Coming in November – an audiobook edition of The Spirit Banner, the first of my contributions to the Rogue Angel series!

The audiobook is produced by GraphicAudio and judging from the sample file they have on their site, it is going to be a terrific production!  We’re talking a full cast of characters, narration, sound effects and even cinematic music throughout.  Based on what they’ve done with The Spirit Banner, I would be thrilled to have them produce any of my other titles (especially the Templar Chronicles.)

But don’t take my word for it – check out the audio sample yourself.

Download audio file (RA022sample.mp3)

Friend and fellow writer Brian Keene has been kind enough to open up an official section for me on his message board forum, so drop on by and join the conversation!  I’ve added some beginning threads to introduce you to some of my work and will be stopping by there regularly to answer questions and chat.

You’ll need to register for an account first, but once you do you’ll have access to forums for a wide variety of writers, including Brian Keene, Tim Lebbon, Tom Piccirilli, Ed Gorman, and James A. Moore, never mind a slew of others.

Link to Register

Direct Link to the Forum

While paging through an online copy of PREVIEWS, the monthly magazine/catalog of the comic industry from Diamond Distributors, I came across the following:

Which means you can all reserve your copy today!

Now, I have to say I’m not thrilled with the selection of cover art.  Originally, Candice Crow was going to be released as five separate issues and the cover art for each of those issue was superior to the art that was chosen to grace the cover of the graphic novel.  But as the writer I don’t have much say in that issue so all I can do is grimace a bit a hope folks looks past that to the cool story and terrific art inside.

I should also point out that in the listing the writer’s name is wrong – Sean O’Reilly is the head of Arcana Comics, not the writer of Candice Crow, that’s me – and the short summary of the title is also incorrect.  I’ll post the proper one below.

If you’re looking to order a copy over the web, the best prices I’ve seen are at:

Westfield Comics

BoomPanda

Urban Collector

For my overseas fans, you can find it at Forbidden Planet

“For the last six months my life has been sliding out of control, but even in my worst dreams I’d never imagined that it could get this bad.

My father’s a drunk.  My boyfriend’s a selfish pig. And a week ago, my best friend “committed” suicide. To top it all off, I have to climb into some weird freakin’ suit every few hours to keep from looking like a reject from Dawn of the Dead.

My name’s Candice Crowe.  Welcome to my messed-up life.”

Candice Crowe’s just your average American teenager until the death of her mother and the stress of her best friend’s alleged suicide causes her previously dormant powers to surface.  Telepathy.  Telekinesis.  Extreme strength and agility.  Everything a girl could ask for, really.

Gifts like these always come with a price, however, and for Candice it means she’s forced to wear a special suit every few hours to keep her skin from necrotizing from the inside out.  Still, she’s determined not to let that put a damper on either her love life or her dreams of being a rockstar.

But first, Candice intends to find out what happened to her best friend, Claire, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way.

Annja thought she was the only one.  That her sword was unique, one-of-a-kind.  But Annja’s about to come face to face with the fact that for everything light, there is something dark.

Annja’s about to meet the Dragon and in doing so will discover that she isn’t the only one who carries a sword…

The Dragon's Mark

THE DRAGON’S MARK release date is only about two weeks away, so I thought it was time to give you a little taste of what’s to come.  Here’s an exclusive excerpt from the first chapter…

CHAPTER ONE

Paris, France -Present Day

Annja took the steps two at a time, calling her sword to her hand as she went.  The weapon responded, emerging from the otherwhere fully formed and fitting neatly into her grasp as if it had been fashioned for her alone.  She remembered the first time she’d seen the sword.  It had been in this very house, lying in pieces in the case Roux had fashioned for it.  She remembered the heat coming off the pieces of the broken blade and the rainbow-colored light that had exploded off of it when she had grasped the hilt and lifted it free of its case, reformed anew.  Then, as now, she knew the sword was hers; knew it down to the core of her very soul.  Just having it with her made her feel more confident about the confrontation that lay ahead.

She kept her eyes on the landing above, not wanting to be surprised by the sudden appearance of an intruder, and thankfully she made it to the top without incident.  She found herself faced with a long corridor that ran off in opposite directions.  She knew the right held a series of guest bedrooms, for she had stayed there in the past and was even using one of them now.  The left side of the hallway held a bathroom, an office, and a display room for some of Roux’s art.  She ignored all of them; the crash had come from the room at the far end of the hall, the one now facing her, and as she moved toward it, she tried to remember just what was used for.

A spare bedroom?

Another office?  Maybe a study?

Then it came to her.

A display room.

The room held a portion of the weapons collection that Roux had accumulated over the course of his extended lifetime; there were more rooms just like it scattered throughout his home.  But this room was special, Annja remembered now.  She had even spent some time in it during a previous visit, for it contained a certain type of weapon that she had grown rather attached to lately.

