Here’s the cover, and a sample. If you enjoy the sample, spread the word. And included with this novella (about 30,000 words, or 100 pages) is the complete first Bubba the Monster Hunter story – Voodoo Children. AND you get Gone Daddy Gone, a Black Knight Chronicles prequel. AND you get the first chapter of Genesis, Book I of the Return to Eden trilogy.

All for just $2.99.

If you have an iPad or a Nook, I can send you the ePub file from here as well. Just click the appropriate box. This would be a pretty good intro to my writing if you’ve got a friend you want to read cool stuff, since the novella is a complete story, then there’s the intro to Bubba and the intro to the Black Knight boys. So help spread the word!

Thanks, and enjoy!

Now for where I’ve been – Merlefest was a couple weeks ago now, and it’s always one of my favorite weekends of the year. This year I discovered a couple of great new bands. This chickadee is with a band called Jubal’s Kin. They’re from Asheville and have a great sound. Check ‘em out.

This bunch is also from Asheville and is called Johnson’s Crossroad. The singer sounds like a bigger Tom Waits, and their songwriting is amazing. Their album is on my list to buy soon.

If you’ve been around this site for a while you’ve heard me talk about the Hillside Album Hour at Merlefest, which is one of the musical highlights of my year. The Waybacks pick a classic rock album, rehearse it, bring in amazing special guests, and play the album track by track. This thing has grown ridiculously over the five years or so that they’ve done it, and now there’s something like 10,000 people sitting on a hillside listening to some of the best musicians in the world jam to cover tunes. It’s THE thing to do at Merlefest on Saturday afternoon.

Past albums include (and I have been to every one of them) – Led Zeppelin II, Sticky Fingers, Abbey Road and (my personal favorite) Eat a Peach. This year’s selection was Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? And the crowd certainly experienced something special in this nearly two-hour set!

Sam Bush was amazing as always on the hill.

Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi/Trucks Band were only scheduled for one set Saturday night, but they were all over the place, jammin’ on the hill, joining Sam Bush for his Friday night set (their version of Bell Bottom Blues was amazeballs), hangin’ for part of Los Lobos’ set, and then doing their own jam.

James Nash of The Waybacks not only rocked the Jimi guitar, he got political with his Vote Against Amendment One sticker on his guitar. Way to speak out for equality, James!

And for the first time at Merlefest, I got some good pictures of the man himself, one of the living legends of bluegrass, Mr. Arthel “Doc” Watson.

If you’ve never seen Doc live, you’ll be amazed at what this old man can do. I recommend the “Three Pickers” album, with Doc, Earl Scruggs and Ricky Skaggs jammin’ at Reynolds Auditorium in Winston-Salem.

But that’s not all I’ve been up to. I wandered out to Arkansas for the Pulp Ark 2012 con, and had a great time hanging with the folks there.These photos all by Suzy Deacon, who knows how to use my camera much better than I do.

This is what my friend Sean Taylor looks like when he’s accepting his award for Best New Writer (which he beat me out for, congrats!).

This is me chillin’ with Felix Silla, better known as Cousin It on the Addams Family and Twikki on Buck Rogers.

This is me giving the stinkeye to my new friend Link, the Squirrel of Mass Distraction, acquired from my buddy Allan at Kerlak Publishing.

I had a great time at Pulp Ark, but I’m happy to be home for a little while. Next up is ConCarolinas, then HeroesCon, then Fandom Fest, all in June.

Alright, that was a bunch of photos, and a bunch of links. Now I’m off to Theatre Charlotte to touch up programming lighting cues for 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, then back to editing.

“It’s deeply funny, very well written, both in terms of pacing and voice, and fast paced.” – Asa C. Page

“The Chosen by John Hartness is an example of all that is good and joyful in fiction. I love this book. It’s fast paced, very well voiced, and genuinely funny. ” – Keryl Raist

“What I will tell you is that this is a well written work that transcends genre. Its a great book that will keep you entertained on a flight with even a crying kid or two. Don’t grab it when you can’t sleep though. It will keep you going til the sunrise.” – Ken Prevo

See, told you. But if you don’t believe me, here’s a sample!

