EDIT:  Okay, before reading forward, everybody can relax.  I spoke with the owner of the Two Hour Wargames after I posted this. Yes, he was inspired by the first part of MHI. He will be putting up a thing on his page about that is where he got the idea. He apologized, and will be linking to where people can get my book.   Ed apologized, said that he read that bit and got fired up, and should not have used my stuff like that.  I respect that he contacted me so quickly to apologize and to try to make things right. 

I don’ t mind fan fiction, in fact I love it and there is some great MHI fan fic on the internet. I know of at least a dozen different gamer groups that are running their own MHI based campaigns and I think that is awesome, but when someone uses a writer’s creation to make money, then that is different. Baen Books owns the rights to MHI, and anything that ties in there needs to be cleared through them through proper channels.

So I’m pulling this down. Thanks to everybody who jumped in there. I’ve got a brutal fan base. You guys rocked, but we’re cool here.

So now that I know that after Monster Hunter Vendetta, the next MH book from Baen will be Monster Hunter Alpha (i.e. the Earl Harbinger novel), I’ve had to get my butt to work. Luckily for me I managed to beat Dragon Age: Origins last week, so that wasn’t calling to me and it looks like Call of Duty: MW2 will have to wait for a bit. (you know that you’ve had to do a lot of writing when you meet a bunch of fans in Arizona and one of them says that they haven’t seen you on Xbox Live in like two months!  Sorry, Hyrum, I will return!)

I wrote pretty much all day on Saturday.  My wife (who is far handier than I am at this kind of thing) is finishing our downstairs bathroom, so she’d occasionally call me to lift something heavy or to hit something with a hammer, but other than that it was pure writing fun.  I don’t do well at the whole home/car repair thing. Basically my wife says that when it comes to that kind of thing, my ratchet is twice as tight as a normal person. So for example, a repair problem that would be a 1 for most people is a 2 for me. A 5 turns into a 10. etc. If something is really difficult it usually ends up with my car catching on fire inside the garage, tearing the driver’s side door off, and then being rolled out into the street and left to smolder. (that is actually a true story). 

Good thing that I’m good at writing and accounting or I would have starved a long time ago! I managed to get 5,000 words done, which isn’t bad.  I tend to start slow at the beginning of the novel, but then it tends to come faster and faster as I get into it.  Usually by the time I get to the end of the story, I can do 10,000 words on a Saturday and 2,000 words a night during the week. 

I took a Facebook break and saw that Brandon Sanderson was at my local Barnes & Noble doing a signing.  I know Brandon pretty well, as he was the first person to really give me good solid advice on the business of writing. Since then I’ve done his Writing Excuses podcast. He’s a great guy, and for being Mr. Super Author, really humble.

Now I’ve never got into WoT. I read the first one when I was in high school. The first time I met Brandon was at a Con where he was the guest of honor and I was a dude with a self published book that had just gotten picked up by Baen.  He had a table and was signing books. It had just been announced that he was going to finish Robert Jordan’s mega epic.

Brandon had been surrounded by about twenty hardcore WoT fans. It was more like an angry mob. They were absolutely grilling him. “Are you going to do this?!” “What about so & so?” “You better make the such and such do that one thing!” They were absolutely brutal.  I came up afterward, introduced myself, and said that I felt kind of bad for him, because if he screwed this up, these people were going to actually murder him.

Here we are a while later, and he is #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and the reviews are universally good. Brandon pulled it off. He managed to make the vast majority of the Jordan fans happy enough that they didn’t burn his house down. Most of the reviews I’ve seen have been some variation of “More happened in this book than in the last 3 Jordan books”. The only people he hasn’t made happy are the internet cranks, but come on, nothing makes those guys happy. I know, I’ve read their reviews of MHI.

So I headed down to B&N. Brandon has been on a mega book tour for the last book in the Wheel Of Time epic, and I know that he’s been getting literally hundreds of people at his signings. This one was relatively quiet, but then I remembered. It was the BYU vs. Utah game. The whole state shuts down for that. The least effective signing I had ever done was at that very same B&N on a Saturday where both BYU and Utah were playing big games.

I ended up selling half a dozen books myself, because as I walked up, Brandon pointed at me, told everybody who I was, and pronounced my book awesome. So I took a crowd of people over to where my section. (Luckily this is my local B&N, so they keep lots of my stuff in stock, which made me look even more cool). There was even a kid who was about 12, who came over and said “You wrote Monster Hunter! That is the best book ever!” Which was really good for my ego.

Paul Genesse is another local author and friend of mine. Paul showed up too, so the three of us grabbed a quick dinner afterward. Paul’s an extremely talented writer, but unfortunately for him he originally was picked up by a small press, with lousy distribution, zero marketing, and now they’re dropping their whole fantasy line, even though Paul is their bestselling writer with two books into a three book series. He has some other projects in the works though, and I’m positive he will find another publisher.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I had a great one. We went down to Delta and visited my family, got to hang out, shoot the bull, eat lots of stuff, and my kids were able to play with cows and cousins.   I love Thanksgiving, and as far as being thankful, my family has been extremely blessed this year.

