Tag Archives: Traditional Publishing

Out of Print and a Temporary Lack of Availability

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A fun (or not so fun) fact of the publishing industry is that books can sometimes become classified as “Out of Print.” What this means, typically, is that for various reasons (though usually based on sales) the publisher has stopped making that book available for purchase. The specifics of how a book qualifies varies from contract to contract, so I won’t go into that. Some months ago, The Forgotten got flagged as out of print by Harper, which meant the paperback would no longer be available. However, because we live in the digital age, the ebook did remain available.

Now, a brief digression. Since my American Faerie Tale series was published by HarperCollins, one of my chief regrets was the lack of audiobooks. This is partly why I’m so excited about Two-Gun Witch getting one. In short, this was because part of my contract with Harper included the audio rights, but they never did anything with them.

Back on topic. When a book goes out of print, that typically means the author can request their rights back from the publisher. I initially held off on doing this for two reasons. First, The Forgotten is book 2 of the series. Understandably, not many publishers are interested in picking up just one book in the middle of a series. The second reason I held off was, frankly, ego. HarperCollins is one of the big five, and having a book with a major publishing house was, for me at least, a sort of badge of honor. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel no longer being a Harper Author. Also, it felt a bit like admitting defeat and becoming a failed author.

I’ve since grown past those concerns, and because of the terms of my contract, I thought the other books would also qualify, I formally requested reversion of rights on all my books. They agreed to The Forgotten and Three Promises, and we’re in discussion about The Stolen. I’m hopeful the steps I’ve taken will get that one back as well, but we’ll see. The Returned is still selling well enough to not qualify, so I do also get to remain a Harper Author for now.

What does this mean to you, the reader? Well, if you go looking for The Forgotten or Three Promises, you’ll find it unavailable. The Stolen (hopefully) will likewise become unavailable before long. It’s possible that if you bought the ebook through Amazon, they could vanish from your library. This is because with Amazon (and some other retailers), you didn’t actually buy the book, just the right to read it, and they could pull it at any time. Yeah, I’m not a fan of that either.

HOWEVER! Falstaff Books, the small press that published Two-Gun Witch, has said they want to pick up the American Faerie Tale series, in whatever pieces I have to offer. I’m hopeful, and optimistic, it will be The Stolen, The Forgotten, and Three Promises. How long it will be before they’re available, I don’t know, but it will happen. They will all also get new covers (Harper owns the originals) and, most exciting, AUDIOBOOKS! Those will take a bit longer to come about, so I ask for patience in that.

In the short term, the books will be unavailable, and for that I apologize, but they will be rereleased, so hang in there. The publishing world, even for small presses, doesn’t move at lightning speed, but if I had to guess (and don’t hold me to this) I’d say sometime early next year. If I go quiet for a while, it will be because John Hartness of Falstaff read that and had me beaten into unconsciousness.

Thanks for your patience. More to come. Watch this space!

Podcast Appearance

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Ed, my friend since seventh grade, is a history teacher in Northern California. He also co-hosts a podcast called A Geek History of Time with Damian Harmony, a fellow teacher. They were kind enough to invite me on to talk about my writing journey, and my American Faerie Tale books. I’m a fan of the podcast and if you enjoy history and/or geekery, I highly recommend it, even the episodes I don’t appear in. The episode on Squirrel Girl is on of my favorites. Beware, if you dread puns, stretch your eyes before listening because Damian will have them rolling continually. And good news, the podcast is available everywhere I know of that you can get podcasts!

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A Big Announcement!

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One of the downsides to being a writer is that you often get good news but can’t share it right away. A few weeks ago this happened to me (again) and now I’m finally able to share it.

*drumroll*

Two-Gun Witch has been picked up!!!


