Paranorman and the End of Summer

Summer is almost over.  Time to get my son ready for school and start thinking of Halloween and the holidays (because, let’s face it, they’ll be here before you know it).   Time to order that costume he wants, too, before they sell out of his size.  If you’re reading this, I hope you had a great summer.  Summer is the one season that’s full of promise; I don’t think we ever outgrow that feeling, even when we’re stuck in corporate day jobs and can’t really enjoy the summer properly.  I love the autumn, so the end of summer doesn’t bum me out the way it does some folks, but there’s always that lingering sense of melancholy that hits when Labor Day comes.

Chiller Theatre

I'm not much of a Con-goer.  I used to go every year to a convention here on Long Island called ICON, which is actually a lot of fun, and one that I had the honor of being a guest at back in 1999 (I think).  I'm also a little sick of hearing about Comic-Con, because it's just so overplayed and hyped.  So when I say I'm not much Con-goer I pretty much mean that I haven't been to one in years.  On the other hand, there is one convention that I just love, one that comes up every year at Halloween and is a relative stone's throw from my house--the Chiller Theatre!

Sword of Angels Book Giveaway

In my on-going effort to get folks jazzed about the release of The Forever Knight next April, I'm holding a little giveaway contest for subscribers to my newsletter.  The prize is a hardcover, 1st edition of the third book in the Lukien series, The Sword of Angels.  I have two of them to give away to lucky winners.

How to enter?  It's super easy.  Just be a subscriber to my newsletter.  If you're already a subscriber, great; there's nothing more you need to do.  And if you want to be a subscriber, all you need to do is click on the subscription link to your right.  Don't worry about spam--the newsletter is just a way for me to inform book fans about upcoming releases and such.  In fact, I haven't even sent one out yet, so trust me when I say you won't be inundated by them.

On September 8th two lucky winners will be chosen at random.  It's all real hands-off, selected by a random number generator.  If your number comes up, you win! Then I will contact you via email for your mailing address to send you your signed book.

Good luck all!

The New 52--One Year Later

So next month DC Comics is going to be releasing a slew of #0 titles to mark the first year anniversary of their massive, all-titles revamp known as the New 52.  For comic books fans it's a good time to look back and assess how it's gone, and what we like and don't like.

The first thing I should say is that I'm glad that DC revamped their titles.  It was their attempt to pull new readers into the fold, and lapsed readers like myself who were too intimidated by the all plot twists and back-stories to get back into it.  I realize that this remains a point of controversy for a lot of comic book fans.  All I'm saying is that it worked for me.

The Forever Knight--One More Update

Well, it's official.  My editor has, at long last, completely finished reading the manuscript for The Forever Knight. The final verdict?  She "loved" it.  Believe me, I'm not bragging about this news.  I'm happy about it, but it's more of a feeling of sweet relief.  Just some fairly minor plot points need tightening up, a few things need to be clarified and brought forward, and I have until late October to get the revised manuscript back to her.

Expendables 2

This summer hasn't been the greatest for movies, at least not for me. There just wasn't a whole lot that interested me, and some of the films that I did see felt disappointing. It might be because the season started with The Avengers, and after that nothing really measured up (I'm looking at you, Brave).  But there was one movie that I wanted to see as soon as I knew it was coming out--The Expendables 2. Some old school destruction is exactly what I needed to bookend my summer movie going, so I saw it last night and had a great time.

Crown of Ash

Today's a great day.  Why?  Because it's the day that Crown of Ash goes on sale, the fourth book in Steve Montano's Blood Skies series.  Hopefully you remember Steve from the excellent guest post he did here back in July.  I'm really pleased to be featuring Steve here once again, this time to present an excerpt from his new book.

You can buy Crown of Ash right now from Amazon and Smashwords. I already brought my copy and I hope you'll do the same. Steve is a great author who deserves to be widely read.

Six Sentence Sunday--The Bloody Chorus

This week I'm posting another snippet from my work in progress, The Bloody Chorus.  I've been working steadily on this book lately, and although progress has been slow I'm really pleased with how it's turning out.

The world of The Bloody Chorus revolves heavily around a sea-faring people known as the Cryori. In this excerpt, we see a glimpse of what life is like aboard the Gonkin, one of the vessels of the Cryori fleet known as a beast-ship...

For two days they sailed east, watching the sun stroll across the sky and porpoises race alongside.  The birds and insects had vanished with the land, and behind them stretched a mile-long tail of foam, a fading arrow pointing toward their distant home.  The crew of the Gonkin worked the sails and pulleys and ropes.  The officers manipulated their gleaming instruments, reading the heavens like a map and peeking through their brass spyglasses.  Captain Nuara strode confidently across the deck, the bare bits of his arms peppered with tattoos.  Beneath the waves the Gonkin’s keel shifted with the currents, its mysterious armatures extending and retracting, speeding the beast-ship through the water.

Please check out the other authors posting excerpts from their work this week at sixsunday.com.  And as always, thanks for reading!

