Okay, lots of fun stuff going on currently.

Book Stuff

The eARC for House of Assassins is available now (see the last blog post for details) and the regular release (hard cover, eBook, and audio) will be in February.  So maybe now people will quit giving Book 1 one star reviews on Amazon because “I’d abandoned the series” (ironically said review was posted while Book 2 was already available for preorder on that very website).

The anthology of sci-fi and fantasy themed noir stories Noir Fatale edited by me and Kacey Ezell was turned in last month, and will be coming out in 2019 also.  I believe in August.

Monster Hunter Guardian, with Sarah Hoyt, is pretty much wrapped up and has been sent off to the Alpha Readers. It is awesome.  It also has a 2019 release date. I think in October. Unless I flipped it and Noir Fatale. But it’s one of those.

I just finished a short story called Proxy War for Michael Z. Williamson’s next Freehold anthology. The anthology is about the occupation and resistance against the UN. In the original book, there’s one little part about how Freehold has dueling, and even proxy duelists who can stand in. So my story is about the professional duelist’s association, and what they end up doing to the people who came along and messed with their livelihood.

John D. Brown just sent me the first section (45,000 words) of the rough draft of our Not Yet Officially Named Sci-Fi Collaboration. It’s about a gang of space pirates who make a living by stealing combat mechs.  I’m really excited for this one.

Once that goes back to John, then I’ll be switching gears and going back to the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, and a short story that will be going on the Baen website to coincide with the release of House of Assassins, and then I’ll be getting back to #3, Destroyer of Worlds. (which, I’m about 35,000 words into, but had to pause to do the final edits on Monster Hunter Guardian).

There is another collaboration in the works with Steve Diamond. Think “trench fantasy”, like a fantasy WW1 Eastern Front in a world with dark fairy tale magic. Steve’s working on the rough now. There’s a story in this setting in Noir Fatale also. Our working title on this series is Grunt’s Eye View. 

Target Rich Environment 2 is mostly put together, and if you scroll down a couple posts you can even see the bad ass cover. I’m just waiting to hear back on one particular story to make sure I’m okay to include it. Then I’ll be turning that in.

There is a 2nd Monster Hunter Files but it has been on the back burner, because this time instead of a whole bunch of stories from different authors, Toni wanted me make it five novellas based on stories from the 1st Files, and some of the extremely good authors I’ve got for it are currently backlogged with their own things, so I’m not going to harass them about it until they’re more caught up. (and it isn’t like I don’t have a dozen other projects myself)

That’s what I’m working on currently, and there’s a bunch of other stuff in line behind that, including more Monster Hunter (next book goes back to Owen’s PoV and picks up after Siege and Guardian) , a 2nd Grimnoir trilogy (set in the 1950s, I’ve got another preview story in Noir Fatale for that).

Tie In Stuff 

The Savage Worlds  Monster Hunter International RPG will be moving forward now that the new edition of Savage World’s Kickstarter is done (and they kicked ass!). We sent out the eARC with the old edition of the rules to the backers, and they gave us a bunch of feedback which we’ve incorporated. So now we’ll switch over to the new rules and move forward.

Once the MHI RPG is entirely fulfilled, I’m going to launch Gritty Cop Show, the Game. This one is just a little side project for fun, because I wanted to try my hand at game design, and this was a game that I’d run at conventions for charity, but it came out awesome, and it is really a lot of fun so I’m going to release it.

There are some other irons in the fire involving some of my IPs, but nothing that I can currently talk about in public.

Yard Moose Mountain Update

Building a house is a giant time suck, but after three years of developing a chunk of mountainside, permit hoop jumping, tax paying, road cutting, well digging, and so forth, we broke ground this year and had a race against the snow.

However, things have come together (seriously, our general contractors are amazing. If you are building a house in northern Utah, talk to Randall Brother’s Construction), and it looks like we are going to be all buttoned up before the snowfall.

Tour and Appearances 

I’ll be doing another book tour in February for House of Assassins. I’ll be posting the locations and schedule soon.

