While supplies last!

Inspired by the positive experience of other ebook writers, I've decided to enroll Confessions of a Gourmand, or How to Cook a Dragon in Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing Select program-- in return for offering my novel exclusively on Amazon for three months, I get to promote it as a free download for five days.

Confessions will be available for free at the Kindle store starting today until February 8th. Please give it a try! If you enjoy the book, I humbly ask that you tell a friend or leave a review on Amazon. Many thanks in advance...

(And thanks to Joey C. at Good Morning Gloucester for plugging the book!)

Make It Happen 2012: Day 29

One of the things that I resolved to do as part of Make It Happen 2012 was to pay closer attention to the business side of my writing. While I always seem able to find the time to eke out a few words here and there on a new project, when it comes to editing, polishing, submitting, or self-publishing my works online I tend to procrastinate like there's no tomorrow. Today however I took advantage of a lazy Sunday afternoon to finally get my entry for this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest ready for submission. Although I had entered the 2010 competition (with my fantasy novel Confessions of a Gourmand (/shamelessplug)) and actually made it to the second round, for various reasons I ended up missing the deadline for last year's contest and regretted it terribly for not having given it another try.

Well, I'm back this year with a new entry-- another fantasy novel called The Librarian's Tale. However I fare this time, I will be sure to release the book as a Kindle edition, just as I did with Confessions, but in the meanwhile wish me luck!

(I've also been working on something else today, but I'm saving that announcement for tomorrow for reasons which I hope will become obvious. Let's call it the best kind of procrastination...)

A new flash fiction series!

If you wander over to the Confessions of a Gourmand blog you'll find some fresh content: Breakfast in Iskandalon, an inaugural entry to a new series of flash fiction chronicling the latter-day journeys of Van d'Allamitri, Varo's most celebrated chef. His mysterious agent Heinrich may be calling it a 'book tour,' but don't be fooled: after twenty years in the City, Van is ready to see the world again and sample its fantastic cuisine.

Keeping with the spirit of flash fiction, I plan to post a fresh dispatch every Sunday. Stay tuned for next week's episode, when Van travels from Iskandalon, City of Letters, to Egrezi Ra, City of the Living Dead!

Today's Silver Lining

I sold a book! Thanks, whoever you are, and I hope you enjoy the read...

I made a Kindle edition!

Even though I didn't make the second cut in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, just getting as far as I did has inspired me to sell Confessions of a Gourmand as a Kindle edition at Amazon.com.

I'll be working on some print options as well, either at Createspace or Lulu. But in the meantime, if you've enjoyed reading the blog version of the novel, I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd consider recommending the Kindle edition to others or posting a review on the Amazon site.

Thanks a lot and wish me luck!

A new series!

If you're hungry for some more Varo, then I hope you'll enjoy the new series of short stories I'll be posting over the next several weeks. Varonian Nights chronicles the adventures of a thief, a painter, a garbageman, a songstress, a gondolier, a bounty hunter, a cop, and a Gorgon Queen as they cross paths in the city of a million souls...

Check out Chapter One: Red Legion!

(This series is also syndicated at The Penny Dreadful, a new collaborative serial storytelling venture that I'll be contributing to regularly.)

Win!

So I finished the 2009 NaNoWriMo challenge last night at around 2am, while Mrs. Exile was pulling an almost all-nighter on an assignment for one of her library school classes. That's 50,000 words in 20 days! Though I still have to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion, I'm hoping to have done so by the end of the month.

It's funny how different this year's NaNoWriMo was from the last one I participated in, in 2006. While I managed to "win" that year as well, getting those 1776 words in every day proved to be a constant challenge and/or source of worry, whereas this time around I was averaging almost 3000 words every day that I wrote. So what changed?

The tools, for starters. In 2006 I was still writing on my PDA, which is a great way to focus, but you can only peck so fast. This year however I used a laptop from start to finish, as distraction really isn't the issue that it used to be for me. When I'm writing, I'm writing- not surfing the web, Tweeting, or updating Facebook.

I think I'm just also in a different place with my writing efforts than I was three years ago as well. Back in 2006 I'd just finished the first draft of Confessions of a Gourmand and was still trying to figure out whether I had any creative juice left in me. This time around I know that I've only just begun.

When I do finish "Eight" (the tentative title of this year's NaNoWriMo project), it will be the fourth work set in the same fantasy world, after Confessions, The Librarian's Tale, and Varonian Nights. There was a time when I thought that I needed to make a break from a genre writing, as if it were something to be purged out of my system so that I could move on to more serious literary efforts, but the more I fully realize this world the more I realize I want to spend more time in it, not less.

I do still have a non-genre project that I've been working on since before the 2006 NaNo, and I hope to return to it sometime early next year, but I fully expect to add more installments to the world of Van d'Allamitri, the Great Library of Iskdandalon, and of course the City of Varo as well. And as revise and edit each of these tales, I will be posting them online just as I have been with Confessions of a Gourmand.

Good luck to everyone on finishing up this year's NaNoWriMo- remember to just keep writing!

(Yes, I know the above is a split infinitive. Deal with it...)

And we're off!

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is more commonly called, is underway again, I'm taking the plunge this time around after a hiatus of three years. Astute readers will no doubt recall that I participated in the 2006 NaNoWriMo, completing a 60,000-word first draft of The Librarian's Tale that November with a day or two to spare.

My jump to professional librarian in October 2007 made repeating the feat the following year a nigh-impossibility, and although last year was much better for my writing overall I was too deep into special project limbo at work to commit. This year is a whole different ball of wax, however, so despite the fact that I'm already about 70,000 words into a fantasy anthology (Varonian Nights), I'm throwing down the virtual gauntlet with myself.

So far, so good- it's Day Two and I'm already at 6,000 words! I think I did myself a huge favor by not attempting to shift genres on myself, keeping the novel set in the same fantasy universe as Confessions of Gourmand, The Librarian's Tale, and Varonian Nights. This one is a hard-boiled detective story- crossbow noir, if you will- and it's way too much fun to channel a little bit of Raymond Chandler for a month.

While I have an official profile at NaNoWriMo.org, this time around I'll be doing most of my progress updates on Twitter. To all those people out there who are also making their way towards 50k this month: good luck! Remember that your only goal this month is to write, not to edit, re-write, or second guess yourself and/or your writerly output. Send your internal editor on vacation until December 1st and focus on the simple joy of putting words together for a spell.

Stay tuned! And wish me luck...

Cyclops, Gorgons, and Chocolate (oh, my!)

Chapter Twelve of Confessions of a Gourmand is now online!

Double the writing goodness

Not only is Chapter Eleven of Confessions of a Gourmand now online, but I've added another short story to my Random Tales writing blog: Keeper, a horror tale about two fishermen and the one that didn't get away.

Chapter Ten and other news

Totally forgot to mention that Chapter Ten of Confessions is now online!

I've also been talking with a friend who has entirely too much webhosting on his hands- he's offered me some virtual real estate for my fantasy writing so I'm likely to take him up on his offer when I've finished posting Confessions of a Gourmand in its entirety. More on that later, but I thought I'd share the exciting news with y'all.

More delicious fantasy

Chapter Eight of Confessions of a Gourmand is now online!

Confessions Update

As promised, Chapter Three of Confessions is now online.

The story continues

Chapter Two of Confessions of a Gourmand is now online. Enjoy!