WTF is the deal with the Blacula box?

Okay, so here's the deal: I'm helping a friend of mine sell some stuff online, and while going through some of it Sunday, I was suddenly confronted with THIS. As someone with a lifelong fascination with old horror movies, B movies, and '70s blaxploitation movies, this thing appealed to me far more than is probably healthy. "If you want that box, you need to take it right now, because if I leave this house with it, it ain't gonna find its way back over here," I told him. He didn't want it, so this glorious prize is now mine! the only problem: I have no friggin' idea where it came from. He had similarly gotten it from another friend years ago, and likewise has no clue to its origins. The box gives no indication, and the only text on it (aside from the Spanish on the front) is some copyright info on the bottom. A few Google searches turned up nothing relevant. I like to think that a really nice bottle of liquor was originally housed within it, possibly in a drawstring bag. Who knows?

EDIT: Before this post went live, I did some more digging, and finally found a little information about this box. Evidently, it was intended as a storage box for trading/playing cards. I can't find any other information about it, but at least that lays to rest the mystery of its intended purpose. Even with the central mystery solved, this thing is still interesting enough to share. I certainly feel my home is a bit better for having a Blacula box in it!

WHO is joining the Justice League in April?!?? (Spoiler alert!)

Justice League and Forever Evil  writer and DC bigwig Geoff Johns revealed in an interview earlier today that none other than Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor will join the Justice League in April's issue #30! The team will consist of Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman, Shazam, Luthor, and another villain-turned-hero, Flash rogue Captain Cold. For those who have been reading the Forever Evil series, this actually seems like a natural progression, as the series sees Luthor struggling to unite a team that can stand against the Crime Syndicate(evil versions of the Justice League who have invaded from a parellel universe) after they've apparently killed the Justice Leagues. Luthor truly attempting to reform and give the hero thing a go is sure to be fascinating, however long it lasts.

Oh, and in the last line of the interview, Johns tosses this tidbit out: "Ted Kord returns to the DCU in Forever Evil #7, and plays a role in Justice League post-Forever Evil." For long-suffering fans of the second Blue Beetle, this is very welcome news!

The print edition of NIGHTMARE ESCAPADE is now on sale on Amazon.com!

As noted in this post Monday, Nightmare Escapade is now available in print. Amazon.com got it up on their site a few days earlier than expected, so you can now order from them right here! You can still get it from the link in the previous post too, of course. I'll earn a bit more money from each copy that way, but if you prefer to order from Amazon.com, which is certainly understandable, you now have that option. Expanded distribution of the print copy, including overseas territories and libraries, will be coming in the next few weeks. I've also enrolled it in the Kindle Matchbook program, so if you buy the print copy, you can then download the Kindle version for free! I think that's a pretty great program, so expect to see that for all my books going forward. If you have a Nook or an Ipad or a Kobo reader or something and prefer read in that format rather than via the Kindle app, I'll have you covered there as well in a month or so. Stay tuned...

My New Year's Reso-- er, writing goals for 2014

For various reasons, I just didn't get as much done last year as I wanted. There were many factors that lead to that, and not all of them were my fault, but the fact remains that I didn't publish anything new, and this blog was largely neglected during the second half of the year. Unless I spontaneously combust or the world blows up or something, we're not gonna see a repeat of that this year. These are my goals for this year.

Finish APEX PREDATOR

This is the big one, and the one currently getting most of my attention. I was nearly done with it a few months ago when disaster struck, as you may recall. I was so sick about the whole situation that I wound up taking a break from it for a month or so, though I did work on some other things during that time. I recently dove back into it, and it will be released this year. I'm not sure about a release date yet, and that will obviously depend on when I finish it, but my goal is to have it done by the end of March at the latest. The issue with backing up the file more often is now moot, as I setup Skydrive to automatically sync the file whenever I use it, so it's automatically backed up. Reeeeeaaally wish I'd known about that last year, but there's no use in fretting over it now. What's done is done, and all I can do is charge forward.