I don’t know what cons I’m going to in 2019, though I am trying to drastically cut back. I say that every year, and I keep going to too many. Cons are awesome, and I love meeting my fans, but by the time you factor in travel days each one kills the better part of a weak of productive writing time.

That said, my next one will be LTUE. And I’ll be at SpikeCon, but both of them are in Utah. I haven’t decided on the others yet.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, an eARC is an Electronic Advanced Reader Copy. The actual book release isn’t until February. These are the things which normally would only go out to reviewers, but Baen makes the ebooks available for customers who can’t wait.

https://www.baen.com/house-of-assassins-earc.html?fbclid=IwAR3wPu4cSBl659QmXjWwnuSmfLVfTelUB_DnQLVEWDloP5lBBs6_6-XvWcU

House of Assassins picks up right after Son of the Black Sword. I’m really proud of this one. Jim Minz has been my editor for a bunch of my novels. He told me that in his opinion, he thinks this is the best book I’ve ever written. I don’t know about that, but I really am proud of it and this series. Book three is Destroyer of Worlds, and I’ll be working on it for the rest of the year.

Here is the cover for the 2nd volume of my collected short stories.

Usually when Baen does short fiction collections for its authors, they have the artist put the author on the cover, like they’re something from one of their stories. In the last one Kurt Miller painted me as a bad ass monster killer.

This time around,  I’m a barbarian. 😀

My publisher Toni was inspired by a spontaneous pose that my wife and I did at a book signing in Dallas where I was Atlas Shrugging a manatee, and my wife ran out of the audience to do a Boris Vallejo/Frank Franzetta hold on my leg.

Luckily my wife thought it was hilarious.

Wendell was content to take the back cover.

And here you can see the background of how Kurt had us model for the cover (he sent us the 3D mock ups first) and also the original book signing pic from last year that started it all.

My merchandise guy, Jack, emailed me today to say that we had a ton of these Manatee Party stickers in stock. https://mhiswag.myshopify.com/collections/whats-hot/products/hoon-party-sticker

There is an election coming up.  As a devout capitalist I realized that the best way to move these awesome stickers was to write a post detailing the political platform of our eloquent candidate Wendell T. Manatee of the Libertarian Space Cowboy Revolution Party* (as heard about in the Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent, available on Audible.com or in Target Rich Environment).

* warning, the LSCRP may not exist in your dimension. If you in a dimension stuck with squishy republicans and lame democrats, sucks to be you. But you can still buy an awesome sticker.

Aquatic-American, CFO of CorreiaTech, former Ghost of Christmas Future, and decorated veteran of the Deep War, Wendell T. Manatee  is currently running for the senate in Florida. So I sat down with Wendell (well, he was floating in his tank) to interview him about the hot button issues of the day. I did my best to translate his answers from majestic manatee into boring old English.

What do you think about the budget?

Manatees are known for their fiscal responsibility. Cut everything. They are called budget cuts because they are supposed to hurt.  If they didn’t hurt, they would be called budget tickles or something.

Taxes?

Taxes are stupid. Keep as much of your money as you can. Spend it on lettuce or Xbox. Wendell does not care.

Gun Control?

From my cold dead flippers.  (when I asked this question, Wendell just chuckled and showed me that his tank was fitted with a nuclear powered plasma cannon).

Social Security?

Why would you trust your retirement to the one entity in the universe which couldn’t turn a profit on a legal whorehouse?  Foolish land mammals.

Immigration?

Immigration is great when it’s legal. Make the process more efficient. Just not dolphins. Dolphins can go to hell. Those guys are the worst.

Healthcare?

 I’m not fat. I just have a protective layer of blubber because I live in the ocean. Mostly I have to watch out for speed boats.  I’ve actually got great cholesterol.

How? I just watched you eat a fifty pound tub of Cheetos? No, I meant the Affordable Care Act. 

Oh that? Obamacare was really dumb. I warned you that your premiums would go way up for crappier insurance, but nobody wanted to listen to the professional finance mammal.

