Cheating on My Own Blog...

I know I haven't posted here in a while. The reason is that I've been posting for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers on the regular, and my blog-fu has been going to them. For those who'd like to drop by and see what I've been up to, here's a list of links to the blog posts I've done so far:

Learning from Television: The Art of Predictability

Mixing It Up--You're Doing It Wrong

Wrapping It Up--Finishing a Series

Feeding the Muse

Making a Big Deal out of It

Gadgets and Spreadsheets and Apps, Oh, My!

Spicing Up Your Stories

I hope you'll drop by and take a look. And I'll try to get a big more news coming on this blog. I have some news regarding an upcoming release, and I'm looking forward to talking about it.

Coming Soon, plus New Cover!

Coming soon from Shara Azod, LLC:

Snow: White Tiger Shifters Series

Jayanti is pissed. The last thing she knew, she was cavorting with tigers in Rewa, India. Then suddenly she's abducted and dragged off to a zoo in the US with no safe way to shift back to her human form.

Dr. Logan Carter, DVM, has worked his whole life to try to preserve white tigers. When an apparently wild white tiger arrives at his zoo, he sees hope for a new genetic line to revitalize the animal.

But it's not long before Logan discovers his new tiger isn't what she appears to be. And that's when things really start to get interesting...

New Book on the Way!

Taylor Pyatt. He sat on my casting couch and he liked it.

Today is October first. What does that mean? Opening night for the NHL, of course. It also means I'm going to announce a new book.

I just signed a contract with Samhain Publishing to publish my book Blood on the Ice, a literary look at the importance of... no, that's not right.

It's about vampires who play professional hockey. If you see anything particularly literary in it, please shoot it.

On the eve of the Stanley Cup Finals, Travis Payne of the Chicago Blackhawks intervenes in a vampire attack outside a bar where he and his friends are celebrating. The vampires in question turn on him, and just plain Turn him.

Waking up in the Warm Room of the Cook County morgue, Travis discovers his whole life has been turned upside down. He can never play for the NHL again. Fortunately, there's the VHL--the vampire-only league--and his contract is transferred to the Chicago Cobras.

Marcus Antonius, ex-gladiator, has been a vampire since the days of Julius Caesar. He's also the Cobras' captain. He takes on the job of mentoring Travis, helping him adjust to his new team, his new life, and his shifting views of sexuality (that last one means there's lots of vampire sex...).

I'll be talking more about this book in the future, as we get closer to the release date. It's scheduled for next year, but I don't have a final publication date yet. In the mean time, visit the Pinterest board where I've assembled a lot of my research materials and my "casting couch." I've added some short excerpts so you can have an advance taste of the rest of the novel.

And be sure to tune in tonight to see the Blackhawks decimate the Washington Capitals!! :-D

See You at Colorado Gold! Sneak Peek

I'll be at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Colorado Gold conference this weekend, and I hope to see some of you there! I'll be presenting a workshop on Friday at 5 pm in the Big Thompson room called "In the Middle: Pluses and Minuses of Small-Press Publishing."

I decided to talk about this topic because I've noticed that in a lot of writers' conferences and events I've been to, there's a lot of talk about "Big Six" publishing and a lot of talk about self-publishing but not a lot of talk about all the opportunities that lie between these two options. I've had a good amount of success with smaller presses, and I wanted to discuss this sector for those who might be frustrated with the Big Six and not quite comfortable with the self-pub option. There's a big, bright world out there for you to explore.

If you're going to be at Colorado Gold and are interested in attending the workshop, my handouts are available for download at http://www.rmfw.org/conference/handouts/ . (I've been scribbling additional notes on them, though, so you'll miss out on my last-minute brainstorms, numerous asides, dorky goof-ups, and irrelevant stories if you don't attend the workshop.) There'll also be a Twitter hashtag for the session at #rmfwsmallpress so you can follow along whether you're at the conference or not. I hope folks will take advantage of the Twitter option, because I think it's a great idea.

Friday evening starting at 8, I'll be signing books, too, in Ballroom B, so drop by and say hi!

Coming on Monday--a New Blogging Series at RMFW

I've taken on a regular blogging gig at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. My first blog will appear on Monday. I'm starting out with a series called "Learning from Television," where I'll yammer about my love for TV and how you can learn important writing skills from your favorite shows. I'll be posting on the fourth Monday of each month, except for November and December when the dates will shift to earlier in the month to accommodate the holidays. I hope you'll drop by and say hi!

Beware the Candy

I'm here today to talk about the horrors of addiction. Not to drugs or alcohol or even Nutella--that would be far too serious for this blog. No, I'm talking about the soul-crushing, life-ruining horror that is Candy Crush.

