News

Well. You guys could easily have been forgiven for assuming that I’d abandoned this site; I’m afraid it’s been way too long since I updated. A combination of real-life issues and a lack of any substantial news combined to where I’d lost track of how long it’d been. I hope you all had a great holiday season and new year.

I still don’t have any major news to share, but here’s what I’ve got.

1) Dead to Rites, book 3 of the Mick Oberon series, has been completed and sent to editing. I believe it’s due out this summer, but don’t hold me to that. More details when I have them. I’m really happy with how this one came out; it’s got a different feel to it than the first two books, while still very much being part of the same series.

2) Some of you may recall my involvement in a Kickstarter last year, for a project called "The Lost Citadel." If not, you can get the gist by clicking here. It’s a fantasy-horror shared world project, and my contribution to the first anthology–a short story entitled "Requiem, in Bells"–has been completed and delivered. I should have details on when that anthology will be available (both for Kickstarter backers and for purchase) in the near future.

3) Due to technical difficulties, I have been unable to get into the e-mail address associated with the editing/critique service I offered. If you’ve sent me something to that address and are waiting for a response, please resend using my standard contact page and put "critique" in the subject line. Sorry for the inconvenience.  😳

4) And finally, here’s the cover for Dead to Rites. 😀

Okay, this isn’t news per se. But I really feel the need to put this on the front page, rather than under the blog tab, because it’s important.

Today, WFC came out with an absolutely toothless, insulting harassment policy. On the same day, SXSW canceled various panels on harassment and safety in fandom spaces, over threats of violence. I’m not often a fan of the whole "If you’re not on one side, you’re on the other" dichotomy. But sometimes, it’s accurate.

Convention-runners? If you aren’t overtly anti-harassment? YOU ARE PRO-HARASSMENT. Maybe you don’t mean to be, but that’s the message you’re sending to the people who do the harassing and those who are victims of it, and guess what? Those are the only messages that count.

Step the hell up already.

Obviously, I’m not the one threatened by a lack of such policies, but that’s exactly why I–and other people in my position–need to support this effort. Sadly, the people who are affected aren’t likely to be heard. A while back, author John Scalzi created a pledge, which many authors signed, saying that he (and they) would not attend any conventions that didn’t have a functional anti-harassment policy in place. Consider this public notice that I’m on board.

Tomorrow, August 18th, is release day for Hallow Point! The second book in the Mick Oberon series will be available online and on bookstore shelves in all the usual places.

In celebration/promotion, I’ll be doing an AMA over on the fantasy sub-forum on Reddit.com.

What’s an AMA? It stands for "Ask Me Anything," and it’s basically an open Q&A session. Starting at around noon CST (give or take), I’ll be posting a link to the discussion. It’ll be open all day for people to swing by and post whatever questions they want–and I do mean whatever. Ask me about Hallow Point and Mick Oberon, sure. But you can also ask me about any of my other series or characters. Ask me about my game work. Ask me about my writing process. Ask me about my personal history. Ask me about my taste in movies, or books, or cuisine. My background. My cat. Anything at all.

I might swing by throughout the day to answer a question or two early. Whether I do that or not, I’ll be back around 7:00 pm CST to do a couple of hours of real-time answering. I’ll post answers to existing questions, and I’ll watch for additional questions or follow-up questions. It basically becomes a live Q&A at that point. I’d very much love for to see a bunch of you there at the time, so we can turn it into an ongoing conversation. I’ll wrap it up somewhere between 8:30 and 9:30 (again, give or take), and pop back in the next day to see if there are any lingering/straggler questions that came in after I was done.

Very much looking forward to seeing you guys there. 🙂

For those who’ll be attending Geekfest at Central Texas College in Killeen, here’s my schedule.

So, I’m not traveling much this year and it’s mostly smaller venues, but… CONVENTION SCHEDULE:

ArmadilloCon: July 24-26, Austin, TX.

http://2015.armadillocon.org/