Spellbound audiobook coming soon

The audiobook for Spellbound will be available from Audible.com on February 21st, read by Bronson Pinchot.

http://www.audible.com/int/Coming_Soon?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=14XS2KDKQ5GE9QR0BN18&pf_rd_m=A2ZO8JX97D5MN9&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=adblbestsellers&pf_rd_p=1331309382&pf_rd_s=left-12

It is kind of surprising to me how well my books have done as audiobooks. For example, MHI is still in their top 20 bestsellers even after all this time:

http://www.audible.com/adblbestsellers

So it is me, Stephen King and Steve Jobs, just kind of hanging out. Honestly, I blame the MH novels audio success on Oliver Wyman’s amazing narration. If you haven’t checked them out you really should. They are awesome.

LTUE 30

I spent the last weekend at the 30th annual Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium. This year it was at Utah Valley University instead of its regular spot at BYU. I didn’t really notice much difference in the venue change except that this time the cafeteria had caffeinated beverages.

I’ve been a panelist at LTUE for the last four years. I always have a good time. LTUE is a great chance to for the writers to hang out with other writers, for aspiring writers to learn stuff, and for everybody to network. It is three days of panels, discussion, hanging out, and goofing off.

I mostly go for the goofing off.

So Thursday I did my big panel on Writing Action. I do this one every year. I kind of have a rep for being good at that topic for some reason. Go figure. I believe it went really well, and was very well attended. I normally also do a panel with Super Author John Brown about developing story ideas, but John couldn’t make it this year, so bummer. That one is always a blast.

But more importantly than teaching stuff is the goofing off. So Thursday night I went out to all you can eat sushi with a bunch of other writers. i.e. MonkeySlothCon II.  It was good to see many old friends. I ate too much sushi, then went back to the hotel and crashed into raw fish shock.

Speaking of the hotel, I stayed at the Super 8 in Provo. It was not Super. The room itself was okay. But the shower was awful. I travelled to 11 states last year. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels in my life. This Super 8 didn’t just have the worst shower of any hotel, it had the worst shower IN AMERICA. The temperate started at 200 degrees Celsius, and then would randomly switch to the core of Europa. Burnfreezeburnfreezeburnfreeze. Don’t try to adjust it. That will just make it angry. Then it will burn, burn, burn, and as your skin is boiling off you think that you can live with this long enough to use soap, but then you get lathered up, it laughs and you have been deceived it pelts you with ice water. You can deal with one misery or the other, but MAKE UP YOUR FREAKING MIND!

Friday I was on several panels. I did one about how you do different types of magic systems in different types of fantasy novels. Then there was another one about marketing and how to do effective book signings. My last one of the day was about book bombs, at topic which I’ve developed a bit of a reputation for.

I want to talk about the book bomb panel. Book bombs are a relatively new phenomena. They are just another cool tool for marketing a book. Mine have been a bit more effective than most, with a couple of them being downright crazy. You guys know, you’ve been here for them. I told the audience during the panel to not come and ask me to do one for them, but I still got about twenty requests for book bombs.

The issue is that I can only do them so often. I figure about once a month, and any more than that I start to dilute their effectiveness. Next, they need to be books that I think that the Monster Hunter Nation would really like. I can’t just do them because I’m friends with the writer. One of the reasons you guys like my book bombs is because you trust my opinion enough to take a chance on a book. I knew that I was going to get a ton of requests, and it always makes me feel bad when I can’t do it, but it is what it is.

Also on Friday, Bob Defendi, man mountain of awesomeness, brought me this:

That is a 3×4 foot map of Rokugan, which is the fictional empire setting of Legend of the Five Rings. For those of you that have been reading the Friday serial, this is the place Writer Nerd Game Night plays in. Bob made this for his own personal use, and then printed an extra copy to give me as a gift. I’m getting this thing framed.  

Between panels I spent a lot of time hanging out in the hallway just talking with and answering questions for aspiring writers. I always enjoy that part. Many of these people feel like they are bugging the authors, but honestly I love helping out and sharing whatever knowledge I can.

