Stacia Kane

I’m sure it will come as a great surprise to you that this post is full of updates.

I’m currently trying to figure out an easier way to send out Downside Army emails. I’m way behind on that–I’m now handling it all myself–and there’s a whole lot of new members. But hopefully, if you’re a member or if you’ve joined recently, you’ll be getting something in your email in the next week or so.

But today’s big news is store stuff! The bare bones of the store site is up (no, you can’t see it) and the list of products–not many to start with–it coming along. I’ve sent four logo/whatevers on to the guy handling it all for me, and he tells me that if all goes well we should be up and running by Friday next. Very exciting. Not sure if we’ll open then or if we’ll do a week of preorders or something ahead of time. What I do know is that it should be extremely easy to use–just like any other online storefront anywhere–and the prices will be either a bit or a considerable bit less than those on places like Zazzle. Plus the stuff should be better quality, and there will be a wider variety–maybe not at first, but eventually. Yes, it took longer than I would have hoped to get it all set up, but in the end I don’t feel like some sort of evil overlord charging thirty-five bucks for a t-shirt, and hopefully this means people who might not otherwise have gotten something will go ahead and get something, which would be cool.

So, if you have any requests or suggestions, let me know. I’m hoping to add new stuff on a semi-regular basis. And there are some interesting tidbits in the works aside from just the basic t-shirts & tote/messenger bags type of stuff, too.

I cut myself on my laptop last night. I have a Mac, and the edge of it is really sharp, and the plastic on mine cracked just at the edge. Which is where I think I did it. Anyway, I sliced my finger, and didn’t really notice until I realized I was bleeding on my keyboard. SEE WHAT I GO THROUGH FOR YOU PEOPLE?? Hahahaha. Anyway. It did sting (it still does), and I decided to leave the blood on the keys because I am so badass that I laugh at hygiene. Hygiene is afraid of me! (It’s not, like, tons of blood or anything. Just a little. It’s my offering to the Writing Gods. No, seriously.) (Also, if I was a dude nobody would even bat an eye at me leaving blood on my laptop.) Yes, I am literally working my fingers to the bone for you people.

Yes, that is my blood. Muahahaha!

And in other picture fun! A girl I know from online has recently jaunted off to Abu Dhabi, to teach or something. She emailed my pal Seeley DeBorn, who never updates her freaking blogs to say that she visited the hotel gift shop today–in someplace named Al Ain–to look for a book, figuring she’d have to make do with some tired old bestseller from last year, when lo and behold, she found UNHOLY MAGIC! Ha ha! No tired old bestsellers in Al Ain, no way! Instead, a sort-of-new book that sort of sold okay but didn’t exactly set any fucking records! Look!:

And I think that’s about it. I have a roast in the Crock-Pot that smells fantastic, and I’m working away on many many things, and my finger hurts a bit.

Just a quick one today, because I’ve been dinking around all morning and now have to go do stuff in like half an hour. Plus, I’m still not feeling great. Just a general sort of queasiness which hit me late yesterday afternoon (NO, contrary to what certain dorks named Brigwyn said on Twitter, I am not pregnant).

So. I was asked this morning by Anilu, the genius behind many of the t-shirt logos which you guys will hopefully be able to see soon (and things are moving along with that, more slowly than I would have liked, but they are moving along and again, the end result should be less expensive stuff plus a much wider variety), if Terrible had fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror of the Chevelle. My immediate thought was that he did. But I wasn’t entirely sure.

So I grabbed my copy of UG (since I’m writing the 4th book–and it’s coming along!–I keep copies of all three by the couch in case I need to double-check something) and started looking. And I popped onto Twitter to ask if anyone could remember, did he have fuzzy dice, and if so, where in the book did I mention it?

About eight people replied that yes, he definitely did. But we couldn’t find the reference. This went on for, oh, ten minutes, with all of us convinced that Terrible did indeed have fuzzy dice but with none of us able to find anywhere in the books where they’re mentioned. Finally I opened the original mss and searched for “dice,” on each of them.

Guess what? No dice.

