Blog’s going dark–will respond to comments and other pending stuff in a bit. I’m off to finish drafting that %%% book before the internet can terminally distract me.

In the meantime, the Codex blog tour is under way, and you can find me over at Nancy Fulda’s blog, Suite101 (courtesy of fellow AR author Colin Harvey), and Lawrence M. Schoen’s blog. Many thanks to my wonderful interviewers for lending me a bit of space on the internet–and stay tuned for more guest posts on this blog (after the novel is done, of course…)

Also, my short story “After the Fire”, originally published in Apex, has been reprinted in Descended from Darkness Vol 2, a compilation of Apex short stories for the past year. (a sneaky way for me to share a TOC with the always awesome Rochita Loenen-Ruiz).

That’s all. I’m off to usher in the Apocalypse….

So…

Apparently, Harbinger of the Storm should be out in the US–and on all good electronic platforms (Kindle, Nook, etc.) as well.

You can read an excerpt here. Basically: murder and mayhem in the imperial palace. Mihmatini and Teomitl get into trouble. Oh, and star-demons, which is always good for sheer terror.

Go forth, buy, read, and so on, and so on. Meanwhile, tonight is Thai restaurant night.

I completely forgot to post about this, but book 3 now has an official title: Master of the House of Darts (yes, I know. It looks kind of the old unsuitable title, but after thinking it over AR feel that the coolness of it offsets the, er, sheer length of the thing). Release date: November 2011.

I’m currently around 75% of the way in, entering the big ugly climax with a ton of dangling plot threads. The H assures me this is business as usual 🙂

So, as usual, I discovered my book was out in the UK through other people telling me through twitter :-p

aka the book of Aztec imperial intrigues/serial killer in the palace. More Teomitl and Mihmatini for those who liked those characters, and generally expanded worldbuilding–featuring Texcoco, Teotihuacan and a lovely, albeit hurried trip through the Anahuac Valley. Also, various political intrigues, the election of a new Emperor, and divers alarum and chases of supernatural creatures.

Oh, and star-demons, of course.

More info here, including the real blurb; the first spotted review here at Val’s random comments, courtesy of Rob Weber.

Book seems to be shipping through some of the usual places in the: amazon.co.uk, the Book Depository, Waterstones and WHsmith.

Meanwhile, I have a %%% cold and was up for much of the night–so right now I’m feeling a bit zombified. But consider this my celebration post, while I go on contaminating my colleagues at work with my germs 🙂

Want to read the first three chapters?

You can see them here.

This is part 2 on a post chronicling my trailer-making experiments. For part 1 see here.

Here’s the Harbinger trailer again, so you can see what I’m talking about:

Step 4: Get Music
This has always been the trickiest part for me. Basically, you need a soundtrack you can cut up and modify (I’ll come back to syncing the music and the images later), and I had a lot of trouble finding those. A quick survey of people doing their own books trailers showed them either using public domain stuff (like old interpretations of classical music), or having musician friends/acquaintances who could provide them with slightly cheaper alternatives to mainstream music (I don’t even want to know how much the majors charge for using bits of song, given how bad they are at authorising authors to quote lyrics for a reasonable sum of money).
Continue reading →

Those posts have been in the queue for a while, but I’ve never had the leisure to properly edit them before putting them online.

Basically, I thought I’d share my experience in making book trailers. It’s limited: I made my first book trailer in 2009 in the leadup to the release of Servant of the Underworld, and reiterated the process a year later when I made the trailer for Harbinger of the Storm. To my surprise, the HoU trailer was highlighted on a number of websites as being attractive, which proves that at least I got something right.

As usual, I’m not saying this is the way to go: just pointing out what worked for me, and what I learnt in the process. I’d be delighted to hear other people’s experience on the subject.

Continue reading →

32,000 words. Beginning of chapter 9, which means I’m back on track wordcount-wise. Nezahual and Teomitl are back to their old habits. Fun. *sadistic author*

I’ve just submitted two short stories. Been a long time since I haven’t done that.
In other news, my 2011 schedule is filling up (can’t say anything yet, but some sekrit event is definitely on the cards)

And 1,000 additional words on the novel, bringing me to 30k or something like that (right now, the novel’s in two pieces, of which one is on a computer and one on my neo). I was complaining to the H about feeling bored with the whole thing, and he looked at me and said, “yup, that seems like the right time for you to say so.” Guess it’s official: we have entered the Terrible Middles.

Still trying to select which stories to pimp for the Nebulas. The novelette’s pretty much self-explanatory (“The Jaguar House in Shadow” got good reviews, a mention in Rich Horton’s year-end summation, and high visibility); the novel’s easy, as I only published one this year. The short story… I’d want to plump for “The Shipmaker”, but the odds are it won’t be eligible for the Nebulas (it’s been published in the paper edition of Interzone, but not in e-version, and I’m not sure fictionwise will have the e-version up by the end of December). So it’s a choice between “Memories in Bronze, Feathers and Blood” (how can you not like Aztec steampunk, plus it got a number of good reviews), and “As the Wheel Turns” (my Chinese reincarnation short story published in GUD, which has a more original structure, more lyrical language and who’s left a lasting impression on the couple of people who’ve read it).

Decisions, decisions…

I’ve read somewhere that all good epic fantasy should have maps of the known world–well, I’m not exactly writing epic fantasy, but I’ve just added a special map page for Obsidian and Blood onto the website.
Of course, we all know I suck at drawing, so they’re just rough schematics, but if you’ve always wondered where exactly Acatl’s temple was in relation to the Great Temple or the Serpent Wall–this is the place to go.
(there might be minor inconsistencies with those in SoU and HoS, because I wasn’t smart enough to draw the maps beforehand)