I recorded an episode of the Writing Excuses podcast that day. It will be out in a couple of months and the topic is Writing GUNS. Before we started, Brandon Sanderson asked me if I could talk for about 5-7 minutes about things that writers get wrong about guns… Multiply that number by ten and I would just be getting warmed up. Overall I think the session went pretty good. The audiobook pick of the week was Spellbound, which will be available on Audible.com on February 21st.

Okay, helpful writing stuff out of the way, back to the important business of goofing off. (don’t laugh, cons are about the only time I actually take time off) Friday night I went over to Howard Tayler’s house to play some Warmachine/Hordes. Howard even cooked steak. Jordan Sanderson, knowing that I’ve been building a miniature samurai themed army even brought me a couple very cool minis he’s found. Thanks, Jordo.

Then the best part of LTUE weekend, my Skorne army defeated Howard Tayler’s Trolls. Kevin was MVP and punched many trolls in their big blue faces. It was a lot of fun. (in the other game, Dan Wells Khador was defeated by Jordan Sanderson’s Cygnar. The night was a bloodbath of tiny painted men) 

In actuality, the only reason I didn’t get my ass kicked was because Howard’s friend Alan came over, and Alan knows how to play Skorne and offered me helpful advice every time I went to do something really stupid.

Saturday was a lazy day (which was good because all of that troll killing meant that I went to bed late). I didn’t have much scheduled as far as official con business until late in the afternoon, so I mostly hung out and shot the bull with people. But then I got drafted to play a game of Star Trek: Fleet Captains board game. I’m not a Trekkie, but it had strategy, combat, and little ships. I’m a sucker for little ships that fight. Me and Dave Butler were the Klingons and Dan Wells and Eric James Stone were the Federation. Four writers enter only two will leave. Let the death match commence!

I’ve played board games with Dave before, and I know that he’s one of those very analytical, super-strategic, good at winning types. Neither of us had played, and Dan Wells is also a hard core gamer (who had played), but I figured me and Dave could pull it off. But little did I realize that it isn’t just Nebula award winner author Eric James Stone that we were facing… It is Captain Eric James Stone of the USS Sutherland, Starfleet hero, and he got his Kirk on and whooped our Klingon asses. Curse you, Captain Stone, you magnificent bastard.

My last thing to do was a reading. However they scheduled my reading at the same time as Dan’s reading. Which meant that we’d have to compete against each other. Which extra sucks since many of the people there are fans of both of us. So we just combined it. I didn’t want Dan’s self esteem to get hurt when my room was way fuller. (on a serious note, Dan’s novel Partials is the next book bomb. He read from it, and it is awesome).

Once it was over I went to dinner with Paul Genesse and a bunch of friends. It was the second time I managed to eat Thai food in one day. Then I drove the two hours back to Yard Moose Mountain.

All in all, it was a really fun weekend.

Is there a lawyer in the house?

I ran into a friend this weekend and he told me about some legal troubles his family is going through. Without going into a lot of details, one of this guy’s kids was accused of something, and is in trouble with the law, has been tossed into juvy until the trial, and it sounds like a weird call on the part of one judge. The kid has a couple of serious disabilities. The accusation sounds fishy, with some odd holes in the accusation. Now of course I’m getting this information from the kid’s dad, who is biased, but if he is even half right about what’s happened, then this situation is messed up.

The issue is this family is not well off financially. They don’t have much money. They consulted with an attorney specializing in juvenile criminal issues, but that’s $250 an hour. So they are stuck with a public defender that doesn’t seem interested in talking to anybody.

So if there is a Utah attorney here that can do juvenile criminal justice, and would be willing to consult with this person, and possibly do some discounted or pro-bono work, please leave me your contact information and I will forward it on.

