Book Roast: Cold in the Light

I forgot to mention that the Book Roast is going on all this week. That means a chance to win free books, as well as have some fun answering strange questions and feeling free to make off-the-wall remarks. So check it out.

And, especially, please check it out tomorrow, Thursday, April 16. I’ll be the grillee, or grilled, or whatever it’s called, and there’ll be a chance win a copy of Cold in the Light. Even if you have a copy drop by for a visit. I’ll be popping in and out all day to answer questions and respond to comments, which means most of my blogging tomorrow will be over there.

Chris Eldin and the Book Roast crew have done a wonderful job with this project, and I know it's been a lot of work for them. They grilled Swords of Talera back when it came out so they have also been very, very good to me.

Yeah Book Roast!
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Announcements and Links

Here's a reminder that the always exciting Book Roast Team: Blogless Troll, Christine Eldin, Dee, Diesel, Jason Evans, Sarah Laurenson, and Shona Snowden, will be back in action starting this Monday, January 12.

They're hosting a party that includes one hot publisher, two terrific agents, and six fabulous authors. The schedule is below:

Monday, Jan 12: Mystery Publisher
Tuesday, Jan 13: Eric Stone
Wednesday, Jan 14: Agent Lucienne Diver
Thursday, Jan 15: Barrie Summy
Saturday, Jan 17: Elysabeth Eldering

Monday, Jan 19: Mystery Publisher
Tuesday, Jan 20: Traci E Hall
Wednesday, Jan 21: Maggie Stiefvater
Thursday, Jan 22: Agent Nathan Bransford
Friday, Jan 23: Jennifer Macaire

Check it out here

Also, if you haven't entered my "Strange Worlds Contest" to win a free book, check out my Tuesday Post. Hey, it's FREE.

And please don’t forget that a site has been set up to help Travis Erwin and his family, who lost their house to fire on January 4. There’s a link HERE.
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I'm a Winner

How cool is this! I just won a $25.00 gift certificate over at the Book Roast for a t-shirt slogan idea I posted. There were some great entries so I’m amazed that I won. My entry was: “Reading: It’s not just for the bathroom anymore.” Thanks very much to Moonrat for selecting me, and to Chris Eldin for organizing these roasts, which must be a lot of work. I’ve already been poking around at Amazon to see what I want. Well, who am I kidding, I really kind of want them all. But I’m looking forward to narrowing my selection down.

As for the local conditions, we’ve had a lot of wind yesterday and today due to Hurricane Ike passing underneath us, but nothing serious has happened. But this is a big storm so I hope all our friends in Texas are bracing for impact or getting the hell out, depending on where they live.

In writing news, I’m working right now on the update for the Neuropsychological article and it’s getting close to done. I still have two original pieces to do, though, which will take longer, and I’m going to have to cut back on blogging a bit. This morning I had 50 new posts on Google Reader, then 18 more new ones after lunch, and 9 more just a few minutes ago. There is so much great stuff going on in the blog world, like the Book Roast, Bernardl’s online novel, the interviews that Shauna Roberts’ runs, and the funny cartoons that folks like Laughingwolf post, but I’m pretty close to saturation point at the moment. I’ll continue visiting blogs but won’t be posting comments as frequently. The writing just has to come first.

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Lana's Photo, and other Sessy Things

I've put the cover of Wanting the Mouth of a Lover on my sidebar. Clicking it will take you to Spec House of Poetry in case you want to pick up a copy. I'm not sure why the image is bigger than the other book images, or why it's set further to the right, but, hey, it's there.

I've also added links to more blogs I visit, although I didn't get them all. My list is so long now that it's hard to be sure who I've added and who I've not. If I didn't get your link up, please let me know. I no longer go through my link list every day. I'm depending on Google Reader to identify new posts. If not for that I'd have no time for anything but blogging.

Lana, who did the great cover for the chapbook, has a photo entered in a contest, and I think it's the best one there. She has the link on her blog where you vote, so if you get a chance and want to look at some great photos please stop by her blog and follow the link to vote.

Finally, I didn't get a chance to point out that the Book Roast is happening again. You can win free books, so check it out.

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Starting Over, Or So It Seems

I finally tried Monday to get started back on Wraith of Talera, and I realized that the layoff while I was in Cross Plains, and then taking the next few days off to do some other writing I had deadlines for, had brought me to a dead standstill on the book. In fact, reading over it I thought to myself, “man this sucks.” That’s probably not a completely accurate feeling, but I need to really hit it hard tomorrow and try to get back into the mood. Maybe I need to conceptualize the story a bit better. Layoffs are just killers for me, and take so long to recover from. Anyone else find the same thing?

Another of my pet peeves has raised its weary old head again, as well. A heroic fantasy story with an effeminate male villain was criticized. The person doing the criticizing assumed immediately that the villain was homosexual, even though it never said so in the story. The point that bothers me is that, so what if the villain was homosexual? You can’t have a homosexual villain? That’s ridiculous! Does every villain have to be a white, heterosexual male? I can see that it might be an issue if every villain was drawn as homosexual, or as black, or as freaking Irish for that matter. But it’s going to get pretty “vanilla” if you can’t occasionally have a villain of some non-white, non-male, non-hetero persuasion. The truth is that villains come in all flavors, and writers should be allowed to work with that variety.

Don’t forget that Book Roast is still going on. It’s been great fun so far, and I won Bernita Harris’s book.
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