(SQUEE)

For those of you who follow my blog posts, you know this has been a long and often daunting road. I feel this book is my best work to date, which it should be in terms of my writing skill, but I also believe this is the best story I’ve written with some of the best characters. For those who haven’t followed my posts, or don’t remember, the short version is that the book got sent around to the big publishers, and a few smaller imprints. Generally (high 90 percentile) the editors really liked the book and wanted it, but the marketing people put the kibosh on it because they weren’t sure how to sell it, or felt it was too much of a gamble (fantasy westerns don’t usually sell well). I knew this would be an issue even though I think it’s more of a historical fantasy; only part of the story is set in the old west. As such, It didn’t take long for me to realize that a small press would be the best place for TGW. They can often take risks the bigger houses won’t.

The book will be published by Falstaff Books. I think Falstaff is a great home for TGW, and not just because they call themselves the Misfit Toys of Fiction, but that helped. I’ve known John Hartness for a couple of years now, and I’ve rarely met someone who works harder for authors and books. Additionally, there will be an audiobook which is something I’ve been wanting for a very long time. I’m super excited (in case you couldn’t tell) and I can’t wait to see what the book becomes.

Obviously there isn’t cover art yet, or a release date beyond sometime next year, but as soon as they become available, I’ll be announcing them here. While I am eager to get the book out, I’m also excited to have the time to build up some hype, get some reviews, and hopefully spread the word. This is of course where you (my wonderful, brilliant, incredibly attractive, spectacular readers) can really help. Have I mentioned lately how much I love you all, you sexy beasts?


(I’m just going to assume this is you)


(or this #BestCompanionFightMe)

In the coming months I’ll be releasing details about the book (see above about hype) and also revealing details about a special offer for pre-orders from The Fountain Bookstore (my local indie, who ships worldwide).

In the meantime, here’s a little something for you wonderful (and did I mention super hot?) people to tantalize. This is a sample flap copy I wrote up last year. If you don’t know the term, the flap copy is the paragraph or two you find on the back cover of paperbacks or inside the flap (hence the term) of the dust jacket for hardcovers. It’s unlikely that this will be the final copy, but I think it offers a good idea of what the story is about.

Talen is a Stalker, a bounty hunter hired by the Marshal Service to hunt down humans stained by dark magic. She’s also a two-gun witch, one of the few elven women who can wield two magical revolvers, spell irons, at once. For three years she’s lived for the next bounty, and a whisper of vengeance for the destruction of her people. That changes when she takes the warrant on Margaret Jameson, a new kind of stained, one immune to the usual tools of collection. Upon finding her quarry, Talen realizes Margaret isn’t stained at all, but someone worked very hard to make her appear so. The search for an answer carries the two unlikely partners from the wilds of the Great Plains to the expansive cities of post-Civil War America. There, they learn the truth is much darker than they imagined, and it could mean the death of millions, or even reshape the world itself.

More to come. Watch this space.

A Story is Born – T. Frohock

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Welcome to the inaugural post of what I intend to become an ongoing series. Several authors I respect and admire have an ongoing blog series where authors can come and talk about their books. John Scalzi has The Big Idea, Mary Robinette Kowal has My Favorite Bit, and Chuck Wendig has 5 Things I learned. I wanted to do something different, and since authors are so often asked “where do your ideas come from” I decided my contribution (or rather theirs) would be how the story of their book came about.

But I’ve taken up enough space talking about other people. For the very first A Story is Born I invited T. Frohock to talk about her book, Where Oblivion Lives. She did one better and talked about how her Los Nefilim series came about.

In the beginning …

King Solomon was dying. That was how the first incarnation of Los Nefilim began. It went something like this:

In the garden beyond my window, a night bird cried a sublime song while in the distance, a guard called the watch. Otherwise, the palace slept as I, Solomon, third King of all Israel, lay dying with only an angel at my side.

She was a small creature, this angel of mine who cradled my hand, her wings folded demurely at her back. When I was a young man, the tip of her head barely reached my collarbone. Now she towered over my deathbed. She seemed larger somehow; an illusion amplified by the darkness and my fear of the dark.

