Order placed.  According to customer service, almost everything was IN STOCK.

 Which means the vast majority of the guns will be arriving next week.

I wrapped up the CZ group buy last week, and turned in the order.  The regional sales rep stopped by the store a couple of days after that to check the new place out. 

As of right now, I’m waiting for the first items to ship.  I don’t know the ETA yet.

CZ does it kind of weird.  All of their stocking dealers need to reapply at the beginning of the year.  So what happens is that all of their major dealers order at the same time.  The rep said they try to keep ahead of this by having a huge number of the more popular guns on hand. 

I’ll post updates as I have more information.  I’m still hoping for the first guns to go out shortly.

http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/reviewsSF.shtml 

Uncle Hugos is a well respected independant bookstore up in the great frozen wilds of St. Paul.  They’ve posted a review of MHI for February.  Basically, same as everybody else, loved it and couldn’t put it down.  (see, I told you so, and Don Blyly knows books)

A little background after you read that review, in my defense, I didn’t decide to self-publish right off the bat.  I spent almost 2 years getting rejected by EVERYBODY.  Which was really frustrating.  I did the traditional route, contacted agents, publishers, got copies of Books In Print, sent out all the query letters you could think of, shook the tree, the works.  I have a stack of rejection slips. 

Somehow, every regular person who read MHI loved it, while at the same time, every professional I spoke with kept telling me that it wasn’t “marketable” or that it was too long for a first timer, and therefore would take up too much shelf space at retail bookstores.  This disconnect about drove me nuts. 

It was actually that former employee that Don Blyly mentions that put me in contact with a very well respected professional in the literary community, a president of  a well-known publishing house.  She liked MHI, but even then, she had doubts as to MHI’s marketability.   I rewrote the book to her specs (and they really were good points that I will agree improved the final book) but after another half a year of waiting, I just couldn’t take it anymore, and took the plunge into self-publishing.

Believe me, self publishing was not the route I wanted to take, and I only did it when it came down to do it myself, or just say screw it and give up.  Even somebody as stubborn as me can only get kicked in the chops so many times.

But over the last couple of months, I think I’ve pretty well proven that MHI is marketable, and it is selling really well, especially considering that my marketing has consisted of me writing free fiction on THR, preselling my book with free patches, begging the people on the preorder to tell their friends, and this blog.   Reviews across the web have been great, and I’ve got a really good buzz going.  Heck, people are sending me FAN ART!  (some of it is actually really really damn good too).  I’ve got folks who want to start an RPG set in the MHI universe.  How friggin’ cool is that?

Since that time, it looks like I might be getting a real, honest to goodness, publishing deal, though nothing concrete has happened yet.   I’ve spoken with this publisher again, and we’ll see what happens.  Ironically enough, since MHI has gotten out there, I’ve had four other people who are also literary professionals read MHI, and they’ve all contacted me and told me that I need to send it to that same specific publisher that I’m speaking with anyway.  Apparently a bunch of professionals all seem to think that that is where I fit, and believe me, I’ve been reading their stuff since I was a kid, so I’m down with that.

Any good news will get posted here first.  (obviously!) 

Alternate Title:  Death is a stinky robot, or something…

A bunch of college kids, at an isolated location, are picked off one by one, by an unseen monster…  Yep, that’s never been done before.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393635/

Actually, Reeker does do something rather original.  I can’t say what it is, because that will ruin the ending.  And it has Michael Ironsides!

Overall, this movie was above average as far as acting, as everyone did a pretty good job.  The setting was cool.  The idea had some merit.  I wish that they had sped it up a little bit, as there was a lot of time spent with nothing really happening, except for the relatively uninteresting character’s talking to each other. 

Worth renting for B-movie geeks. 

Alternate title:  Armand Assante owed somebody money.

Every now and then, somehow, a real actor ends up in a B-Movie.  I’m looking at you, F. Murray Abraham in Blood Monkey.  But this time we’ve got Armand Assante slumming it as a vampire/hotel owner/cult leader in Soul’s Midnight http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493456/  

It was semi-proficient, and some of the acting was decent, but I just couldn’t get excited at all.  It was relatively incoherent, and paced pretty slow.  I have a hard time rooting for a hero, who gets 90% of the way to cheating on his pregnant wife, with a vampire stripper, in a meat locker, and no, that scene isn’t even as interesting as I just made it sound. 

The vampires have to sacrifice a baby descended from St. George to bring back their leader, who I think was supposed to have been the dragon, but is a guy in a big rubber vampire suit, who punks out and dies from a single stab wound.  I’m sorry, if you’re the bad ass 2^nd coming of evil incarnate, you really should be a bit tougher than that. 

Overall, eh… rent it if you’re really bored.