake up to that spiffy story you wanted on release day.
3. If you like signed copies but the author isn’t  touring near you, you can often get them anyway…by preordering! Call (or visit online) any of the bookstores on  the author’s posted tour schedule and preorder a signed copy. Once the author swings through there, the bookstore has him/her sign it for ya and they ship it out.

So there you have it. That’s why preordering is spiffy. You don’t gotta do it. I’m grateful whenever you buy a book, wherever you buy it, and in whatever format. It’s all good, thank you always!  Just…bonus thanks for preordering, I guess, because it’s super nice and super helpful.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide some preorder links for A PLAGUE OF GIANTS (Shelf Awareness gave it a kind review and a non-spoilery summary):

Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, Books-a-Million, Google Play, Hudson

If you want signed copies, you can get them from B&N or Books-a-Million, or any of the indies on my tour (below).

Oct 15 with Mysterious Galaxy at special ticketed event; or you can preorder signed copies from them to be shipped
Oct. 17 in San Francisco at Borderlands, 7 pm*
Oct. 18 in Portland/Beaverton at Powell’s Books, 7 pm*
Oct. 19 in Seattle at University Temple UMC, books on-site from University Bookstore, 7 pm*
Oct. 20 in Phoenix/Scottsdale at The Poisoned Pen, 7 pm
Oct. 21 in Houston at Murder By The Book, 4:30 pm
Oct. 22 in Tampa at Inkwood Books, 4 pm**
Oct. 23 in Minneapolis at the HarMar Mall B&N, 7 pm
*with Chuck Wendig and Fran Wilde
**with Delilah S. Dawson

Yay! Dates and times are all confirmed! No cities are a repeat of the BESIEGED tour in July, so between the two tours I’ve seen a good chunk of the country this year. Of course I still can’t make it everywhere—sorry!—but perhaps you can round up some peeps and road trip to see me if the scheduling gods are kind. Even though this tour is for A PLAGUE OF GIANTS (which I really hope you’ll give a try), I’d be delighted to sign anything from the Iron Druid Chronicles as well.

Oct. 15 in San Diego for the Giant Book Fiesta! Special pre-release party with Fran Wilde! You get dinner! Books! Other goodies! And I will come to you rather than you standing in line to see me. It’s a pretty awesome time. A few tickets are still available, snag yours here!
Oct. 17 in San Francisco at Borderlands, 7 pm*
Oct. 18 in Portland/Beaverton at Powell’s Books, 7 pm*
Oct. 19 in Seattle at University Temple UMC, books on-site from University Bookstore, 7 pm*
Oct. 20 in Phoenix/Scottsdale at The Poisoned Pen, 7 pm
Oct. 21 in Houston at Murder By The Book, 4:30 pm
Oct. 22 in Tampa at Inkwood Books, 4 pm**
Oct. 23 in Minneapolis at the B&N HarMar Mall, 7 pm
*with Chuck Wendig and Fran Wilde!
**with Delilah S. Dawson! Please note their current address will not be the one we’ll be using. By that time they will have moved to a new location, and that address is: 1809 N. Tampa Street (store entrance is on Franklin Street) Tampa, FL 33602

If ye can’t make it to any of these but would like a signed copy, you can contact any of the stores on my tour with a phone call and preorder a signed copy. Just specify you want a signed copy when I come through, any personalized message you want, and then they will ship it to you after I visit and sign it!

Looking forward to seeing y’all. This book means a lot to me & it’s somewhat unusual in terms of structure: If you’ve been looking for something different, well, this might be it! Here’s a recent kind review from Shelf Awareness.