Except that book didn’t sell. It was too much story in such a short space of words. There were angelic and daimonic wars, and multiple incarnations, and the narrative moved between Solomon’s first person account of the events in the past and the third person account of the events on the Iberian Peninsula in 1348. It was a huge tale that probably should have spanned multiple novels, but I wrote it like one book and it failed to win an editor’s eye.

That happens sometimes. We spend a lot of time and energy on our prose, and though it might feel emotionally devastating when something doesn’t sell, often it just means a particular work isn’t ready for publication. Sometimes, the story needs time to settle … ferment, if you will.

With that thought in mind, I tucked the novel into the metaphorical trunk that is a computer’s memory, and then I moved on to other stories. None of them sold, either.

I was ready to quit writing. Not out of petulance—okay, maybe a little, but once my hurt feelings passed, I took a quick inventory and realized that if my work wasn’t being published, then it was probably something wrong with my writing. Maybe … just maybe … it might be an idea to start back at the beginning. I considered taking some classes, honing my craft a little more before trying for publication again. In other words, it was time for a break.

Meanwhile, the novella market was opening up and a friend suggested that I try writing one. At something of a loss for what to do, I decided to make the novella a gauntlet challenge: if the novella was rejected, then I would quit writing for a while.

As I turned ideas over in my head, I remembered my Solomon story, which is really the backstory for Guillermo, Diago, and Miquel. That backstory went something like this:

You see, the Psalms of the Old Testament were written by several people: David, Solomon, and someone called Asaph. I thought it odd that there was so much literature about David and Solomon and the other members of their respective courts, but this guy named Asaph gets a byline and then pretty much drops out of sight forever. I’m sure Biblical scholars know more about him, but I couldn’t find anything. So I made up a story about how Asaph and Solomon were great friends, but they had a falling out, one so severe that Solomon banished Asaph from his court and imprisoned him with a half-mad angel, but Solomon still loved Asaph too much to erase him from existence entirely, so he left his name on the Psalms they composed. The end.

Then I kept the components of the original story that worked: Solomon/Guillermo, who in his arrogance caused the fall of the Nephilim; his best-friend and betrayer, Asaph/Diago; and the commander of one of Solomon’s army divisions and Asaph’s lover, Benaiah/Miquel.

For everything else, I essentially started from scratch. I eliminated the shape changing and as I reworked the story, I discovered that it wasn’t really about Guillermo. The story of the nefilim was about Diago. So I trimmed the details down to their very essence for the first novella, and since they all had Spanish names, I kept the setting in Spain.

Rather than stick with epic fantasy, I moved the story forward to the turbulent years leading up to the Spanish Civil War. The novellas (In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death) all serve as an introduction into the world of Los Nefilim, as well as forming the basis for discovering the Key—the song that will enable the nefilim to open the realms as the angels do. The novels, which begin with Where Oblivion Lives, concern Diago’s actual composition of the Key. Somewhat like an opera in three parts, the stories follow the crucial points that lead our heroes to the next act of the movement.

The newest novel, Carved from Stone and Dream, will be published February 2020 and is something akin to Band of Brothers meets John Wick. It takes place at the end of the Spanish Civil War. I spend some time talking about the Spanish retreat and how the French treated the refugees fleeing Franco’s armies.

It’s been an amazing journey with these three guys and their adventures. As I work on the third novel, A Song with Teeth, I’m bringing this portion of their story to a close and realizing that theirs is the journey of three men moving away from the toxic masculinity of their firstborn lives to learn to nurture one another in an emotionally healthy relationship.

After reviewing this very long post, I guess my message to authors is a simple one. You never know which incarnation of a story might sell, so stick with the process you’ve developed for yourself and keep trying, keep writing. More than anything, don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles.

Write on … I will watch for you.

T. Frohock has turned a love of history and dark fantasy into tales of deliciously creepy fiction. A real-life cyborg, T. has a cochlear implant, meaning she can turn you on or off with the flick of a switch. Make of that what you will. She currently lives in North Carolina, where she has long been accused of telling stories, which is a southern colloquialism for lying.

