Cats, Skunks, and Audiobooks. Is There a Connection?

YamadaEmperor-600You don’t always dodge the bullet. Carol and I just spent a rough night followed by some non-too-joyous time this morning giving one of our cats a special bath to remove (or at least dial-down) eau-de-skonk. Took us a while to figure out what had actually happened, since he got the concentrated point-blank skunk shot and it smells more like burning rubber than normal skunk. For a while. Then the true nature of the situation becomes way too clear. I hope he’s learned his lesson. I doubt it, because Cats.

In an attempt to move on to more to a more pleasant subject, I just received my free author codes for the Audible.com edition of Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow. More than I need, and rather than let them sit idle, I’m going to give them away. No silly contest, no “What was the ghost Seita-san’s favorite food?” None of that nonsense. Just one string—I want you to review/rate the audiobook when you’re finished. That’s it. Hate It, Love It, Meh, Whatever. The review can be long and insightful or short and pungent. Entirely up to you, and doing a review at all is strictly on the honor system. I will not be checking. The only other catch, if you can call it that, is I have only a limited number of these, so it’s first come, first served, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ll put up a note when that happens.

All you need to do is shoot me an email requesting one of the codes, and as long as I have one free I will send it back to you along with instructions for using it. My email address is in human-readable form on the “About” page on the website. Grab it and go, and Happy Listening.

Edited to Add: And we’re done. Thanks to all who participated.

The Draken Harald Hårfagre

DrakenProwMy new home town is situated in a river gorge, and both the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal pass right through it. So we were fortunate that the Draken Harald Hårfagre made it one of their stops in the their Canadian and US tour. The name translates as “Dragon Harald Fairhair.” The Draken Harald Hårfagre is the largest Viking ship built in the current age. Named in honor of King Harald Fairhair (sometimes also translated as “Prettyhair”, the dude clearly had some major locks), the first King of Norway and modeled after the Gokstad Ship. On Saturday and Sunday the ship itself was open for tours, and who with a modicum of interest in history is going to pass up the chance to stand aboard a real viking ship? It’s not like that happens every day. So we braved the crowds and headed down to the marina. Continue reading

And Now We are Four

Now that I’ve got them all together and out–or soon, in the case of the print edition of The Emperor in Shadow, I thought it might be sensible to list the entire Yamada Tetralogy, with links. Because I’m all about convenience.

 

Yamada_DH_FinalCover_smlYamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Prime-AuthorCopy3 Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The War Gods Son-First SightingYamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
YamadaEmperor-600Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow

Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow Ebook Live

YamadaEmperor-600We interrupt whatever this normally is for a strictly commercial announcement: Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow is now live on Kindle, Apple/iTunes, and Nook. It’s a little unusual for the ebook edition to be available before the print edition goes live, but this time those preferring their reading on the screen will get a headstart. Enjoy!

Fireworks and Final Edits

YamadaEmperor-600Happy 4th to all those stateside. Our across the street neighbors apparently chose to celebrate by re-enacting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Our cats disappeared for a while but came out unscathed when the coast was finally clear. Not that I should complain. I went through my own phase of being enamored with firecrackers, but that was mostly because I was a kid in a small southern town and often there was literally nothing better to do. Read all the books/comics I had multiple times (no internet). Run out of scrap wood for tinkering. Night too cloudy for stargazing. I know! Let’s set off low-scale ordinance! What I have trouble understanding is why alleged grownups want to do it now. I grew out of it before I’d left my teens, and count myself fortunate I still have all my fingers.

Good thing, too, as I needed them to make final corrections on the typeset manuscript for The Emperor in Shadow, which from the link you can see now has its own Amazon page, and an official release date of September 6th. Which means it’ll more than likely be available in August, because that’s how these things usually work. Since it’s July now (What gave it away? Oh, right, fireworks…), that’s not very long, but why wait? You can pre-order it now and have it as soon as it’s available.

On that subject, I want to give a shout-out to my editor, Paula Guran, who turned the manuscript around in a short time under extremely trying circumstances, only one of which was me cutting it so close to the deadline. It’s a much better book for her efforts. Anything you don’t like falls squarely on me.