Swords.

The collection contained both working blades and a few museum quality relics, but nothing that was overly valuable and certainly not much that could be moved easily on the open market.  The thieves, if that was indeed what they were, were in for a rude surprise if they thought differently.

And they still had to contend with her.

She raced to the door and flattened herself against the wall beside it. She put her head against the wall, listening, but Roux’s mansion had been built in the days when they had used quality building materials rather than the cheap substitutes that had become so common today and she couldn’t hear anything but her own breathing.

She was going to have to do this the hard way.

Gripping her sword in one hand, Annja grabbed the doorknob with the other, took a deep breath, and then pulled it open, slipping inside with barely a sound.

She’d been right; it was the one of the display rooms.  Swords lined the walls by the hundreds – long swords, short swords, broadswords, cutlasses, epee, scimitars – every make, model, and size it seemed.  Their carefully polished blades shone in the spotlights that had been artfully arranged to draw attention to the weapons and here and there the wink of precious gems gleamed back at her from their scabbards or hilts.

But Annja barely noticed the swords on the walls, for her attention was captured by those held in the hands of the intruders facing her.

Looking for something new to read?   I’m giving away from ebook versions of The Heretic: Book One of the Templar Chronicles to everyone who signs up for my mailing list.  Just enter your name and email address in the form on the right and you’ll receive instructions on how to download your copy of this bestselling urban fantasy tale.

Publisher Roy Robbins over at Bad Moons Books sent over the final cover art for the forthcoming Templar Chronicles Omnibus today and I wanted to share it with you all.  Pre-orders will begin very soon (next couple of weeks, I’m told) and I’ll be posting more information about that as soon as I have it.

Word came in this morning from Sean O’Reilly, publisher at Arcana Comics, that Candice Crowe will be released as an original graphic novel instead of a five issue comic series.  The coloring of what was originally the fifth and final issue is being completed as I write this and the complete work should see publication later this fall/winter.

Here’s the official blurb:

“For the last six months my life has been sliding out of control, but even in my worst dreams I’d never imagined that it could get this bad.

My father’s a drunk.  My boyfriend’s a selfish pig. And a week ago, my best friend “committed” suicide. To top it all off, I have to climb into some weird freakin’ suit every few hours to keep from looking like a reject from Dawn of the Dead.

My name’s Candice Crowe.  Welcome to my messed-up life.”

Candice Crowe’s just your average American teenager until the death of her mother and the stress of her best friend’s alleged suicide causes her previously dormant powers to surface.  Telepathy.  Telekinesis.  Extreme strength and agility.  Everything a girl could ask for, really.

Gifts like these always come with a price, however, and for Candice it means she’s forced to wear a special suit every few hours to keep her skin from necrotizing from the inside out.  Still, she’s determined not to let that put a damper on either her love life or her dreams of being a rockstar.

But first, Candice intends to find out what happened to her best friend, Claire, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way.

I really enjoyed writing CC and I’m looking forward to seeing it hit the store shelves.  Here’s a look at some of the completed art..

There’s nothing quite like it. That feeling of walking into the bookstore and seeing your name on the cover of a new release sitting there on the shelf. It’s pretty damn magical, if I do say so myself.

But there’s also nothing quite like the feeling you get when, after waiting for weeks, sometimes months, you finally get a response from the editor or agent to whom you submitted your latest work and…it’s another rejection. Even worse, there isn’t any helpful feedback – no sense of where you went wrong or what you can do to make it better. How are you supposed to improve if no one is telling you what you’re doing wrong? How are you supposed to make yourself stand out from the thousands of other submissions they are receiving?

I know, you say to yourself, I’ll sign up for one of those live workshops. One taught by a team of successful authors. Surely they can help me, you think. But every workshop you look at costs hundreds of dollars per session, never mind what it will cost to travel and stay in the hotel for the week. By the time you’re done you’ve spent well over a thousand dollars. Who can afford that?

There has to be a better way. You know what? There is.

It’s called the Summer Writing Intensive and it’s taught by two successful authors, Jon F Merz and Joe Nassise, who have sold more than thirty books between them in the last eight years to publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Harlequin/Gold Eagle, Kensington, St. Martin’s Press, HarperCollins and Tor.

You want to be confident the next time you submit your work. You want that submission to generate interest; for that editor or agent to sit up and take notice. Ideally, that interest will turn into an offer of publication and eventually, later on down the road, you’ll be the one walking into that bookstore looking for that first sight of your new book on the shelves, waiting for a legion of crazed readers to buy it.

The Summer Writing Intensive can help get you there. Best of all, you can do it from your own home at a fraction of the cost of other writing retreats.

The workshop consists of eight live webinars; each focusing on a key element of the writing craft that you need to know in order for your manuscript stand out from the rest and to make your career what you want it to be.