Chapter 1

I sensed him before I saw him. I always did. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, playing a little blackjack, when I felt his presence over my right shoulder.
I spoke without bothering to turn around. “Hi, Lucky.”
“Big A.”
I hated that. He always had to go there right away. And he was supposed to be subtle. Ass.
“Been here long?” he asked.
“A while. Playing a little cards. You?”
“Well, you know me. I’ve got a place here. I love this town. Everything about it just calls to me.”
“Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.”
I finally glanced over and gave him the satisfaction of a look. A new image for him this time around—red riding leathers, no helmet of course, black boots, black hair tied back in a ponytail and sunglasses. The sunglasses were kind of a given, I suppose.
“Nice outfit. You look like one of the cavemen in that insurance commercial.”
“Thanks. You, as always, look well put-together.”
I’d never been sure how to take his compliments, and I wasn’t in Las Vegas to think, so I just went for face value. I was wearing a worn t-shirt I’d picked up at a roadside store somewhere in Montana sometime in the past, and a thrift store work shirt with “arry” over the left breast pocket. I didn’t know if it used to say “Larry” or “Harry.” Neither was my name; I just gave Goodwill $2.99 for the shirt.
“Thanks.”
For once, he didn’t press the issue. He sat beside me and slid the dealer a hundred. We played blackjack together for a while, me playing green chips, him moving quickly from green to black to purple, all the way up to the yellow thousand-dollar chips in a couple of short hours. He lost just enough hands to keep from getting thrown out, but not quite enough to keep the eye in the sky from getting suspicious.
“A, looks like we’ve got company.”
“You got a mouse in your pocket? I’m not the one who’s been sitting here counting cards for three hours.”
“Yeah, but I’m not the one who took twenty grand in chips out of my safe deposit box this morning. Chips, I might add, that came from a casino that was demolished a couple decades ago.”
I hated that he always had more information than he rightfully should. To give him his due, he probably had people literally everywhere in town. But it was still annoying. I could admit that visiting a box that hadn’t been touched in years might raise an eyebrow or two, but I still blamed the attention of the lummox in the off-the-rack suit on my unwanted companion’s unabashed card-counting. Either way, the brutes in suits might have had a few questions for me that I wasn’t fully prepared to answer at exactly that moment, so I looked at my old pal Lucky.
“Keys?”
“Might I suggest California? I hear San Francisco’s nice this time of year, and you know how much you love seafood. Why not check out Fisherman’s Wharf? Visit Alcatraz, you know, see the sights a little. My bike’s out front. You’ll know which one. You owe me.”
“We’d have to be even for me to owe you. And we’re not even. This doesn’t even come close. Nowhere near close.”
“You really know how to wound a guy, Big A.”
“Bite me.” I grabbed Lucky’s keys from the table, tossed a green chip to the dealer, and headed for the cage. I spotted another security goon between me and the cashier, so I decided on discretion as the better part of valor, tossed a couple grand in chips into the air, and used the resulting pandemonium to make my less-than-subtle way to the exit. As I glanced back toward the table where I had left Lucky, I noticed that he and the two guards were having a beer and yukking it up like long-lost frat brothers, which for all I knew, they might have been.
He was right; I picked out his bike right away. It was a big, loud ostentatious black thing with flames painted on the gas tank. Subtle. I could have sworn the thing looked hungry. I put the key in the ignition—an apple key chain? Really?—and pointed the machine south down the Strip, putting California firmly behind me as Lucky had suggested.
Okay, so looking back on it, maybe opening a twenty-five-year-old lockbox wasn’t exactly the most under-the-radar move I could have made. I knew that people took out safe deposit boxes in this town all the time. But not all of them paid the rent on those boxes with automatic debits from numbered accounts. I’d just had the bad luck to run into the same security guard that rented me the box the first time, on his first day on the job twenty-five years ago. Little bugger had a good memory, that was for sure. I guess I hadn’t changed much since then. Okay, make that not at all. But I was still blaming Lucky. After all, he’d been taking the blame for things for millennia now, so what was one more little incident?
Maybe I should back up a little. This is as good a time as any for introductions. My name is Adam. No, I don’t have a last name. Yes, that Adam. No, really, you can feel for the rib if you like. But it’s better if you don’t. I’m ticklish.

