Sight-Seeing on the Backroad to Nirvana

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Huzzah!  Honeyed Words hits the shelves today in mass market.  New price point, new opportunities to find new readers.  All happy making.  I just completed a give-away on Goodreads and thought it was a success.  I’ll be mailing out 3 copies of the book in the next few days.

Having  a book launch is a lot like sending your children to school for that first time.  There’s very little you can do at this point.  You’ve done all the hard work and now they have to explore the world on their own.  Of course, with children, you usually get them home at some point that day, but with a book you just watch and hope it finds its legs.

Here’s hoping Honeyed Words finds its way into the hearts of readers.  The more the merrier.

Less than a month until Forged in Fire makes its debut.  June 19th.  This summer is going to be a busy one.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

I’ve got a pretty good handle on delayed gratification.  Seriously.  Stop laughing.  Hey, I didn’t buy Skyrim nor Rage when they came out because I gotta wait on that kind of stuff until after I hit the NY Times Best Seller list, so maybe never.

Honeyed Words, the second book in the Sarah Beauhall series has been out almost a year and is doing well.  Not breaking any records or anything, but survivable.  The real kick in sales should come in a few days when the Mass Market is released.  May 22nd to be exact.  You can pre-order it now, of course, but it should hit stores in a few short days.  I know when Black Blade Blues hit Mass Market, sales spiked nicely.  I’m hoping for a better showing this time around.

The funny thing is there’s another book releasing on May 22nd that I am also looking forward to with great gusto.  Mira Grant’s Blackout.  OMG. I love this series so much.  I think Feed and Deadline were definitely the best books I read last year.  NO question in my mind.  And I read a lot of good books.

So, when you are considering your precious book budgets and what to spend your time on, I really hope you pick up Honeyed Words after you buy Blackout.  I’m just sick that I can’t read it the second I have it in my hot little hands.  I’m too busy.  But it will sit on my night stand as the absolute next thing I read, you know, as soon as I finish the novel crit I owe a wonderful friend, and the story critiques I owe for two different conventions.

Oh, and the novel I am dying to read for a writer I just met who I’ll be sharing a podium with in San Francisco on my upcoming book tour in June (more news to follow).

Then there’s the whole, finish the current novel I’m working on as well (Hearth & Home, book 4 in the Sarah Beauhall series where I’m currently waiting to see if I get a new contract from Tor).   And write the commencement address I give on June 12th, start making headway on my new chairmanship I’ve accepted (curriculum advisory committee for prison continuing education here in Washington).

Some of these I’ll be making separate blog posts about in the coming weeks.  Oh, yeah, I should be blogging more as well.  Sleep?  Who needs sleep?

When I type it out like this I get a little overwhelmed.

So far in June I have 16 days with events and only 14 days with nothing but the day jobbe, family and novel writing.

I need a vacation.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Got up at 5:30 this morning to row.  Makes the third time this week.  I rowed twice last week.  I’m starting to feel like it doesn’t totally suck.  Maybe by next week I’ll start enjoying it again.

It’s funny how quickly I lose the love of working out, especially when I’m overwhelmed with work and writing — the work I do where I don’t punch a clock.  But, eventually my brain recalls that when I work out I have more energy, not less.  Giving up some sleep in the morning, means I have more energy all throughout the day.  I’m not sure why I forget that and lost my momentum, but I guess it has to do with inertia and the universal thought that a body at rest wants to stay at rest, or something equally counter-productive.

So, I’m rowing again.  Plan to keep this up, but setting small goals.  I constantly get sunk by the big goals.  Too much risk, too much chance of failure. Little goals allow for small victories that can lead to large victories.

Another good night of writing last night as well.  The rowing is helping clear the cobwebs and exhaustion from my long days in the office.  I wish meetings and analysis work burned far more calories than I’m seeing now.  Also, while I’m wishing, I wish Mt. Dew was a health food and offered some sort of nutritional value.  As it is, I’ve given up the soda again as well.

I’m not an idiot.  Really, I’m not.  But I back slide into idiotic habits.  One of the things I’d tell my younger self if given the opportunity (besides buying Apple stock) would be to never start drinking Mt. Dew.  That stuff is horrible for you, but oh, so tasty.  I’m broken that way.

Novel is coming along well.  The outline is keeping me on track, now that I’ve totally rearranged it, and gutted about a third. On track to have my best writing week since the Rainforest Writers retreat in March.

Next week I go to Miscon.  Looking forward to this con.  Will be my first visit there.  I’ve heard excellent things.  I’m very excited that George R. R. Martin is the guest of honor.  I recently read the first book and watched the first season of Game of Thrones.  Very nice stuff.  The structure of the book aligns very well to the small screen.  Can’t wait to start the next season and the next book.