My Writing Fantasy

I was listening to an interesting interview this morning with Kelly Sue Deconnick, the woman who's writing the new, reinvented Captain Marvel comic book.  Now, when I think of Captain Marvel I don't think of the Marvel version--I think of the DC version, or Shazam, but okay, I won't get into that again..

I don't always listen to interviews with writers because I often find them pretentious and cloying, but comic book writers fascinate me for one simple reason--I want to be one of them.  I have a feeling that most writers have a "fantasy" project in their mind, something they wish they could do in addition to whatever else they're doing.

7:28 (Or, Start the Damn Movie Already)

I hate commercials. I know--everyone hates commercials, but I really, really hate commercials. Not sure if I've mentioned this on the blog before or not, but I absolutely refuse to listen to commercials if I can help it.  Those things come on the TV and I switch the channel or mute it, even if I'm in another room. So I'm not one of those people who enjoys watching the trailers they show before a movie.  I used to be, before they started strangling viewers with them, but now?  I've come to dread trailers, which is why I always show up late for a movie.  I would honestly rather miss the first five minutes of a film than have to sit through any trailers.

Six Sentence Sunday--The Forever Knight

I'm feeling all writerly again, which is a good thing.  I had some real plot breakthroughs yesterday on my current book project, The Bloody Chorus, and have decided to participate again this week in Six Sentence Sunday.

This excerpt is from the long-awaited fourth book in the Bronze Knight saga, The Forever Knight.  Some of you might remember me talking about creating a monster for this story a long, long time ago on my previous blog.  That monster turned out to be Crezil, a rather demonic creature that really ratchets up the body count in the book.  In this scene, Lukien sees Crezil for the very first time...

It was wholly unnatural, made from the very skeletons and skins it had burrowed beneath.  It climbed into the sky, towering over me upon my horse, its bony head the stolen skull of an ox.  A ladder of broken spines made its backbone, the ribs of its varied victims forming its chest.  Four legs protruded from its vaguely human shape, the two in front capped at the knees by mismatched skulls, the other pair dangling behind it.  It made its arms from borrowed bones, using goat horns for fingers.  In fact the thing was armored in bones, human and otherwise, an absurd and ghastly mishmash of corpses hung with rags of flesh.

As always, please check out sixsunday.com for other authors participating in this week's Six Sentence Sunday.  Thanks for reading!

The Hunted!

I’m psyched!  I’m so psyched I had to blog about it, because some blessed person finally posted a video up on YouTube that I’ve been searching for for years.  It’s an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the 80s called The Hunted starring Edward Woodward.  A.H.P was basically one of those anthology shows like Amazing Stories and the Twilight Zone, except that instead of fantasy stories these were mysteries.  Now I’m not a huge mystery fan, but back in the 80s I was totally enamored with the actor Edward Woodward, because of the show The Equalizer (which I blogged about here a while back)

Replicants and Triffids

There's almost always a silver lining to being sick. Unless, of course, you're really, really sick, it's a pretty good excuse for dumping work overboard, kicking back, and watching some movies.  I had the oddly good fortune of being ill the past couple of days--nothing serious, thankfully--just bad enough to stay home from work and catch my breath.  And what was waiting for me on Monday?  A nice red Netflix envelope with the Blu-ray edition of Blade Runner inside it.  I've talked about my love for Blade Runner a couple of times on this blog.  It's one of those movies that really holds up well for me, even after having seen it so many times.

My Favorite Book Cover Ever

Last week after posting about the Green Ninja, I started thinking about how common the word "ninja" has become.  When you say the word nowadays, everyone knows exactly what you mean, but it wasn't always that way, obviously.  When I was a kid that word just didn't exist in normal vocabulary, and the first time I ever heard it--or saw it, I should say--was on the cover of the novel, The Ninja, but Eric Lustbader.

The Green Ninja

Kind of sounds like the name of a cool action movie, but if you've seen the Lego Ninjago cartoon you know the green ninja is actually one of the characters on the show.  I actually don't want the show, but my son does, and he suddenly desperately wants to get ahold of the green ninja Lego minifig.  You've all probably seen lego minifigs before--those cute little lego guys (and gals) that often come with the lego playsets.  And maybe you've noticed how much those Lego playsets cost, because man, they're expensive.  Worth it, I suppose, but pricey.  The problem is, the green ninja figure only comes in a playset. 

The Forever Knight--Delayed

All day long I was wondering what I should blog about tonight, but a late-day email from my editor at DAW solved that problem for me.  I'm sorry to have to say this, but the release date for my upcoming novel THE FOREVER KNIGHT has been pushed back to April of next year.

I suppose I should have seen this coming.  As many of you know I turned in the manuscript for the book almost two years ago. For various reasons it took my editor up until now to read it.  The good news is she likes the book and called it "beautifully written."  So that's a yay.  But like any manuscript it needs some tweaking to make it the best it can be.  I've always known that and was expecting to get feedback on it a long time ago.  Unfortunately there just isn't time to get all that done by the original November pub date.