Each webinar session will be an hour long and will include handouts and real-world examples to illustrate the point of each lesson. As a participant you’ll be able to ask questions and interact during all of the sessions, allowing you the opportunity to learn from your fellow participants as well as from the instructors. Transcripts of each session will be available after the workshop for you to refer back to at a later date, so you’ll always have the material on hand when you need it.

Here’s a quick look at the sessions and what you’ll be focusing on in each one:

Story Structure: Crafting a Plot that Begs the Reader to Keep Reading

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• How proper structure is necessary for a story to work
• Why conflict is the key to any story, regardless of genre
• The three pillars of plot that support your story
• The best ways to build complications that make sense and increase the conflict

Living, Breathing Characters: Make Your Heroes and Villains Come Alive

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• Techniques to design and execute character arcs in your stories
• How to give your heroes larger-than-life qualities
• The proper use of backstory and how to provide context to your characters’ actions
• How to create villains that your readers love to hate

Pacing: Getting to the Climax is Just as Important as Having a Good One

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• How to craft an effective hook to open your story
• The importance of adding tension to every page
• Why so many books sag in the middle – and what you can do to prevent it from happening to yours
• Five ways to craft a knock-out ending

Action Scenes: It’s a Gun Fight not a Ballet

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• The basics of a fight: emotion, adrenaline, and tactics
• Armed and unarmed fighting for writers
• Structuring your fight scene so it leaves the reader breathless
• Does it make sense? Understanding anatomy and how the body responds to being punched, pulled and crushed

Revision: Sharpen that Knife, Baby!

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• How proper structure can keep your revision work to a minimum
• Specific techniques to organize your revision work so that you don’t waste unnecessary time
• How to know what to revise and what to leave alone
• Ways to polish the good stuff to make it great

Proposals: In Order to Sell, it has to Sing

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• The three key elements of a great proposal
• How to write a synopsis that grabs them by the throat and won’t let go
• How to write a query letter an agent or editor will actually read – then act upon!
• Ways to craft a proposal package that will have your editor or agent wanting more

Social Media Marketing: Using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to Build Your Career and Promote Your Work

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• What’s behind the Facebook craze and why it’s important to you
• The difference between a solid Twitter presence and a poor one
• How using LinkedIn can enhance your career and provide opportunities you might have otherwise missed
• How to measure and monitor your social media impact

Digital Editions: Stop Leaving Money on the Table

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• What you need to know before putting digital editions of your work up for sale
• Tips and tricks to properly format your book for sale on the Kindle
• How to get format and upload your book for sale on the iPad
• Ways to promote and publicize your digital editions to make the most of your offerings

The techniques Joe and Jon will be teaching in the workshop have helped them write and sell successful novels in a variety of genres – here’s just a sample of what they’ve published recently:

Better yet, the workshop has been designed with the would-be author’s pocketbook in mind. You get:

• Eight sessions focused on improving your craft
• Handouts and real-world examples to help you put the techniques into action
• A written transcript of each session
• Feedback and advice from two bestselling writers

All for just $125.00

The workshop begins July 21^st and runs through Sept 8^th, meeting each Wednesday night. Sessions start at 9:00 pm EST and run for an hour. (If you have to miss a session, the workshop transcript and materials can be sent to you following the session.)

If you’re thinking about submitting your work in the next few months, you don’t want to miss the Summer Writing Intensive. We’re limited to 100 slots, so get your registration in early!

Announcing a brand new ebook of four thrilling tales from Jon F. Merz and Joseph Nassise…

4 for FRIDAY

Four tales – 20,000 words of pure adrenalized mayhem – available only for an extremely short time: FRIDAY for the incredibly amazing price of just $2.50

Available in any ebook format (pdf, epub, mobi, ltf) 4 for FRIDAY ships right away, as soon as you order it!

Contents:

Barlow’s Game – On the streets of monster town, one veteran agent tracks an elusive killer and finds much more than he bargained for…
Roadside Memorials – What we do for the living, isn’t always right for the dead…
A Peaceable Mind – What happens when a simple assassination turns out to be anything but?
Siren Call – Sometimes it is best not to disturb that which lies dreaming in the dark…

PLUS, exclusive introductions to the stories direct from the authors themselves.

Don’t wait! Get 4 for FRIDAY right now by choosing your file format and then clicking the Buy Now button below. There are no plans to offer this ebook for sale anywhere else except direct from the authors.

File Format

PDF MOBI (Kindle) EPUB LRF (Sony)

My next Rogue Angel adventure, The Dragon’s Mark, will be available in early September and I’ve received this low resolution scan of the cover art to share with you all.  (Update with a new, high-res image thanks to my marvelous editor!)

I’m very happy with it, given what the book is about, and I think the tagline “For everything light, there is something dark” is just perfect!

The Dragon's Mark