Now it’s time for a shower and the day jobbe.  Lots of good things in store today.  I truly love my jobs, both of them.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Another beautiful day here in the Pacific Northwest.  Slept in, which always sounds nice, but I’m a morning person so I’m a little cranky about it.  Of course, I stayed up until midnight, which is also something I rarely do.  Spent some time on social media this morning, keeping up with what’s going on in the world.  Listened to half of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me on KUOW.Org streaming while I ate my breakfast of Canadian bacon, wheat berry toast, scrambled eggs and fresh strawberries.

Spent an hour puttering around with the family, tidying up the house, folding laundry, putting away books, etc.  We have a house inspection on Monday for a refi.  Hard to turn away from the lower interest rates and we are not underwater, luckily, so we are trying to improve our financial position in the long run.

Today I still want to get a full Lake in on the new novel and watch Captain America, as I missed this one in the theater.

Tomorrow I need to gather up all the computer flotsam, strip out the hard drives since I have no idea how to insure they are wiped clean enough for security reasons.  Then I need to get the printers, old computers, keyboards, motherboards, etc. someplace that isn’t my house.

After that, I’ll clean the office, pay the bills and if I’m really efficient, go off with my buddy Allan and put together some marketing packets to send to radio stations so I can drum up some buzz about Forged in Fire and the whole Sarah Beauhall series.

Honeyed Words drops in mass market in a few short weeks.  That’s awesome.  Forged in Fire pubs in June.  Time is running short.

Busy weekend, but hopefully a decent amount of downtime and a bit of that old “good work” effect from all the chores.

Also, somewhere in there I’m hoping to read a few more chapters of Game of Thrones.  I’m late to the game, but I’m really liking Mr. Martin’s style.

I guess I’d better get cracking.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Hey, all the cool kids are doing it.  Here’s my schedule for Norwescon this year.

Thursday        8:30 pm        Cascade 1
J. A. Pitts reads Mushroom Clouds and Fairy Rings
Post Apocalypse Fey story Rated G
J. A. Pitts

Friday        5 pm        Rainier
Writers Workshop – Thom Marrion
Werewolf Tango
Kim Ritche (M), Mary Rosenblum, J. A. Pitts, A.M. Dellamonica

Saturday        9 – 11 am    Rainier
Writers Workshop – Round Robin 3
Rebecca Birch – The Memory of Huckleberries; Christy Johnson – Where the Light Don’t Reach; Mae Empson – Bus and Bridge and Brother
Kim Ritchie (M), J.A. Pitts, Jim Glass

Saturday        11 am        Cascade 6
Fact and Fantasy
When does ‘staying real’ matter, and when does it just get in the way? Should fantasy Seattle streets match real Seattle streets perfectly? Does your pseudo-medieval weaponry have to perform like the real thing? How much can we alter history for the sake of the story before the reader cries ‘Enough!’
J. A. Pitts (M), Stina Leicht, Mark Teppo, Mary Robinette Kowal, Adrienne Carlson

Saturday        1 pm        Evergreen 1&2
Crossing Boundaries: Writing the Other
Can you write a great character of another gender? From a different culture? A different sexual orientation? How do you know what’s good characterization and what’s stereotyping?
Caren Gussoff (M), Diana Copland, Lorelei Shannon, J. A. Pitts

Saturday 3 pm Grand 2
Autograph Session 2
Meet the writers of all those fabulous SF/F books, share stories, and have them autograph their novels (especially the ones purchased in Norwescon’s wonderful Dealers Room). All of our distinguished Guests of Honor will be present. PLEASE: so that as many fans as possible can participate, we will be enforcing a limit of three books to autograph at a time!

Saturday         5-7 pm        Salon
Evolution of a Writing Career with J.A. Pitts and Ken Scholes

I hope to see some of you folks there.  I’m especially excited to be teaching the Evolution of a Writing Career with Ken Scholes again this convention.  It’s a great way to hear a bit about our careers and ask questions to help you along your own.  Please come out.  It’s well worth the time.

Otherwise I’ll be hanging in the bar, wandering around the dealers room or crashing in the green room.

Come play, it’ll be a blast.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Just wanted to share that I completed the ten page synopsis of the fourth book in the Sarah Beauhall series, then wrote a two page treatment for both book 5 and book 6.

Once I hear back from my agent we’ll send the proposal package over to Tor.

Titles are as follow:

Book 4:  Hearth & Home

Book 5: Sins of the Father

Book 6: Suicide Blonde

Keep your fingers crossed.  And as always — tell your friends, post reviews and buy more books!

