So, tonight is big-time signing for Lisa Mantchev's debut YA novel, EYES LIKE STARS and I 'spicion Team Seattle will be out in force to support our favorite cake-abuser. There will be cupcakes! So get yer buns down to the University Bookstore tonight by 7 p.m. and get a copy (or two or three) and a tasty treat (sans destructive fairies). You know you want this book: it has Theater, Shakespeare, Fairies, and Cake!

And sometime today, the fabulous Seattle Geekly will be uploading the weekly podcast which includes yours truly blithering away.

Ah, frabjus day: the lovely Lisa Mantchev's debut YA novel, EYES LIKE STARS, is on the loose today, officially! Do you like fairies, orphans living in magical theaters, Shakespeare, and cake? Then you must have this book! Yes, you really must. Or you may find frosting in your pillow tomorrow. (I hear Peasblossom and Moth really get around.) Go get a copy. Right now!

Congratulations and Hurray for Lisa! (have some cake, my dear.)

And Poltergeist mass market is out today. Time for more prizes for photos of the wicked thing caught in the wild--the weirder the better!

I just noticed that I have two friends who are both into things medieval. Well, OK they aren't my only friends who are and I had known this before, but they are certainly the ones who stand out from my eclectic crowd of fiends--umm... I mean friends--since they are both writers and researchers in the same field... and yet they do no know each other. I can't help wondering how they'd get along... I suspect they would debate quite vociferously, but beyond that, I don't know. Would they love each other? Hate each other? Go after each other with Gutenberg bibles (and main gauche) at 5 paces?

What do you think? Cage fight time? (and do bear in mind both are my friends, no fun-poking intended here, just wondering...):
Jeri Westerson (Getting Medieval, The Crispin Guest Historical noir novels)
vs
Anna Richenda (History Fish, The Saint and the Fasting Girl)

Two very different results from the same historical sources.

I finally have the outline mostly complete (points exist, but order is still a little scrambled) and I'm quite, quite chuffed with it. Hehehehehe... I gets to kill stuff and blow shit up and stuff like that! Wooohooo!

Now to get the writing itself moving, but not until after I go see Andrew Grant at Seattle Mystery Bookshop at Noon! (He is sooooooo nice it ought to be sickening, but isn't.)

Hohohohohoho.... Happy Katmass to me!

And don't forget to stalk Greywalker in the wild: still three prizes to be given away (unless McBeaner forgets to get in touch and give me her email address! You hear me McB? Get in touch!)

Besides my own mass market release, this is a busy day for SF books: Caitlin Kittredge's STREET MAGIC is out today--at last; and the superhero collaboration BLACK AND WHITE by Caitlin and Jackie Kessler; and Dakota Cassidy's Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy novel KISS AND HELL; and Richelle Mead's SUCCUBUS HEAT came out last week and is selling like hotcakes; also THE STRAIN by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan,releases today in hardcover and is already flying off shelves. Cool stuff, readers!

And don't forget to stalk the Greywalker mass market in the wild and possibly win a prize!

It seems that Ms. Thurman's new book, DEATHWISH, has cracked the NYT mass market paperback list at #26! Now, do I not tell you guys to go read her books? Huh? Don't I? See what badgering people does? It gets you on the NYT! Go, Rob!

My fellow SFNovelist, Simon Haynes has a very interesting interview with himself up on his site about DRM and free ebooks. See... Simon has a thriving series of comic SF books in Australia, Hal Spacejock, whose success outside Oz has been largely due to his publisher giving his first book away for free in ebook format. (It's still available too, so if you want to read something dryly funny that takes a lot of good solid jabs at Space Opera conventions, go get it and get hooked.) Sounds kind of screwy in this age of financial depression and copyright malfunction, but it's working very well for Simon and Freemantle Press. By making his books into inexpensive, DRM-free ebooks (only the first one is free; sorry but you'll have to help Simon pay his bills if you want the rest), Simon and Freemantle have been able to penetrate the worldwide English language market with minimal cost and promotion. This is not only good for Simon, it's good for his publisher and readers and it's a very nice model I'd like to see expanded.

I am very much in favor of DRM-free ebooks, even though they are easier for commercial pirates to copy and distribute (I have waived DRM on my audio books with Recorded Books for the sake of library access, but the option is not available to me on the ebooks). The basic idea of DRM-free ebooks (and audio books) pleases me, not because I don't care if I make money on my work--I do care a lot!--but because it cleaves to the standard of trust and reason I prefer. I like to think that most people are reasonable and ethical, or will be if you make it easier for them to do things in reasonable and ethical ways than in unreasonable, illegal, unethical ways. And I think that giving a few things away, keeping prices reasonable, treating your readers and customers well, and behaving in a generous manner will earn you more readers and customers in the long run.