You can find her in a lot of places online, but she is most often at her website or lurking on Twitter.

Author Visit: Liana Brooks

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Liana isn’t just a fellow Harper author (Time and Shadows series), she’s also an incredibly skilled writer, and a very cool person to boot. That’s right, a triple threat! Well, while you wait for word about my next work (news coming soon!) she’s here to talk about her latest book, Bodies in Motion.

Newton’s First Law of Motion states “A body in motion will stay in motion until acted on by an outside force”. We usually think of this in terms of physics, physical objects, and friction but it applies to choices and lives too. Often a person will set their course and stay on it unless acted on by something external force, even if the destination is catastrophic. For Selena Caryll her course is a downward spiral, she’s lost everything and has no future to look forward to. For Titan Sciarra his life was headed for an early death until he was shot down in the war, the subsequent injuries and his absence from the battle lines allowed him to change direction.
In a world where two stagnant cultures are on a collision course with mutual destruction it will take something extraordinary to change the world. And what’s more extraordinary than love?

Why did you write this book?
Many, many years ago when I was trying to take a mental break from the Time and Shadows series I decided to try writing Harry Potter fanfic. I was fascinated by the isolation Hermione had at the end of the series, how she’d given up every aspect of her muggle life to become part of something else. And I wondered if she’d ever want to go back to MP3 players, smartphones, and democracy after fighting to live in the hyper-controlled world of the witches. Needless to say… I don’t appreciate Harry Potter well enough to write good fanfic in that universe and the idea quickly spun out of control. I kept thinking of magic in terms of science, implants for wands, crews instead of Hogwart’s houses.

I took the threads of the story and started to write NEWTON’S CRADLE, and realized I’d jumped too far ahead in the story for it to make sense. So, I went back and tried to figure out where I needed to start. Not with the war, because wars are boring, but with the fallout of the war. How do you rebuild cultures and trust and friendship after something as awful as a civil war?

How do you forgive someone who fought against you because they thought it was the only way to survive?

BODIES IN MOTION is the catalyst for change, it’s the pivot point where everyone in this universe gets a second chance at making the right choice.

Is BODIES IN MOTION a standalone book? BODIES IN MOTION is the first in a series of books about the Malik system. It can be read all on its own, and the other books will be written in a way that allows them to be read without the reader having read the other books, but it will have an over-arching storyline as well.

Why did you serialize the novel? I’ve wanted to serialize a novel for several years now. In part because I like the old-time serialized novels from magazines (think Sherlock Holmes) and in part because I wanted to see how modern readers would adapt to the format. This summer (2017) I realized that I was going to be traveling so much that I wouldn’t have time to blog regularly. A serialized novel seemed like the solution. It gave my readers something to check-in to see, and it served as an introduction to this new universe.

Would you serialize another novel? Maybe? There were some die-hard, “I will wait until the book is out!” readers who avoided my blog all summer because they didn’t want spoilers. And then there were readers emailing me from other countries saying they missed a train because they stopped to read the newest chapter. I probably won’t serialize the next book in this series (LAWS OF ATTRACTION coming 2018) but maybe the first book in a new series sometime later on.

For readers who enjoyed the Time and Shadows series, what does BODIES IN MOTION offer? The Time and Shadow series (The Day Before, Convergence Point, Decoherence) with Sam and Mac was SF-lite. Clones and the multiverse, but less high-tech space exploration. Still, it shares a theme of choices with BODIES IN MOTION. Sam realized she was an einselected node and that even her smallest choices affected the fate of the multiverse. In BODIES everything is post-war, people are dealing with the trauma of having lost people they loved, of having killed people they once considered friends, and there’s no one in Selena’s age group who wasn’t effected. They didn’t get to opt out of the war. When a society is that fragile, every choice matters. Every word, every action, every inaction has a long-term consequence. This is only the start of the series so we don’t get to see everything yet, but you get to see the start.