Chapter 2

I rode south a few hours. Just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, I pulled over to watch the sunset. And to think. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Lucky, or Lucypher if we wanted to be precise about it, to show up unannounced, but I hadn’t seen him in years. I wondered what he wanted. He always wanted something, and he usually got it. And it usually wasn’t good to be the one who gave it to him or the one between him and his goals. It was better to sit on the sidelines and watch the carnage, hoping not to get too much splatter on your shoes.
That’s what I’ve done for years—watch. I’ve watched the number of people grow from just a couple to billions of huddled masses, yearning for something or another. I’ve watched people kill each other over pennies in the street, and I’ve watched people give their last breath to help a stranger. And through it all, ever since the Garden, Lucky has been a constant. Always around, always goading something into action. I never know why or what he wants, I just watch.
But our last little interaction was different. For the first time in a long time, Lucky had been goading me. He wanted me to do something, and whatever it was, I didn’t want to do it. The last time I did something he wanted, it didn’t turn out so well for me, so I’d tried to steer clear of his maneuvering since then.
I sat for a while and watched the desert turn from a superheated wasteland to a patchwork canvas of light and rolling shadows. I liked sunsets; they carried the memory of the day before and the promise of the one yet to come.
Eve always preferred sunrises. She said they were more anticipatory, like a held breath before the day exploded like a sneeze all over the world.
Yeah, Eve’s real too. It all is, except for the bit about Lucky being a serpent. That was a little bit of poetic license on Moses’ part. He’d always been creeped out by snakes, so I think the whole serpent thing was just an underhanded way of making sure people overall didn’t like snakes any more than he did. Really, Lucky was our friend, and he was in the Garden with us from the very beginning. Several of the Archangels used to come visit; Gabriel, Ariel, Jophiel, and Metatron were there the most, but after we left the Garden, we saw more of Azrael than we really wanted to.
We really did all live there with all the beasts in perfect harmony. Everybody lived forever, nobody died, and it was all sweetness and light. But that couldn’t last, and it didn’t. Then the whole war in Heaven thing happened, and the angels didn’t come around much after that. When Lucky did come back to visit, he had another agenda in mind—one that changed things for us forever.
Lucky tricked Eve into eating the apple, and she shared it with me. We got kicked out of the Garden and headed off to the land of Nod to live all that stuff you’ve read about since you were a tadpole.
We were out on our own, cast out of our Father’s presence and betrayed by one of our best friends. Things were pretty tough for Eve and me for a long time, and eventually we parted ways. After a long time, and more than a few beers, I managed to forgive Lucky, and we reached an understanding of sorts, but Eve never let it go. Leaving the Garden broke something inside her that never healed.
I guess by now you’ve figured out that we’re immortal. Gaining knowledge of good and evil didn’t do anything to change the whole ‘living forever’ thing we started off with, even though we didn’t completely pass that on to our children. Don’t get me wrong; they lived a good long time. I watched more than one century turn with my kids, but eventually they grew old and died. It seemed that with every generation, they died sooner and sooner until eventually, Eve and I were alone. It didn’t matter what my buddy Clive Lewis wrote about all men being “sons of Adam.” That could never change the fact that my direct sons and daughters were gone.
There I sat, on a little hill in New Mexico, watching the sun go down and trying to figure out what Lucky wanted. He had suggested California, so of course, I headed east, but was that what he wanted me to do in the first place? Lucky was the original trickster, so for him to double- or even triple-think me into going exactly where he wanted me to go wasn’t out of the question.
As I pondered, the first star of the night came winking into view in the east, and I felt my answer. East. I had to go east, and I had to find Eve. Things were gonna get ugly.

Yay.

