Scene of the Month: Dragon Stones

The votes are in (although about half the time this month I forgot to include the poll in the weekly post) and the winner by a landslide for the next Scene of the Month is perennial favorite Dragon Stones! Will The Wolf ever come out on top again? Who knows? But the moral is, werewolves shouldn’t mess with dragons, on account of dragons breathe fire. At least my dragons do.

Scene-Of-The-Month: “Dragon Stones”

The votes are in and the readers’ choice for this week’s scene of the month is Dragon Stones. Randomly flipping through the book, I stopped here, towards the end, where the dragon has finally cut loose on her enemies. Burn, baby, burn!

Scene(s)-Of-The-Month: September 2009

The votes have been counted (or more accurately, the percentages have been looked at) and for the first time since I started the Scene-Of-The-Month, we have a tie!  Dragon Stones and The Wolf each received 49% of the votes.  Now we could have a runoff election, but what fun would that be?  Instead, here is one scene from each.

Scene-Of-The-Month Poll

New posts will appear underneath this post

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.

Auction for Soldiers’ Angels

Anyone who has been reading here for a while has no doubt seen comments from Kristen Tsetsi, a fellow small-press/self-published author.  You may also remember my short review of her terrific Operation Iraqi Freedom novel Homefront last year.  Now Kristen is preparing an eBay auction to benefit Soldiers’ Angels.  From the Soldier’s Angels website:

Soldiers’ Angels is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and their families.

I’ve given one copy each of all four of my published books (just the novels, not the anthologies) to the auction, which also includes a number of other books (including vintage books such as a 1953 copy of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway), photographs and other artwork, jewelry, and more. Rather than reiterate everything that Kristen will be listing, I would encourage you to visit her blog and view the variety of items that people have donated to the auction.  It’s for a good cause, and Kristen always has something there worth reading.

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.

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 Available

Dragon Stones is now available direct from Lulu.com!  I’m still putting the finishing touches on the formatting before submitting it for distribution via the usual channels, but at this point I think that further changes are unlikely.  (And if I do change something after you buy it, then you will have a rare limited edition copy!)

As I’ve mentioned, Dragon Stones is a fantasy novel, so anyone who’s been a little squeamish about reading A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Long Before Dawn or (especially) Night Watchman needn’t fear — the goriest thing in Dragon Stones is a swordfight between a couple of the characters (but I won’t spoil anything by saying which).  If you enjoy fantasy novels, check it out — I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

In other news, I’m still editing and formatting my ghost story Father’s Books as my next release.  Although it’s a horror novel (again), it’s not nearly as, um, intense (*COUGH* gory *COUGH*) as Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn, so even the squeamish might be able to read that one.  I’ll have my wife look at it and report back; nobody’s as squeamish as she is!