I like to mention Ephemera once or twice a quarter because if I don’t, well, not that many people buy it.  And if people don’t buy it, the seas boil, the moon turns red as blood, lots of people get paper cuts, and at least two beers turn skunky.  I don’t want that on my conscience.

So, Ephemera is an ebook collection (available in all formats) of my dark short fiction.  Three of the stories … Read the rest

I’ve been thinking about the books I enjoy the most and it turns out that all of them have what I’d call “sticky” characters.  By that I mean that when I look back on the book, the thing that jumps out at me first is the characters — not the plot, the prose, the theme, the worldbuilding or underlying ideas, but the characters.  This is perhaps, unsurprising, since it squares with my own sensibilities as … Read the rest

Amazon is offering copies of The Erevis Cale Trilogy for about $6.00USD.  The price seems to vary a bit from time to time, but the long and short is that’s really, really inexpensive.  This makes Cale a cheap date, if you’re into tall, bald, morally conflicted assassin-priests. And really, who’s not?

Likewise, getting a signed copy is an inexpensive proposition.  Since I’m an Amazon Prime member, I can order copies at that price and they’ll … Read the rest

I can produce a certain amount of quality (at least I think it’s quality :-)) writing within a given time frame.  That amount has varied greatly as my career has advanced.  When I first started out (with The Halls of Stormweather and Shadow’s Witness), writing 500 quality words in a day was a struggle.  Today, with a much larger “writer’s toolkit” at my disposal and significant experience under my belt,  I can produce maybe … Read the rest

A confession:  I am not a Zen Buddhist.  Quite the contrary.  I’m a very competitive person who needs to be running full-out or I feel like I’m standing still.  This has served me quite well in life overall, both in my day job and writing career.  But a side effect has been to suffer from time to time from professional envy.  Given the number of posts/articles I’ve read over the years about why one shouldn’t … Read the rest

Susan Morris conducts an excellent interview with R.A. Salvatore on How to Write a Damn Good Fight Scene.  There’s a ton of great tips in that interview.  Go read it.  I’ll wait.

Back?

All right, one of things Susan doesn’t ask directly (though the answer is implicit in Bob’s responses, because he’s a master at this as well as at the pure choreography of a combat scene) is this:  What is the purpose of a … Read the rest

So, Peter Thiel plans to start his own version of Galt’s Gulch by creating his own floating country off the coast of San Francisco, which country will embody libertarian ideals.

On a small scale, something like this could actually work.  On a large scale, probably not so much, in part because of the two prominent issues that libertarianism doesn’t address well on its own terms — the problem of public goods, and the ex-ante regulation … Read the rest

Star Wars Books was kind enough to post another mini-excerpt from Riptide, my next Star Wars novel (and the sequel to Crosscurrent).  I have copied it below.  This is a conversation occurring via subspace communication between Jaden and Grandmaster Skywalker.

_______________________

“Jaden, Master Kenobi started my training in the cargo bay of the Millennium Falcon. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“The Force calls each of us differently. For you, it was enrollment … Read the rest

This is a badass bald dude — Darth Malgus.  He is in my novel, Deceived.  You can read a sample chapter from Deceived here.

This is another badass bald dude — Erevis Cale.  He is in a lot of my novels, including The Erevis Cale Trilogy and The Twilight War.  You can read a sample chapter from Shadowbred, book one of The Twilight War, here.

 … Read the rest

Per usual, I’ll be giving away signed copies of the Riptide print galley (unbound) to two winners chosen by random draw.

To enter, just leave a comment to this blog entry (or the mirrored entry on my livejournal).   Please use a unique username and enter only once.   I’ll keep the contest open through August, announcing the two winners on the morning of August 31.  Ergo, the winners will get to read the book well in … Read the rest