BOOK BOMB! IRON DRAGON series by Paul Genesse

Here we go again.  This book bomb is for my friend Paul Genesse, who is releasing the 3rd book in his Iron Dragon series of epic fantasy novels.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B006V5Q3PY

For those of you who don’t know about Book Bombs, I pick a book or an author that I really like, or who I think is really deserving of a boost, and then I tell you guys about it, and encourage you to all buy it on the same day, and also to tell your friends about it. This does a couple of things. It helps the writer move up in the stats on Amazon, which gets them more attention, which gets them more sales, and more potential fans. And hopefully, you will share this on your blog, facebook, and tell your friends, which will build up even more momentum. If we can get them onto a top 100 or top 20 list, then they will be seen by lots of potential readers.

Plus, it helps the writer make his house payments.

Our Book Bomb this time is for Book 3 of the Iron Dragon series, the Secret Empire. If you haven’t read book 1 and 2, I would really recommend picking those up also. The eBooks are very affordable. I believe Paul set it up so that you can jump right in on this one if you haven’t read the first. There are also hard copies available of all three.

I really enjoyed the first two books in the series. They are straight up, epic fantasy goodness. I let my older kids read them as there wasn’t anything too awful or nasty or anything like that, but I believe these were intended for adults.

Besides really liking the story, and being friends with Paul, the main reason I wanted to promote his work is because Paul is the perfect example of a good author that has been shafted by the publishing business.

Paul has published a ton of short stories. He’s edited anthologies of short stories. He’s probably one of the hardest working and sharpest marketers I’ve met in this business. My first ever panel at a Con was because I talked to Paul right before it started, and he found out that I was about to be published by Baen so he drug me up on stage. Paul’s a sharp guy who always goes out of his way to help aspiring writers, but despite all of that he got screwed.

He sold his Iron Dragon series to a small publishing house, which released book 1 and 2, which were by far the best selling fantasy books that house had. But before book 3 could come out, the publisher ran into financial trouble.

That is a writer’s nightmare. 

So Paul was stuck with a floundering publisher, and even though his books were some of their bestsellers, they couldn’t get their crap together enough to release the next one. I don’t really know the details. Time passed. Paul tried to get his rights back and he did, finally, but only after the momentum from the first two books had tapered off. Aspiring writers, you think it is hard to sell a book? Try selling a book that is #3 in a series when a different publishing house already put out the first two.

So now Paul is doing it himself. You can grab his eBooks on Amazon today, or if you are registered over on CreateSpace you can get them there for a little cheaper. (full disclosure, I believe Paul actually makes more off of CreateSpace, but I love seeing the stat boost on Amazon because it is bigger, most of you already shop there anyway, and when you order anything through the links on my webpage, I get a percentage of the sales to immediately blow on Hordes miniatures on Amazon) 🙂

As of right now:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,384 Paid in Kindle Store

And we will check back through the day.

EDIT:  Another fun fact about Paul Genesse. He’s a cardiac nurse. Which means he routinely deals with life or death freak outs and dying people while holding human organs in his hands, so he’s actually pretty chill on the whole publishing thing. The dude can handle stress.

EDIT 2:  Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,376 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store

More Paul Genesse Fun Facts. Paul and I once had a conversation with a ghost in an abandoned cemetary. It was very Scooby Doo of us.  http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/talking-to-myself-in-the-dark/

EDIT 3:  Now that’s what I’m talking about:  Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,912 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Book Bomb Tomorrow

I should have posted this sooner, but 1. New Kid. 2. Past Deadline. 3. Audit Season.

Head’s up everyone. I would like to do another book bomb. This time for my friend Paul Genesse and his new release. I will put up the post tomorrow.

Paul is a great writer and all around good dude. He has an epic fantasy series that I have been recommending for years. Sadly, he wrote the first two books and then his publishing house fell apart. (when I talk about the dangers of signing with a small press, I’m thinking about Paul).

So here Paul was with an awesome series, two books in, and fans waiting for the third one. It didn’t matter how good the books were, no publishing house was going to come along and buy a series that had already been started by somebody else. So he was basically screwed.

But with the eBook revolution, Paul can now do it himself. Now that the rights have reverted to him, he can rerelease all 3 books on eBooks himself. Which is sweet for those of us who have been waiting to finish the series, and good news for the rest of you who haven’t started it yet.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B006V5Q3PY

More details to come tomorrow.