New Anthology with a New Faust Short

So, this might be of interest. Full Metal Magic is a new short-story anthology featuring tales of urban fantasy from a number of authors, myself included, and it's out today. My contribution is called A Drive in the Country, and it's a glance back at an event from Daniel Faust's past. You know that one heist? The heist, the one that went tragically wrong, and drove a rift between Daniel and Nicky Agnelli? That's what it's all about -- that, and the consequences which have been waiting in the wings ever since.

Oh, best part? The anthology's only ninety-nine cents, having been envisioned as an urban fantasy sampler of sorts. Lots of good stuff in here, and new authors you just might like.

A Harmonious Release Date

Harmony Black book three has an official release date! Looks like we're on target for a March 28th launch. Pre-orders should go up much sooner than that, once we're done with final copy-edits and the cover design, and I'll let you know when that goes live.

Incidentally, there's been a title change, as sometimes happens in publishing. For various behind-the-scenes reasons (nothing juicy, just marketing/series branding stuff), the book (which was originally going to be called House of Wolves) is now titled Glass Predator. (Book four, which I'm working on as we speak, is still tentatively titled Cold Spectrum -- I'll have more news on that in early 2017.)

Meanwhile, I'll be spending much of the coming winter focused on the first book of the new secret spin-off trilogy, which I'll be able to break my silence on very soon. Right now, suffice to say it's the biggest (in length and scope) story I've ever attempted, and the biggest challenge I've ever taken on as a writer. If I do this right -- if -- it'll be nightmarish and fairy-tale-esque and beautiful and terrible. If. I fear failure, but I'm more afraid of not trying.

Getting ready for a short trip to New York next week for some field research. Also, got an anonymous tip via email about some odd viral graffiti I should check out. I'm sure it'll be totally safe...

A Word of Gratitude

Thanks to the magic of Facebook (specifically that random "hey, you posted this eight years ago, want to repost it for no particular reason?" feature), I've been reminded of an anniversary I would have otherwise missed entirely. One year ago, I put in my notice at my day job, resolving to take a chance and become a full-time writer.

It was the scariest thing I've ever done, hands down: the idea of leaving a steady, good-paying income to become a creative professional, living or dying on the strength of my writing career (literally), was nerve-wracking. Thankfully, a good friend helped push me over the cliff. And I leaped. And so far, I have not fallen.

It's not a cushy life. I traded eight-hour days behind a keyboard for twelve-hour days behind a keyboard, and weekends are generally not a thing for me. That said, I wouldn't trade it for the world. This is the dream I've had since I was a child, and I'm living it. And you are the reason why.

A writer is nothing without readers. You can create the most heartbreaking work of genius that the world has ever seen, and if nobody reads it, you might as well have locked it in a trunk. In the immortal words of Ice-T, "Guess who controls your destiny? Fans." Fans buy in and keep you afloat. They get the word out, and help other readers find you. A little positive word of mouth can be more powerful than a dozen advertisements.

I've been in this game for three hundred and sixty-five days, and that's three hundred and sixty-five ways I want to thank you. Because I am where I am, and going where I'm going, solely and one-hundred-percent because of your support. Thank you.

Now I've gotta buckle down and gear up for 2017. Lots of stories yet to be told, and the fun's just getting started.

I Have to Say This

I have been told to keep my mouth shut about politics, by people who are arguably smarter than me. That there is no possible upside, that the only thing I can possibly accomplish is lose readers and hurt my career. And I have been sitting here for hours, agonizing over this post. I'm not a famous writer. I don't have an unassailable career, I can be hurt by backlash. Hurt enough to ruin me.

And yet.

And yet today the cavalcade of Donald Trump's offenses against honor, against wisdom, against basic decency ramped up yet another notch, with a tape wherein he clearly discusses what is, let's call a spade a spade, sexual assault.

"I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

"Whatever you want."

"Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

I could stand silent while he offered up nonsensical, counter-productive policy promises. Wiser economists than I have done a better job of tearing Trump apart than I ever could. I could stand silent while he made an utter boor of himself. Wiser pundits than I have done a better job of highlighting his inane anti-intellectualism, his sheer and staggering lack of third-grade civics knowledge, his financial incompetency when his only credential is "good at business," than I ever could.

But I can't, tonight. I fucking can't. Because I have the temerity to call myself a feminist, and if I didn't say something, I'd be nothing but a coward.

I won't tell you to vote for Hillary. Lots of my readers don't like her. That's fine. Hey, Gary Johnson is both a reasonable candidate and, insofar as I can tell from his interviews, a pretty solid human being. I'd love to meet the guy. Or Jill Stein, there's a viable option.

But don't vote for Trump.

Don't vote for a man who treats over half the human race like garbage. Don't vote for an entitled little rich boy who was born on third base and STILL managed to fail again, and again, and again, and yet thinks you should vote for him because he's...well...rich. 

This isn't a slam on my conservative readers, because Trump is not a conservative. There is nothing conservative about praising Vladimir Putin. There is nothing conservative about wanting to censor the Internet, or rewrite libel laws to do an end-run around the first amendment and make it easier to punish people who dare to say mean things about him. That's not conservative. That's not Republican. That's fascism.