I don't rail against used book stores or libraries for letting people get their hands on my books without my getting a cut. So it makes no sense to me to tie up the electronic versions so that the majority of customers are hamstrung and treated like criminals to restrict the activities of the few who are criminals. I'm very disappointed in the tigerish stance of some organizations in the name of protecting copyright. I'm reasonably sure that the current copyright system is broken and needs a total replacement, or at least a major overhaul, and taking draconian steps that only alienate and restrict customers and readers is not going to help preserve the earnings of writers as much as it keeps control in the hands of corporations. We don't need to treat customers and readers like cows to be milked.

Readers are rare enough beasts that we should encourage them. Selling or giving them something (an ebook or audio book in this case) without strings attached, that they can keep and share with others is much better than squeezing them for every penny and restricting what they can do with the book they just paid for. If they like your books, they will tell others, or pass their copy along to someone else who may be equally pleased and buy some for themselves and pass the word along, and so on.... That's part of how the review process works. It's the reason publishers give away thousands of copies of books every year to conventions and publications. Word of mouth is the single strongest promotional tool writers can have on their side. Locking up the electronic forms of books so readers are captive to a proprietary format hurts that potential word of mouth by restricting readership conditions. It also insults the buyer of your book with the supposition that they can't be trusted. While it's not the writer who makes that decision, it's the writer who will suffer most when the books don't sell.

DRM is largely a tool for maintaining industry control; it doesn't help writers. It would be nice if writers were guaranteed to get money every time anyone read our books in any format and from any source. But that has never and will never happen. I'm not sure what changes we need to make to the way we manage intellectual propery in this electronic age, and how we give writers and other intellectual creators a reasonable chance to profit from their work, but I am sure that draconian DRMs aren't them.

Now, go read Simon's book. It's much funnier than I am.

The world's funniest book trailers are back for more. Mario Acevedo has a new trailer for his upcoming Felix Gomez vampire detective book. Once again the Lego-insanity has been produced by his talented son, Emiliano, and features the music of the Limbs! Check it out:

Jailbait Zombie trailer.

I've been updating the reading list on my other blog with the books I finished or started in February. Generally I write them up when I'm done and put them in the month I finished. I'm still nibbling on Lamentation since it takes some concentration, so the intrusion of my copyedit is keeping me from reading it faster, but I'll get it done.

Now, back to the grind....

Tonight at Third Place in Lake Forest Park! (Where the cool Steve works.)

Back when I was a newbie author I went to a convention--my first convention as a "pro", though I didn't actually have a book coming out for 3 months. In the Green Room I was introduced to a crowd of fabulous people who were all very friendly and nice to terrified me. Some of them I still manage to stay in touch with. Of those was a tall, ginger-haired guy...

And he was telling a story about himself that went sort of along these lines (this is the best I can remember it, not actually word-for-word):



This very funny and self-deprecating man was Ken Scholes (kenscholes ). And later I heard him read a short story of his own that was amazing and sad and surprising--about a colony of monkeys on the moon and what happens as they approach sentience.... It was creepy and wonderful and Ken delivered it well.

I read some more Ken Scholes stories and they were all strange and wonderful and had odd little endings that quirked off in unexpected ways and made me go "wow." One day while chatting to Ken at a con about various writerly things I said "you really ought to write a novel. You have such wonderful strange ideas, but you have to make them so short and they have so much potential to be big strange stories. People don't know about you. Write a novel..."

Little did I know i was far from the first to say that or what was happening in the darkness of publishing as I did. But at the time, Ken said he wasn't sure he could sustain a good story for a whole novel.

He was wrong. This came out today:



It's the first of five and though I haven't started it yet, the part Ken read tonight at his first-ever signing event was wonderful and creepy and strange. It's not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction and altogether odd, but it's pure Ken. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, to be sure, but it's certainly going to be worth tasting.

I'm copying this from my Recent Reading page because I just can't let it hide in a corner. I love this book that much.

Trigger City, by Sean Chercover (Ray Dudgeon PI mystery #2): First I have to own up that I know Sean and consider him a friend so, yes I'm biased, but... Goddamn is this a good book! I liked the first one, Big City, Bad Blood, a lot and I like this one even more. Sean's already-sharp and noir-lyric writing has gotten even better and his plot is tighter than ever. PI-hero Ray Dudgeon is still messed up and hardheaded, but you have to pull for him, love him, and admire his sense of honor. He's a twenty-first century Sam Spade. This time around Ray gets sucked into dark doings that revolve around the murder of the daughter of a retired Army Intelligence officer, the suicide of her killer, private military contractors, Chinese dissidents, and political corruption. I had the feeling there was some tiny flaw somewhere, but I never could put my finger on it, so hypnotic is Chercover's storytelling. It's a corker of a story, violent and gritty and mesmerizing. Chercover is still the best new PI novelist of the decade.

The downside: it's so good it makes me cry and think I'll never equal it.

To the fabulous Richelle Mead for sweeping the Urban Fantasy Land Reader's Choice Awards.

To Caitlin Kittredge for the Best Debut Author award at that same site.