So now I have to decide if I want to give him dice. On the one hand, he’s really not the kind of guy who would buy them for himself. On the other hand, it is exactly the kind of thing, say, Katie might buy for him, or that he might think are kind of funny/cool to have, so they’re totally the kind of thing he would have. I mean, they’re dice. he has a belt buckle with dice on them (yes, he does, I just never mentioned it; he has lots of different ones), so why not fuzzy dice?

But the crazy thing is that when I asked the question, everyone, even me, was convinced that he already had fuzzy dice. All of us. We just knew he did.

So what do you say? Shall I go ahead and give him fuzzy dice?

Also, we’ve done another round of updates! Check the Fun Stuff page in particular; there are some CITY OF GHOSTS deleted scenes (especially the two scenes which ended up becoming the burning slaughterhouse scene)! And some reader-made wallpapers and buttons for you to copy and use for whatever you like! And links to the Goodreads and Shelfari groups readers have set up, if you’d like to join in the discussions. There are a few new interviews linked on the media page. I’d meant to have a page listing all of the books I read but that page didn’t get made, and my weblady is on vacation. So I may try to set that up myself.

Anyway, go have fun with all the new things. I hope you enjoy them. And, if you’ve created anything based on the books–wallpapers, buttons, livejournal or webforum icons, whatever–and you would like to share them with other readers here, just let me know. I’m happy to add them.

So…fuzzy dice, yay or nay?

Yep, I’m being lazy, and although I’ll be posting this Thursday morning it’s actually quite late Wednesday night as I write this, and I got barely any sleep last night, so I’m quite tired.

And because I’m quite tired I have very little to discuss. It occurs to me I should mention Dragon*Con. I had a wonderful time at the con, I really did. Friday I got to hang out with Caitlin and my family, in addition to sitting and chatting in the bar with a number of other people whose names I’m not going to mention because they probably don’t want to admit they were actually in public with me, ha. No, actually, it was just a lot of people. But I think a great time was had by all.

This was my stepdaughter’s, and my daughters’, first Dragoncon, and they were pretty awed by the whole thing. We left them at home on Saturday–that being the most crowded day, usually, and yeah, it certainly was–and wandered around ourselves. Ended up–surprise!–in the bar again. I did a little interview for a very nice girl named Day, and my friend Shannan came along, and somehow the conversation turned to a video I saw online once of a couple discussing their bestiality and how they really love their pet miniature horse. Hey, I just saw it, okay, I wasn’t in it or anything. And I wasn’t talking about it like it was a beautiful love story or something. It just came up in conversation, as these things are wont to do if you hang out with weirdos like me and my friends.

The point of my mentioning it is, apparently on Sunday people were hearing that I actually had a bestiality porn video on my phone, and was showing people. So there goes the rumor mill! I’m waiting for the tale of how someone caught me shooting up in the bathrooms or something to get out. Because, um, of course that never happened! Ha ha! No, not me! (Of course I’m joking. It totally happened. Ha! See what I did there? Oh, I am a card.) No, really, honestly, of course it didn’t happen, because I didn’t shoot up anything in any bathrooms because I am not a shooter-upper, but such is the nature of rumor that I’m expecting more outrageous stories about me, is all. My agent says that’s a good thing, because obviously if people need to talk about you you’re doing something right, and he said something else that was really wise and reassuring but I don’t remember now what it was. Anyway, I find the whole thing both terrifying and amusing, so we’ll see which of those wins out.

On Saturday too we hooked up with our pals Chris and Mike, and went for drinks in the restaurant, and then to home.

So Sunday I was pretty well exhausted. To the point where I started drinking around two pm just in order to stay awake. You know, hair of the dog and all. And it worked; I did in fact stay awake. I had a panel at 5:30 that my children got to come and see, which was pretty cool; they waved at me a lot and I waved back, and they really wanted to wear costumes so they were Wonder Woman (Faerie) and Batgirl (Princess). Sadly, hubs had to take them all home shortly after that panel ended, leaving Caitlin and I all on our alones. We didn’t end up in the bar that night, well, not the Hyatt bar where we’d been. Instead we had dinner with more friends, two very awesome ladies, and then we hooked up with other friends and hung out in the lobby area by where the comic artists alley was, drinking from the little bar there and looking at costumes and generally having a gay old time.