Let me lay my creds on the table: I'm a moderate with liberal leanings. My best friends include libertarians, lifelong Republicans, and Christian conservatives. I don't believe people have to agree on politics to be friends, and I've had some of the best and most ferocious arguments with people I love. People I'd do anything for, and them for me. We don't have to agree, in order to love. We don't have to agree, to recognize that we're all human beings, and riding this same crazy planet together. And we all want what's best for all of us, we just disagree on how to make that happen.

It's all about love.

But not for Trump. No, for him...it's all about him.

We have a chance, this November, to stand up to a bully. We have a chance to say, no, this shit is not okay. That we won't reward a man who treats women like trash, who slurs minorities, who preens around like a peacock despite being a woeful failure at everything he's done in his entire life, with the highest office in the land.

Hey, fun fact? There's a decent chance I'd personally prosper under a Trump presidency. His tax plan is a total giveaway to the rich, and while I'm not rich per se, I'm doing okay as a small business owner (never had to declare bankruptcy unlike, well, you know). I'd make some money. But this isn't about me.

I'm pulling the lever against Trump for every woman in my life. I'm pulling the lever for every GLBT person in my life. I'm pulling the lever for every person I cherish and love, and for every person Trump stands to callously hurt.

Fuck that guy.

Just fuck that guy.

The Castle Doctrine is Live!

You've waited long enough. So has he.

The Castle Doctrine, the sixth full-length Daniel Faust adventure, is available now. Hardcopy is coming in a few days, and the audiobook is in production. I hope you enjoy it!

So, Here's the Thing...

Publishing dates are set for lots of different reasons. Many of those are financial or accounting-based. While The Castle Doctrine is finished (we completed our final proof and layout last night), the release date was set to 10/1 for boring accounting reasons I'm not gonna get into. And I've just learned that said reason was actually not necessary in the first place. What does that mean?

It means The Castle Doctrine is coming out tomorrow. It'll be up on 9/27, bright and early, assuming nothing goes weird on Amazon's end. The hardcopy version should be out just a few days later, and the audiobook is currently in production. This is the first full-length Faust novel since last year's Killing Floor Blues, and I'm so very excited to share it with you!

(Besides, tonight's the presidential debate. I figure everybody's going to be angry from dealing with arguments and Internet trolls all night, and you might want something cheerful to look forward to.)

(Well, for a certain value of "cheerful.")

I've had a few recurring questions about the book since Saturday's cover reveal, so here are some non-spoilery answers you might be wondering about:

This does wrap up a loose second "trilogy," like The Living End did. Not every plotline is resolved, but some things that began in A Plain-Dealing Villain will come to a definitive end, as Faust enters a new chapter of his life.

The situation involving Nadine's envelope, and the claims she made about Caitlin (staying super-vague to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn't gotten that far), is not resolved. Sorry, I originally planned to, but the book was so jam-packed with other stuff there was no way to do it without giving it short shrift. Suffice to say that this will be addressed, in full, in next year's Surface Tension.

And if you've read the Revanche Cycle, somebody has a very special message, just for you. Don't worry. You'll know it when you read it.

And that's all I can tell you. I'll put up another post when the book goes live -- see you tomorrow!

Cover Reveal Time? Yes. Cover Reveal Time.

We're exactly one week from the launch of The Castle Doctrine, the sixth Daniel Faust novel, and that seems like the perfect time for an official cover reveal. And here's the synopsis:

Out of prison and back on the streets, Daniel Faust returns home to a city on fire. The Chicago mob is making their play for control of Las Vegas, with an army of gunmen and a lethal shapeshifter on their side, while Daniel's friend Jennifer marshals the forces of the Vegas underworld. Staying on the sidelines isn't an option, especially when a Metro detective orders him to get the war under control -- and if he can't, he'll expose Daniel's secrets to the FBI.

It's a bad time for ghosts of the past to come calling, but Damien Ecko is on his way with a hit list and a legion of walking corpses. Marked for death by the courts of hell, the mad necromancer plans on making sure that everyone who framed him, Daniel first and foremost, dies along with him.

Hunted by the living and the dead, pushed to his limits, Daniel will have to be smarter, faster, and more ruthless than he's ever been. He'll need to call upon new, dark powers, and darker allies. His enemies thought they took everything he had. They couldn't take his hunger. When this war is over, Daniel Faust will rise like a phoenix...or go down in flames.

Greetings from Editing Hell

So, this is a first. By the luck of timing, both The Castle Doctrine (Faust book six) and House of Wolves (Harmony book three) are in editing at the same time. This means that for the next couple of weeks, I get to spend all day, every day, confronting my shortcomings and mistakes, having every single flaw in both manuscripts pointed out by two very skilled editors whose job it is to ensure I deliver the best book I can. Yes, it is every bit as painful and ego-crushing as it sounds. These ladies do not pull their punches, nor would I ever want them to. Much like going to the dentist or working out, it might not be fun, but it's good for you.

I thought it might be interesting to write a little about the process, which is certainly not a way for me to productively procrastinate. Nope, not at all.

