I fell in love with the Black Stallion when I was ten years old. Loyal to The Black, I refused to read about any other horse, even as I consumed any and all non-equestrian books to cross my path. I read constantly, voraciously -- at home, in school, while walking down the street. I was nearly hit by a bus during a climactic scene in Johnny Tremain ( Read more... )

So I'm trying to figure this whole blog thing out.  After years of extreme dilettantism I need to get my rear in gear.  I'm going to be pitching my novel to publishers this August, and it's no longer enough to have a book, not even if it's a good book.  No, you must have an entire marketing platform, and for some reason, Valar know why, it must ( Read more... )

I'm going to be in Chicago next week, Sun 1/6 through Sat evening 1/12.  I'm already planning to meet up with a couple of fellow LOTR fans on the Wednesday evening, 1/9.  If anyone else out there wants to join us, I'd love to meet you.

I was going to post about seeing the new Hobbit movie last night, but given today's tragedy in Connecticut I think it's better to wait ( Read more... )

In less than three hours I'll be at the Hobbit Premiere!  My delight is only slightly marred by the fact that if I lived in New York I'd have seen it a week ago.  But then I'd have to be a New Yorker, and live in New York City, so never mind.  They might get the movie first, but the Pacific Northwest is where the real Elves are ( Read more... )

So I went to two conferences back-to-back this week.  The first one was for work.  It was in North Carolina, I flew there on Sunday (while fasting -- it was Tisha B'Av), stayed for four days, attended a couple of board meetings, met with a lot of vendors selling expensive equipment, and tried to stay awake during the clinical physics sessions.  The ( Read more... )

So I had an agent read the partial manuscript, and she loves it and wants to read the whole thing.  Yay!  The problem is, she says the word count is too long.  She wants me to cut 50,000 words or else split the novel into two books ( Read more... )

So I wrote a book.  THE GLOAMING is an actual, publishable, original novel, and it'll be available on Amazon in November. In the meanwhile, you can follow my chief character, Malachi Blackwell, on twitter. Scientist, artist, musician, genius, and vampire: you can find him at vampire_in_PDX. But be careful. He bites.

This is too awesome not to share.

President Obama supports gay marriage.

It's a good day.

So as of today I've sent out four queries and had two rejections.  The trick, I think, is to just keep sending queries so that I always have one in the queue, one "could be yes" to offset the "definitely no."

FYI, if anyone out there is querying agents, there's a fantastic resource to help you know what works and what doesn't.  Check out Query Shark ( Read more... )