And that was it. We came home. Had considered going back Monday but I was exhausted and felt like absolute crap. Yes, all that vodka caught up with me on Monday; I was capable of movement and speech and all, but I certainly didn’t feel like my chipper self, and the thought of dragging my ass down to the Marta station, and from there on the train down to the con, and then around the con, just didn’t appeal. So I didn’t get to see the dealer room at all this year, which was again a disappointment since I wanted to get myself something. (Of course, it also meant there was no repeat of last year’s corset issue. And I admit, part of me wondered if that booth wouldn’t have a picture of me taped up somewhere with a warning not to let me anywhere near the store. Now I’ll never know, sigh.)

What else shall I mention, in my lackadaisical blog post? My stepdaughter went home this morning, so it’s been kind of a downer day here, which sucks since Caitlin is here. And then she leaves tomorrow which makes me sad too. And all my Dragoncon pals, of course, have already left, which always sucks.

On the plus side, though, work on the 4th Downside book is coming along nicely. Work on the t-shirt designs and other things is coming along nicely, and I’m quite pleased and enthused and I think you all will be too, at least I hope so. I have the deleted scenes from CITY OF GHOSTS and a list of other updates and tidbits ready to be added to the site, along with more really cool reader-made stuff that I think you guys are going to love. And I’m going to do a list of research books, and sort of suggested reading/things I read, for those who want to learn a bit more about that stuff. So I’m quite excited about the next wave of updates. And as always, if there’s anything you guys want to see on the site, let me know, and I will do my best. (And if you’ve done anything like wallpapers or artwork or something along those lines and would like to share it on the site, let me know that too.)

Oh, and several of you asked questions in the comments on my little “How Babies Are Made” series. I will get to them as soon as possible, and give you what answers I can, okay?

I think that’s it for today’s lackadaisical blog post.

Okay, yes, I know this is so, so late. I was out of town and forgot to take my notebook with all the entry counts in it, and then we were doing this that and the other things, and it took a while to get everything organized, and then we–well, my husband–picked the winner last night but it was too late to post it here.

Here’s what we (again, my husband) did. I gave him the list of all of the entries–and some of you guys had thirty or forty of them!–and he entered them into a spreadsheet, which he then had shuffle randomly and picked the first name off the top. So, not a slips-of-paper-in-a-hat thing, but still totally random.

Anyway, the name at the top was…

CHELSEA, from Vampire Book Club!!

So Chelsea, send me an email, and we’ll talk.

For everyone else, I can’t thank you enough for playing along!

I am going to be starting the fourth book this week–I’d planned to start it today, actually, but see the aforementioned this-and-that-in-the-way, so I’m hoping to start by Friday. In the meantime, I’m working on a publishing wonk post for here.

I thought it might be fun, and maybe even interesting for some of you, to find out exactly what goes into producing a book; what the publisher actually does, and why it takes so damn long. Why it’s necessary for it to take so long. This is going to be part of the short series on editing I plan. And part of that is going to be sharing with you some actual copyedited pages from UNHOLY MAGIC and CITY OF GHOSTS (I don’t have the copyedited mss for UNHOLY GHOSTS), and some pre-edited scenes and bits of information about all three books.

So, I’m starting on that, hoping to get the first one up tomorrow, and in the meantime, yes, we have a winner!

First, yes, I do totally intend to reply to all comments and questions, both here and on Livejournal, from Wednesday’s big De-lurk. And again, I can’t thank you all enough! So many happy birthday wishes, so many great comments and questions. It was fantastic, as are all of you. I have to admit, though, next year I may do the De-lurk day on a day near my birthday but not actually on it; that was a lot to keep up with, between here, Facebook, and Twitter. Not that I’m complaining, at all; it was wonderful. But I may change it a bit next year so I can give everyone the attention I should.

We’re back home now, sigh. Being in Miami is always kind of bittersweet; fun but not fun. It’s always great to see Cori and her family. It’s always fun to drive around and know exactly where you are, and five or six different ways to get somewhere, and all of that. But at the same time it’s sad to see how much has changed. It’s sad to drive by places that were once important to you, and now they’re not. It’s sad to remember people you once knew that you don’t anymore, or even just the person you used to be, how young you were and how different. So yeah, Miami is kind of bittersweet. And I’m sad I didn’t get to see my brother either; the days flew by so fast and we were so busy, when I finally had a chance to call it was too late. But we’re hoping to go back in a couple of months.

