Son of the Black Sword is doing pretty darned good. I was curious how my first foray into epic fantasy would do compared to my regular urban fantasy, but it has been really solid, steady sales for months now. Audio especially has been great. It appears that this is my best reviewed book yet. Plus many of my regular fans were surprised that I could get all literary nuanced and shit.
But anyways, Son of the Black Sword made the LA Times holiday picks:
It is kind of funny. I’ve gone my whole career without hardly ever being mentioned in any of the mainstream review places. That’s been true for most Baen authors. But not this year. Now we’re popping up all over the place. Go figure. 🙂
And Son of the Black Sword was picked as one of the best audiobooks of the year:
So in the fantasy category, my book with a Jim Butcher cover blurb, came in only behind Jim Butcher. Because Jim Butcher wins at life. When notified of this (mostly by me typing CURSE YOU BUTCHER!!! on facebook) Jim told me I need to add a dog, because people love dogs. Note to self. Add dog to next book. This time, don’t have werewolf eat it.
So last night I got a message from my sister. She’d been watching Jeopardy and I guess this one kind of took her by surprise. Thanks to her heads up fans got screen shots and video when it aired in the next time zone. (it was the first time in years that I’ve regretted cancelling cable)
Originally, because my sister didn’t have a chance to catch the exact wording, fans were asking on Facebook if the question was biased. My response was that I doubted it, because unlike most of the news media, Jeopardy still has fact checkers.
Some Puppy supporters didn’t like how it was phrased, with “scandal” having negative implications. Personally, I like it. Especially the part where they used “Rocked”. Damn right. Rocked you like a hurricane. The scandal was the part where the CHORFs ran a lying media smear campaign, and handed out wooden butt holes, while block voting No Award to keep out barbarian Wrongfans having Wrongfun.
But the awards totally aren’t biased. They’re prestigious. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.
Someone else on FB wondered if former Jeopardy champ, Social Justice Warrior, and all around douchebag Arthur Chu would have something stupid to say about this? Probably… But everything Chu says is stupid, so that won’t be surprising. Luckily this happened when he wasn’t on, because then Chu would’ve had to call in a fake bomb threat against Alex Trebek or something.
My original goal was to expose the bias, insular, cliquish realities of the supposedly prestigious awards to the rest of the world. We’re on Jeopardy… Yeah… Going to say that worked. 😀
But did the contestants get it right?
EDIT: Oh look. Our inevitable link back from File 770, as Glyer-50-Hugos hopes desperately for relevance and traffic. Hey, everybody. Wave at the doofuses.
How many doofi… Let me check the stats… Top 10? Keep scrolling. Top 20 referrers? Keep scrolling. Holy shit. How lame is your traffic, Glyer? No wonder you keep linking to everything I write! 😀
Toni Weisskopf and I did an interview for the Baen podcast where I went into great detail about Son of the Black Sword, the writing process, and some of the stuff I tried to accomplish.
I did two radio interviews this morning arguing against gun control and further government encroachment on civil liberties. I’m about interviewed out. 🙂
Jack Wylder here, with your (now) weekly update on the progress of the coins.
(I would have put this up a while back but I wanted to leave Larry’s post about those Awesome MHI Lower and then his most recent thoughts on gun control on the top for a few days…) First let me get this out of the way: the website is not being attacked. We are aware that Larry’s recent temerity in posting once again about gun control has broken the internet and we are taking steps to fix it. (My goodness are we aware- it took me at least 15minutes to get this to post!) Accordingly, Weds night after midnight the site might be even more troubled than usual but it should be short lived and will hopefully once again take care of things for another 6 months at least. (If the ILoH would quit irreparably damaging his career maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about his personal servers STILL not being enough to keep up with the traffic…) My predecessor, Jack Wylder the XVII has been properly disciplined and I will be sure to get it working again promptly. Thank you.
Now on to coins… the lovely Mrs Wylder and the CorreiaTech Mamma Packing Brigade (assisted by myself, of course) have been burning through the packing and we are finally making some serious headway. At this point we have hundreds and hundreds of orders packaged (and filling the dining hall of CorreiaTech’s Texas Embassy.) Most of you should have received your tracking number emails- if you haven’t gotten yours yet, we’re getting to you just as quickly as we can. Keep in mind, though, that even if you got the email your package might not yet be on its way- I still have to drive these to the local PO. (I should be able to get at least one batch delivered tomorrow after work. Maybe two. My jeep can only handle so many boxes at once…) At this point we have three different sets of eyes reviewing each order so there shouldn’t be any mistakes in what is delivered and we are taping these boxes nine ways to Sunday so there shouldn’t be any empty boxes delivered this time. We’re not done yet, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel now. I’m still not comfortable guaranteeing delivery before Christmas (but it IS still the goal and at this point it looks possible.)
This last weekend was for me just a perfect example of why I am a devout Capitalist. The CorreiaTech MPB worked hard and got a huge amount of orders packed, making our Customers happy, they were very well paid for their work (don’t tell anyone, but the ILoH is actually an incredibly generous dread overlord and these are all incredibly deserving ladies whose children will now have a much merrier Christmas/Happier Chanukah), the lovely Mrs Wylder is one step closer to having that half of her house back, yours truly is one step closer to being able to take a breath before plunging into the next CorreiaTech Special Project we have planned (that I am SO excited about), and Larry is one step closer to getting HIS coins (since he has decreed that, like last time, his is the last order shipped.) Win-win-win-win-win. Yay Capitalism!
Since the last post threatening to start cancelling orders I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive support and thanks coming in from the Monster Hunter Nation- thank you all so much! You’re the reason we do this to ourselves.
Ok on to the FAQ:
Q: Why can’t I order patches? I wanted them for Christmas!
A: That sucks and we are truly sorry. As stated before, when you find yourself in a hole the first step is to stop digging. We will get the store re-stored (heh) as quickly as we can but we have to fulfill our current obligations before taking on any new ones.
Q: I live overseas and still haven’t gotten my coins!
A: Again, I am very sorry about that. I’ve had to triage these orders to get as many out as quickly as possible and unfortunately with all of the customs declaration paperwork that goes with export orders I’ve had to push the domestic orders to the front. I will get your orders headed out as quickly as I can.
That’s all I can think of right now- I still have about 400 more packages to get into boxes and time is short so I’m going to wrap this up. Any other Q&A s I missed, just put ‘em in the comments and I’ll get to them as soon as I can. Thank you all again for your patience and support- you are all amazing and we appreciate you very much. I’ll update again next week and let you know where we stand.
