Great Comicon Kc

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I was at Comicon in Kansas City this past weekend and it was great! By far the best con I’ve been at.

They moved to Bartle Hall with about twice as much space in order to alleviate the crowding they’ve experienced in past years in a smaller venue. It didn’t work. The place was absolutely packed. There was a line of several hundred people waiting to get in both days. The passage between booths were beyond crowded..they were quite claustrophobic at times. Which is a good thing!

I got a chance to talk to Wil Wheaton but missed George Takei . I even sold out of Sympathetic Resonance and actually made a few dollars (even after cost of show and quite a few free books given away).

But the best part of the weekend was definitely Sunday around noon. A very nice lady had come by on Saturday and bought a copy of my novella,

    The Color of Love

. She read half of it Saturday night and got up to read the rest Sunday morning. She came in Sunday and told me that she absolutely loved it” and she bought copies of the rest of my books. This is the sort of feedback that indie authors (and probably all authors) live for. (Thanks Mendi!)

Now hopefully she’ll convince about 2 million of her closest friends to each buy copies. ;-)

Review on Bibliognome

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Bibliognome posted a short review of The Happiness Equation. It had a couple of good things to say, but I wish there had been a bit more to it.

That being said, it makes you feel good when someone asks of your work, “What the hell prompted someone to come up with these scenarios?”  ;-)

 

Check it out here: http://bibliognome1.blogspot.com/2013/02/happiness-horror.html

Review – Codex by Lev Grossman

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Just finished listening to this from Audible.com. The purchase was on a whim. Description sounded interesting and I thought I’d get something like Lincoln Child or maybe Dean Koontz.

Instead, what I got was a very slow, meandering story that alway had lots of potential to explode into awesomeness at any point. The good news is that I listened to the end because I was always sure that the awesomeness was just around the corner. The bad news is…having finished the novel, I’m still waiting.

And the ending was so severely disappointing that I was confused how that could be the end.

The writing style was actually quite good in places. The characters were well-described and I identified with them. The detail of the environments was good and there were quite a few places where I said (frequently outloud), “What a great phrase!”

The good writing made the bad plot and lack of action that much more painful. I was expecting intermittant action scenes to keep the story moving along. I think the closest thing to an action scene is when the main character is confronted on the street by some rivals who also want the Codex. As soon as the main character realizes that the two men might actually be threatening him physically, his large friend just happens to show up on the sidewalk, looking imposing. And that’s where the section/chapter ends.

Unfortunately, the actual reading of the book added to the pain. The speaker was actually quite good throughout most of the book and affected the various characters’ voices well. But it was read in a British dialect so that words like “khaki” were pronounced “cocky.” This was very distracting to my stupid, American ears.

Sadly, I can’t give this book more than 2 d’s out of 5.

Excellent Book – 14

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I just finished 14 by Peter Clines and it was awesome! Definitely a rating of 5 d’s!

The book is about a hotel in Los Angeles that has some strange features. I’m not going to put any spoilers here, but suffice to say, I could not have guessed the details of the building. I had a general idea about where the story was going, but the details of getting there were excellent.

As for where it goes…it is pretty out there if you just consider it on the surface. Again, no spoilers, but Allan Grohe should definitely read it!  So if I just told you where the story goes, you might dismiss the book…but it is so masterfully built up, piece by piece, that it seems perfectly reasonable when you get there.

I really liked the characters (although I found the character hook ups to be strange…) and the pace was good. There were very few wordings/passages that drew me out of the story.

I am purchasing more Peter Clines books even as I type this.  :-)

Highly recommended!

ConX KC!

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Had a great time at ConX this weekend in Kansas City. Met a lot of great people–vendors, celebrities, staff, and guests.

I sold a few copies of my latest titles and gave out quite a few for review purposes and set up a future interview, so it was well worth the cost and time it took to attend.

I also made some great contacts including a publicist who I may be working with in the future. We’re already discussing a future con that might be a good fit for my work and other events. I’ll keep y’all posted.

I also got to chat with a borg (Patrick Barnitt), put my arm around Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), have dinner with Chekov (Walter Koenig), be mocked by Dr. Ivan Cryptosis, and called out by name by Erika Eleniak.

All in all, it was a great weekend and I’m looking forward to more positive results from it in the coming weeks. So a big thanks to Drew and Michelle for putting it all together and hopefully we can do it again next year!

Two new titles are available!

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Great news! Both The Weight of the Universe and The Happiness Equation are now available in both Kindle and Paperback formats!

It’s been a long road to get both of these completed, edited (thanks to Jess and everyone who read for me), cover art done (thanks Rachel!), formatted, packaged, finagled, jiggled, wrapped, and put to bed. But it’s soooo completely worth it as I am excited about the books. I think they have turned out great both in writing and publication.

Here’s some feedback from my advance readers…

 

The Weight of the Universe:

“LOVED IT!  Really. Great. Book.”

“…a great job explaining the science and keeping it interesting…”

“…always in awe of great story tellers…”

The Happiness Equation:

“Really good. Something really different, yet not too different.”

“I was impressed by the way the characters relationships were woven together.”

“Good read!”

Cover Art is finished!

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With great help from Rachel Filbeck ( https://t.co/E6IGK32N ), I finally have completed cover are for both The Happiness Equation and The Weight of the Universe!

It only took about two design studios and 96 versions, but the final cover for Happiness is below.

Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think!

The front cover artwork for The Happiness Equation

 

New cover art coming!

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I have been working with a wonderful artist by the name of Rachel Filbeck. I found her through Elance and she has done a great job putting together the cover for The Weight of the Universe. She also took care of the back cover for me and created a wonderful effect of the metaverse cracking open (allowing all of the universes to spill out into oblivion) like a snow globe.

In fact, she did such a great job, I also asked her to handle the redesign of the cover for The Happiness Equation (as the first version I received from a different shop wasn’t what I wanted).

I’ll post images of both as soon as they’re finalized!

It looks like I just may get all of this craziness done in time for ConX after all!