Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Comic 707 -- Sax and the Ghost (plus bonus fan art!)

And here's the next installment...

http://talesfromthevault.com/thunderstruck/comic707.html


Today I also have the great pleasure to show you a new piece of Thunderstruck fan art. This is by Sarah Schanze, author of Thistil Mistil Kistil, a terrific comic inspired by Norse mythology centering around a somewhat dead character searching for the lost hammer of Thor. One of Sarah's fans noted this bears a certain neat similarity to the Princess of Aptos chapters of Thunderstruck, and asked for this commission of Sharon and Mjolnir during Sarah's kickstarter campaign. Sarah has graciously let me reproduce the image here. Go read her comic. It's superb.
 

Monday, March 23, 2015

The Long-Awaited Big Announcement

I've got a publisher for my first novel!

Okay, so I've been hinting at this announcement for a little while now, but everything is finally all signed, official, and ready to go public.

The novel in question is Dragon Waking, first of a planned trilogy. It's a middle-grade book (main market: ages 10-14), and as the (current) title suggests, it's about dragons.

The publisher is Albert Whitman & Company, and you can go check 'em out. Our target for release is Spring 2016.

And my deepest gratitude to Jennifer Unter, my hard-working agent who put it all together. I would have been totally lost in this process without her.

Lost or a basket case. So here's my first lesson for aspiring writers from all this: have patience. Because man, this process takes a long time. I got my offer memo (that's the announcement that they planned to make an offer on the book) last summer... late July, I think. It's taken this long to navigate the contract process and get the signed papers in front of me.

Now, I've managed to hit a few unusual speed bumps, I think, but the fact remains that the publishing industry is slower than you probably imagine. I know this from my own experience both as an author and as someone who works for a publishing company. There were times I felt I could make a mighty nice suspension bridge out of my nerves.

Which makes times like this even sweeter.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on progress, news, and interesting experiences in the process. But for now...

Woohooooooooo!