I am an utter goof off + Amphigory

 

The great week of goofing off continues!  Went out to lunch with an old friend yesterday, and am probably gonna go out today too.  I haven't written a word (I know, very strange for me) and have instead been killing demons and making my little anime characters get tougher and tougher by having them fight pointless battles against little cactus men.  It's enchanting!

I will note that my corruption of my wife continues.  I've managed to get her to play a little bit of Final Fantasy X, which--in my opinion--is the one in the series that has the best story, save maybe for six.  Anyway, she says she enjoys it, but that may just be her humoring me again.  She did make me learn how to waltz yesterday as payback for her learning to play magic.  Curses!  How quickly that backfired on me.

And now, some post-Christmas silliness:

 

Need a hint?  His name is right here.  Need the answer?  Check the file name.

Merry (late) Christmas! + Warbreaker

For my part, I intend to take a week off.  I'm going to play Final Fantasy 12, perhaps some Devil May Cry 3, and do as little ANYTHING as possible.  Not going to be hard because I appear to have gotten sick AGAIN.  Normally, my constitution is quite above such things, so I can only blame working myself so hard while traveling about to bookstores and visiting with all you wonderful people.  Ah, the sacrifices we authors make. 

Anyway, for Christmas, I got some sweat presents.  Topping the lists is a new watch from my father, a framed picture from my brother and mother, and some little transformers things from my dear wife.  (Along with some other stuff.) 

In other news, while we were on our book tour, a guy from a local SF podcast dropped by and recorded one of our question and answer sessions, then made a podcast of it.  You can download it by clicking the picture below:

And, finally, here's a Warbreaker chapter:  Chapter Thirty Nine

Whew! 31 Stores in 2 Days

Anyone who has heard me talk about my agent probably knows that he likes to visit bookstores.  The guy never gets tired, likes to walk everywhere, and moves at about three times normal human speed.  When I meet up with him, we end up visiting as many bookstores as we can so that I can meet bookstore staff, shake hands, and hopefully sign the copies of my books that are on the shelves so that they can get the nice little "autographed copies" stickers on them. 

However, trying to keep up with Joshua over any length of time is exhausting.  We hit 31 stores in the last two days, and I managed to hand-sell seventeen copies of my novels.  However, I'm beat--and the booksigning hasn't even started yet!

However, onward and upward, or whatever.  I really think this could be a fun signing, even though nobody can come visit me because it's beyond the security gates.  Hopefully, there will be a lot of last-minute shoppers buying books as gifts. 

I'll post a Mistborn annotation as soon as I have more than five minutes to stop and think!

Warbreaker + Party

Well, my friends surprised me with a birthday party last night.  Many congratulations to my wonderful wife for setting it up, and thank you so much to everyone who waited out for an hour playing the Wii with my brother. 

New Warbreaker for you all:  Chapter Thirty Eight

Copy Edit Done, Very Tired, Birthday Amphigory

Happy birthday to me!

I'll try to get a Warbreaker up tomorrow.  Might be late in the day.  Check the file name for the hint for the picture above, if you need one.

Birthday + Annotation

 

So, my birthday is tomorrow, if you're watching for it.  I'll be thirty-one. 

Age thirty was a good year.  It's the year when I got married, the year when I got the Alcatraz deal, the year when Mistborn came out.  I've had a couple of really strong years--good friends, lots of fun writing, and some amazing occurrences.  Thank you all so much for being part of it.

Final part of the book tour is coming up--by D.C. visit this weekend.  If you live in the area, drop me an email.  Since the airport Borders is behind the security checkpoint, you won't be able to visit me there unless you happen to be flying out.  I will be visiting a lot of other stores, however, and signing the books they have on the shelves.  I'd be happy to meet up with anyone in town and sign their books.

New Annotation: Mistborn Seventeen pt. One

The Mistborn copyedit goes well so far.  It's slow work, and I don't have a lot of time to do it.  I'm on page 700 of 950, and it needs to go back tomorrow.  After that, the Alcatraz copyedit needs to be back the 21st.  So, whew!  Lots to do.

Amphigory tomorrow. 

And, because I feel like it, here's a stupid picture.  Sorry, I can't resize it. You'll have to click to see the animation.

