Yes, I know. It’s been over a month since my last blog post, but I’ve been kinda busy.
Appearances
I will be a guest at TupeloCon in Mississippi in a few weeks.
At the end of March I will be at FantaSci in North Carolina.
If you are anywhere in the area, stop on by. It should be fun.
LTUE was last week. For those of you not familiar with that, it’s a writing conference held every Valentine’s Day weekend in Provo Utah. I think this was my 11th year in a row. It’s probably the single best writing con there is (that doesn’t cost a bunch of money, LTUE is like $20 or something to attend for 3 days).
LTUE is focused more on writers trying to get better at writing, than fannish stuff, though there is that too. I was on a bunch of panels on various topics. I did a two hour solo presentation on crunchy business stuff for writers, like contracts, taxes, incorporation, advertising, scheduling, etc. It was basically the When Can I Quit My Day Job class for writers who have figured out how to sell their work, but now what? Then I did the Larry Show kaffeeklatsch thing, and then since Tony Daniel had to leave early to take care of a sick kid, I took over his presentation on contracts (which I’d just touched on earlier that day, and now got to spend an hour on things like advances, royalties, remainders, sub rights, foreign translations, audio, reversion of rights, and what to look out for from crappy predator contracts). So Saturday was 4 straight hours of me talking.
I did a reading on Thursday, of the first half of the story I did for Laurell K. Hamilton’s Fantastic Hope anthology coming out in April. Judging by audience reaction, it’s actually pretty funny. Good! Because I think I’m hilarious when I’m making this crap up, but I can’t tell until you guys actually see it!
This year my friend Brad Torgersen was the writer guest of honor, which was pretty fun to watch. He’s earned it. He’s extremely talented, has supported LTUE for a decade, and he just won a Dragon Award. The very best part of Brad being GoH however was that it caused several of the Shrieking Harpies of Tolerance to throw a temper tantrum and declare that they were going to boycott the event (and they did, yet absolutely nobody missed them). Upon hearing that I asked if they could make Brad emeritus GoH every year forever, because that’s like putting a tick collar on a dog.
From what I heard on Saturday, this was the biggest LTUE there’s ever been, with a record number of attendees.
Writing Stuff
Last year was a busy year, with Monster Hunter Guardian, Target Rich Environment, and Tom Stranger 3. (and Dead Six was rereleased as an Omnibus!)
This year my big release is in October, because that’s when Destroyer of Worlds comes out. Originally the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior was pitched as 3 books, but when I told Toni the story I had planned, she’d laughed and said there was no way that would fit in a trilogy. She’s right. It’ll probably be 5 or 6.
I’ve also got a bunch of shorts in various places this year, but I’ll post about each of those when they get closer and I’ll put up preorder links.
I didn’t get as much writing done in 2019 as I normally would, but that was because of the epic house building/moving project. It turns out that developing a big chunk of mountainside in the middle of nowhere and then building a really big house on it is time consuming. Since that’s been wrapped productivity is back at normal levels. (I’ve averaged about 2 books and change a year for ten years now)
Right now I am working on a sci-fi collaboration with John D. Brown. This is the one that was originally brain stormed live on an LTUE panel years ago, based on ideas given to us by my (at the time) 11 year old son. I’m hoping to have it wrapped in March.
After that I will either be working on the next main series MHI novel (back to Owen’s perspective) OR the first book of the next Grimnoir trilogy. I’ve got them both planned, so it’ll just depend on what makes more sense to get out to the fans sooner.