But! We did go to the Mai-Kai for tiki drinks and dinner; it’s one of my absolute favorite places. And, to make things even more exciting, I wore a new dress. A new dress that isn’t even black.

Now, granted, I did buy two of the exact same dress (from Express; I don’t care that it’s a mall store, I almost always find something I love there that looks decent on me, and it’s one of the few stores that usually has my size in stock), and one of them is a very dark charcoal gray, which is just gorgeous. I absolutely adore this dress. But I decided the light color–it’s sort of a creamy pale peachy color–looked more tropical. And I had these shoes which look weird in the picture but are actually a gorgeous shade of blue, and have big flowers done in sequins on the outside.

So, enough prattling, I have questions to answer! And I’ll be announcing the Name a Character Contest winner on Monday! Here are a couple of pictures: first is me and the hubs, and second is me and the BFF, Cori. The one of Cori and me isn’t the most flattering picture ever taken of me (the flash totally washes me out and makes my eye makeup look kind of creepy), but what the hell, right? I said I’d share some pictures, and so I will. Plus, it’s proof that Cori actually exists! I’ve talked about her on the blog for years–we’ve been best friends for almost eleven years now–and UNHOLY GHOSTS is dedicated to her, because she’s my super beta reader and totally encouraged me to finish writing that book and sat on the phone brainstorming with me for hours, but this is the first chance I’ve had to share a picture of her or of us together. And I actually really like the one of me & hubs, which is a very rare thing, as I generally hate the way I photograph.

Also, yes, that is my husband sitting right behind us at the bar.
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As I think most of you know–I am stunned by the number of birthday messages I’ve gotten on Twitter and Facebook, I can’t thank you all enough!–today is my birthday. My Faerie, who is five, has decided I’m twenty-seven today, and I have told her she’s exactly right. So I’m sticking to that.

Anyway. Every year on my birthday I ask for those who lurk but never comment to just say hello. Of course you’re not obligated to in any way, but it’s fun for me to see who’s out there aside from the group who comments (not that I don’t adore them too). I just get a kick out of it, basically. And it’s even more fun if you leave a little message saying why you read here, or what types of posts you enjoy the most, or whatever–stuff I can use to make sure I’m giving you guys the types of posts you like to read. Remember, my job here on the blog is to entertain you, and make it something you enjoy reading. Yes, it’s mine, and I rant and stuff at times too, but in general, if I’m ranting I want it to be about things that interest you in some way.

And this year I thought we’d make it more fun–although I don’t actually think anyone is going to take me up on it, since you usually don’t–if you want to leave me a question in the comments, or whatever, and I’ll answer it as best as I can.

Again, you’re not obligated to comment, of course. Not at all. If you do comment you’re not obligated to tell me why you read here, or what types of posts you like the best, or what your favorite post was, or anything of that nature. You’re not obligated to ask a question in any way. But if you wanted to, that would be cool, and I would enjoy it.

So if you like, and if you feel comfortable, and if you want to, it would be great to hear from those of you I don’t usually hear from, in addition to those I do.

And just in case any of you lurkers are people who’ve emailed me, or if any of you who’ve emailed me stop by, I WILL reply, I’ve just not had a chance yet.

Also, again, huge apologies, I forgot to bring my notebook with the entry counts for the Name a Character Contest, so I’ll be announcing the winner on Monday, and I’m so sorry! Duh, I could have sworn I packed it.

So de-lurk away, if you like! And thanks again, everyone!

I am in Miami at the moment, staying at my best friend Cori’s house, and we’re doing all sorts of fun chatty things and going out for drinks and everything. So this is just going to be a quick little update, and I’m doing it today instead of tomorrow because I’ll be out pretty much all day tomorrow, and I do want to come back and check in for my birthday on Wednesday.

So, first thing I wanted to let you know is, a group of awesome readers have set up a Goodreads group for fans of the Downside books! The group is called “I Gots Terrible Fever,” and you can join it here.