The Castle Doctrine is in the final round of edits, getting it ready for the October First release. This is the point where Kira delivers her final verdict on the manuscript, with every page liberally doused in red ink. Much of it is grammar/formatting tweaks; I'm fairly clean when it comes to basic typos, but if there's one thing I've learned at this point, it's that errors always slip through. Always.

Between finishing my first draft and the final, formatted book, I'll read a manuscript around six times from cover to cover. While you might think that means nothing could get past me, the truth is actually the exact opposite: once you're that familiar with a story, it becomes easier and easier to let your eyes glaze over and "see" what you think is there, not what really is. That's one reason it's so vital to have an editor or a proofreader (or both) hit your manuscript with fresh eyes, and catch all the errors that have become invisible to you.

The rest of Kira's annotations are there to catch continuity mistakes, things that stand out as illogical or jarring (or just plain cliched), and things that I take for granted but a reader might need reminding of (like if I bring back a character from four books ago and forget to say who they are). Some errors are easy to make when you're buried in a story but obvious to a reader, like a gun being empty in one scene but loaded in the next, or a character (and this is something that happened in the Harmony manuscript) being bloodied and bruised from a fight, going into a public place, and nobody glancing her way or seeming to notice. The kind of head-slapping mistakes that seem super-duper obvious when your editor calls them out, and make you wonder how you didn't see it before.

This is why writers need editors. Period.

On the Harmony end, Andrea is my developmental editor. The developmental phase isn't as concerned with typos and the nuts and bolts (that's for proofreading, the next step), focusing instead on the structure of the book itself. It's all about story: is this scene tense enough? Can we raise the stakes? What's the theme, the emotional through-line? Do the characters change and grow? Big questions that often come with big rewrites.

I'll give you an example: we're in the second round of rewrites on House of Wolves, and at this point, it's about 3,000 words longer than the original manuscript. It had a major problem in that 1) a major character vanished for half the book, and ended in a totally unfulfilling resolution, emotionally, and 2) the ending was way too easy. Now, it's important to note that telling me what to write isn't Andrea's job: she calls out scenes and elements that she thinks don't work or could be strengthened, and why. Figuring out how to fix it is my job.

Right now, we've got a completely rewritten ending, as well as new scenes throughout the book aimed at keeping the tension high and emotions on edge, and...well, it's better. A lot better. And the changes, which again seem obvious in retrospect, never would have occurred to me if I hadn't had an expert on my side to lend a guiding hand. Believe it: artists may work in solitude, but a good book is a team effort.

And we're 15 days from The Castle Doctrine, so I'd better get back to work.

"Free" is Faust's Favorite Price

Hey everybody, hope you're having a great week so far. A number of you might remember the launch of The White Gold Score, a Daniel Faust novella; because of how my writing schedule wound up, I realized it was going to be a full year between novels, and I really hated making y'all wait that long. So, I wrote it as half-apology, half a story to tide folks' appetites over until October. Oh, and when it launched, I gave it away for free, because...because I do random things like that sometimes, to my accountant's chagrin.

A lot of you have found my books in the time since, and with The Castle Doctrine one month from release, I figured it was a good time to share the wealth. So, from right now until the end of Saturday, The White Gold Score is once again free. For folks who have only read the Harmony Black or Revanche books, this novella was also written as a stand-alone introduction to the Faust series; it's technically book 1.5, but only has a couple of references to The Long Way Down and you can pretty safely dive right in.

(Well, I don't know about "safely"...)

Oh, and for everybody waiting for The Castle Doctrine's release on 10/1, you'll definitely want to have read this one. A couple of characters introduced in The White Gold Score will be making their return next month, for better or for worse. Probably worse. Almost definitely worse.

Happy Women's Equality Day!

Ninety-six years ago today saw the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote. Actual history, as it always is, is rather messier than that: we have records of individual women voting, here and there, as early as the late 1700s, along with (always successful) bids to outlaw and silence said voters. The fight for the Nineteenth Amendment wasn't one single groundswell that paved the way. It was a long and hard-fought battle that played out over more than a hundred years, marked with tiny victories and painful setbacks.

Isn't that crazy? The very idea that over half our population voting would be seen as controversial seems mad today, yet suffragettes faced decades of verbal and physical assault, public shaming, and even prison time for advancing the radical notion that women should have a voice in society. And they kept fighting, for the simple right to speak out, to be heard, as much as for the right to cast a ballot. As Susan B. Anthony said, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized."

And here we are, in 2016, with a woman heading up the candidacy for a major political party. Now, this isn't a political post and I'm not here to tell you who to vote for, that's not my business; I'm just saying, isn't it incredible what a difference less than a hundred years can make? It wasn't time that made the change, though: it was the hard work and sacrifice of so many people, who fought and struggled and laid their livelihood and often their lives on the line to give women their due. So many of their names, lost to history now. So many of their individual sacrifices forgotten, even though we benefit from them today, every single day.

So here's a toast to the suffragettes, then and now, and the spirit of freedom. The spirit of this nation I love, where I'm free to make my art and tell my stories in part because of those brave sacrifices. There's still work to be done, but there's nothing wrong with a little celebration now and then.