I’m pleased to announce that both The Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones will shortly be available as audio books, courtesy of Audible! I just signed the contract late last week.
Now, presented for your amusement, a fabulous song too few people have heard of, performed by Swag.
With the year winding down, I thought I’d write up a post on the Jones blog itself.
In the last 12 months I’ve gone from 2500 unique visitors a month to well over 7000 unique vistors a month, and the number of visits, hits, and page views has more than quadrupled. I want to thank you for that — although, judging from many of the links, many of those visiting come from Russian sites COMPLETELY unrelated to anything here on this blog. I still don’t quite understand why that’s happening. But, hey, if you’re an English reading Russian and want to visit, you’re welcome.
The most popular posts are a strange grab bag.
Battle Academy in action. Be warned — it is LOTS of fun.
With the children off for a few days, I plan on spending some time gaming or playing music or watching movies with them, although, old as they are, they’ll probably want some alone time as well — playing Minecraft, or in my son’s case, playing piano or guitar — so I’ll get some writing in.
I’d hoped to be coming to a close on the rough draft of this first Hearthstones book by year end, and while I’m closing in, I’m not that close. December, with all its running people to appointments and gift shopping and minor home disasters, slowed down the process. Still, there’s a good chance that I’ll have five of the seven parts drafted (some of which will be finely polished) by December 31st, which will mean a January completion date.
Speaking of the looming end of year, my Arabian fantasies of Dabir and Asim have made a few “best of lists” I wanted to share.
First, they’re mentioned over on Fantastical Imaginations. Second, while you’ll usually find detailed restaurant and wine reviews at The Passionate Foodie, you’ll also find some thoughtful book posts, and I made the fantasy year’s best list there.
Yesterday I had a mind meld, today I’m on a Podcast over at SF Signal! I hope you’ll swing by and listen to my musings about writing Pathfinder, Dabir and Asim, and sundry other nonsense with the talented (and Hugo Award winning) Patrick Hester!
Arr, the link be here!
*Not actually Howard or the hole he dug.
There’s nothing like going without running water in the house to remind a person how much we modern humans take for granted. Or to remind me, at least. The water line to our house busted over the weekend, so much of the last few days has involved me digging a really big hole (to access the water pipes) and then filling said hole when the job was completed. I was assisted by another neighbor who wandered over with a small back hoe, and a kind city utility guy who advised us about how best to line things up. If not for the digging and the reassurance from the other gentleman so that we continued digging, I would have been at it for far longer. My faith in humanity went up several notches, because neither man was under any obligation to donate so much time.
The actual repair took our plumber just a little over an hour, but if he’d had to dig that hole the cost would have been over a thousand dollars… and the job would have been delayed, because he didn’t have time in his schedule to dig such a hole, but had time to swing in and replace pipe.
Out here in the country we aren’t in easy walking distance of other water sources (except, of course, for the Sea of Monsters, and there’s always the danger of getting dragged in by a tentacle if you get too close). Our nearest neighbor was away, but fortunately some old friends live only a ten minute drive off. We took over a couple of big coolers (and they loaned us another) and the buckets our horses drink out of, and filled ’em all up. We ate out rather than cooking and getting more dishes dirty. We washed from basins that we filled via recycled two liter bottles filled from those coolers.
If any of you are in the Southern Indiana region, I’ll be part of a nifty little Writer’s Festival held at the Knox County Public Library on Saturday, November 2nd. Margaret McMullan, National Author Winner of the 2011 Glick Indiana Authors Award, is giving the keynote address and leading a workshop on “Writing What you Think You Know But Should Know Better” from 9-11.
She’s followed by James Alexander Thom, National Author Winner of the 2009 Glick Indiana Authors Award, who will be making a round table presentation on “The Art & Craft of Writing Historical Fiction” from 11-12.
Sarah Alderfer, Professor of English at Vincennes University, leads another panel from 1-2 on “Your Dreams of Becoming a Writer: Making it a Reality.”
And then I wrap things up with a presentation on “Becoming a Published Author” from 1-2.
The schedule’s a little tentative now — there may be gatherings for coffee, and there will be opportunities for book signing — but registration will open soon. It’s $30.00 for the day, and details will go live soon at the Knox County Public Library site.
I haven’t felt this good in years. I feel so healthy that I want to leap in the air and kick my heels. Heck, I’m so well rested I can even do it. And there’s the key phrase: well-rested.
I’ve been suffering from sleep apnea. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about it on the blog before because as medical conditions go, it beats the heck out of most of them. Who am I to complain when some of my friends and relatives have diabetes, or are struggling with Alzheimer’s… or are dying of cancer? Annoying as it is to be hooked up to a machine each night, at least I have something manageable that isn’t killing me. As long as it’s treated, sleep apnea isn’t dangerous.
Except that for a good long while it hasn’t been as treatable as it should have been. Around the month I got my book contract for The Desert of Souls I remember being thankful not just for the contract but for the timing of the moment, because I didn’t think I had the energy to write in my spare time any more. Over the last years if I’d had to write in my spare time, I wouldn’t have had the strength. I was convinced that my waning reserve in the evenings was a result of me simply getting older, and that the sleep apena regimen had improved my life as much as it could.
Shh. So I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I’m one of the authors who will be unlocked if funding is met and exceeded in a new Kickstarter. There’s at least three of us mysterious contributors (I won’t tell you the identity of the others) who will be revealed if Kaiju Rising meets its stretch goals.
As it’s an anthology for monster stories, you can darned well bet that I’m drafting a new Dabir and Asim story for the collection. I’m pretty busy with other stories right now, but it was such a great looking assembly that I couldn’t stand to pass up the opportunity.
The project is being published by J.M. Martin, Tim Marquitz and Nick Sharps (the latter two serving double-shift as editors), illustrated by Dan Howard, and will feature stories by Larry Correia, Peter Clines, James Lovegrove, Erin Hoffman, James Maxey, Jaym Gates, Timothy W. Long, Mike MacLean, Natania Barron, Joshua Reynolds, David Annandale, Clint Lee Werner, Jonathan Wood, Gini Koch, Paul Genesse, Edward M. Erdelac, Samuel Sattin, Bonnie Jo Stufflebean, and Peter Rawlik.
The first stretch goal will include additional internal art from Robert Elrod and Chuck Lukacs, and the next three stretch goals are authors. I’m not sure which of those three I am, but I’m hoping you’ll join in the Kickstarter and unlock my story. The full details can be found here.
I was so busy last week that I completely forgot to mention my guest post over at Lawrence M. Schoen’s site, for his Eating Authors column.
It is not, as you might suppose, a column for cannibals, but a place for authors to talk about their favorite foods or meals. I regaled readers with a story of Persian chicken and hallucinating deer, if you want to take a look. There are any number of other tales from numerous authors, so poke around a little when you drop by.
No, I didn’t go jousting, but the family and I, along with family friend Bruce Wesley, drove down to Murfreesboro south of Nashville and wandered about the Renaissance Festival. It was a little more crowded than we’d seen in previous years, which made it more like the Line Fair than the Renaissance Fair, but hopefully that means it will just expand and host more merchants next year.
We toured Castle Gwynn (yes, a real castle, hand built since the 1970s by a hard working man with a dream), got to pick up a Crusader sword found on the field of Acre (for real, and it was astonishing how light it was). And I met an Ent!
Me and an Ent.