How would you describe the life of a writer? Imagine sitting in an overgrown cottage in the woods, bears trundling past as the snow falls on withered vines. Inside a woman sits over a magic tablet conjuring infinite worlds. She captures these worlds, presses them into a portable container, and distributes them around the world. When someone finds one, they enter another world.

That’s writing. It’s magic done with computers and inks and patience. It’s the ability to conjure best friends, vicious enemies, and infinite wonders out of nothingness. Everyone should try story-telling at least once.

What advice do you have for writers who aren’t published yet? Keep at it! Keep writing. If you want to publish keep writing, keep learning, keep trying. If a book isn’t working, write a new one. If you want to write but can’t figure out how to make the story in your head appear on the page take classes, meet with writing groups, check out online places like CritiqueCircle.com and give yourself space to learn. The only thing standing between a new author and publication is time. If you keep at it, you’ll get published someday.

Selena Caryll lost everything in the war: her ship, her crew, her family. The only thing keeping her going is the hope that somehow the feuding, ground-bound settlers and the fuelless space fleet can set aside their differences. But getting the politically-fractured fleet moving again is more than she can manage alone. For now, she has to settle for working undercover with the planetary police force.

When someone tries to reignite conflict between the planet-siders and the fleet, there’s only one person who has the rank and ability to help Selena protect the fleet: Titan Sciarra, Fleet Guardian—the one man she’s tried hardest to avoid since the war destroyed her life.

In a world where the stagnant weight of tradition can be as deadly as any knife, the only way to survive is to keep moving.

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You can also learn more about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in fiction HERE

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Liana Brooks write sci-fi and crime fiction for people who like happy endings. She believes in time travel to the future, even if it takes a good book and all night to get there. When she isn’t writing, Liana hikes the mountains of Washington with her family and giant dog. Find her at LianaBrooks.com or on Twitter as @LianaBrooks

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Your Baby is Ugly…Again

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Almost four years ago I posted to this blog for the first time. The post, Your Baby is Ugly, is about dealing with rejection. And now we come full circle. Last year I submitted a proposal to Harper for the next several books in the American Faerie Tale series (four to be exact). It also contained the first four chapters of the very next book. After several months, they rejected that proposal. I was—and still am—disappointed but I will say I wasn’t entirely surprised. The sales numbers for my books haven’t been terrible, but each book has sold progressively less than the one before. Publishing is a business and, I hope, this was a business decision. As such, I hold no ill will toward Harper or anyone there. Sure, I would’ve liked to have gotten more support in terms of marketing and/or publicity, but I also knew from the beginning I was a very small fish and there was only so many dollars to go around. It should be noted that Harper has said they would be happy to look at anything new I might have. So what does this mean?

Well if you’ve read that first post, and several others, you know I’m sure as hell not giving up!

In the short term, however the series is done. I could finish the next book and self-publish it, but I’m not ready to go that path yet. It would be the fifth book in a series and I think would be more about my vanity than my readers. Besides, I would rather devote my limited time toward something new.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done. As I write this post I’m about 30k words into the first draft and I think it’s pretty damned good, if I do say so myself. No, I won’t tell you the title or what it’s about. I’d rather wait until it’s at least close to finished, or has a publisher ready to put it out. I will say it continues my habit of genre bending, and I don’t recall seeing anything like it before. That could be good or bad, we’ll see.

I’ve also started writing some more short fiction. It hasn’t been picked up anywhere, I think I’m better at long fiction, but you only get better with time and practice. So I’m going to keep trying. I’m considering posting the things that don’t sell on here. What do you think? Post in the comments if you have a thought one way or the other. I also have one manuscript finished, Luna and the Star, and I’m going to see about shopping it around while I finish my current work in progress. It might be my first self-published work, but I haven’t decided. Stay tuned for more.

Without any new books coming out, obviously I won’t have as many appearances, but that doesn’t meet I won’t have any. I’ll be attending RavenCon (April 28th-30th) so if you’re going to be there, stop by and say hi. I’ll also be attending the Nebula awards, and will even be on some panels this year.