Second, after I get back home I am going to be compiling my doc of deleted scenes from CITY OF GHOSTS, so look for those to go up on the site within the next couple of weeks. I’m also considering putting in some trivia, like the way Chess’s last name came from the Salem Witch Trials, or whatever. I think that might be kinda fun, and I want to give you guys as much information as you might want; I like websites to be really informative and full of different kinds of things, don’t you?

And I am still considering what we’ll do as far as t-shirts and stuff, but we definitely are going to do something. So please keep those ideas coming!

And, we have some new reviews for CITY OF GHOSTS!

Abigail at All Things Urban Fantasy gave it what she calls an “uber-rare” five out of five!:

After devouring the first two Downside Ghost books in all their addictive, screwed up goodness, I had crazy, impossibly high hopes for CITY OF GHOSTS. And Stacia Kane didn’t disappoint in this action packed, scary cool, emotionally naked urban fantasy that I can still feel racing through my veins.

Niki Bruce, who reviews for several major newspapers and publications in Australia, did a joint review of UNHOLY MAGIC and CITY OF GHOSTS (with a link to her review of UNHOLY GHOSTS, which I hadn’t seen, and is great!) says, among other things:

Chess is the perfect anti-heroine; the antidote to the soppy, love obsessed teens dominating the urban fantasy genre at the moment. There’s not a vampire or werewolf in sight – thank god – and the gritty truth of Chess’ life adds depth to what could be dismissed as “just another fantasy novel”.
There are more books in the Downside Ghosts series to come; I can’t wait.

The book got five out of five stars from SupernaturalSnark, who says:

This series is addicting, and I’m as sure to enter withdrawal waiting for the next book as Chess would be without her drug of choice.

And I know there are more, but those are all I could bring immediately to mind, and I have to go hang out with Cori now.

Oh, and when I come back on Wednesday…as you know, I normally do a De-lurk day for my birthday. This year I think we’ll do a bit of that, but I thought it might also be fun–although it probably won’t work, because I’ve asked it before and not gotten the kind of response I’d hoped for–if you guys, any of you, whether lurkers or people who regularly comment/participate, have any questions you want to leave in the comments, I’d be happy to answer them!

Also, I am STUPID and left my notebook with the counts for everyone’s Name a Character Contest entries at home. We’re going home on Thursday, so I will endeavor to announce the winner(s) on Monday; I’m so sorry, everyone! I thought I’d remembered to grab it! Sigh.

And that’s it for the day.

Well! Last night (or actually early this morning) I sent Frauke at Croco Designs, the lady who designed this fabulous site and still does the more complicated updates for me (which is most of them, frankly), a very very long list of updates. Included in those are a bunch of interview links, and bunch of guest blog links (mostly about different aspects of the Downside books), some new sidebar links, the Downside playlists with buy links, and a bunch of other stuff. I also sent her a separate file with four or five deleted scenes from UNHOLY MAGIC, with commentary explaining why they were deleted. I don’t actually have any deleted scenes for UNHOLY GHOSTS, to be honest, but there are a few for CITY OF GHOSTS as well, and those will go up a couple of weeks after that book’s release. Which is Tuesday! Ack!

(One thing about the deleted scenes that I think will be really fun: I wrote a scene for UM that ended up getting cut. But I really really liked the scene, so I rewrote a little bit of it–the intro part, basically–and stuck it in CITY OF GHOSTS. But as I edited CoG, I decided the scene still didn’t work as written, so I rewrote it again, extensively this time. So there will be a few versions of that scene, and you’ll be able to compare them all, if you’re the type of person who enjoys stuff like that.)

So look for all of that soon. I’m really excited about it.

Another thing I’m quite excited about is the fact that my blog series “Be a Sex-writing Strumpet,” with which I know some of you are familiar, is now available on Kindle! So you can buy a paperback from Lulu, or an ebook from Lulu, or a Kindle version from Amazon. And of course, as always, the series is free here on the blog; just click the “be a sex-writing strumpet” tag in the sidebar.