Publish print versions of my books

This one has actually happened! I spent the first bit of the year working on getting Nightmare Escapade ready for printing, and it went on sale Monday. Now that I've familiarized myself with the process, it should go much more smoothly when it comes time to publish future books. In the meantime, just having an actual physical copy of my first book sitting on the shelf feels pretty amazing.

Get the local bookstores to carry the print versions of my books

Pretty self-explanatory. We have two bookstores in town that have sections for authors from our region, so hopefully it won't be too tough to make this happen.

Get better at self-promotion

This one is really crucial. My sales are not where I'd like them to be, and the brutal truth is that I'm just lousy at promoting myself and networking with people. I need to really double down and make some serious effort to change that. 

Post on this blog more often

This is a problem I tackled last year as well, and I made a big effort to post at least once a week. I stuck with it for a few months, but eventually, things just got in the way, and I began posting less and less. So, I'm going for it again this year. Hopefully I'll do better this time. 

These are not all the goals I have set for myself for this year, but they are the major ones. If I can accomplish all of them, I'll consider 2014 a rousing success! If not, well, I figure any year in which I don't die is still a pretty good one. ;)

NIGHTMARE ESCAPADE print copies are now available!

Been enjoying your Kindle ebook copy of Nightmare Escapade, but wishing you had a print copy of it to display on your bookshelves, give as a gift for Valentine's Day, smash bugs with, and whatnot? You're in luck! You can now order your very own old-school printed-on-paper copy of Nightmare Escapade! It will be available on Amazon.com in about a week, and via other channels a few weeks after that, but if you can't wait, you can order a copy right now if you click here! (I'll make another dollar or two per copy if you buy it via that link too, so, there's that.)
Tell your friends! Tell your enemies!

Happy xmas, everyone!

Of course, this is auto-posted, since I don't have to be up this early on xmas because I don't have kids. 

Happy Halloween!

Sadly, circumstances prevented me from doing an excessive amount of Halloween and horror-related posts this October, but you can celebrate the day by revisiting all of the previous posts right here! Hope you all have an awesome Halloween!

Bad news, everyone!

Today is the day that Apex Predator was supposed to go on sale. So, where the hell is it? My PC has been having stability issues lately, crashing on me abruptly and freezing up with some regularity. A few days ago, it happened to slap me with the blue screen while I was putting some finishing touches on Apex Predator. Computer restart, and WHAM! File corrupted.

Yeah.

Thankfully, I'm not totally up shit creek here, since I had backed up the file on a flash drive. Unfortunately, I had not been as vigilant about that as I should have been, so that backup is a couple of months old, and needs a lot of work done to get it to the point the now-corrupted file was at. So, I guess you could say that I am up shit creek, but at least I've got a paddle.

So, the book is still coming. I'm not sure exactly how long it will take me to re-complete it, though I'd be shocked if it were to take me more than a month or so. Not sure if releasing it smack in the middle of the holiday season is the best timing, so I'll likely hold onto it for another month or two after I finish it before it actually goes on sale. I'll have to play that bit by ear, but have no fear; I'll keep you all posted. Hopefully, this won't affect the release of the book I have planned to release after Apex Predator. I've already done some preliminary work on it... but it's altogether too soon to start talking about it. all I'll say for now is that it is not another Grant Mercer novel. (More of those will be coming eventually, though.)

Anyway, apologies for the entire debacle. I gotta get back to work. That book's not gonna re-write itself!

Rant Ramblings: Week of 8-9-13

I'm hard at work on Apex Predator, which is eating up much of my time, so this week's post is just a few interesting odds and ends.

My man-crush Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson did an AMA focused on the upcoming revival of the Cosmos TV series!

Here's a cute story about a cat who inadvertently raised nearly $1000 for charity.

You can check out some old weird flash cards featuring toddler versions of DC Superheroes here. (Wonder woman's outfit is really disturbing on a one year-old!)