If you've never played Candy Crush--and if you haven't, for the love of God don't start now--it's a member of the Bejeweled family of Horribly Addictive Games where you swap pairs of pieces to create matches of at least three in a row to eliminate those pieces from the board. Four or five in a row will create one-up pieces that explode larger portions of your board. In Candy Crush, the pieces are shaped like--you guessed it--candy. As you progress, the game presents new challenges like weird bottlenecks, portal squares, bits of chocolate that creep across the board like some kind of brown gelatinous ooze, and licorice strings that introduce your bits of candy to the joys of bondage. Cut scenes feature frightening little girls, whales, bunnies, and other creatures that appear to be constructed of cut paper fastened together with brass brads. I don't even want to know what kind of post-apocalyptic world this is, where everything has transformed to permutations of sugar.

I don't know why this type of game is so damn addictive. I went through a thankfully short but intense relationship with Bejeweled a few years ago that I was able to end fairly gracefully after spending hours swapping jewels while watching original series Star Trek. But Candy Crush? Man, I wish I could quit you. Instead I fritter away hours swapping bits of candy that look like Chiclets and Good n Plentys and smacking myself on the head when I accidentally waste one of those cupcake things with the sprinkles. If you do play--and PLEASE don't, I beg you--you'll know you've hit rock bottom when you're up at midnight paging through the app store looking for a game that's similar to Candy Crush that you can play while you're waiting for your allotment of lives to replenish. My not-Candy-Crush game of choice is Jewel Mania.

I've done my time in addiction and recovery with Farmville, Words With Friends, and even Angry Birds. I've justified time spent with these games because often I work out plot tangles while I'm feeding my bunnies or crushing pigs under complex architectural constructions. But Candy Crush is well on its way to becoming my undoing. I can't warn you strongly enough to stay away from it. And if you succumb to the allure of the bright candies--well, that's between you and your god.

How We Became a Cat House

You could say it started with the mice. I lived in this house for I think about three years before they started showing up, running around like they owned the place, staring at me while I was trying to watch TV, sitting in the dog's food dish chowing like there was no tomorrow and leaving gross mouse deposits in my expensive stoneware under the stove. Our ferrets seemed to deter them a little, but this tactic only seemed to work consistently at the back of the house where the ferrets actually live. The kitchen and living room, not so much. Traps? Yeah. One week I caught seven mice. Then they started just eating the peanut butter out of the traps and going on their merry way. It was like I'd wipe out one generation only to have them breed up the next generation better, stronger, faster, and addicted to peanut butter. Natural repellant worked for a while, too. But when I replenished that, it seemed to lose its effectiveness. This generation has added the characteristic of enjoying the scent of very strong balsam pine.

So for the last few weeks, every night between about 7:30 and 9:00, this mouse would run across the kitchen floor, plant himself in the dog food dish, have dinner, then run off. I killed him once. Another mouse came back and did the same exact thing. The dog would sit next to me and watch. Seriously. This is the most useless dog known to man when it comes to pest control. Okay, once she smooshed a spider. Give her props for that.

Everybody kept telling me to get a cat. And I kept saying no, I can't get a cat. I'm allergic. Cats make me miserable. It s a valid reason. But damn, the mice.

So I started doing some research. A few breeds of cat produce less of the enzyme in their saliva that causes cat-specific allergies. One of these is the Siberian cat. Another is the Russian blue. I looked at Devon and Cornish Rexes. My sister, who also has cat allergies, had a Cornish Rex or two. But I didn't really want to hunt up a breeder, spend a ton of money, and, most importantly, miss the opportunity to rescue a cat that might otherwise end up euthanized.

Next step--allergy testing. My daughter was off visiting a friend, and I needed to go pick her up that day, so I took a Claritin in the morning and planned to make a side trip to PetSmart to find a kitty and cuddle it and pet it and call it George and see how the Claritin held up.

My daughter kept delaying. Apparently they were lounging around the house watching Star Trek and Firefly. I couldn't really condemn that behavior. But what I'd anticipated as a lunch trip turned into dinner time.

Eventually I made it to PetSmart. And there, in their larger cage, was a passel of kittens. One was sitting near the back, a little gray girl with green eyes. She looked straight at me and blinked. And I went oh, shit.

I think we all know how this story ends. We've all been there. We take home the cat we know we probably shouldn't take home. We name it Pond, then Storm, then argue that neither one is quite right. But here's the kicker--the cat had arrived at PetSmart an hour before I walked in. If my daughter hadn't been forced to consume geekery, I never would have seen the cat at all. And, as my daughter and I looked over the cat's records, we discovered she'd been fostered by a friend of the friend who had force-fed said geekery. It was one too many coincidences for me.

So here I sit, typing this blog post on my iPad while Stormy-Pond (sorry--my daughter says it's more properly "Stormageddon Sharknado") tries to attack the iPad. She keeps missing and biting my knee instead. The dog is sitting in the living room wondering what the hell is going on. And I'm praying to the gods of allergies that the Claritin and the Zyrtec hold up, because damn, this cat is adorable.