Blogging the Muse

It’s going to be a busy summer.  In addition to promoting Heart of the Ronin and working on graduate school, I’m taking six weeks to attend the Odyssey Writers Workshop, starting next week. It’s going to be a great experience focusing so intensely on writing over the summer. In case you don’t know, Odyssey is a science fiction/fantasy/horror workshop for professional writers and writers on the verge of going pro. This year, two of the guest teachers at Odyssey will be Carrie Vaughn and Jack Ketchum, both of whom have been interviewed right here at Blogging the Muse, so I’m looking forward to speaking with them again.

On the downside, however, the Author Interview Series will have to be put on hiatus until sometime in July or August. But don’t worry–it’ll be back, bigger and badder than ever.

Best-selling romance author Nalini Singh invited me to be a guest blogger on her website last week.

For a stark contrast in the differences between romance fiction and almost everything else, check it out here!

Book Signing

Wednesday, May 27, 4:00-7:00 p.m.

Ground Zero Comics and Games - Bellevue, Nebraska

Marking a milestone here on Blogging the Muse, our Fiftieth Author Interview (ta daaaahh!), we have a very special treat, at least for me.  See, I’ve been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for quite some time (still some of the best TV writing anytime, anywhere), so when I heard that Amber Benson–the actor who played the good witch Tara on Buffy, also a ground-breaking role as Willow’s love interest–had just published a new mass-market urban fantasy novel, Death’s Daughter, I didn’t waste any time contacting her PR firm. Of course, I was delighted when she agreed to be interviewed. Not only is she a talented actress and now solo author, she’s also a film director and producer with a ton of creative irons in the fire: movies, television, comics, and books.  Many thanks to Amber for taking the time out of all that to speak with yours truly, and for an enjoyable interview.

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Presentation, Reading, and Book Signing

Monday, May 25 1:00-4:00 p.m.

Naper Auditorium, Naper, Nebraska

Courtesy of Naper Public Library.

Giles Kristian has led an “unconventional life.”  Ex-rock’n'roll-star with the boy band Upside Down, he has sung for H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, performed with Eric Clapton, Shirley Bassey, the Back Street Boys, and Meatloaf.  As a copywriter, he has worked for marketing and ad agencies. As a model, he’s appeared on posters and TV for Panasonic, Canon, and Magnum Ice Cream.  He has even played semi-pro soccer.  With that kind of a wildly varied past, he sounds a lot like a writer, too.  His debut novel Raven: Blood Eye was released this February by Transworld Publishing, a division of Random House, and it’s getting good reviews.  Gotta love a good Viking story!

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Janni Lee Simner’s Young Adult novel, Bones of Faerie, was released this January by Random House, but she’s been writing and selling short stories for readers of all ages for some time, with over thirty publications in pro markets, including Realms of Fantasy and The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and anthologies such as Chicks in Chainmail, and the short fiction podcasts Pseudopod and Escapepod. In other existences, she was born on a pirate ship, caravaned across the Sahara, and perused the stacks of the Library of Alexandria for priceless nuggets of forgotten lore.

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Jaye Wells is one of those authors who, finally, after years of resisting the pull that had been built into her from birth, succumbed to the creative instinct and launched herself into fiction writing well into adulthood.  Just like so many of us who choose this path, for her the need to string words together in some semblance of entertaining order is strong, and she does it with a compelling new urban fantasy character, Sabina Kane, and a ballsy sense of humor. As she describes in her blog, “How did you cultivate such a wicked sense of humor?  I made a pact with the devil. My dark master feeds me witty lines through my dental fillings.” That pretty much says it all.

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Five Star Publishing has informed me that the first print run of HotR has already sold out. And it’s only a month after the release date.  Thanks to all who already purchased your very own copy!  If you haven’t yet, don’t fret.  The second print run has already been completed and is in da house.

Banzai!  Banzai!  Banzai!

Stay tuned here for more appearances by yours truly.

Book signing

Barnes and Noble, Oak View Mall, Omaha, Nebraska - April 9th, 2009, at 7 p.m.

Author of eighteen novels and two short story collections, Janny Wurts has been around fantasy literature for a long time, from her best-selling Empire series, co-written with Raymond Feist to two fantasy series of her own, The War of Light and Shadow and The Cycle of Fire. But she is also an accomplished artist and painter, and that is where yours truly first encountered her talent, on book covers and in fantasy art collections.  All that, and she’s also a musician, formally trained in the highland bagpipes, among other instruments.  How much more creative could one person be?

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I can count the times on one hand (maybe even a couple of fingers) when a television series has so moved me, so inspired me, so filled me with emotion that I have to write about it.  I just watched the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. (Yes, I’m almost a week late, but I’ve been saving this episode.) This blog is about the triumphs of writing, and if ever there was a triumph of writing, of vision, for the big screen or small, it is this series.  (Yes, I know this sounds like hyperbole, even as I write it.  Didn’t I just say I was inspired?)

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