Finally, the Inauguration Station (character creator) for Saints Row 4 went live on Tuesday, so you can go ahead and get your character ready for when the game comes out on the 20th! You can even download your character from the third game and re-upload them for use in SR4 if you like. We've only got about a week and a half before it's here! If you're super excited for the game and also ridiculously rich, there's a special edition you can pre-order for $1 million. It actually sounds like a bargain!

That's all for this week!

Rant Ramblings: Week of 8-2-13

Has it been three weeks already? Time flies when you're splitting your time between writing a novel and generally goofing off.

Grant Morrison's epic seven-year run on Batman ended Wednesday with the release of the final issue of Batman Inc. (The image is the variant cover Morrison himself drew.) Yeah, it was awesome. I'm not about to give anything away, but I will say that the finale was more low-key than most readers were expecting, yet the book paid off emotionally in the best possible ways. There are echoes of every phase of Morrison's run, and Batman's overall history, and several enticing threads for other creators to follow up on if they so choose. The final page, in particular, makes me wish Morrison was planning to return in a year or two to follow up on some of them himself. Chris Burnham's art is gorgeous, of course. Morrison's run is already regarded as one of the finest ever featuring the character, and I think that, as time goes by, it will be recognized as the greatest Batman run of all time.

Here's a look at the recently-completed New Century Global Center in China, now the largest building in the world.

The Magnavox Oddyssey, released in 1972, was the world's first video game console. You can check out a cool photo gallery of an Odyssey unboxing here. While we're on the subject of video games, here's a cool collection of photos and info on most video game consoles that have existed. Even if you're well-acquainted with the history of video games, you're bound to see a couple you didn't know about.

Believe it or not, Morgan Freeman was once young.

A group of scientists and engineers working on the Mars Curiosity Rover mission did a very interesting AMA a few days ago. Guess who else did one? The Most Interesting Man in the World, bitches!

On that note, I'm outta here! Hopefully I'll be back in less than three weeks this time.

Rant Ramblings: Week of 7-12-13

Big news this week! In case you missed it, I announced Tuesday that my next book will be Apex Predator: A Grant Mercer novel! Check out that post for the details.

I finally picked up WWE '13 during Xbox Live's summer sale last week for $15, so I've been busy re-making characters in it when I haven't been working on Apex Predator. I only "upgrade" with this series every 2 or 3 years, so the changes are plentiful from the 2010 version I was accustomed to. The changes are mostly positive, although a few quirks in the character creator are annoying. If I come up with a way to capture decent gameplay videos without buying any new equipment, I'll post some videos in the coming weeks.

Here is a chronicle of the art created by a restaurant server who decided to do something special with order sheets. Pretty cool stuff.

Hold the mushrooms and onions, please.

We have AMAs by David X. Cohen (the head writer of Futurama) and John Malkovich, so get reading!

That's it for this week; I've gotta get back to writing!

My next book will be APEX PREDATOR: A Grant Mercer Novel

One of the most popular stories in Nightmare Escapade: A Horror Anthology was the tale that introduced Grant Mercer, a former detective whose search for a missing child takes a horrific turn when he stumbles upon the underworld of supernatural beings who are pulling everyone's strings from behind the scenes. Without spoiling things for those of you who have not yet read the story, things take some unexpected twists and turns, and by the end, the breakout character of the book was born. Almost every reader who gave me feedback on the book began with how much they enjoyed that particular story, and wanted to see what happened next.

It was my plan all along to launch Grant into his own series of novels, so naturally, I'm very happy that readers responded so well to his introductory story. In September, Apex Predator: A Grant Mercer Novel will pick up right where that story ended, delving into the supernatural empire that we've only glimpsed. Grant has only dipped his toe into the water; in Apex Predator, he gets tossed right into the deep end!

As a bonus, the story from Nightmare Escapade that introduced Grant will be included, so new readers won't have to buy another book to "catch up." With that inclusion, it seemed appropriate for that story to lend its name to the novel, since it picks up immediately following those events. Apex Predator is only two short months away. For now, enjoy the debut of the cover art, and give Nightmare Escapade another read to help you prepare!