In the long term, my goals are still the same. Rejection is part of life, and especially part of being an author. I’m still working towards living on my writing, and I’m not about to stop. The only way I’m going to fail is if I stop trying, and I’m not going to do that. If you’ve read the books, I offer my sincerest thanks. If you haven’t, well they’re still out there and still worth reading.

Guest Post: Nancy K. Wallace

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Nancy Wallace was my first writer friend. When I first got word from Harper Voyager that I’d been selected from their open call and offered a contract, I posted a comment on a thread on the HV website. I was told not to do that again, politely, and I did. Not everyone had been notified you see and they wanted to make a big, official announcement. As you might imagine, this single comment created a lot of buzz. More than 4500 people had been waiting for 18 months to hear, though the number was surely much smaller by then. Status updates didn’t come as often as any of us would’ve liked and my comment was something new. After that, I had to keep my head down. I answered questions as best I could without revealing anything more. Then I got a message from Nancy. She was also accepted and was told not to say anything yet. That was more than two years ago, and I’m proud to call Nancy a friend. Her first book, Among Wolves, is spectacular and I highly recommend checking it out. The sequel, Grim Tidings, is now available and I’m sure it will be just as good. To mark the release of the book, Nancy is here to talk villains, why we need them, and how hard they can be to write sometimes.

Why Must There Be Villains?

Anyone who knows me well knows that I avoid confrontation, violence, and just unpleasantness in general. Maybe it’s simply my nature or maybe it comes from having worked with children for almost 30 years but that fact is that sword wielding heroes pretty much turn me off. I am more hobbit-like in nature. I like a good cup of tea, a cozy fire, and a good story sans the gruesome details. I believe the Greeks had it right in confining violence off stage where it was hidden safe from sight.

And then, I found myself writing Grim Tidings, Book#2 in the Wolves of Llisé series. I’d left my readers with a cliff hanger at the end of Among Wolves; one that couldn’t be conveniently explained by divine intervention. I knew in my heart that my villain, René Forneaux, had to be really horrible if Book #2 was going to work. The first line of Book #2 gives a good idea that this book will be very different: “At dawn we discovered the first body.”

I found myself squeamishly dabbling at a difficult subject for me – the inherent evil of some people. I have always preferred to believe that everyone is essentially good, if somewhat misguided, and that most people can be swayed by finding common ground. But the farther I went into my story, the darker it became. It was very difficult for me to watch this happen, considering that I wasn’t able to read anything other than the first book of the Hunger Games because I was so traumatized by the violence!!

I had the most difficulty subjecting my original cast of characters to untold horrors, so I created some new ones. Oddly enough, I found the poor traumatized characters rising from the ashes like the Phoenix. I even added a character that I don’t believe I was capable of creating two years ago.

When my manuscript was returned to me with structural edits, there was, thank heavens, not much to change except that my editor felt my villains weren’t quite as villainous as they need to be – even after all my work!! So I tweaked. I made some things more graphic, or as graphic as I could bear to make them and I made René Forneaux a man who people wanted to kill. It made a difference and I learned an important lesson, too: without darkness, light is not so startling in its beauty.

Writing is a study of contrasts, of struggle, failure, and blessed resurrections. It pulls us out of our comfort zone and forces us to see the world as it really is, with all its sorrow, evil, and hurt. But as writers we can also offer beauty to mollify pain, and extend hope to assuage sorrow. That is the benefit of fantasy: in a place that doesn’t even exist, we can imagine ourselves as we might be at our very best!

