According to many other writers and not a few others, I'm supposed to update my blog regularly, which is supposed to help with the promotion of my books.
Trouble is, it's hard to update when the stuff I'm doing is not particularly interesting, just part of my day-to-day work! I figure you don't want to know how many words I did or did not write on any given day, or whether I worked out the plot problem in chapter whatever. I don't care how a mechanic fixes my car, so long as the outcome means I get to drive it home.
But cool things have happened!
Yes, I DID go to the awesome RT Booklovers Convention in LA, all courtesy of the amazing and awesome Rachel Caine. I had an equally amazing and awesome time and did not make too great a fool of myself during my brief thank you speech. It seems they presented me with their Pioneer Award for "Forging the Way for Vampire Fiction Since 1990."
Which is PRETTY DAMN COOL!
I'll include a picture of it if I ever find my digital camera and remember how to link it to the 'puter.
A full post of this weekend is not possible, as 1) I'm mega-busy; 2) much of it might be of little interest to anyone who isn't me; 3) I'm still mega-busy.
I did meet--in no real order--the likes of William Link and his lovely bride Margery (Mr. Link is a co-creater of Columbo) and you're danged right I got a signed book from that man! The clever and charming Lee Goldberg, who is as nice in person as he is on his blog, editor and author Laura Anne Gilman, who demonstrated enough features about her color Nook to sell me. I didn't buy it--but soon. Re-met the charming L.E. Modesitt, sitting next to him at the awards ceremony.
That's the top of my head, I'm sure more will come to me, but in addition to meeting and greeting new friends and long time friends like Carole Nelson Douglas, I went to a number of panels, most of them to do with e-publishing, which I'm finally committing to this year.
Which is why I'm so danged busy! I learned a lot and am applying it.
At this time I am working on the first steampunk book for Tor, ON HER MAJESTY'S PSYCHIC SERVICE: THE HANGED MAN and editing HEX SYMBOLS for St. Martin's Griffin, but in odd moments I'm prepping a series of short stories to release on Kindle, PubIt! (Nook), and Smashwords. The latter is giving me my 101 course in how to format for digital books.
So, no, I don't have time for blogging!
Suffice that I'm putting up a collection called THE LUNCH TIME SHORT STORIES SERIES which will feature many of my long out of print tales. Each story is long enough to read over lunch--which happens to be something I like to do. While I love a good novel, it can run long, especially if it's REALLY good, but a short story (at 20-30 double-spaced pages) is just the right length to enjoy over soup and a sandwich.
The stories won't be double-spaced, that's the manuscript length! Most run from 8-10K words, two to a volume for .99.
I'm including something for everyone: mystery, historical mystery, a science fiction novelette, and Vampire Files tales--including a NEW story, DRAWING DEAD, which was a chapter that didn't make it into THE DEVIL YOU KNOW. It just didn't fit into the flow of that book, but works just fine as a stand-alone!
Prototypes of the covers are up on my FaceBook page, if you'd like to cruise over and check 'em out!