Back! (Kind of) + Mistborn 2 Cover

So, I'm back from the second leg of my tour.  The first leg, Spain, was pretty crazy--but this one (the West coast) was really insane.  I don't know how rock band members do it.  All of that touring has me beat, and I was only gone for a couple of weeks! 

I met a lot of interesting people, including a number of evil librarians last night at the singing/reading in Las Vegas.  Thank you to everyone who came to see us, and for everyone who bought copies of the books!  I'm not 100% convinced that a book tour like this is worth the expense if I look only at an earnings/cost comparison.  However, these things seem to make readers more excited, and I like to do my best to give something back to them.

Speaking of which, I hope to resume regular updates to the blog starting next week.  Thanks for being so patient for me!  As a thank you, here are two things.  First, another Mistborn annotation!

Chapter Sixteen Part Two

And finally, a first look at the Mistborn 2 cover:

 I stole this off of Jon Foster's website, and it's copyrighted to him, so I'm not going to post a very large version of it until we have lettering and title on it.   If you want to see a bigger version, look right here.  (It's the seventh picture down.)

Whew! (Warbreaker + Annotations)

Just stayed up until 1:00 am trying to work through a little of my email backlog.  Sorry it's taking so long--I'm beat!  This book tour is rather exhausting, which is strange, since all I do is drive around and talk to people.  At least I get to stop back in Provo tomorrow so that I can see my wife.

Which reminds me, signing at the Provo Towne Centre Waldenbooks on Wednesday at 5:00!  Come say hi to me, David Farland, and L.E. Modesitt Jr.  Also, don't forget Vegas on Thursday or Denver on Saturday.  Times and things are on the front page of my website.

As a thank you in advance, here are two of the Annotations that I owe you. 

Part Two Wrap Up

Chapter Sixteen: Part One

And, just because I know I'll hear a lot of begging if I don't get it up, here's the next chapter of Warbreaker too:

Chapter Thirty Seven 

Also, if you want it, here's a complete download of part three:

Part Three: Chapters 26-37

If you are reading these, please take the time to post a link to the first page of the Warbreaker thread on any websites/blogs you may frequent.  The more people we get reading, the better!

Link to the first page of the Warbreaker thread, with all the old chapters:

 

One of the really exhausting things about all of this is that both Tor and Scholastic decided to pick the same month to ask me for a copy edit of my current books.  I knew this was the danger in picking up a second publisher, but it means that I have A LOT of work to do, suddenly. 

And, just so this isn't all about me, if you haven't been following Schlock Mercenary lately, you're missing out.  It's been some of the best writing that Howard has done yet.  Here's a good place to start:

Warbreaker + Amphigory

New Warbreaker!  Chapter Thirty-Six

As always, let me know what you think on my Forums.

And, because I've skipped it two weeks in a row, here's a quick Amphigory Eleven!  It's based on a bumper sticker I saw. (Regular update schedule resumes when my book tour is over.)

Book Tour Days 1, 2, 3, 4 (Contact.)

So far so good!  We've had some really great signings.  Thank you to everyone who came out to see us! 

We'll  be back in San Francisco tomorrow, so if you didn't make it to Half Moon Bay, make sure to see us in Citrus Heights. 

We've only had a few little bumps.  One was where, oddly, we blew a tire.  Or, well, we didn't actually blow a tire.  We just lost the entire tread to our tire.  It was the strangest thing.  Dave and I just stood there at the side of the freeway for a few minutes, scratching our heads, trying to figure out if the tire was safe to drive on or not.

Eventually, we took the chance (since both of us are wimps, and didn't want to change the tire ourselves) and drove to the little town we could see up ahead twinkling in the night.  We got there and found a nice, all night tire place (why the heck does California have all night tire places?  In Utah we don't even have restaurants that stay open past ten!) where a kindly Mexican man sold us two new tires and put them on.

I got to watch him put some tires on a semi truck while I was waiting for the glue on my tires to dry.  That was pretty darn cool. 

More tomorrow, assuming I have Internet.  I plan to throw up a Warbreaker chapter and hit a few of those back annotations that I haven't been able to post. Huzzah!