So I go into the wormhole that is tech rehearsal starting on Sunday, and most shows this is where I die for a week and then come out the other side exhausted but happy with the results. I think it will likely be a bit different this time around, without that pesky day job in the way of my rehearsals! Sunday will still be kinda brutal, with two rehearsals covering ten hours, but that’s the only really bad day we’ve got. And it’s a relatively simple show. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee won’t take nearly as many rock concert-like cues as shows I’ve done in the past like RENT or Seussical. It’s a very cute show, with adults playing the roles of kids at a spelling bee. The cast is in good shape, and I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

There’s a new Bubba story out, the silliest one yet. This one is called Hall & Goats, and yes, I’m totally riffing on the band Hall & Oates. Because I can. This month Bubba faces the dreaded Chupacabra! How is he supposed to kill something he can barely pronounce? Check it out on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

It was the middle of the night, and I was crouched in a damp, smelly field waiting for something the happen. This wrapped a lot of my least favorite things all up in a nice little ball of suck for me to gnaw on. I hate waiting. I’m a man of action, as they say. I like to do stuff, not wait around to do stuff. Now I’ll admit that some of the stuff I do sucks, like chasing down zombies, or werewolves, or fighting witches or ghouls or vampires or pretty much anything else that goes bump in the night. But it’s a damn sight more entertaining than sitting around waiting for something to show up for me to kill. Especially when I don’t know what I’m waiting on. Waiting to me just seems like a great big waste of my precious drinkin’ time.
I hate being wet, too. I’m a big dude — six-five and a good bit past three hundred pounds. And every damn inch is covered with hair. I got a ponytail that hit me halfway down my back, a beard that reaches almost down to my chest, and a pretty good suit of man-fur everywhere else. I ain’t one of these billboard pretty boys that’s got nowhere for a tick to hide on their cute little manscaped six-pack abs. I got a whole great big fuzzy pony keg of a belly, and that all makes it pretty uncomfortable when I’m rolling around in the cold damp grass. And it takes forever and about three big towels to dry off. I tell you, it’s just irritating.
And as much as I am a bonafide country boy, I’m not a big fan of the smells of nature, if you know what I mean. And this field was full of some impressively natural smells. I much prefer the kind of smells that come from a bottle. Like the sweet, soothing smell of Jack Daniels. Or the glorious lavender-scented cloud of stripper perfume. I once heard a fella say “they call it Destiny, but it smells like shame.” I disagree. It smells like the hopes and dreams of desperate men and women smart enough to take advantage of them. I love strippers, they have an uncomplicated view of life. You give them money, they show you boobies. I have a similarly uncomplicated view of life — monsters need to be killed, I kill ‘em.
And that’s why I was stuck in a damp, smelly field in the middle of the night miles away from the scent of whiskey or the sight of a boob. I had a monster to kill, and as long as the critter was playing shy, I was stuck out there freezing my ass off and bitching to Skeeter over the Bluetooth. Skeeter’s my backup, my technical liaison, my navigator and my best friend. He’d appointed himself my best friend since the day I kept Jason Skoonfield from running his underpants up the flagpole in middle school. I probably wouldn’t have stopped Jason from having a little bit of innocent fun, but since Skeeter was still wearing his underpants I thought that was a little over the line. So me and Skeeter struck up an unusual alliance. I kept him from getting killed for being the only black kid in our school, not to mention the only gay kid and the smartest kid in three counties, and he made sure I passed algebra and got out of high school. Even the principal thought it was a fair trade. He was pretty tired of replacing all the desks that couldn’t hold me, and he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork if Skeeter ended up dead. So he didn’t ask about my grades, and I didn’t tell.
“Skeeter, you remember when Jason Skoonfield was gone run your drawers up the flagpole in tenth grade?” I asked the air.
Skeeter’s disembodied voice came back in my ear. “It was one of the most traumatic experiences in a traumatic youth, Bubba. Of course I remember it. It may have been the pinnacle of my humiliation in that vile institution they called a school. Why do you bring that up now?”
“You know I get all philosophical-like when I’m stuck out here smelling cowpies and staring up and the stars. You ever wonder where we’d be if I hadn’t stopped Skoon and his buddies?”
Skeeter’s voice got very quiet. “I do, Bubba. Sometimes I do, but I try not to think about that too much. And you shouldn’t either, we’ve got a job to do.”
I knew where he was going, and it wasn’t a road I wanted to go down right then. Or ever, for that matter. I looked down at the glowing face of the child’s Mickey Mouse watch and thought back to happier days. Then I gave myself a shake and answered Skeeter. “Yeah, but what the hell is the job, Skeeter? I’m freezing off my danglies out here and ain’t heard nothing all night.”
“You know the monster’s been feeding every third night, and this is the only herd that hasn’t been attacked this month. So if there really is a chupacabra somewhere around here, this is the best spot to find it.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty damn good spot to get a frostbit sack, too.” I grumbled. “You got it easy, sitting there in your nice warm little command center. Remember, I was on a lake just a few days ago in flip-flops and no shirt, and supposed to be there for another four days. Instead, I’m fully dressed in long pants, a leather jacket and a sweater and I’m still freezing my ass off!”
I heard a sharp intake of breath as Skeeter started to reply, but I cut him off with a hiss. “Shut up, I think I hear something.” There was a rustling sound coming from the fenceline a few feet away. I crept over in the direction of the sound and suddenly realized that the source of the sound was a cow. I got to within three feet of the beast before I could make out its shape in the moonless night, then I scrambled backwards as quickly as I could as the cow unleashed the most terribly stench I’d ever experienced right in my face.
“Skeeter you sonofabith a cow just farted on me!” I screeched into the earpiece, trying to get away from the cloud of methane that was wrapped around my head. I heard Skeeter laughing uncontrollably in my ear as I worked hard not to vomit.
“You know I’m gonna kill you when I get out of here, right?”
“I don’t make the assignments, Bubba, I just send you the emails.” He sounded dangerously close to hyperventilating, and I was dangerously close to walking off the job when I heard the scream.
If you’ve never heard a goat scream, you should do everything in your power to keep it that way. It’s a sound like nothing on earth, kinda like a mix of a human scream with a deeper tone than any human can make, and it can carry for miles. It chilled me to the bone, and put my butt in gear. I started running for the sound, drawing Bertha, my fifty-caliber Desert Eagle as I went after the monster. When I got there, I stopped dead in my tracks at the scene in front of me.
This was not what I had come here to hunt.

