I will be at Book Expo in New York City next week. This is an industry show, I don’t think there is anything open to the public, and I’m booked up with business stuff the whole time. So I won’t be doing any regular events or even playing tourist while I’m there.

I’ll have the full calender of my tour stops and cons for the rest of the year posted as soon as I get back. I just needed to figure a few things out schedule wise before posting. People have been asking, yes, I will be at DragonCon. I’m going to ALA too, but that is causing me to miss LibertyCon. I’ve got about a month of tour around the release of Son of the Black Sword, and I’ll post all those soon.

Speaking of which, Jim Butcher read it and loved it. He wrote a blurb for the cover. Jim is a very talented author, I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, so that was pretty neat. Beyond the blurb he gave me a bunch of feedback on the plot. Jim got what I was trying to do and what I’m working towards. He’s a perceptive guy. 🙂

Some of you have noticed that on the eARC for Son of the Black Sword the cover has changed.
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-2688-son-of-the-black-sword-earc.aspx

The basic black cover is now the cover for the hard back. The Larry Elmore painting is now a full color art page in the front with the maps. This was one of those marketing decisions that the author didn’t have much to do with. There was a bunch of discussion. I trust my marketing people, so if that’s what they say to do, that’s what we’ll do.

People ask me how much say an author has over their cover. At first? Zip. And by the time you are successful enough that your opinion actually does count, that means you’ve sold enough books that you trust the people who sell them for you.

That said, this picture is still totally bad ass, and I’m glad it is in there as a glossy art page. (I’m also putting it on my wall in a nice frame).

The packet of samples is now available for download.

 http://sasquan.org/hugo-awards/packet_download/ 

It should go without saying, but apparently I need to plainly state the blatantly obvious, everyone should read the nominations and vote honestly.

Check this out.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1486366537/champions-of-aetaltis-a-heroic-fantasy-anthology

Marc Tassin put this fiction anthology together. It features a bunch of really good authors with all new stories.

I first met Marc at GenCon, where he is one of the organizers of the writing track. He told me about his RPG project, and the world he’d created for it. He wanted to know if I’d write a story for it. I get a lot of writing requests and have to turn most of them down, but after I read through the world guide, I had to do it. They’ve created something unique and fun here.

In the world of Aetaltis there is an order of mystical warrior monks called the Kinjatsi. There is also a stoic, tough race called the Drothmal, who worship the god of suffering. Once I got done reading the world guide, I contacted Marc and asked if anybody had claimed Kinjatsi. No? Score. 🙂

My story is already done and turned in, and I think it came out pretty darned good if I do say so myself.  So please, check it out.

The eBook for my first novel, Monster Hunter International, is available for free right now. We just added MHI to the Baen Free Library.

My publisher follows the same basic marketing philosophy as crack dealers. The first hit is free! If you like it, there is a whole lot more where that came from.

I don’t know if this is the final or not, but it is pretty freaking awesome. 🙂  (yes, this is the book that I am working on with Mike Kupari right now)  We’ve been calling it Project Blue for years, but that won’t be the name of the book.

At the link you can see the evolution of drafts. It is pretty interesting stuff. http://www.kmistudio.com/blog/index.php/gallery/image_full/322/