I offer the series as an actual book because I had a lot of requests to do so, and I charge for it in those formats because people convinced me to do so by saying they wanted to pay me something for it, but you absolutely do not have to buy the book to read and enjoy the series. You don’t and you never will have to. I wrote it as a blog series, and it will remain a blog series. The book formats are just there to make it easier for people if they like, and so they don’t have to keep clicking all over my blog if they want to read it. I still get website hits for that series almost every day, which just stuns me; if you type “be a se” into google the second auto-finish term it offers is “be a sex-writing strumpet.” It’s just insane, it really is. I never imagined when I wrote it that people would enjoy it so much and find it so useful, and that’s amazingly gratifying. Also, having it on Amazon offers people a chance to write a review for it, which would be fantastic; it’d be really cool to see some feedback on it after all this time! And of course you could all review all of my books if you want, heh.

Also exciting to me is the Name a Character Contest! I’m thrilled at how enthusiastic you all are! Thank you so much! I did want to let you know that I am checking the #cityofghosts tag on Twitter regularly, and keeping track of the entries there, as well as the emails and blog post links I’m getting. If at any time you want to double-check the number of entries you have, feel free to email either the Downside Army email address or me, or use the contact form here on the site (which of course also comes to me). Make sure you include your Twitter name, if you have one, or whatever other information I might need to identify you.

Tomorrow evening sometime I plan to post a new snippety excerpt from CITY OF GHOSTS, so be on the lookout for that!

I know I say this a lot, and you guys are probably tired of hearing it, but I really honestly am amazed by how enthusiastic the response has been to the series. I never expected it, I really didn’t, and it’s absolutely amazing. I can’t thank you all enough.

So let’s see, what else? I’m going to be popping down to the RWA convention in Orlando next week for a couple of days. I know, I know, it’s RWA, but I’m not actually registering/paying for the convention, I’m just hanging out in the bar, really. I’d decided–and basically committed to–doing so when it was supposed to be in Nashville, which is only like two hours away. Of course, tragic floods intervened, and now it’s in Orlando which is considerably farther, but like I said, I’d already committed. And it’s not a bad drive. I like driving by myself. I mean, I like to drive, period, but I especially like driving by myself. I can turn the music up loud and sing along, I can flip through the radio stations all I want, stop or don’t stop as I please…whee! I’m almost more excited about the drive than the con itself, much like I was when I drove to Massachusetts to see Caitlin before we went to RT. Of course, I was excited about the convention, but that really was an awfully fun drive.

Anyway, I think this post is unfortunately a bit dull. Too much news and stuff to keep track of. I’ll try to be more fun again shortly. For now my head is so full of nervousness (over CoG’s release; what if you all hate it? What if nobody buys it?), projects I’m working on (loosely mentally plotting the 4th Downside book, and lots of stuff for the new WIP/series I’m working on), netbooks (hee, I am totally getting one asap!), our trip to Florida to see my BFF next month–we’ll be there for my birthday–and of course the usual family things. So forgive me, please. I’ll be more interesting next time. Anything you want me to blog about? Feel free to ask!

Oh! And speaking of questions, I wanted to let everyone know that this Saturday the 24th at three pm, I’ll be participating in Twitter’s first #UFChat! You can find a bit more info about it here. Either way, come and hang out, follow the hash tag, and please ask any questions you want, as many as you want! I’m hoping it’s going to be a lot of fun (and, you know, that people actually participate).

One week to the release of CITY OF GHOSTS, and I’m doing a big contest, so stay tuned for details!

Let’s clear some other things out of the way first. I have some really exciting news! We’ve sold Polish rights to the Megan Chase series to Amber Publishing, the same company putting out the Polish Downside books! Foreign translations are just the coolest thing, so I’m really thrilled about this!

And speaking of the Downside books, we have a couple of new UNHOLY MAGIC reviews!

Vampire Book Club gives it five stars and says:

With increased intensity, Kane delivers an action-packed, dark urban fantasy novel that will leave you reeling for days after finishing it. (We actually pre-ordered the third novel, City of Ghosts, the day after completion of Unholy Magic because we don’t want to waste even a day not knowing what will happen with Chess, her job, the love-triangle and the others within Downside.)

