The votes are in and the readers’ choice for Scene of the Month for July is my unfinished werewolf novel The Wolf. Since I posted the prologue a few months ago, I figured I would follow it up with the scene that immediately follows it. Enjoy!
Tag: Books
Scene-Of-The-Month: June 2009
The results of voting are in and once again Dragon Stones is the readers’ choice for a scene of the month! Taking the book off the shelf and flipping to a random page got me this scene, which is quite near the beginning and, once again, involves some misfortune befalling poor Adaran. There really is a dragon in this book, honest — in fact, in this scene, Adaran and his companions have just returned from a raid on her lair. I just haven’t pulled any scenes yet in which the dragon actually appears. But if Dragon Stones keeps winning the polls, I’m sure she will turn up here eventually.
Just a reminder: The Dragon Stones PDF file can be found here.
Dragon Stones
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:
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.
Random Rejection: Maria Carvainis Agency
Well after the last couple of weeks of me being chatty about my checkered past in the horror field, this week we are back on more familiar ground, with a lovely random rejection letter from the Maria Carvainis Agency:
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.
Recall
A while back, I sent a copy of Dragon Stones to the artist in Italy. With his sharp artist’s eye, he noticed that the cover illustration of the dragon was not anti-aliased properly. This problem has now been fixed, and the cover art looks much better — the lines are smooth rather than pixellated and the details are sharper.
I’m of the mind that anyone who bought Dragon Stones with the pixellated cover art is deserving of a pristine copy that looks the way the artist intended. If you have a copy of the book and would like to get the updated version, please let me know and I will send you one free of charge. (Obviously you shouldn’t post your address information in a public comment, so feel free to e-mail me at the listed address.)
Now, some might say that this could be an expensive thing for me to do. But don’t worry. I know how many copies of Dragon Stones have been sold, and it won’t be. (Too bad …)
Dragon Stones: A Lulu Of A Review
So I found out today that someone wrote a capsule review of Dragon Stones on Lulu.com. (My father, who keeps closer track of this sort of thing than I do, let me know about it.) With some trepidation I went to read the review, but I needn’t have worried — this is the best review I’ve gotten since M. Kenyon Charboneaux rated Night Watchman “1,000 on a scale of 1-5”. Although the review is anonymous, let me assure everyone that I didn’t write it myself; I was busy in the mountains all day today!
Dragon Stones6 out of 61 Jun 2008byThe story captures the reader right away with interesting characters and descriptive writing. The writer is, in fact, facile with words and the book is an easy read. While it follows the adventure genre of characters moving from situation to situation, one does not wonder, as with some novels, when the string of obstacles will end. I might add that the cast of characters is diverse and interesting. Although it is a lengthy novel, it was not overlong and kept my interest. While the ending ties everything up decently, there are enough strings left for a couple of sequels, and I, for one hope they follow soon.
To the anonymous reviewer: I don’t have any sequels in the works right now, but I’ve got plans … 😉
Viscosity 