Why My Brain Is Goo, And Other Updates

Yesterday, I crossed the finish line on The Blue Blazes, my next Angry Robot novel in which I write about the conflict between the criminal underworld and the Holy Shit There Are Monsters Living Beneath Our Feet Actual Underworld. The man in the middle is Mookie Pearl, big thug, bad dad, and ugly motherfucker, who finds both sides playing against the middle — and in the middle is the entire population of New York City.

It’s just shy of 100,000 words, my longest novel yet.

I wrote 10,500 words yesterday alone.

The book took me a little under two months to write.

I have no idea if it’s total ass or not. You stare at a painting long enough, eventually, it’s just a blobby mess of colors. That’s the book to me, right now: just an array of words, their quality and context unknown.

I think it’s good. Or at least okay. I know it has some problems I look forward to fixing in the next draft or two. Hopefully you’ll dig it — it’s a little more straight-up urban fantasy for me. High-action, lots of criminal goings-on, lots of weird monsters you won’t find elsewhere — no vampires or werewolves or vampwolves or wizardvamps or sexy succubi, but you will find gobbos, trog-bodies, cankerpedes, roach-rats, milk-spiders, Snakefaces, Vollrath, and the Hungry Ones. And a strange man named “Candlefly.”

The character of Mookie Pearl, by the way, comes out of a short story I wrote called “Charcuterie” that will (er, hopefully) one day be published in this anthology right here. (At this rate, I’m almost wondering if the novel will be out before the short story.)

I’ve heard some awesome news on the cover that will tickle your pink parts as it did mine.

You can, at present, pre-order the novel (which you could apparently do even before I finished it) over at Amazon and BN.com. I’ll assume the date of May 28th is pretty firm? Good stuff.

Holy Crap, io9 Reviews Mockingbird

“All those plot gears do not turn in a wholly straightforward way. What appears to be a simple “find the serial killer” story at first delves down a few blind alleys before unraveling in a bizarre and stunning way. And even when the story does move in a linear manner, it’s highly entertaining.”

That, from Ed Grabianowski’s review of Mockingbird over at io9!

I know the first Blackbirds review was fairly influential for getting people into that book — I heard from a lot of people who told me that review was how they heard about the book and why they bought it. Hopefully this review will do similarly. Check it out, if you’re so inclined.

Interviews

I have a new batch of interviews I have to get caught up on now that I’m done writing Blue Blazes (and I move into editing Heartland, Book One, and writing Beyond Dinocalypse) — though, I’m thinking that after this batch I might change how interviews are handled here. They’re a fairly small thing but even still, they require just that much extra work from me to write up a second round of questions and read as much of the originating author’s source material as I can muster — I ultimately find that with the writing and blogging I already do, it’s a tricky sitch to force myself back to the computer to go that extra couple of inches.

I’m noodling turning interviews into something more along the lines of what you get with Scalzi’s Whatever — a series of ten questions, say, about a given upcoming release (book, game, film, comic, etc) and the storyteller behind that release. Same questions for everybody, no follow-ups. Thoughts? The other solution would be to have authors write a guest post, instead — something tied to the unofficial mission statement here of talking about story and process and all that jazz, but I think the interview is a greater chance to bring the funny? Fuck, I dunno. Comments, questions, complaints, prayer requests, death threats?

In Which I Slather Myself With Homemade Ice Cream

I have an ice cream maker now, ho ho ho.

(That, written on my t-shirt not in blood but smeary chocolate.)

I made Nutella ice cream as my first attempt and it was guhhh drool sputter.

So good.

Recipe here, except I substituted cream for the milk and added an egg yolk.

Now it’s your turn to give me ice cream recipes and ideas.

Soon, A Merch Test

I will soon sell a few selected pieces of merchandise for a limited time.

Just to see if it’s viable.

Eyes peeled, terribleminders.