I’m still having a great time working on the Black Knight Omnibus (out this summer!) and Black Knight IV – Paint it Black (out late summer/early fall). I’m learning a ton through the process of working with this publisher and editing team, and I’m sure there’s more to come. We’re polishing all three of the early Black Knight novels, brushing up on some continuity things I screwed up the first time, cleaning up some bad writing habits that I had in Book 1 that I’ve worked my way out of by Book 3, and generally making the books tighter, cleaner and better. I think there will be enough new going on in the Omnibus that even if you’ve read all the books, you’ll find something fun in there. And I’m trying to figure out what kind of little bonus content I can put into the Omnibus for the folks that buy it – maybe an exclusive short story or something like that.

That sound? That was my editor’s head esploding from the concept of editing another short story from me in addition to the revisions on THREE NOVELS in time to make the release dates for this omnibus . That’s what writers do, we don’t just torture our characters and readers, we torture our editors, too. Love ya!

But I haven’t forgotten the Bubba fans. I’m halfway through the next Bubba short, and it should be finished, polished and uploaded THIS WEEK. I make no promises when this week, but Bubba the Monster Hunter: Hall & Goats will hit before April leaves us, I swear it. And I’ve got more Bubba news – next month you’re going to get more Bubba than you can shake a stick at (I’ve never understood that phrase). Not only will I do a new May Bubba short story, but that will give me four Bubba stories since I released Monsters Beware. That means it’s time for a new four-story Bubba Collection! And with eight Bubba stories under my belt, I think it’s time for a Bubba the Monster Hunter PRINT COLLECTION!