John

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

I meant to announce the winners of my little give-away contest last week, but the week got away from me.

Right now I’ve randomly drawn 3 names from the list of people who posted here, on my Facebook fan page, and on my Livejournal account.

The winners are: Brian J. Hunt, Dreamline (Livejournal) and Arief Zanial.

I’ll contact each of you to see where to send your prize.

Congratulations.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Just hit 100 people who like my Facebook fan page. Hovered between 98 and 99 for a while. Either folks left, or Facebook lost the ability to keep track of numbers. I’m not making any assumptions.

So, with this auspicious milestone, let’s celebrate. How about a contest?

Comment here, Livejournal or the Facebook fan page and tell me a song that should be on Sarah’s playlist when she’s running. Something that would fit her character and something that would help her stay motivated to pound out those miles.

I’ll pick a comment at random and send that lucky winner or two a book. People need to already be reading Honeyed Words (or soon, as the mass market comes out in May) to get ready for the new book coming out in July: Forged in Fire.

Then I’ll check out all the songs listed and post a new playlist for Sarah that I’ll use when writing the next book.

Be creative, be inventive and pick something that would rock Sarah’s world.

The SFWA event in Portland last night was stunning.  I’m still processing how great it went.

I showed up around 4pm to the Kennedy School McMenamins to find a bunch of folks already there writing.  I sat with them and cranked out a thousand words on the new novel and enjoyed the company.  Then we grabbed dinner.

At 7pm, we went over into the Gymnasium room which was set up for 80 people, theater style with a book seller in one corner and a bar in the back.  There were also 3-4 round tables back by the bar.

Mary Robinette Kowal opened the event with some SFWA related information than introduced me as the evening’s host.  I read from Forged in Fire which comes out in June.  That went really well.  I hadn’t realized just how emotionally powerful that opening chapter was until I read it in front of that crowd.

Then I introduced Ken Scholes who read two short pieces.  Ken was brilliant as always.  His stuff is visceral.  I highly recommend you look up his Psalms of Isaac series, or check out his stuff on tor.com

We then took a break so folks could refresh their “frothy adult beverages” as Mary said.  Then David Levine came on to read.

I’ve never heard David read before and let me tell you; the man has hidden talents.  His dialect work was excellent — really enhanced the story experience.  He’s a damn fine story teller.

We mingled a bit afterwards, but the place cleared out fairly quickly, being a work night and all.

Then I drove home, got in after midnight.  Was a long day.  Slept in a bit, and heading to day jobbe soon.

And tonight, we do it all over again.  Only this time in Kirkland with Me, David D. Levine and Nancy Kress.  It’s a powerful line-up.  You should come.

There will be great food and great stories.  Here’s the details below.  Hope to see some of you there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From Brenda Cooper – Reading coordinator…

I’m very pleased to be part of the team helping to put these literary events on.  The very first Seattle-area event will be Feb 1st, 2012.

The greater Pacific Northwest is home to a host of fabulous genre writers.  Last year, we heard from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, …Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang, Cherie Priest, Mark Henry, and Kat Richardson.  These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.

The 2012 series kicks off with John Pitts, author of Black Blade Blues, reading from his critically acclaimed series.  He’ll be joined by not one, but two Hugo-winning authors:  David Levine and Nancy Kress.

Register at the SFWA site for future mailings.  This is a quarterly event with new authors each time.

February 1st, 7pm.

Venue is the Wilde Rover pub in Kirkland

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

The outline for the fourth book in the Sarah Beauhall series is done.  My high school English teachers would not be amused by my use of that word.  <queue Princess Bride>

Be that as it may:  the outline stands at 205 pages and just over 36K words.

Yes, this is 1/3 of the novel. Some scenes will only need a light touch. Many scenes are high level ideas in need of real dialogue, description, setting, etc.

This is my fourth time through the outline in total.

• Draft one was a skeleton with missing pieces and little meat.

• Draft two filled in the missing pieces and started adding details where I thought they were too important to lose during drafting.

• Draft three added in some sub-plots and bits of foreshadowing, motivation and emotion

• Draft four was a continuity pass. Did things flow organically from one scene to the next?  Does the plot hang together?

I know how I write, I’m confident in my style. This book will come in between 100 and 110k words.

Crazy, huh?

Now it will sit for a couple weeks while I tackle the page proofs for book 3 (Forged in Fire) in preparation of its July 2012 publication.  Proofs are due back to New York by January 17th.  Once that’s wrapped, I’ll be drafting Hearth & Home with earnest.

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.