Smokin’ Hot Books also gives it five stars (to both books in one review, actually):

Unholy Ghosts and Unholy Magic are two of the best books I’ve read of 2010 and 2009. I’m not going to lie, the second book will tear your heart out, you may even find yourself emotionally ‘stress eating’ but so worth it. I promise! This series has grit, angst, violence, and pulls you in with each page – if you haven’t read this series, get thee to a bookstore post haste!

Vampire Book Club also has an interview with me, and a giveaway contest for both UNHOLY GHOSTS and UNHOLY MAGIC. So if you haven’t yet read them, there’s your chance!

There’s another interview with me, conducted by Daniela, a very sweet German blogger I chanced upon one day (she was blogging about GEISTERFLUT, the German edition of UNHOLY GHOSTS which will be released in Feb 2011, and I said hello, and it went on from there). Anyway, she asked me some kind of neat questions, and you can find it here. The interview is first in English, then in German; hee, look at my perfect German! And don’t you love that German cover? I can’t wait to see what they do with the other two! Obviously, the bangs aren’t there, ha, but who cares when it’s that pretty and atmospheric?

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Wow, this is late in the day to be posting.

Seriously, guys, I cannot recall ever being this busy in my life. I mean, in normal everyday life, not, like, the weeks before my children were born when suddenly the entire house needed to be scrubbed and redecorated, or the weeks before my wedding when the entire house needed to be scrubbed and redecorated and I had a houseful of guests and I needed to get manicures and hairdos and fittings and all of that stuff, or when we move. This is just my daily task-list growing longer and longer. (Oh, and before I forget, did you all see the UNHOLY MAGIC playlist on iTunes? You know I don’t get paid or anything when you purchase it, but the artists do; I just put them together in case anyone was curious about the music in the books and would like to hear it. This way you don’t have to hunt around and not know which songs are mentioned or whatever.)

I just finished a short story for an anthology; it’s a Downside story but because I didn’t want to give spoilers, and am well aware that most readers have never heard of me or my books, I wrote it from an outsider’s point of view, which was fun. You know what the most fun part of it was, though, which is really weird? Getting to actually describe Chess head to foot. You know, it’s hard to find ways to describe characters when you write from their POV; you don’t want to use hoary old tricks like them looking at themselves in the mirror, and really, just about any other sort of trick to describe your characters feel hoary.

MC: Oh, Friend #1, I hate my hair.

Friend #1: Nonsense. I wish I had long blond curls like yours.

Do you know what I mean? I don’t describe my characters too closely, I don’t think of them in terms of what actor they look like and would never describe them that way. I like to leave that up to you guys to fill in, really. Which makes me think of a fun contest! Which I may mention at the end of this post.

Anyway. So it was really fun to write a short where, because the MC of that story doesn’t know these people, he can actually take in the details of their appearances. They’re still not really facially described, but there’s a much more complete description, down to things like what Chess’s bag actually looks like. (I’ll share that one; it’s faded army-green canvas.) The story is tentatively titled Rick the Brave, but I’m still trying to come up with something better.

Now I have two other projects on my plate, one of which is another short for something else, and one of which is a new series-starter WIP which I’m extremely excited about. I’m not super far into it yet, but what I have I’m very happy with, which is a great feeling. It’s tentatively called Stone and Steam, but that will probably change.

I also have a to-do list which includes five interviews, which I really need to get to. And, I’ve got a couple of dozen emails and forum messages in my inbox from readers, relating to the Downside books, which I swear I will answer, my days have just been disappearing from me lately. But I do get those emails, I do read them, and I do appreciate them immensely. Nothing in this world is as amazing as getting an email from a reader who loved your work. (Well, okay. Sorry readers, but there are a few better moments, I have to admit. Holding your baby for the first time is pretty fucking amazing. But outside of stuff like that, reader email tops the list.)

BUT. That does bring me to a question most of the emails have been asking, and a ton of people on Twitter have been asking, as well as here on the blog. And I really wasn’t able to answer the question, although I’ve known the answer for, oh, three weeks or so now. Ready?

YES. There WILL be more Downside books!!

I don’t have any more details I can share as to number or dates or anything, although I think I can pretty safely say, considering it’s now July, that we’re talking about next year. We’re still working a lot of details out. But I’m extremely pleased and excited, and I hope you guys are too. Read the rest of this entry »