That’s right, kids. Come find me at a con in June or July – ConCarolinas, HeroesCon, Fandom Fest or LibertyCon – and I’ll have a Bubba the Monster Hunter print collection available! I’ll also have print copies of Genesis at those cons, because I’m going to spend May holed up in my office editing, formatting and writing. When I’m not in a theatre, but anyway.

So that’s the news that’s printed to fit for today. See you in the funny books!

I love being a Fantasy writer. What a fun genre to write in. I’ve attempted to write Crime…and I can do a downright awesome beginning, but blimey, I cannot get past that. Hats off to J.D. Robb and those other folks that write Crime, like Richard Castle. What? He’s not real? Oops, my bad. (Nathan Fillion, you’re real to me

I’ve been writing stories since I was…ten or eleven (we will NOT say how long ago that was…but I will say I wrote them on an electric typewriter.*shudders*) and I’ve been often told, “Write what you know.” So, when I was redoing my series, Living Dead Girl, a few years ago I set them in the Goth/Industrial scene seeing as I’ve been in that since 1989 (*cough cough* please don’t do the math). We used to always joke that the real vampires could hide in the goth/industrial scene easily since so many “posers” and “wannabes” were there, no one would know the difference. Thus the background for my series was born.

Originally, my series was going to be this love story between a vampire and a witch. Then I set the book down to finish college, become a teacher, run a theatre company, move to NYC, and produce theatre. But one New Years I made a resolution to finish it. As I reworked it, the characters took over. Atlanta fell in love with someone else, the primary plot changed, and I was stuck sitting there going, “Where did my original story go?” Then I thought, “Who cares?”

From that point on I’ve written without an outline. I just let the characters take me on a journey. From what I understand, this is not normal practice. And, it very likely is why I have to do a lot of revision and cuts, but I enjoy the adventure my characters take me on.

That journey got a wakeup call one day when a YA vampire movie, that shall not be named, was all people could talk about. I worried, “What if it’s my story?” So, on a Friday afternoon off, I went to see said movie the day it opened (I was one of 4 in the theatre) and saw that it was NOT my story, not by a long shot. HOWEVER, it made me realize…someday it might be. If I wanted my story out there, I needed to take my dreams seriously.

I sat down to finish The Betrayal (the first book in The Living Dead Girl Saga) and began to shop it around. I told myself I had two years to get a bite on this book or I’d consider going to grad school. Thankfully, I did get a bite, and in October of 2011, Eirelander Publishing released The Betrayal as an e-book. The second book of the saga, Shattered, is in edit now, and hopefully will hit e-book “stores” this summer!

Speaking of October, I was lucky enough to be interviewed at NYC Comic Con this October by the talented and lovely Ana Catris (Link to Interview: http://is.gd/sIbCn1 ). The audience of that online publication is primarily Young Adults. Now, my books fall under the 17+ age range so I’m not used to getting YA feedback. So I asked Ana what they had to say. She told me that they felt the interview made me sound normal, like anyone else they would know, giving them hope for their own writing. That made me supremely happy to hear.

If you have a dream, be it writing, theatre, dance, drawing, graphic design, etc. You should go forth and do it! If you have an original idea, let the world know about it! Have the confidence in yourself. I didn’t have that confidence for ten years and this book sat printed on paper, in a drawer, bouncing about with me from SC, to NC, to NYC. And thankfully I saw that sparkling vampire movie, because it put a boot on my ass…and my simple “love story” became a story of self discovery, strife, love and standing up for what’s right. It’s an adventure not only for those who read it, but for me as well. I couldn’t be happier.

I pray that you pursue what you love. It makes all the difference.

Take care and happy writing! If you are interested in asking me anything…find me on Twitter…I lurk there often! Username: @tamsinsilver

xo

Tamsin J

P.S. If interested, you can snag an e-copy of my book by going to my website: www.tamsinsilver.com and if you don’t have an e-reader, the book will be out in print through Amazon Print On Demand by the end of March, 2012.