Defense?

Stay off my lawn.

You live in the ocean. You don’t have a lawn.

It’s an idiom. It means I am very nice to everyone and will leave them alone, but if you mess with me, I will blow up your house.

Sounds legit. What about the unsubstantiated allegations that you had an inappropriate relationship with a lady manatee back in 1987?

Bitch be crazy.

What do you think about how even though we are talking about a part of the world where there are no good guys, just degrees of bad guy, and Saudi Arabia has been our “ally” under Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, their current prince is trying to drag their country kicking and screaming into the 1950s, by going against hard core fundamentalists who disagree with his “non-traditional” policies like letting women drive or not blowing up Jews, so even though he’s been disappearing his terrorism supporting relatives for the last couple of years, his  recent ham fisted murder of a Muslim Brotherhood supporting journalist in Turkey, has caused America’s democrats to want us to all of a sudden declare war on Saudi Arabia?

That was one long ass question.

Well, it’s kind of complicated.  I did kind of write a book about this exact sort of thing.

(ponderous shrug) If the Washington Post didn’t want their reporters to get murdered by Saudi secret police, then maybe they shouldn’t hire reporters who got an I Heart Osama Bin Laden tattoo on their butt?

What do you think about all the left wing outrage over NPC memes?

Didn’t you write a movie review a couple of weeks ago because they were calling everyone who disagreed with them a Russian Bot?

Heh… Yeah, that was a good one. https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/10/02/my-russian-bot-review-of-the-last-jedi/

I need more Cheetos.

If elected, you are going to have to work with Senate leadership. What do you think about Mitch McConnell?

He looks like a sea turtle. I know many cunning sea turtles. You can work with sea turtles, but they are never to be trusted.

What do you think about Nancy Pelosi?

She is a Deep One hybrid. You must cast out the spawn of Dagon. During the Battle of Sunken R’lyeh I destroyed many of her kind.

That’s pretty bad ass.

Yes. I am awesome.

It is Book Bomb Day!

A Book Bomb is when we pick out a deserving author who could use a publicity boost, and get as many people as possible to buy their book in the same day on Amazon. The more people who buy, the higher it goes in the sales rankings. Once it gets on some bestseller lists, that gets it in front of even more new eyes. Success breeds success, the author gets new readers, and most importantly, the author GETS PAID.

Today’s Book Bomb is for Primordial Threat, by M.A. Rothman.

I’ve known him for several years, before he launched his own writing career. If you’ll recall the Israeli archaeologist who gets his ass kicked by the ghost of Sextus Bassus  in Monster Hunter Siege was named Dr. Rothman. 🙂

He’s a great guy, and even though he’s just starting his writing career, he’s very talented. I’ve been listening to the Primordial Threat audiobook and it’s really good.

It’s old school, big idea SciFi, man against nature, I’m talking end of our solar system kind of danger, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

So please tell your friends and share the link. The key to a good Book Bomb is getting as many new eyeballs on a deserving author as possible.

This time we are trying something a little different. This is the first time I’ve ever run a weekend Book Bomb. Normally when I schedule a book for a Book Bombing it is way further down the best seller lists, too, and this was when we put it on the calendar. But Rothman asked me to shoot for this date because he was going to be doing a bunch of publicity himself beforehand and drop the eBook price all the way down to 99 cents.

And oh boy, is it working.

Right now, Friday at 8:00 MST:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

• #2 in Colonization Science Fiction eBooks
• #2 in Colonization Science Fiction
• #4 in Terrorism Thrillers

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

• #1398 in Hard Science Fiction
• #3842 in Military Science Fiction

EDIT:   Saturday afternoon, holy moly.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

• #1 in Military Science Fiction
• #1 in Hard Science Fiction
• #1 in Hard Science Fiction

EDIT: Because it was Saturday I wasn’t around my computer as much to update, but Primordial got to #9 in the ENTIRE KINDLE STORE.

It was #1 in every genre it was listed in.