Myth, the Universe, and Everything

When I asked friend of the blog Brian LeTendre to write a guest blog about his latest novel, Lovecraft's Curse, I didn't expect myself to appear in his entry! Since Brian's been so vital in helping me find an audience for my writing -- Brian has been a huge supporter of the Redemption Trilogy since Into the Reach first came out, and was one of the first reviewers (and definitely the first interviewer!) to cover the book -- I'm excited to know that the support and inspiration travel in both directions.

Without further ado, Brian LeTendre!

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My pal Alana Abbott graciously offered to let me guest blog over here on Myth, the Universe and Everything to celebrate the release of my new horror novel Lovecraft’s Curse. Before I tell you about my book though, I want to talk a bit about inspiration.

Alana Abbott has been inspiring me to write since I met her in 2006. We were first introduced to each other right around the time Into the Reach was released. After interviewing her for my podcast (Secret Identity) and doing some playtesting for the Chronicles of Ramlar RPG (which she was working on), we continued to stay in contact. Alana did some guest gaming segments on the podcast, and we even covered WoTC’s D&D Experience event with our pal Max Saltonstall in 2007, chronicling the release D&D 4th Edition. The rest, as they say, is history.

I fell in love with Alana’s writing when I read Into the Reach. I read to escape, and my favorite stories are the ones that feature worlds I can immerse myself in. Alana’s attention to every detail in the worlds she creates makes you want to live in them. She puts so much into the culture and history of the characters she creates that you can read her stories multiple times and always find something new to dig into.

In many ways, meeting Alana and reading Into the Reach inspired me to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2007. I completed the 50,000-word challenge and came out with the first draft of what would become Courting the King in Yellow, my first horror novel. From that point on, I was on the path to taking my own writing seriously. I began doing freelance writing for a major comic news site covering games, and working on my own projects on the side. In 2010, I launched a webcomic called Mo Stache, which is still going strong today. Last year, I finally published Courting the King in Yellow, as well as a hot-to book about podcasting called Making Ear Candy. Which brings us to the here and now, and Lovecraft’s Curse.

Lovecraft’s Curse is my homage to the man I consider to be the greatest horror writer of all time--H.P. Lovecraft. It’s sort of a “What if?” story about his legacy and the things he wrote about. Here’s a quick teaser trailer for the book:



Lovecraft’s Curse combines my two favorite genres, fantasy and horror. Parts of the story take place in the Dreamlands, one of Lovecraft’s more famous creations and a place where worlds intersect and can be accessed through dreams. My main character Fela Barton is a young woman who has a connection to the Dreamlands that she doesn’t understand, and it has put her and those around her in great danger.

If you think that sounds interesting, you can grab a digital copy of Lovecraft’s Curse on either Amazon or Drive Thru Fiction, where you can get the print version as well.

Thanks to Alana for her continued support and inspiration!

I probably don't actually have enough links for an extravaganza, but it sounded good in my head, so I'll let it stand.

• I've been waiting until it was public to announce this, and since this interview at Operation Awesome is up, I'm going to say that makes the news officially out there: lyster , aka Max Gladstone, is being represented by Weronika Janczuk of D4EO Literary Agency! He talks about it on his blog here. So many congratulations, Max! The world is one step closer to seeing your awesomeness in print!


• New bits of my writing on the Web: a series review I did for School Library Journal is up here. The history column is progressing with some fun questions and answers. I got to write about the mysterious Great Oak at Double Beach, which no one remembers coming down; a wacky local legend about early governor of Connecticut Gurdon Saltonstall and the lake that bears his name; and weird road names in Branford and how they came to be. I've also started doing some articles for Branford Patch beyond the column, the first of which is about our local toy store, Kid Wishes, closing the bricks and mortar store and moving online..


• Other new fun stuff related to my writing: the director's commentary style interview that I did with Brian LeTendre (of Mo Stache and Secret Identity Podcast) is up streaming here, and is available for download at my home e-tailer, DriveThru. (The interview is downloadable for free.)
• Speaking of e-tailers and e-book sales (with just a slight segue jump), Chuck Wendig wrote a great piece on how the low ball prices on e-books can impact your favorite authors. Don't get me wrong -- I love getting books at the $3 price point. sartorias 's books are available at around that price over at Book View Cafe. I priced Into the Reach and Departure at under the $5 mark. jeff_duntemann 's new novella and an accompanying novella by James R. Strickland are priced together at $2.99 at Barnes and Noble, and will soon be on Kindle for the same price. Clearly, authors I know and respect are offering their fiction at rates that are incredibly affordable -- less, as Cat Valente says, than folks pay for a cup of designer coffee. I don't know how the business model will shape out, but it is interesting to watch. And I agree with (and am a follower of) Chuck's final point: if you like a writer, buy their stuff, and recommend that your friends do the same. I don't always have room in my budget to do so, and I may hold off until after the release date when cash is flowing more freely (and my review pile has fewer books in it!), but I try to support the authors I really want to keep writing more books.


• Of course, that crazy e-book market is doing things that the e-prophets have been anticipating since, oh, 2000 when I went to the Denver Publishing Institute and first heard the voice crying out in the wilderness. According to PW, e-book sales were up 202% in February. But while those percentages don't always mean much to me, the big number in this article is that publishers reported over $90 million in e-book sales. Despite this, and despite the uptick in college students reading e-books, most college students aren't using e-readers for their text books. I'm actually kind of astonished by this, since I first got hooked on e-readers as a great idea when thinking about how much I'd have preferred to carry around something the size of a nook on campus, rather than all my text books -- assuming that it took notes more like a Kindle. ;) (I'm still not a fan of the nook's note taking capability in comparison, but luckily, I don't need to take notes much anymore, unless it's in a review book, and those are almost always ARCs.)


• And last in e-book news, Kindle owners are in luck: they'll be able to start borrowing books from their libraries just like nook and Sony users! PW's link is down, weirdly, but here's the news from Venture Beat. No word yet on a time frame, but I'm super psyched that Amazon decided to make library lending possible for the Kindle. It's a big win for libraries!

Actually, that ended up being more links than I thought I had. Ta da, extravaganza complete!