For fun, if you like my characters, there are pictures of them here: http://tamsinsilver.com/photogallery-2.php as well as info on each of them on my blog: http://tamsinsilver.blogspot.com/

So far this week I’ve -

Finished and submitted a short story to a steampunk anthology

Finished the novella about the teenage assassin, Cindy Slaughter (now a nickname based on your preferences)

Gotten to within spitting distance of finishing the rough draft of Black Knight IV: Paint it Black. I’m well into Act III of the book at this point, and expect to be done with it before I fly to Vegas next Friday.

Written more words of fiction than I did in all of March. Not that my word count for April is impressive (about 22K so far), but March sucked out loud, what with travel and illness and all that jazz.

Finally gotten around to listing the Big Bad anthology with Duotrope. If you’re a writer and you’re submitting work to anthologies and magazines, Duotrope is the best resource in the world. And now that I’ve listed the anthology on there, I’ve gotten more submissions in 48 hours than I did in the first 12 weeks submissions were open.

Gotten back to reviewing submissions for Red Dirt Review. I’d gotten ahead, then gotten behind again. Now I’ll spend time this weekend catching up.

Registered for the NAB conference so that I can get this marketing business rolling.

Edited a revision of Genesis that I should have done before I put the book on sale. But I suck, so that didn’t happen.

Planned out bad guys for the next dozen or more Bubba stories, insuring that I have no BS writer’s block excuse to keep me from churning words with that character.

Started planting the seeds for a longer Bubba story, or at least a bigger arc that explains how he came to be a Monster Hunter, what makes him the way he is, and why he likes strippers so much. But really, there are pretty obvious reasons he likes strippers. They’re called boobs.

Next on the plate is dealing with COBRA, getting a crown on one tooth (yay!), dealing with cashing out my 401(k) (yes, I know the penalties, but I also know what I make and how long it will take for my income to catch up to my expenses, so cashing out the 401(k) is a big part of this career change plan, and getting on the artist’s calendar to get my phoenix tattoo finished up.

Then I go to Vegas next Friday. Lemme know if you’ll be there then, we should grab a drink.

I’m still adjusting to life without a day job. I still sit in front of a computer for most of the day, and it still starts at about the same time, but I will admit that there are days that I don’t put on pants until well after noon. This being one of those days. It’s a perk, I’ll admit it. I broke down and bought a new MacBook Air, which I love. It’s crazy fast, and all my stuff transferred over almost seamlessly using Migration Assistant. The only thing it looks like I lost was the saved games in Zuma’s Revenge, so I guess I’ll just have to make my little frog burp up a lot more balls and reclaim my accolades.

Still working on the weight thing – I’m cutting back on portions and cutting back on sodas, so I think I’ve lost a few pounds. Nothing spectacular, but it’s a slow process. I figure in this time of life change if I can lose a couple pounds a month that’ll be a miracle, especially as much as I’m traveling over the next few weeks.

To that end, here’s a list of where I’ll be the next few months if you want to say hello. If you live in any of these areas and want a hard copy of a book, let me know and I’ll pack some, even if I’m not coming to a book show. And I’m always happy to meet folks in a bar or casino to chat about writing, the characters, whatever. If you’re interested in meeting me and hanging out, please don’t be shy. I love to talk about writing, literature, all of it.

April 13-17 – Las Vegas, Nevada – National Association of Broadcasters. I’m staying at the Excalibur and plan to play the Venetian Deep Stacks on Saturday and Sunday. Then I’ll be pitching my new marketing firm at NAB during the week. I’m totally available for drinks in the evening.

April 20-22 – Batesville, Arkansas – Pulp Ark 2012. I’m driving for two days to get to this convention featuring the best new pulp writers and fans in the nation! Come on out if you’re in the Mid-South area. I’ll be stopping in Nashville on the way, so if you wanna get a beer there, let me know.

April 27-29 – Wilkesboro, NC – Merlefest. The only exception to the “I’ll bring books anywhere” rule. I’ll be on a mountain listening to boogie. You’re welcome to listen with me. And chat. But there’s no booze at the festival, and I’ll conduct no business there. It’s a family vacation, and a semi-holy spot for me. You’re all invited, it’s a great time. But no business that weekend .

