Hark, An Announcement!

Hello all. I hope this Boxing Day or Kwanzaa or Monday December 26 finds you well, and that this season has seen you enjoying exactly the Holiday celebrations you wish with the people you treasure. 

Folks who follow me on Twitter may have noted a few cryptic "I have cool news I can't announce yet" tweets in the past couple of months. I wasn't exactly under an NDA or anything, but I wanted to keep this under my hat until I knew it was truly happening, and now I do. 

I've signed an audiobook deal for The Paladin Trilogy with Podium Publishing. 

This happened several weeks ago and I've been keeping it fairly close except largely for family members and beta readers. The even more exciting news than that it's happening is that they are going to be narrated by none other than the amazing Michael Kramer, who has narrated the work of Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Ken Liu, and countless others. It's an honor and a pleasure to know that Ordination is in his hands and that he will be bringing Allystaire, Idgen Marte, Torvul, and Mol to life. 

I want to thank all my original readers and everyone else who has read Ordination, written reviews, foisted it on friends and family members, talked it up to other fantasy readers, left ratings on Goodreads or reviews on Amazon so far. I also especially want to thank Andrew Gifford and the entire team at SFWP for all the work they have put in as well, and for having had the belief in my work to put it in print in the first place. 

I don't yet know a release date, but as soon as I have one I'll be sharing it with everyone. 

Thank you, and Happy New Year. 

Stillbright Cover Reveal

Greetings! 

Well, the release of Ordination: Book I of The Paladin Trilogy is imminent. The official release date is June 1, but Amazon is going to be shipping pre-orders this coming week (so make sure to get yours in today and take advantage of the ebook sale if print is dead to you). 

With that being said, I'm going to be off selling and signing copies for the second time this spring, and since so many of you are going to be meeting Allystaire and Idgen Marte in the next few days, I thought I'd reveal the cover of Stillbright: Book II of The Paladin Trilogy. 

Largely, I'm happy to let Kerem Beyit's beautiful art speak for itself. What I love about this image the most, besides the simple fact that it features Idgen Marte, who I hope many of you will come to enjoy as much as I do, is how much of her character this image manages to showcase. Whatever is happening out of frame, she knows about it, has assessed it, and is readying herself to deal with it, while Allystaire has barely noticed anything. 

Reviews and ARCS and Appearances....

This week represented a pretty significant milestone for Ordination: Book I of The Paladin Trilogy. 

I got my first review, from Publisher's Weekly. You can read it here.  They liked it! They call it promising, single out characters and dialogue, two things I work really, really hard on. I'm not gonna lie; this was pretty exciting, and I must've read the paragraph two or three dozen times by now. I know I should probably be acting cool and composed about it, acting like I've been here before, tempering my enthusiasm...but you know what? 

Screw that. 

I haven't been here before. This is my first novel, I've been working on it since August of 2011, and getting a good review right out of the gate from a big publication felt great.

I only let it feel great for a day, though, and went right back to working on Stillbright: Book II of The Paladin Trilogy which is now in the developmental/copy edit stage. I'm not going to bore you with craft talk (I'll do that some other time) but this is easily the most difficult part for me. It's no longer in the fun, creative, anything-can-happen-and-who-knows-what-it'll-be-stage. It's a real thing that I'm working on with other people, with expectations, with professionals involved. Thankfully they're brilliant (just like they were with Ordination) and working with them makes me a better writer and produces a better book. But it's harder than just writing; it takes more care, more precision, more cooperation. 

Also making sure every character's got the same color horse and the same color of eyes and nobody changes their handedness or other salient features across a 500 page novel isn't the easiest task in the world. And now's the time where I've got to make sure it's all getting neatly sewn together. Details; they're evil, but also the most important part of any craft or art, if you ask me (a theory I might expound on later if you're willing to listen). 

So a good review is great, but the thing I can control is how hard I work on the next book. So that's what I'll focus on. 

By the way, I'm still looking for opportunities for appearances; I'm booked the weekend of April 9, May 21, and October 8. Some other dates, I'm hoping, will get blocked off soon. But there is no convention, no book festival, no gathering of fellow writers, readers, and nerds (I use this word out of love; I am a nerd) I can drive to that I'll turn my nose up at. 

I still have Advance Reader Copies of Ordination to give away, so if you're a blogger, podcaster, librarian, bookseller, reviewer, or just someone who wants to stand on a corner, real or otherwise, and shout about my book, get in touch! 

Oh, and while I'm linking things, check out the latest issue of the SFWP Quarterly, wherein yours truly is interviewed, along with fellow spring 2016 fiction writers and GMU MFA alums Tara Laskowski and Brandon Wicks. If you want a little peek into how the Paladin sausage is made (it involves a roomful of action figures, earbuds, and a lot of swearing) or what I've been reading, give it a look.