Rumors, Hearsay, and Unconfirmed Scuttlebutt!

Fans of All the Paths of Shadow will soon have something to be very happy about indeed!  I'm not quite prepared to make any grand pronouncements yet, but I'm very excited about a project related to the book, and I think readers will be too.

I will say that one of the characters from the book will be brought to life, so to speak, in a unique and thoroughly entertaining way.

And that's all I'm going to say about that right now.

Switching gears for a moment, I'm floored by the way the upcoming Markhat book (The Broken Bell, to be released everywhere on December 27) has already been selling as a pre-order.  If I'd known so many people were waiting on the book, I'd have typed faster!

For anyone interested, you can click here to see All the Paths of Shadow on Amazon in Kindle format, or click here to head to Cool Well Press, where you can get any other format.

Want to check out The Broken Bell?  Click here for Amazon, or here for Barnes & Noble, or even here to go straight to the publisher, Samhain Publishing.  Rest assured we have a format for your tastes, including good old print!

Oh, and one last thing, which won't cost you a dime.  I redesigned my website, and I'd love it if you'd go have a look.

Thanks!

Now back to the WIP...

I Quote Myself

Today, in lieu of actually writing anything new, I decided I'd post a list of clever things my characters have said.

Why?

Because, that's why.

"Deception wears many masks. Take care to remove them all, should you undertake to see the face of truth."
-- Wistril the Wizard, from Wistril Compleat.


"The stuff of legends is nothing but trouble to the persons unfortunate enough to make them. On the whole, I’d rather have been off fishing.”
-- Tim the Horsehead, from All the Paths of Shadow


"You know you're having a bad day when vampires drop by to chat and you're pleased by the sudden distraction."
-- Markhat, from Hold the Dark


Okay, this is a not truly a quote, but an exchange between Markhat and Mama Hog in Dead Man's Rain.  


Mama Hog nodded.  "Cards say she's got a hard rain coming, boy," she said.  "Turned up the Dead Man, and the Storm, and the Last Dancer, all in the same hand.  Dead man's rain.  That ain't good."  Mama grabbed another morsel of sandwich, guffawed around it.  "But I don't need cards to see the sun," she said.  "The Widow Merlat is headed for a bad time.  She knows it.  I know it.  You'd best know it, too."


"Dead is dead, Mama," I said.  "That's what I know."


"There's other things you need to know, boy.  Things about the ones that come back."


"First thing being that they don't," I said.


Mama pretended not to hear.  


"Rev'nants only walk at night," she said.  "It's got to be pitch dark."


"Do tell."

"You can't catch 'em coming out of the ground," said Mama.  "It's no good trying.  They're like haunts, that way. Solid as rock one minute, thin as fog the next."


"Sounds handy," I said.  "Do their underbritches get all misty and ethereal too, or is that one of the things man was not meant to know?"


"Don't look in his eyes, boy," said Mama.  "Don't look in his eyes, or breathe air he's breathed."


"I won't even ask about borrowing his toothbrush," I said.


Mama slapped my desk top with both her hands.


"You listen," she hissed.  "Believe or not, but you listen."


"I've got all night," I said.     


"His mouth will be open," said Mama.  "Wide open.  He's been saving a scream, all that time in the ground.  Saving up a scream for the one that put him there."  Mama lifted a stubby finger and shook it in my face.  "Don't you listen when he screams.  You put your hands over your ears and you yell loud as you can but don't you listen.  Cause if you do, you'll hear that scream for the rest of your days and there ain't nothing nobody nowhere can do for you then."


Silence fell.  Only after Curfew do we get any silence, in my neighborhood.  I let it linger for a moment.


I leaned forward, put my eyes down even with Mama's, motioned her closer, spoke.


"Boo."
--Mama Hog and Markhat, from Dead Man's Rain.

Lightspeed Magazine

It's a tough world if you're a magazine.

I can count, barely moving my lips, the number of print fantasy or SF magazines which have survived the last few years.  Realms of Fantasy is gone (again).  Weird Tales has changed hands (again).  Only the venerable mainstays Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction seem to be holding their own.

I subscribe, via my Kindle, to Analog and Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Both feature some great writing; neither publication was ever much for interior art, although both have showcased some great covers.  So the black-and-white Kindle format suits them both just fine.

But now that Amazon has announced the new Kindle Fire ereader tablet, I've been looking for new publications with a bit of art mixed in with my fiction.

Which brings us to Lightspeed.  Lightspeed is a new SF magazine, published monthly, which is now available in Kindle format for only twenty bucks a year.

Yeah, I know, you're thinking 'But Frank, digital magazines come and go faster than mayflies!  How do I know this one is any good, and how do I know they'll be around in two months, much less twelve?'

First of all, it's Mr. Tuttle.  Second, I'm blabbering about Lightspeed because of the people behind it.

The editor is a fellow named John Joseph Adams.  Fans of zombie fiction (and anthologies in general) will recognize the name; he's the man behind The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2 collections, among many other titles.

The rest of the Lightspeed staff is equally experienced.

So, these people know what they're doing.  And from what I've seen, they are doing it exceedingly well.  Each month features a podcast -- wicked cool!  -- and some stunning new art by artists on the rise.

Lightspeed is what the Kindle Fire was made for.  Fiction.  Art.  Audio.  Sign me up!

In other news, it's been a bad week for writing.  I think sometimes certain vital areas of my brain just switch themselves off.  Oh, I can still walk and talk, but whatever it is I need to put the right words in the correct order down on paper just isn't working.  So I sit there and stare and wind up with 45 minute writing sessions which result in sentences such as 'The' and a lot of empty page space.

I hate times like these.  I can feel time slipping away, but try as I might, I just can't produce anything worth reading.

The only sure is to produce it anyway, and delete it when the words start coming again.  But it sure feels like a waste of time.

I'm Mister Sunshine today, aren't I?

Well, you could help by clicking here. Or by clicking here.  Or here.  See how much better you feel?