May I’ll be buried in a couple of theatres. I’m designing 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for Theatre Charlotte, then I go straight into the theatre for the Blumey Awards, a new awards show the big performing arts center in town is hosting to celebrate regional high school theatres. That’s got me booked most of the first three weeks of May.

June is back on the con circuit, kicking off with ConCarolinas here in Charlotte June 1-3. I’ll be hanging out with my Magical Words friends and plenty of other cool folk, so come on by! It’s an excellent mid-sized con for writers.

June 22-24 I’ll be at the Charlotte Convention Center for HeroesCon 2012, one of the largest comic book conventions in the US each year. I’ll be sharing a table with Stuart Jaffe and Tamsin Silver, so come say hi! I’m counting on them to wrestle me to the ground and keep me away from the other vendors so I might actually make a profit this year instead of spending all my money on comics.

Then at the end of June I’m heading to Louisville for what is shaping up to be one of the best cons of the year – Fandom Fest. Stephen Zimmer is putting together some of the best panels I’ve ever seen at a con, and the guest list is super-badass! With guests of honor like Richard Kadreay (Sandman Slim), Ernest Cline (Ready Player One), Robin Hobb (too many to list), Jim Hines, Julie Kagawa and others, not to mention media guests like Bruce Campbell, James Marsters and Sean Astin, this is going to be an awesome show.

That gets me to the July 4th weekend, when I plan to collapse for a few days. I’m currently only scheduled for one con in July and then DragonCon, so I might be looking for a beach house to hole up in and write for the month of August. Hope to see you around one of these events!

I went to the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Chattanooga for the 19th consecutive year. It was pretty apropos that I essentially ended my career with Barbizon at this conference, since it was at this conference in Norfolk, Virginia in 1995 where I first heard of Barbizon and met anyone from there. A year later in Louisville, KY I was working in the Barbizon booth!

Some of my best friends in the world were there, and my buddy T-Bone bought what amounted to a bottle of Patron to do a round of shots on Friday night. If you ever stay in Chattanooga for anything, I highly recommend the Chattanoogan. The rooms are lovely, and Alan the cocktail server was amazing. Which reminds me, I need to send him a book for taking such good care of us all weekend. We ended up with twenty people outside by the fire pit on Friday night because it was a lovely night and the band sucked. That marked another first for me – we helped get the house band fired because they were absolutely dreadful. The above pic if just a few folks that were part of the toast, but I wanted to commemorate them here. Thanks to Jeremy K for the pic.

Then I came home and turned up with bronchitis. This happens to me once a year or so ever since I caught pneumonia a few years back. My lungs are a little sensitive, and if I try to go too long without reasonable rest (like doing StellarCon then working a week and doing SETC right behind it), I get sick. This was a doozy, too. I ended up flat on my back for a solid week, and barely recovered for the following week. I was sick enough that it was Wednesday of MidSouth Con before I was 100% sure I was going to Memphis. I watched a lot of Supernatural, broke down and went to the doctor, got some antibiotics that kinda worked, got some hydrocodone-laced cough syrup that certainly made me feel better, then went to see John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in concert.

Or at least most of John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in concert. I’d paid a lot of money for those tickets, and there was no way I was staying home, but I only lasted about 2/3 of the show before it got too warm in the theatre and my cough came back with a vengeance. But they were still amazing, and I highly recommend their acoustic set to anyone, especially if you can see them in a converted church that still has the antique Tiffany stained glass windows. But I might be a little spoiled seeing as many shows at Spirit Square as I have. For those of you that have read Back in Black, yes, Spirit Square is a real place, and it’s one of my favorite concert venues ever. If you’re in Charlotte for anything, I highly recommend seeing a show there.

Then I went back to bed for most of a week. Then I tried to get moving again, because I still had a couple days’ worth of my notice to work out, an office to clean, and another con to attend. But more on that later. Now I’m up, I’m healthy (ish) and it’s time to get some writing done!