My novel House of Assassins won the Dragon Award for Best Fantasy

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Yesterday was the Dragon Awards at DragonCon. I won best fantasy with House of Assassins.

The Dragons are the premier fan popularity award. They’re open to everybody.

This is a huge honor. Thank you everyone. Congratulations to all the other winners and to all the nominees.  A bunch of my friends won as well, and congratulations to them. Some fantastic authors were recognized. A bunch of my friends were nominated but didn’t win, they were up there with the best of the best and I am sure you will get another chance.

On that note about chances, I asked you guys not to nominate me this year because I’d already won before, and I’d love for you to give other authors an opportunity to shine too. But you nominated me  anyway because you’re an oppositionally defiant bunch who does whatever you want.  (I think every time I mentioned the Dragons I specifically asked, please don’t nominate me again, and you guys were all like Am I Being Detained! You’re Not My Supervisor!)

But seriously, I want the Dragons to be successful for a long time. That means sharing the love.  I love DragonCon and will continue to promote the Dragons because I want them to have a gigantic number of participants that dwarfs other fan awards. I want everybody who loves sci-fi and fantasy to have a home free of snooty high-school mean girl gatekeepers.  I want everybody to have fun. So next year when you are nominating the books you loved, if I was #1, just bump me down a notch to give your next guy a shot. Getting recognized means a lot to an author, and I want others to experience that too.

You guys are awesome. My fans are amazing and I love you. I’ve got the best fan base in the business. Thank you. House of Assassins is probably one of the best books I’ve ever written, but that’s because the people at Baen are fantastic and I’ve got amazing editors. And thank you DragonCon for being all about fun, and putting the good times back in this business.  To the other nominees, you guys rock. Keep doing what you’re doing and keep making your fans happy.

This Week On The Internet

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Just as an illustration of how incredibly screwed up we are, this week on the social media:

I saw somebody declare that it was good they had stripped Campbell’s name from the best new writer award because we had learned that his views were “problematic” (he was guilty of being alive when he was alive, and not a woke time traveler from 2019) but then to back up how/why Campbell was a horrible bad thinker who should be shunned once we learned of his sins, she linked to an article by novelist Sam Delaney… who supports NAMBLA.

My personal opinion on the Campbell controversy (and I was actually nominated for one of those when I was a newb!) is that these people are hysterical idiots, and the “Astounding Award” sounds like it should be a paper star you pin on the best behaved Kindergartner. But in a completely unrelated note DragonCon should get Bruce Campbell to host the Dragon Awards, and that year they should add a Best New Author category, which people could then refer to as the Campbell Award for short, but which would in no way have anything to do with anybody else’s estate or trademarks. Groovy.

Then I saw morons declaring that Dave Chappell is a white supremacist now, and we shouldn’t watch him because he’s a hatey hate person of hate (so I’ll probably watch it this weekend because I love Dave).

In a FB hobby group that I’m in, where I never ever go political because I’m not an obnoxious twit (I’m just there for the mini painting) people were talking about how in this imaginary few hundred years in the future sci-fi war game setting, they didn’t like how Islam was being portrayed (and ironically, this is a world where every faction does bad stuff, they’re fairly decent). One guy said he was happy with it and that if he wanted a realistic portrayal of Islam he’d make all his female minis were burkas and hit the gay ones with rocks. He was immediately attacked as a racist, bigot, islamophobe, so on and so forth. The ironic part? The guy who said it was a Muslim immigrant from Iran, joking about the problems in the culture he came from, who then got screamed at and told he needed to “get educated” by a bunch of white American liberals.

Also, the Hong Kong protestors are white supremacists now. So Dave is in good company.

I saw everybody freak out one day about how Trump was stripping birthright citizenship from military babies, and 24 hours later like maybe 1/10th of those people who freaked out posting about how the articles they shared the day before had gotten it wrong.

I learned that my new house is bigger than Barack Obama’s (but I’m still not a *real* writer, sigh), only mine is up high in the mountains, and his is a terrible investment because it will be underwater within 12 years… I actually don’t know which did more damage to the catastrophic global warming narrative this week, Michael Mann’s inability to show his homework, or Obama’s house. Probably Obama’s house.

Because I’m Mormon and a gun nut, I had a lot of people ask me about the news articles that were going around saying the church had banned guns from church buildings. It’s a stupid policy, but not new. They just updated the general handbook (that’s like the binder for how to run a ward). They’ve already banned guns from church buildings since back when I was teaching CCW ten years ago. A multitude of us ignore it and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The handbook also says I’m not supposed to use foul language, and you can see how well that has stuck.

I had lefties randomly screech at me for a wide variety of topics. That’s so common I can’t remember most of them. You kind of tune them out after a while. I get a lot of rando strangers showing up to scream at me every Hugo season. It’s the annual running of the Chorfs.

