Just a quick note to those of you who would like to see some more of Noah Stacy’s artwork. He’s got a new Facebook page and some great stuff is posted here.

Cheers all, and enjoy!

Another first-time convention last weekend at the Wrath of Con, in Panama City, Florida, and let me tell you, a great time was had by all… perhaps too-great a time for some of the guests… Yikes….

We attended as guests, and had a great convention. Rick Albritton did a great job of organizing, especially for a first time convention. There were some great media guests: Jerry Doyle, Richard Hatch, Virginia Hey and Gigi Edgely to name a few. There were also some of us author types, and I was honored to meet David Wellington, a very accomplished writer of Horror and paranormal fiction. We had a great writers workshop panel along with small press publisher and author Bo Savino, and indi published author J. Edward Holmes. I so love doing panels…

Anyway, a good time and great people… What more could one ask?

Well done, Rick!

I was recently honored to be included as a literary guest to the first annual “Omegacon” March 14-16, in Birmingham AL. There were some growing pains, since this was the first, some organizational issues, some scheduling problems, but over all, this was a very good convention.

Over 3000 attendees, which is great for a first convention. The sponsors went into the red, because they had low ticket prices for the first convention to get interest, but this is about par for the course for a first convention.

For me, it was a smashing success. I got to do some panels with some of the biggest names in the business (David Drake, Eric Flint, Ben Bova, William H. Drinkard and more), spend time with some icon authors (Steven Brust). I also got to rub elbows with some great people from publishing: Editors from Tor (Claire Eddy and Liz Gorinksy), Pyr (Lou Anders) and Baen (James Minz) were in attendance and showed us their summer line ups (wow). There were also many small presses in attendance, both in the dealer’s room, and doing panels.

Many kudos to Shaun Knoph for heading up the project and taking the heat.

This was a great success for me, being the first large convention that I was not selling my own books, and was able to network. The hotel was huge, and things were a little spread out, but all told, a great success.

So put it on your calendar for next year. Omegacon is a hit, a good time was had by all. I will be there with bells on (jingle jingle)…

Okay, I’m not one to argue with the likes of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, but… oh, well, yes I am… So, here we go.

Jeff, buddy, what the hell are you thinking? E-book readers have been tried, and have dropped like flies at a bug-zapper trade show. I’m very sorry but the new Amazon Wireless Reader is doomed to fail… Here are the reasons why:

First: A book is a book… it feels like a book, ‘reads’ like a book, and you can spill your coffee on it, wipe it off and still read it like a book. You an throw it in the bottom of a bag with your car keys, let it get peed on by your cat, highlight it with a pen, write notes in the margin, and still read it like a book. When you invent a reader that you can do all those things with, and will never need batteries, or be subject to screen fade, or be to dim to read in bright sunlight, I might buy it.

Second. There are already quite a few devices out there that you can read a book on, and all of them do much more than just display a book to be read. It is human nature to want more for your money. So even though you might be less satisfied with an e-book reader that is also a phone, computer, pda, wireless hub, and washes your car, because you will want to do all these things instead of read your book, you’re going to buy it anyway… And you will do everything with it except read your book. Also, this more popular item will end up actually costing less than your stand alone e-book reader, because of the number that will sell… doomed…

Third: Cost. It retails for a cool $400.00!! Holy crap! I CAN buy an i-phone for that. So the big draw is that it can hold up to 200 books (but you can still only read one at a time, and my bookshelf holds more) and it’s wireless *checks his bookshelf and all his books for wires* … Ahem… Doomed…

I’m not saying people don’t read on their computers. Hey, I do all the time. Cory Doctorow has had millions of copies of his books downloaded through Creative Commons licensing, which is all good. But the people who really want to ‘read’ a book, will buy a good old paper and ink copy, dog the ears, flip the pages, spill coffee on it, fall asleep and drool on it, and love every word.
Sorry, but nice try Jeff.

If you’re interested, here’s more on the new Amazon Kindle.

Cheers! Read On!

I just did my very first podcast, and what a blast! Gail Z. Martin and I discussed the motivations, archetypes and use and abuse of necromancers in our books. In Gail’s book, The Summoner, her Necromancer is the “Good Guy”, whereas, in Deathmask, Azrael is the ultimate villain. Interestingly, we kind of deconstructed our works, and found that we both had similar ideas. If you’re interested, give it a listen.

The strangest thing about doing the podcast was listening to my own distorted voice (we did it on the phone), and wondering: do I really sound like that?

That and I discovered that my mouth sometimes works faster than my brain… well there’s a surprise!

Cheers!

Wow…

DragonCon…

What a gas… I’m still recovering.

We got back to St. Petersburg at about 1:00AM Tuesday, and I had to go to work in six hours, so sleep has been a short commodity of late. I took a bunch of pictures of the fantastic costumes, and should have them up soon, but the real bonus of the trip was the great people I got to socialize with.

Tracy Akers, Michelle Weston and Sandy Lender, three great fantasy authors, shared drinks and tales of woe and triumph with us. Please visit their sites, they are very special and talented, and I hold them in the highest regard.

My dear friend Jana Oliver dropped by on a break from the Dragon Moon Press table and we talked about all the shake ups in Canadian Publishing… It seems things are just as crazy up there as they are down here. She was very excited to announce that the sequel to Sojourn will be out in October! WoooHoo!

As usual, I poked around relatively little, being welded to the dealer’s table. It was nice to have quite a few return customers, and some begging me to write faster, more and delve into the sequels for Weapon of Flesh and Soul for Tsing, both of which I have already outlined sequels for.

I got the opportunity to meet a fellow Herscher Project writer, Gail Martin, who is very excited about her upcoming release, The Summoner. She is published through Solaris, and this is her debut release. Way to go, Gail!