Grim Tidings - Hi Res

Book two in the sumptuous Wolves of Llisé trilogy.
As the son of Llis’s ruler, Devin Roch knows its laws only too well. It’s a land where keeping historical records is forbidden. To do so would mean imprisonment or death.
Only bards may share the histories of their provinces, but Devin’s quest to learn from them ended in tragedy. His best friend Gaspard has been kidnapped, Master Bards are being murdered and whole communities are disappearing. Clearly someone doesn’t want Devin to know the true history of Llis.
With his guard Marcus and a wolf pack for protection, Devin sets out to discover the truth. But as terrible secrets come to light, Devin realizes that some knowledge can be deadly.

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Nancy K. Wallace loves chocolate, Christmas, and puppets! She collects fairytales and folklore and houses them in dozens of bookcases (alphabetically according to country). Her pets include four lovely cats, and an Arab mare named Ariel.  She lives with her husband in a 140 year old farmhouse named Chevonwyck. Fortunately, she has a family who is tolerant of her obsessions and excellent at proofreading! Nancy is the author of 19 children’s books plus The Wolves of Llisé series for new adults. She has reviewed YA literature for VOYA magazine for 20 years.
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Lessons About Life as a Published Author

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Katherine Harbour was one of the author’s discovered during the open submission window Harper Voyager held back in 2013. Her work stuck out so much, she was picked up more than a year before the rest of us, and she certainly earned it. Her Night and Nothing series is truly exceptional and worth picking up, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t usually get into YA.
Not long ago, Katherine posted some of the things she has learned along the way. I wrote something similar last year, and probably will again this year, but she makes some interesting observations. As such, I felt it was worth sharing with all of you. You can read it here, and while you’re there, check out the rest of her site.

What I’ve Learned About Being a Traditionally Published Author

 

 

 

New Author Adventures – Guilty Pleasures

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Auston Habershaw, despite how his name sounds, is not Benedict Cumberbatch’s distant cousin. His bio says that on the day he was born, Skylab fell from the heavens. This foretold two possible fates: supervillain or scifi/fantasy author. Fortunately he chose the latter, and spends his time imagining the could-be and the never-was rather than disintegrating the moon with his volcano laser. It should be noted I have been personally assured the aforementioned volcano laser is strictly for research purposes. He is also  a fellow Harper Voyager author and New Englander (Yankees suck). His first two books, The Iron Ring and Iron and Blood are both available, and as of yesterday are combined into a single volume called The Oldest Trick (various buy links below). Much like Tolkien, Auston had a single epic fantasy book that was so epic it had to be broken into pieces. Bonus points for doing a dualogy instead of the well trodden trilogy. But what do you expect from a winner of the Writers of the Future Award (Volume 31).

As part of his journey to get his book out to every single human being, and any literate animals who can pay, he’s stopped by to share with us his thoughts on guilty pleasures.

On Frivolity

By Auston Habershaw

It all starts in a tavern. All pointless stories start there, since that is the place we can easiest imagine meeting others and doing something interesting, despite the fact that meeting in taverns rarely leads to anything more interesting than intoxication. There’s an elf and a dwarf, and let’s say an orc. Or ork – whichever. Everybody’s drinking ale (which is more interesting than beer) and the barmaid has an irresponsibly plunging neckline. Let’s presume she works for tips.

This is the point in the story where somebody runs in from outside, breathless and bloody. Or where some loud-mouth starts spouting off about ‘the only good orc is a dead orc’ or whatever. Perhaps some lunk gets handsy with the barmaid. Maybe somebody mysterious posts a note on the bulletin board. It says the following:

DANGEROUS ADVENTURE!

Wanted: 1 Warrior, 1 Thief, 1 Wizard (Elves, Priests, and Dwarves optional)

REWARD!

Meet the Creepy Stranger in the Inexplicably Empty Back Room

Maybe all of these things happen. The point is this: what happens next is a bar fight.

Why? Evidently such things are fun. Heroic music plays, as is fitting for acts of criminal vandalism and assault. The fight rages on, and heroes emerge. Why are they heroes? Well, they’re winning the fight, of course. They find in each other a ready ally, a surprise to no one save themselves. Maybe, at the end of all this, they rescue a princess in disguise (she was slumming it, you know. Why drink in the palace when there’s a perfectly good dive down the road where you might get assaulted by a dwarf?). Whatever happens, the drunk under the table never notices; he rises, alone, and is delighted to find free beer.

