Last week’s Scene of the Month post was an excerpt from Dragon Stones, which prompted my friend Almostgotit to plead, “More Dragon Stones, please!” So after careful consideration, I have decided to give Almostgotit, and anyone else who wants it, more Dragon Stones (which are not to be confused with, say, kidney stones). In fact, here’s the whole thing:
Category: Books
Scene-Of-The-Month: April 2009
The votes are in and the readers’ choice for a “scene of the month” is A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder, which squeaked in ahead of Dragon Stones by one vote. Pulling down a copy of Crows off the shelf and flipping through it to a random page, I now present not one scene, but two, back-to-back; because that’s how we roll around here.
Together, these two scenes form the pivotal section of Crows that could be described as “the part where everything starts going straight to hell”.
New Feature: Scene-Of-The-Month
This is a feature that my wife suggested a while ago: Putting up a few random paragraphs from my books once a month or so. She also suggested putting up a poll so readers can choose which book they want to see excerpted. My wife is so smart! Here’s the poll:
The books are tagged (broadly) by genre: “F” for Fantasy, “H” for Horror, and “DF” for Dark Fantasy (essentially fantasy with a strong horror element, or horror with a strong fantasy element). At the end of the month, I will choose a scene at random from the book with the most votes and put it into a post. I won’t choose scenes that give away major plot twists, but other than that, pretty much anything will go.
I’ve decided to start with the prologue from my nowhere-near-finished werewolf novel (unimaginative working title: The Wolf). It’s a very short scene, but I like it.
Stumbling Into The Horror Field
In the comments for my “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds” post, Almostgotit asked how I got into writing horror and why I got out. Like many things in life, I just sort of stumbled into it, but getting out again was a little more complicated.
New (To Me) “Night Watchman” Review
As I mentioned a while back, I periodically Google myself to see if there are any new reviews or other mentions of my stuff. Evidently I don’t do it often enough, though, because I’ve only just now become aware of this review (published last August by Sharon of A Bookworm’s Journey; Sharon’s dog Rusty is good friends with Dennis the Vizsla, and the two can often be found conspiring together against the squirrels) of Night Watchman. A brief excerpt:
Once I started it it was hard to put down. The characters and places Viscosi created were engaging, interesting. I would have loved for Yolanda, a psychic, to have had a bigger part.
I can’t argue with that — by the time I was done writing this book, Yolanda had become my favorite character as well. Perhaps she’ll get her own story some day …
Sharon gives Night Watchman 4 out of 5 stars. Thanks, Sharon!
Review: “Homefront”
This week I finished up reading Homefront, by Kristen Tsetsi. (You may have seen the occasional comment from Kristen here.) I don’t usually write book reviews here, because it’s difficult to apply my snarky rating system to them (“this book put my wife to sleep in N minutes” … nah, doesn’t really work), but I’m making an exception for Kristen because I really want to encourage people to pick up her novel.
Random Rejection: Ashley Grayson Agency
As I’ve mentioned before, I spent a lot of time trying to get an agent. A couple of times (three, to be exact) I succeeded in getting an agent. Unfortunately, Dan Hooker at the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency was not one of them.
Random Rejection: Design Image Group, “Night Watchman”
So one of the things you hear when you are submitting fiction, especially long-form fiction, is that lengthy response times are good. It means that the publisher is seriously considering your manuscript, that it has probably passed from the slush pile through the first readers and is perhaps, even right now as we speak, sitting on an editor’s desk awaiting the final stamp of approval before it is accepted.
Or it could just mean that your rejection letter was lost in the mail.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Design Image Group, “Night Watchman””
Oops
A while back I mentioned that Dragon Stones was now available on Amazon.com and BN.com, but Long Before Dawn hadn’t arrived there yet. I recently took another look and LBD still wasn’t out in the big stores. So I went back to Lulu and took a closer look at the project and noticed that, way down under the “price” section, it said something to the effect of “To be set when your book is approved”. So evidently I forgot to click the “Approve” button after getting my last proof of LBD way back in, oh, April was it? Just think of all the millions of dollars in sales I’ve lost because of that! 😐
Anyway, I have now clicked the “Approve” button, so Long Before Dawn should be showing up on Amazon.com and the other outlets soon.
Dragon Stones Now On Amazon, B&N
Today, during my semi-monthly auto-Googling, I discovered that Dragon Stones has made its way out to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and the like. Interestingly enough, Long Before Dawn hasn’t reached those outlets yet, but it is available from online bookstores in the U.K. Go figure. Perhaps the British are more amenable than the Americans to proper vampire stories, where the vampires are monsters.
Anyway, for all my legions of fans out there who have just been waiting to be able to purchase my two latest books from somewhere other than Lulu.com (you know who you are), your wish has been granted! You can get Dragon Stones from Amazon.com or BN.com, and Long Before Dawn from Blackwell Online and WHSmith in the U.K. Both should be available elsewhere as well.
Viscosity 