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My Favorite T-Shirt

GenCon attendees Wednesday night might have seen me sporting my favorite t-shirt. It’s also my first born’s favorite t-shirt, and seeing as how he’s somehow gotten as tall as me, I turn it over to him sometimes for special occasions.

Anyway, said first-born spotted a pretty cool pic of someone holding said t-shirt the other day, and I thought I’d share it with you.

I’m not quite done with my GenCon wrap-up article I thought I’d be posting today. Fiction writing is going great, although I’m still suffering from some sleep deprivation due to the con. I just didn’t sleep well at the convention, despite not being up TOO late. At least, though, I didn’t come home sick like a lot of my friends and colleagues. A lot of times conventions end up as breeding grounds for illnesses and I usually work to stay hydrated. I guess that did the trick.

 

Back Home

I’m writing up a storm today, so I’m going to keep things short. GenCon 2015 was wonderful, and the Writers’ Symposium was stronger than ever. Marc Tassin and his staff really know how to run a convention — well, a sort of mini-convention within GenCon.

It would take days to relay all the cool things I did — or at least things I thought were cool —  although excessive detail might bore a lot of my readers. I’ll put up a summary Wednesday. I don’t think I’ve ever been busier at a convention. Saturday especially was incredibly tightly scheduled. Dave Gross and E.E. Knight both told me, back when I was new to conventions, that the more I attended, the more it was like going to a family reunion. I had a hard time imagining that, especially when I first walked into one of the rooms stuffed with writers and didn’t know anyone.

The Power of Tregillis

Bill Ward and I have been dependably bringing you re-reads on Friday now for over a year, with very few delays. I’m sorry to say that this week we’ve another. Bill was having some computer issues, and I was having some “this story’s too long for me to finish quickly” issues, so we’re delaying our final re-read for this book until next Friday. After that, we’ll be reading the Del Rey volume The Coming of Conan, which, as you probably know, is a collection of witty and mannered short stories set during the British Regency. We hope that you’ll join us for that one, which is surely among Jane Austen’s very best.

Normally I’d have squeezed time in to read “Adept’s Gambit” over the course of a week. It’s not THAT long. I blame Ian Tregillis. You see, when I wasn’t hunched over a final re-read of Beyond the Pool of Stars or re-writing my new draft of For the Killing of Kings (a title that will probably have to change, alas), I was reading two books by Ian. I’d fully meant to pace myself, thinking that I could read a few chapters of one Ian Tregillis book every night, the way I’d been doing with recent historicals. Turns out that no.

Review Copies

I have a limited number of review copies of my next novel, Beyond the Pool of Stars, available. If you’re a book reviewer and are interested in obtaining a copy, let me know!

Here’s the 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…

Keep in mind that these are uncorrected proofs, so there may be some material in them that won’t appear in the final draft (these aren’t likely to be bonus scenes, but creative spelling, typos, and the like).

Drop me a line at jones howard at twc dot com (with no spaces) if you want to get your hands on one!

Beyond the Pool of Stars

I spotted this the other day. A whole slew of copies of my new book ready to be released. Not to the general public yet, alas, but to reviewers. These are advanced reading copies, or ARCs. It won’t be on bookstore shelves until the fall.

It’s so nice to have a new book just about ready to appear in print!

I’m preparing to dive back into another pass on its sequel at the same time I’m performing rather intense revisions on my new series for Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s. Much as I love the temporary title I’ve been using, I’m not sure it really works anymore, at least for the first book in the sequence. 

My New Book

My new book, Beyond the Pool of Stars, is now available for pre-order at Amazon, although it won’t be in stores until October. I’ve been in love with the cover art since I saw a sketch of it last summer, but I can’t find mention of the artist’s name — something I’ll correct just as soon as I can this week.

Here’s the current draft of the back cover copy, from Paizo:

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…

Mind Meld and Memories

I’m over at SFSignal today with a number of authors, Mind Melding about cities in science fiction and fantasy, and epic road trips. You can probably predict that I mentioned Amber, Lankhmar, and Baghdad.

On a more somber note, I’ve been mourning a childhood friend, dead now for 18 years. We hadn’t stayed in touch very well after high school, but I’m certain we would have reconnected in the years following. God alone knows exactly what artistic career he would have ended up choosing with his in-born talent and drive, but I’m certain he would have prospered. I like to think Jon and I would have joined forces and worked together on some projects.

On Conan and Writing

Following on a great post by Fletcher Vredenburgh about Karl Edward Wagner’s Bran Mak Morn novel (over at Black Gate), I decided to update my own post on Conan pastiche. I’ve read, or tried to read, a lot more imitation Conan since I wrote the document and thought it high time to update the thing.

My own writing proceeds apace. Onward and upward. It looks like final changes are finished on my next Pathfinder novel, coming this fall (through Tor!).

I’m not sure when For the Killing of Kings will be released through Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s, but it’s looking more and more like it will be this coming winter. First, though, I have to finish this revision. I’m shooting to have that draft complete by the end of April. On a long trip recently I started reworking the outline for the second book and am so excited with it I’m having to restrain myself from jumping into work on it right now.

Winter Madness

It’s been a crazy few days. I slid into my wife’s car with my truck, darn it, and then drove about five hours through a snow storm, white knuckle all the way, to get my first born to a college audition of sorts. Fortunately it went well and the roads on the way back were a lot better. (Tomorrow I take the car in for repair — I wasn’t going very fast, and the truck wasn’t hurt, but the car bumper is shot. I miss steel bumpers. Really, what’s the point of a fiberglass bumper?)

I wasn’t able to post Monday because a tree branch took out our internet, cable, and phone. Next Monday, though, Chris Hocking and I are bringing back Hardboiled Monday, and Friday Bill and I will try to wrap up our Lord Dunsany read.

In other news, I’ve become a TOR author. Paizo Pathfinder novels are now going to be distributed through TOR, and the publishing schedule means that my upcoming book will be the third one released under the joint banner.

My novel revisions are going very well and I’ve got a few other projects on the front burner now that are starting to simmer. I hope to be able to talk about all of it in just a little bit, and talk a little more about some writing strategies I’ve been using on my newest work.

Back Soon

Bill and I will return next week to start on the final leg of Lord Dunsany’s Time and The Gods anthology. There are only six left, and then we’ll be turning to the first fantasy book I ever read, Swords Against Death.

This weekend my lady and I (pictured on the left) will be spending some quality time together. May you all be so fortunate.

In other news, I just learned I got the most votes in Black Gate‘s “who should write in the Cthulhu mythos today” contest. That was pretty cool, and totally unexpected. I suppose that Dabir and Asim DO face off against lots of weird menaces. I approach horror more like REH did most of the time, though, like an ingredient to season a story rather than the entire focus of one.

This surprising win does have me thinking about whether I should try to tackle writing some horror straight on, although it will have to take a back seat to the various projects I’ve already got cooking.