This isn’t a Book Bomb (I’m already way behind on the ones I’ve got scheduled) but a quick heads on a new book from a guy who wrote a previous BB that was really popular with my fans.
I’ve not read it yet, but I saw the other day that the author had run into some unexpected financial troubles, so plug time!
Noir Fatale is out now!
This is an anthology that I edited with Kacey Ezell featuring all new noir themed sci-fi and fantasy stories. It is amazing. There’s a bunch of details in the previous post about the stories.
Noir Fatale is out next week.
This is an anthology that I edited with Kacey Ezell featuring all new noir themed sci-fi and fantasy stories. And it came out awesome.
Some of the stories tie into existing franchisees. We’ve got a new Honor Harrington universe story from David Weber. There’s a new Anita Blake story by Laurell K. Hamilton. I wrote a Grimnoir story, set in 1954 to prep for the next Grimnoir trilogy.
But then most of the stories are for new worlds you’ve not seen before. And I enjoyed all of them.
Kacey Ezell writes about a post WW3 femme fatale. Christopher Smith and Michael Ferguson tell the story of a hard boiled PI solving a murder on a space station. Griffin Barber takes a necromancer on a heist.
One that I was really excited about was Kuro, by Hinkley Correia, partly because she’s my daughter, but also because her story about a down on his luck, ghost hunting, detective in Tokyo was awesome. (and she’s working on a book in the setting).
Steve Diamond’s story is set in the fantasy world we are currently doing a novel collaboration in, and involves one of the Tzar’s secret policemen chasing after a golem smuggling ring. Patrick Tracy’s story is great. Imagine playing in a D&D campaign where Raymond Chandler was the GM. That’s the world of Remnar.
Mike Massa gives you a look into his Genius Loci series with a really cool WW2 adventure story. Alistair Kimble has this atmospheric piece, crime story, that’s hard to explain but so good. Robert Buettner did a love story on the moon, and Sarah Hoyt’s missing person investigation takes some weird turns. I loved it.
Okay, I think I didn’t forget anybody. But honestly, I had a great time editing this with Kacey, because all the stories were good from the get go, which really makes an editor’s life easy!
The Monster Hunter Guardian eARC is out now!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Baen eARCs, that’s an Electronic Advanced Reader Copy. That’s an early version of the book that normally only gets sent to reviewers, but Baen also sells them to readers several months before the book comes out. (the official release for Guardian, hard cover, ebook, and audio, will be in August). eARCs are not copy edited so as a bonus you get to see all our typos. (on that note, my manuscripts are pretty clean so there isn’t usually much difference between the eARC and the final)
This is the next book in the regular MHI series and is about Julie Shackleford. It’s a collaboration between me and Sarah Hoyt, because I love the voice she came up with for Julie. It overlaps with Siege in the timeline.
Here’s the back cover blurb:
When Owen Pitt and the rest of the Monster Hunter International crew are called away to mount a month’s-long rescue mission in a monster-infested nightmare dimension, Julie Shackleford—Owen’s wife and descendant of MHI founder Bubba Shackelford—is left behind. Her task: hold down the fort and take care of her new baby son Ray. Julie’s devoted to the little guy, but the slow pace of office work and maternity leave are starting to get to her. But when a routine field call brings her face-to-face with an unspeakable evil calling itself Brother Death, she’ll get more excitement than she ever hoped for.
Julie is the Guardian of a powerful ancient artifact known as the Kamaresh Yar, and Brother Death wants it. In the wrong hands, it could destroy reality as we know it. Julie would die before giving it up.
Then Ray goes missing, taken by Brother Death. The price for his safe return: the Kamaresh Yar. If Julie doesn’t hand over the artifact it means death—or worse—for baby Ray. With no other choice left to her, Julie agrees to Brother Death’s demands. But when you’re dealing with an ancient evil, the devil is in the details.
To reclaim her son, Julie Shackleford will have to fight her way through necromantic death cults, child-stealing monsters, and worse. And she’ll have to do it all before Brother Death can unleash the Kamaresh Yar.
It’s one woman against an army of monsters. But Julie Shackelford is no ordinary woman—she’s one tough mother!
Yes, I know I haven’t blogged much lately. But it’s been busy.
My family spent the first part of the month in Florida for vacation. We went to Disney World, and the beach, and all that stuff, but honestly it’s all about the manatees. It was awesome.
So let me give you a brief update about with what is going on:
Appearances
I’ll be at FanX in Salt Lake City this weekend. My schedule is in the last blog post.
I’ll be teaching a World Building class at FyreCon in June.
I’ll be at SpikeCon in July.
And I’m happy to announce that I’ll be the guest of honor at FantiSci next year.
Book Stuff
Noir Fatale is out next month! This is an anthology of Noir themed sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by me and Kacey Ezell.
Monster Hunter Guardian, by me and Sarah Hoyt is out in August.
Target Rich Environment 2, the second volume of my short fiction collection, is out in December.
I am currently working on Tom Stranger 3 for Audible.
After that I’ll be going back to work on Destroyer of Worlds, the 3rd book in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series. It will be out Fall 2020.
John D. Brown will be sending me the rough draft for our sci-fi collaboration in a few weeks, then the ball is back in my court.
Steve Diamond is still working on our fantasy collaboration.
And there’s lots more planned.
Personal Stuff
Building a house is a big project. Getting a big chunk of mountainside, and developing it by putting in half a mile of road, digging a well, running half a mile of power, moving hundreds of tons of rock and dirt (plus all the paperwork and government hoop jumping for every step) and THEN building a giant ass house on top of that, through one of the wettest, snowiest, never ending winters in a long time (seriously, the ski resort we are next to just got six inches of fresh powder in mid APRIL!) and all that together makes for a really BIG FREAKING PROJECT.
We’ve been working on Yard Moose Mountain for three years now. However, the end is in sight, and we are only a couple of months out of completion. Our contractors have been amazing. If you are going to build a house in northern Utah, look up Randall Brothers Construction. They are meticulous.
All of this house stuff has cut into my productivity, but honestly it hasn’t been too bad. My wife is the one who has decision fatigue. Its like every other day for the last few months she’s had to go somewhere to pick out what color/style she wants of something. The biggest time suck for me was bank stuff last year, because even though I make pretty good money, the sporadic and unpredictable way writers get paid confuses and frightens underwriters. I actually had to get Toni Weisskopf to send the bank a letter explaining how royalties work. 😀
Misc
The MHI RPG is moving along. All we are waiting for now is the printing of the books. All the KS backers who didn’t have physical books have been sent their stuff.
