Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Faith Hunter: the Jane Yellowrock books

I have, over the past couple days, read Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock books, SKINWALKER and BLOOD CROSS.

They’re the most enjoyable urban fantasy I’ve read since I started writing it myself, so basically they’re the best urban fantasy I’ve read in ten years. This is not *only* because Joanne Walker and Jane Yellowrock would get on like a house on fire, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s not just that they’re wonderfully well-researched–which, given that Jane is a skinwalker (ie, shapeshifter) of Cherokee descent, was exceedingly likely to run up against my own research and my own ideas on how I’d do things and clash, but didn’t. It’s not only that the world is well-developed with hints of interesting things around the corners. It’s not just that the writing style, which is invariably one of my problems with urban fantasy, didn’t once catch me out. It’s not just that Hunter’s knack for description makes me want to weep in despair. It’s all of those things put together to make a couple of really great stories, and this is how much I liked them:

They made me want to write Joanne Walker-Jane Yellowrock crossover fan fiction.

In fact, I may have even started a lil’ story that I sent to Faith, which I will perhaps post if she says it’s okay. :)

Anyway, the point really is that if you like the Walker Papers at all, I cannot imagine that you would not thoroughly enjoy the Jane Yellowrock books. SKINWALKER is out, and BLOOD CROSS is out on January 5th (which surprised me, I had no idea I’d gotten an early copy!), so basically you have exactly enough time to dash out, buy SKINWALKER, read it, and make sure your local bookstore will be ordering BLOOD CROSS for release day when you can buy it and make Faith’s numbers look good so there will be more Jane Yellowrock books. :)

A Christmas Contest!

Over on Magical Words, the group writing blog I’m a part of, we’re running a book give-away contest this week. Head on over to participate in my contest–for which the prize is a signed copy of one of my books, or a copy of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”, the Old Races novella I wrote this summer which has only been available to subscribers. While the novella will be available again to buy in February, this is your one and only chance to possibly win it for free. (And I’ll also send the winner one of the Ireland 2010 calendars that I did, if you take the “Hot Time” option.)

The contest ends Wednesday, December 30th, and the winner will be announced New Year’s Eve.

Merry Christmas Eve, everybody!

“Hot Time” commission update

I’ve just sent this to the “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” patron mailing list, but there appear to be about a dozen people on it who haven’t actually joined the group (please please check your trash/spam to make sure the email didn’t get eaten!), so I’m reposting it here:

I was hoping I could put this off until Wednesday and not have to write it at all, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that that’s not the case.

“Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” is much less interested in being a short story, and far more interested in being a novelette or novella (15-25,000 words) than I had anticipated. I’ve written well over 8,000 words now, and I think it’s going to take that much again, possibly more, to do the story justice.

So I have two choices. I can haul something into shape by Friday, and be dissatisfied with it, or I can miss my deadline and send a much longer, stronger story in two or three more weeks.

I rather hope you’d all prefer the longer story on a slightly delayed timeline. I’m going to set the re-scheduled delivery date as September 1, which I ought to be able to make even if this thing turns out to be forty thousand words long. Which would be silly. >.<

I'm extremely embarrassed and apologetic about this, and will do my best to make the story worth the delay.

For the record, for those who hope to buy the story later, this means it won’t be available until December 1st. Possibly I should delay it until February, in that case, so people have some time to get through Christmas before the story’s up for availability…

A FANTASY MEDLEY nearly sold out

If you haven’t ordered a copy of A FANTASY MEDLEY, which has an Old Races story by me along with stories by Kate Elliott, Robin Hobb and Kelley Armstrong (I still can’t help going ‘one of these things is not like the others’ when I see my name in that lineup), here is an important bit of information from Subterranean Press:

Headed into the out of print realm soon is A Fantasy Medley (edited by Yanni Kuznia), which hasn’t even started shipping yet! As I write this, we’re down to our last couple hundred copies of the trade edition, and the last 35-40 copies of the limited edition. It will only take a few wholesaler/large online retailer order to take care of the trade edition, and we expect the limited to go out of print about the same time.

You can place your order here, if’n you want one.