I mean ale. Sorry.

So begins a tale of adventure. High drama. Endless banter. Derring do on every other page. Maybe, by the end, the elf and the dwarf and the orc become friends. A little tear forms in the corner of our eye, but we refuse to ever acknowledge its existence. The tear is undercover, you see. Top Secret. Hush-hush.

 

I bet you were rolling your eyes up there. Chuckling, perhaps? Sure, and why not – the cliché is so banal, it’s comedy. Then again, though, there’s something to be said for mindless fun. There is an article by Adam Sternbergh in the NYT magazine considering the worth of so-called ‘guilty pleasures’. I enjoyed it immensely and enjoin you to read it.

Done? Okay:

Why do we feel so bad about liking things considered low-brow? I mean, isn’t it okay to have fun – even dumb fun – on occasion? Must everything be so deep and serious all the time? I confess to feeling the pressure myself. As an academic (or pseudo-academic, given that my terminal degree is not a PhD but rather an MFA), there is a certain pressure to make what I write and what I enjoy somehow important. Not all of it is, though, no matter what I do to it. When I confess to liking Armageddon or Army of Darkness, there isn’t much that can be said to give such works merit. Likewise my hobbies: despite its sophistication, there is nothing truly artistically redeeming about Warhammer 40,000 unless you put far more effort into painting miniatures than I do. And even then it’s suspect.

So what, though? I think sometimes we spend too much time decrying the frivolous, forgetting just how important frivolity can be. As much as being serious adults is important, it isn’t the only game in town. We also need to have fun. We also need to do things that are easy. All work and no play makes Homer…something…something…

Right then – let’s go to the tavern. I’ll buy you an ale. Later, when we’re riding dragons to save the King of Thumbershire from the Daemon Princess of Xoon, you’ll thank me. Dwarf’s honor.

The Oldest Trick is just as much fun and worth picking up.

Tyvian Reldamar gets betrayed by his longtime partner and left for dead in a freezing river. To add insult to injury, his mysterious rescuer took it upon himself to affix Tyvian with an iron ring that prevents the wearer from any evildoing.

Revenge just got complicated.

On his quest to get even, Tyvian navigates dark conspiracies, dodges midnight assassins, and uncovers the plans of the ruthless wizard Banric Sahand. Tyvian will need to use every dirty trick in the book to avoid a painful and ignominious end, even as he learns to work with—and rely on—his motley crew of accomplices, including an adolescent pickpocket, an obese secret-monger, and a fearsome gnoll.

THE OLDEST TRICK_

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You can find Auston on his blog, Twitter, Facebook, or writing to his cousin.

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Happy Birthday to The Stolen!

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It was one year ago that my first book, The Stolen, was published. It was a momentous event for me, marking my entrance into the world of being a published author. At times it’s hard to believe it’s been a year already, and at others, it’s hard to believe it’s only been a year. It’s been a remarkable ride, with some remarkable moments. Winning the cover of the year on The Qwillery was exceedingly cool. Getting a slot on John Scalzi’s blog (Big Idea) is still very cool to think about. The Forgotten got a spot too, so I suppose I’m becoming an old hand at it, and I’m safe in saying Scalzi and I are total BFFs now (I’m kidding, John, don’t release the hounds!).

I’ve covered a lot of my journey in my “Adventures in Being a New Author” posts, so I won’t rehash that here. I’ll simply say this:
Thank you, fans and readers, for buying the book. Thank you for reading it, for reviewing it, and possibly even for telling others about it. I hope this is the first of many years as a writer, and I hope you enjoy the other books yet to come.
Now, have some cake (Scalzi, you can have pie, of course) and if you haven’t yet, buy a copy of The Stolen! In fact, celebrate and buy two or three copies! And if you’ve bought one already, buy another! You deserve it!