But in the spirit of bipartisan fairness, exactly one week ago I got screeched at by people on the right because I said if you are an American and any politician says they “Hereby Command” you to do anything, whether you agree with them or not, your response had better be a reflexive Fuck Off or you are a sorry excuse for an American and need to quit being such a pussy.

Voting for the Dragon Awards ends this week. It’s free, and open to everyone

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Voting for the Dragon Awards ends this week:

https://www.dragoncon.org/awards/

I’d like to encourage everybody to go and register to vote. If you are a fan of sci-fi or fantasy you really should do it. It’s free. It only takes a minute. But the important thing here is that the Dragon is designed to be a real honest to goodness popularity award for all of fandom, so the more people participating in the process, the stronger it becomes.

I believe the voting closes on Saturday and the awards will be announced on Sunday.

There are some fantastic authors in the running. I’ve got a bunch of friends competing against each other, so I’m not going to say who I’m voting for.

I’m in there for best fantasy for House of Assassins. I did ask my fans to nominate somebody other than me because I’ve won before, but they just kinda do what they want regardless. But anyways, I’m in there now, and honestly I’m really proud of House of Assassins. I think it’s one of my best books.

But I don’t care if you vote for me. I don’t care who you vote for. The important thing is just go vote.

Special Limited Edition Leather Hard Magic Available Now, limited quantities only

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Vault Books has shipped all of the preordered copies of the limited edition, leather bound Hard Magic.

The rest are available here: https://www.vaultbooks.pub/store/p19/Hard_Magic.html

And I’ve just got to say that these are quite literally the prettiest book I’ve ever seen. These would make amazing Christmas presents. I’m not joking, these are gorgeous. I’ll put up some pictures but they don’t do the books justice.

The lettered copies with the slip case are all sold out. The numbered copies, I think there’s like 200 left. So if you want one you should probably snag it sooner rather than later.

There is an outer slip cover that uses the Vincent Chong artwork from the French edition. That’s still my favorite cover I’ve ever had.

This is the heavy duty cover for the lettered editions. There was only A-Z of those.

We got Vincent Chong (who is amazing, and a fan of the series) to do a bunch of new full color interior artwork.

I’m talking full page too. 😀

And every copy has been autographed.

To give you an idea of how solid these look, Steve showed me the first copy at SpikeCon. David Weber saw it and thought it was amazing. David got the next copy out of the box.  There are perks to being David Weber!

Double Barrel Book Bomb, Escalation by Peter Nealen and Militia Up by J.L. Curtis

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A Book Bomb is when I 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.

A little while ago I did a double barrel Book Bomb, where instead of pushing one book, I picked two. That seemed to work really well so we’re going to try to do that again. Plus, one of them is from Krasnovia and other flew for Pinelandia during the war so I hope that this Book Bomb will help heal the rift between our peoples. And get me a Nobel Peace Prize, because that would look pretty sweet on the shelf next to my Dragon Awards.

However, if you’ve been following my blog over the last week you know we’ve got a wrinkle. I’ve been on Facebook for a few hours in a row without being banned, but I don’t know how long that will last. So I’m hoping that you guys spread the word on this one. Tell your friends, and spread the link, because Peter and Jim are two great guys who could use the publicity boost.

Escalation (Maelstrom Rising)

 

by Peter Nealen

Rimworld- Militia Up

 

by J.L. Curtis

 

 

I’ve known both of these guys for a long time. Peter is a former recon Marine. Jim was a naval aviator. They’re both good friends, and more importantly to you both of them can write visceral, tense, punch you in the gut action. And probably even more important than that, it looks like both of these are available for FREE if you’ve got Kindle Unlimited. (and actually I’ve got no idea how that will effect our stats, but here goes!)

I’ll update the stats throughout the day so we can see how we’re doing.  I prepped this blog post Monday afternoon, and right now Escalation is at:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,738 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

And Rimworld is at:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,311 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

UPDATE 1:  Things really jumped over night. The reason I start launching the Book Bombs the night before is that Amazon has like a 12 hour delay before the sales register, so this way during the day we can watch the exciting number climb. (well, it probably isn’t that exciting to most of you but to the authors it is!) 🙂

Peter jumped up 30,000 spots.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,682 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

And holy moly, Jim about 218,000 spots.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,933 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Now let’s really flog these books and get these guys on some bestseller lists! Tell your friends.

UPDATE 2:  For the lunch crowd we are still ticking upwards

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,737 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

and

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,647 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

If we get either one of these to #1 I will record me singing the Krasnovian National Anthem.

UPDATE 3:  Dinnertime Update (and Bridge made me jambalaya for my birthday)

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,176 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,219 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Uh oh, we’ve got a #5. Am I going to have to sing the Krasnovian National Anthem for you guys?

UPDATE 4: I’m going to bed. This one has been odd, we got a bigger earlier push, but not as big a spike during the day. Which makes me think that I put up the blog post too early yesterday. We should hit the peak numbers sometime late tonight as the afternoon sales clock in.

For Peter:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,034 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

For Jim:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,021 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)