And

To Jim C. Hines, Barb and JC Hendee, Charlie Stross, and my fellow Mean Streeters for making the Mysterious Galaxy Paperback Bestseller list for January (Simon made it twice!)

You guys rock!

Hey, there writers-in-waiting. Mystery writer Lee Lofland has a nice interview up at the Graveyard Shift blog with Wendy Burt-Thomas about writing query letters Wendy's a full-time writer and freelance editor and her latest non-fiction work, The Writers Digest Guide To Query Letters has just been released. Wendy's pretty breezy and easy to read, so if the query letter quandary has you tied up in knots, take a look at the interview and maybe a look at Wendy's book.

Lee's blog is always informative and useful, even if you aren't a Mystery writer, so check it out.

First off: the League of Reluctant Adults is back up and running! W00t! (and yes, the answer to the burning question "Why aren't you there, Kat?" is "I'm a jackass.")

And the fantastic Carrie Ryan got a starred review from Publishers Weekly for her debut novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth! Congrats to Carrie! (Not that we didn't know it had to happen because... well... Carrie rocks!)

Rachel Vincent's new were novel Pride is officially out today! Hurray Rachel!

Joshua Palmatier is an uncle! Congratulations to the family of a brand new bouncing boy!

And very soon Urban Fantasy Land will be announcing its Readers Choice Contest winners. Eeek!

What a busy day!

And I got 1000 words on the Librarian superhero done last night. Today I'm shooting for 1000 more. W00t!

Oh yeah, and Warren Ellis has a photo up of a snowbound canal boat in London, which I much admire, since a similar boat features in an upcoming book by moi....

Well... I'm starting to get things together (with the help of new publicists Roseanne Romanello and Joshua Jason). And I'm currently booked for the following:

Norwescon, Seattle WA area, Easter Weekend April 9-12
Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, Seattle WA area, July 30-August 2
ComiCon, San Diego CA , July 23-26
Dragon*Con, Atlanta GA , Labor Day Weekend September 4 - September 7

Looks like I won't make it to WorldCon in Montreal as I'd hoped since it's the weekend VANISHED is being released (yes, Alan Beatts will be disappointed in me.) I'm looking into other things like the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, World Fantasy Convention, and Bouchercon, but I'm not sure what's going to get the nod (or what I can afford.) A lot depends on what the publisher wants to do for the tour and what else might be going on with publicity in other directions.

I'll update my newsletter and my Appearances page on the website soon, but I haven't gotten to it yet, since i'm still proofing the mmp of Greywalker and having my ass kicked by this cold. Originally I was going to go to Left Coast Crime this February, but other things kind of got in the way.

Meanwhile, the fabulous Paranormal Bender Tour has been announced featuring my Team Seattle mates Caitlin Kittredge, Cherie Priest, and Mark Henry, and Denver Mob Godfather Mario Acevedo:



Pure fabulousity! Be there or be... Zombie Bait!

Oh yeah... and don't forget the Urban Fantasyland Reader's Choice contest! We're all in there, so the competition is nasty! W00t!

It appears that my agency-buddy Jim C. Hines is on the way to Harry Potter style stardom... or not. Seems the press has gotten the idea that a movie is going to be made based on is new (and very good) book The Stepsister Scheme. But according to Jim--and I don't believe he's blowing smoke up our skirts on this--there is no such thing in negotiation. But if there were, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

And that makes me think... what books would I (or you) like to see become movies? (Aside from mine.) I read so few books I enjoyed in 2008 that I'd have a hard time picking one, though I thought Nicholas Pekearo's The Wolfman would be kind of nifty as a Dark Fantasy Crime movie. Some books are really not great film material or couldn't be done well, others might do better as TV series but not film. So what book that came out in 2008 would you like to see made into a film?

If you're a reviewer or blogger, you might want to check this out: Tor, Caitlin Kittredge's (blackaire ) publisher, is making electronic ARCs available for advance review on blogs. If you're a blogging reviewer, you can read Caitlin's upcoming new series-starter STREET MAGIC before anyone else you know! And it's a doozy of a book, so if you have the opportunity, grab it! For details, see Caitlin's post about getting the e-ARC

First off, huge congrats to my fellow Team Seattle writer Richelle Mead ( blue_succubus ) for remaining on the NYT Bestseller list with her new Vampire Academy book, SHADOW KISS. This is week 2 for her on the highly competitive Children's Series list. Hurray Richelle!

And my fellow SFNovelist, David B. Coe has a new book coming out early next week (might even be on some store shelves already.) The Horsemen's Gambit is the second book in his Blood of the Southlands trilogy. Sure to be another winner for David!

( Read an interview with David... )

It seems there's a little old nomination window for best (various things) in Urban Fantasy going on at Urban Fantasy Land... and no one nominated me. phoo.... I r teh unlurved.  (oops... I missed it: I'm there in the Demons and Zombies category)

And my Team Seattle buddies, Richelle Mead, Caitlin Kittredge, and Mark Henry all made the list. Yay!  (and Mario Acevedo, too!)