Monthly Archives: October 2015

October Doldrums

This is launch week for my new book, Beyond the Pool of Stars. And it’s only a few days since my new adventure went to press in Pinnacle’s Savage Tales of Horror volume 3. I should be a relentless promotion machine talking about both things.

But I’m having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm.

I went in for a minor medical procedure early this morning and when I returned home I had a message that an old friend of mine had gone in for a minor medical procedure the night before. Ironic. Both things were so minor we hadn’t bothered to tell each other.

The parallel ends with me coming out alive and well. Something went wrong while my friend was under and his brain was deprived of oxygen. He died early in the morning, probably at about the time I was waking to drive in for my own surgery.

I can’t stop thinking about his child, and his sister, and his parents, and his long-time girlfriend, and her little girl, who was like a daughter to him.

Guest Posts

My first guest post is up over at SFSignal, with more to follow in the coming days. In this one I discuss how I came to write the new book, and a little about the writing process.

In other news, the adventure I wrote for the Solomon Kane role-playing game is now available as a PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment, AKA the Savage Worlds folks.

Seems like I had more to share, but I still have a slew of guest blogs to write, so I’d better get on with that…

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Xuthal of the Dusk”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “Xuthal of the Dusk,” sometimes known under the title “The Slithering Shadow.” We hope you’ll join in!

Howard: By this or its other name, “The Slithering Shadow,” Fritz Leiber once named this story as one of the weakest Conan yarns, describing it as “”repetitious and childish, a self-vitiating brew of pseudo-science, stage illusions, and the ‘genuine’ supernatural.”

Beyond the Pool of Stars Sweepstakes and Chapters

TOR.com is running a contest right now to win a copy of my newest book, Beyond the Pool of Stars. All you have to do is sign up in the comments section of this page.

And check this out — you can read a chapter of the book for free right over here!

Once again, here’s the back cover blurb:

Mirian Raas comes from a long line of salvagers, adventurers who use magic to dive for sunken ships off the coast of tropical Sargava. When her father dies, Mirian has to take over his last job: a dangerous expedition into deep jungle pools, helping a tribe of lizardfolk reclaim the lost treasures of their people. Yet this isn’t any ordinary job, as the same colonial government that looks down on Mirian for her half-native heritage has an interest in the treasure, and the survival of the entire nation may depend on the outcome…