We took a lot of pictures, as usual, and I’ll have them up on the gallery as soon as I have the time to post them. A lot going on, in preparation for Viable Paradise, and Necronomicon in three weeks… Yikes…

Gotta go, but not before I would like to thank all of my fans who stopped and talked and spent their hard-earned cash on my books. You all are what keeps me going, and I’m not talking about the money.

You all know what I’m talking about…

Cheers!

That’s right, it’s DragonCon time, and with only three weeks between now and the big one, I’m all a twitter. Once again I am in the dealer’s room, hawking my wares. Getting a guest slot at this one has been a nemesis of mine. Several of my close friends have grabbed that particular golden ring and have gotten in on the show. Eugie Foster is once again a guest, as is Glenda Finkelstein, Tracy Akers, Jody Lynn Nye, Jana Oliver and many other wonderful authors whom I have met at conventions around the southeast.

Cheese Runners, and Cheese Rustlers CDs will be on sale at my table, as well as all my regular titles. The dealer’s room will be in the Hilton this year, which is the southern-most of the three hotels. If you are planning on being at the convention, please look me up, mention my blog and get a “special” price… heh heh…

I was hoping to have an announcement for Scimitar Moon, but that project has been put on hold. Perhaps we’ll have something in print by the end of the year.

I’m still working on Cheese Lords, the third in the Cheese Saga… Okay, so I need a better title for the trilogy…

Stay tuned for future events!

It has been so long since I’ve blogged, I feel there is a lot of catching up and some explanation to do:

Where have I been?

Well, busy, to say the least. Primarily writing, finishing up “Scimitar Moon” and getting it off to a prospective publisher. Well, we’ll just have to see if that tree bears some fruit. I hope to have some kind of news in time for DragonCon, which I am once again attending as a dealer. I’m trying to plan a little “Writer’s Night Out” for a few of the authors who are attending, so if you are a writer, and you’re going to DragonCon, drop me an e-mail and come hoist a few with your fellow writers.

Conventions have been taking up some of my time of late as well, with Mobicon, Florida Supercon, and Oasis all coming along at what seemed like a rapid-fire pace. Met some great folks at all of the above, especially impressed with Eugie Foster, at Mobicon. If you have not visited her site, please do. She is not only wonderfully talented, but a real worker. Her capacity for networking is astounding, and she is a great resource.

Some very interesting, and temper-testing panel discussions around the convention circuit, as always. One of the most contentious was a panel on “Independent Publishing” at Oasis. Four independently published authors sat on a panel with a traditionally published and award-winning author of about 50 years experience. This was rather like throwing oil and water into a bottle and trying to get them to mix. Although I respect his work, I could not accept his opinion that independent publication is “a horrible mistake” and “a sign that you’re not good enough to get published by a traditional publisher”. I see independent publishing as simply another avenue to breaking into the market, one that seems to be working better for me than sending out manuscripts to publishers to sit and never even be read in most cases. The sheer volume of slush is the barrier new writers are fighting (about 1000 manuscripts per month in most large houses, and they choose one or two). With these volumes, it is only human nature to simply start at the top, and find something that isn’t too terribly horrible, and go with it. That is what happens, and that is why I chose to publish my own work and get it out to readers, who will make the choice whether it is good or not.

The problem is, with 1000 submissions per month to root through, you can’t really blame the publishers for taking the short cuts. There aren’t enough readers, editors and marketers to really make a discerning decision given the allotted work load.

My solution: let the public make the decision whether something is good or not. After all, there are millions of fans out there really looking for something good, and I mean REALLY GOOD, to read. This is why the few new good writers dominate the book shelves; Neil Gaiman, for instance, who is a fabulous writer and deserves every penny he earns. Well, his first efforts were graphic novels, not exactly high literature, but he made a go of it, and suddenly he’s at the top of every list. He did this through very hard work, from the bottom up.

Wow, did I get off on a tangent, or what.

Well, there’s the catch up. I’m currently working on the third in the Cheese Runners saga, and preparing myself for Necronomicon, and a great writer’s workshop on Martha’s Vineyard called Viable Paradise. Both happen in late September and early October… In fact, they overlap one day… Yikes, I’m going to be busy… again…

Anne and I have a couple of friends, Skip and Lydia, who have recently retired and have spent the past two years preparing to go on the adventure of a lifetime. The adventure sounds simple: pick a nicely priced sailboat that needs a little work, put your heart and soul into it, make it your home, prepare every way you know how, and go sailing.

Well, they did it.

Skip and Lydia departed St. Petersburg, FL for the Florida Keys last week with a north wind and a reasonably good forecast on the horizon. Check out some pics of their dream on The Flying Pig website.

Then bad things started to happen.

Long story short, due to a bad turn in weather, exhaustion and a navigational error, they grounded their boat very hard on a reef just north of Marathon Key. They are physically okay, but the boat, and their dream, are both badly damaged.

Here is the part we all need to take a lesson from: Skip and Lydia possess the one thing we should all wish for, and that is the indomitable spirit. They are rolling with this punch, already planning repairs, refit, and how to resume their dream. This is akin to someone having their house ripped apart by a tornado, and they are back in the swing of reaching for that dream in a span of days.

That is nothing short of amazing to me.

Many would, under similar circumstances, simply give up. The financial setback alone is daunting, forget having to assess the damage, plan repairs, procure replacement equipment and materials, and do the lion’s share of the work yourself all while living on the very thing you are repairing. Imagine gutting your house down to the framing and studs, rewiring, replumbing, fixing structural damage, sometimes even removing and reaffixing internal walls, all while living in it.

This is the task they have set before themselves, and they are, once again, doing it.

I can only wish I had that type of spirit.

Skip and Lydia, you go.