And right now, I am very full of pie. So very full. So much pie… 

On the writing update bit, I can now say that you will see the following Larry Correia books come out from Baen, in this order:

Monster Hunter International

Monster Hunter Vendetta (told by Owen Z. Pitt)

Monster Hunter Alpha (an Earl Harbinger novel)

The Grimnoir Chronicles: Hard Magic

Monster Hunter ? (told by Owen Z. Pitt)

MHV will be out next year, I don’t have an official date. Then Alpha after that. Then TGC, probably in 2011. Then the next MH Owen novel shortly after TGC #1.  MHV is done. MHA is in progress. TGC:HM is done. MH? is in early scripting.  I’ve got a lot of writing to do. 

Toni really liked TGC. Which made my day. I was a little worried about this one, as it is a very different book than MHI, and I also suck at pitching ideas.  I do believe you guys will love this series though. For my MHI fans, it isn’t monstery, but it is magical, and hence there are beasties that pop up. In this case I’ve got the Summoned and a very different take on the undead.  For my gunny readers, I’ve got tons of period goodness. BARs, 1911s, Lewis guns, Thompsons, and a bunch of things that I made up.  This is the era of blue steel and walnut. And John Browning is in it.  And for readers in general, it is just a great story. 

On the leather bound hard covers, those are still a definite maybe, but will not be happening anytime soon, and certainly not this year.  I still want to persue a run though.

Also, I don’t know where this came from, as I’ve been hanging out in the top 10,000 on Amazon for the last couple of months, but I saw this today. 

Talk about a Happy Thanksgiving!  Boo Yah. That’s the highest I’ve been in months, and I have no idea why. Unless you guys actually went for my MHI for Christmas post.  🙂

Oh, and for the orders that have been coming in, I just ran out of patches, but should have more here any day now. So if you ordered a patch recently, you’ll probably have to wait another week. I’m trying to get some in before I go to Denver.

Hmmm…. I wonder if there is any more apple pie left?

John Brown and I will be doing two signings on December 5th in the Denver area:  http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/author-events/Larry-Correia/2166155

…Keeps on giving me royalites that is! Bwa HA HA HA!! 

Okay, sorry, my inner capitalist was coming out there.  Now I’m assuming that everyone that reads this blog already has a copy of MHI or 5, but I was just thinking… (dangerous, I know), that MHI is the perfect Christmas present!

Hear me out.  I think that all of my regular readers need to go buy more copies of Monster Hunter International to give as Christmas presents. Here is why:

1. It is relatively cheap.  – Think about it. The cover price is only $7.99.  That is the perfect price point for those people that you feel like you should give presents to, but that you don’t like enough to spend real money on.  These are the people that you usually end up giving cheese logs or Hillshire Farms mystery meat sticks.  MHI has all the joy of giving, with half the cholesterol.

Now keep in mind, you can’t really go cheaper. If you were to give them something that cost $5, you’d seem like a miserable cheap bastard. Why don’t you just push them down while you’re at it?  Scrooge.  

2. It makes the person getting it feel real smart. – Yes. Because you would never give a book to somebody who was really dumb. They’d probably just try to eat it or something.  Not only can you make that certain somebody whose name you drew out of the office Secret Santa pool feel like a member of the literati, you can also be known as the kind of extra smart person who gives the gift of words.  “Yes, Jim, when I drew your name out of that puffy trucker hat, I knew that you were so smart that you’d need a book. But not just any book, but one thick with learning. Crap, look at the size of that friggin’ thing. You’d have to be like Einstein or something to get through that pig!”

3. The perfect gift for people who shoot stuff for fun. – Now for the seven of you who read this blog who aren’t gun people, you probably have a gun person on your Christmas list. Sure, you would like to give them something that they’d love, but remember what happened last year?  When he told you that what he really wanted was a 8.72 x 34mm Mannlicher Gustav Crimp Adjuster Sling with Lebel Tactical Larynard and you went to the Cabelas and wandered cluelessly for five hours before giving up and buying them a camoflage cozy to keep their beer cold?  Yeah… he remembers it too. He remembers it with a bitter hate that will not die. But you can avoid that this year by giving the gift that all gun people love. The gift of shooting monsters in the face!

4. For every 500 copies of MHI sold, the author can afford another case of ammo. – Have you priced .223 lately? I mean seriously. It is brutal.

5. Signed copies show that you care – Now for that dude at the office who you feel obligated to give a gift to because he gave you a cheese ball last year, (Smokey Bacon flavor… yum) For that guy you can just get a regular copy off of Amazon. But for that special person who would really savor the hours of enjoyment that only monster killing can bring, you can show them that you really care by getting a signed copy.  At the top of this page is the ultra handy Buy Stuff tab with the instructions on how to get an autographed copy.

You can then revel in the sheer awesomeness as your chosen giftee unwraps their package, and says “Wow! A book! Look somebody drew in it. Is that supposed to be a lightning bolt? What a crappy happy face. Was this drawn by an inmate from the insane asylum?” And if they say that, you have my permission to scissor kick them in the neck, because I have a perfectly fine signature.

So there you go. Five reasons to give the gift of Monster Hunter International this holiday season.  It isn’t just limited to Christmas either. Nothing says Hanukah like MHI. Heck, everyone knows Kwanzaa is all about celebrating the defeat of the Elder Things. (I think, but I’m a little fuzzy on my Kwanzaa history). 

Now if you will excuse me, I’ve got to continue working on The Christmas Noun II. The Bloodening.