Category Archives: Writing

Blatant Commercial – Hereafter, and After

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Hereafter, and After2Hereafter, and After

 

 

 

 

 

This is a heads up for anyone who might be interested. If not, feel free to ignore, as I’m sure you would. For the next few days, my afterlife (?) novella Hereafter, and After, will be avalable on Kindle for 99 cents, then it’s back to the regular price of $2.99.

The image on the right is of the original hardcover chapbook issued by PS Publishing some years ago and long since sold out. The image on the left is my cover redesign. I probably should have used the original image since its long been in the public domain, but I felt like a change. That could have been a mistake but, if so, it is my own. The novella itself remains a favorite of mine, so much so that I’ve resisted the urge to expand it to novel length. Some things are just best the way they are. Besides, it’s only Amazon review says it would be a “decent 3 star short story if it was cheaper.” Now it is. No excuses.

“When a man carelessly steps in front of a speeding garbage truck, that’s usually the end of his story. For Jake Hallman, that’s just the beginning. He awakens on a metaphorical stretch of the Afterlife called the Golden Road, where the angel Brendan comes to escort him to Heaven. But Jake isn’t having any:

“Heaven sounds like a good thing in theory, but what is it really? What will I do there? Can I leave if I don’t like it? Under what circumstances? Can you force me to go?”

Brendan scratched his head. “I don’t think this has come up before.”

With that simple exchange Jake becomes one of the rarest and most valuable commodities in the Afterlife — a free soul. What’s a free soul to do? That is, if he wants to remain that way?

If you’re Jake Hallman you team up with a disgruntled ex-valkyrie named Freya and hit the Golden Road, the mystic path that links the Heavens and Hells of every mythos, plus a few places even the gods forgot. The unlikely pair join forces on a quest to discover if there really is any place in the cosmos where a spirit can be truly free.”

Thing One and Thing Two

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Step4-YamadaYamada_BTG_cover-V06b-Prime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for another update, since things have happened. Things don’t always happen, you know. It’s that whole “Feast or Famine” situation I’ve mentioned before. Most days the only update would be, “Wrote XXXX number of words today. Can’t think straight. It all looks like garbage right now.” I mean, can you imagine 360 blog posts exactly like that, with maybe five about something else? No one would read that. Heck, *I* wouldn’t read that.

Ahem. Getting off course a little bit. The things: First of all Rich Horton has picked up “The Manor of Lost Time” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #150 for his Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015. This will be the first time I’ve had work in one of Rich’s YBs, so I’m pleased.

The other thing goes a little beyond a reprint fee and an ego boost: Both books in the Yamada Monogatari series, Demon Hunter and To Break the Demon Gate are “Out of Stock.” Now, this does not mean that there are none left. Amazon and B&N still have a few of Demon Hunter and a few more of To Break the Demon Gate, but the book’s distributor does not have any more. Which means that the distributor cannot fulfill new orders and there is a backlog of orders waiting, especially with the second book. As a result, TBTDG is going back to press for an extra 1500 copies, which brings the total run up to 4500. Bear in mind, Prime Books is a relatively small publisher, so this is a big deal. It’s even possible that DH will get a reprint as well, though that has not been determined.

Now it’s likely that the next in the series, The War God’s Son, will get a larger initial run. I’m happy, the publisher is happy (astonished, but happy), though with larger runs comes larger expectations. We’ll see how it goes, but for now at least it’s a Good Thing.

Doc, It Hurts When I Do This….

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WRITING 02Yeah, I know. Old joke, but then old jokes come to mind when I find myself repeating old mistakes. Stale humor goes with stale habits.

Some time ago a friend asked me to comment on another story in a magazine I was also in, and I did. Regretted it immediately, and belatedly remembered why I stopped doing that. I see it as no win, at least from my own perspective. Whether I honestly like a story or not, and especially when I have a “stake” in the issue I can’t see it as anything other than 1) sucking up to my peers or 2) dissing the competition. You see the problem — I don’t trust my motives. I consider this wise, because anything I write about the issue will involve my own writerly ego, which is an extremely unreliable narrator. The ego is important and extremely useful, but move it out of its proper sphere (getting the work done, dealing with either the hostility or (worse) indifference that usually follows) and it becomes a liability. By extension and in hindsight this is why I stopped reviewing, period (though of course I never reviewed a magazine issue I was in). Now, reviewing was a useful phase and I’m glad I did it when I did. It helped me analyze my own work when I had to figure out what was wrong (or right) with a story I was reviewing. I think I was a very decent reviewer while it lasted, never pulled a punch or skimped on praise when appropriate. But then it was time to stop, and wanting more time for my own work was only part of the reason. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I was never comfortable with it and was never going to be. I will do it now and again, but only when I can’t help myself. The infrequency of reviews posted here should attest.

Oddly enough, in the context of a writer’s group I have no problem at all giving very harsh criticsm when I think it’s required. That, of course, is when the story can still be saved. Sometimes, it comes down to telling a proud parent that their baby is really, really, ugly. I have a problem with this. Other writers don’t.

Shrug.

Yamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son — Audible Update

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Break The Demon Gates endpapersI just got the news that Audible.com has made an offer for the third Yamada Book, The War God’s Son, so there will be an audiobook edition of this one as well. Word is they want the fourth one too, only there’s the slight technicality that it isn’t written yet.

I hope they’re able to get Brian Nishii to do the narration again, but that’s something to be determined later. In the meantime the third book actually is written, turned in, and scheduled for release in October of this year from Prime Books.

Capsule Description:

“With the Abe clan and its allies in full rebellion, the Emperor’s greatest military leader, Minamoto Yoshiie, is targeted for assassination by magic. It is up to the newly sober Lord Yamada and his exorcist associate Kenji to keep the young man alive long enough to put down the uprising before the entire country is consumed by war. Yamada knows how to deal with demons, monsters, and angry ghosts, but the greatest threat of all is one final assassin, hidden in a place where no one—especially Lord Yamada—would ever think to look.”

RIP Ratstein

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Yoshino-1On top of everything else we’ve had to deal with lately—there’s more, there always is, and lately a LOT more—we’ve had a rat living behind our dishwasher for the past three months. We’re not entirely sure how it got there—it didn’t come through the attic and down the wall. We strongly suspect it was one brought in by our cats to play with, because they’re both strong hunters but only one knows what to do with prey once it’s caught, and he only goes after smaller mice and lizards. Sheffield is the bigger, better hunter, but he hasn’t a clue what to do after catching prey because, to him, everything is a cat toy, so he brings them in to have some fun. So far we’ve removed three chipmunks, a mouse, and a cardinal from the house, but this one eluded us. This wouldn’t have happened in the old days with the late lamented Valentine. He was a killer. If he caught something, he ate it, and at most we—by which I mean me–would now and again be called upon to clean up the crime scene, but never to capture something he had decided to let go. Valentine wasn’t into catch and release.

I grew up in a small town and lived mostly in old drafty Victorian-era houses. Now and again we had to deal with rats and mice. It came with the territory. There wasn’t a great deal to it—bait a snap-trap, every now and then check and remove the bodies. Reset. Repeat. This rat wasn’t playing. Continue reading →