Now that I have an iPad and made that my primary interface, I decided to sync the calender there, as well. Now there’s no WAY I can forget shit.

But sometimes, like just now, I have all three arranged in a semicircle around me at the desk, and all three alarms go off at once.

Scares the shit out of me every time.

What was the reminder? That I will be appearing on The Functional Nerds podcast with John Anealio of SciFiSongs this week. I met John at Balticon where he provided amazing original music for a live episode of I Should Be Writing with Mur Lafferty (another podcast I will be appearing on soon). John and I got to drinking after the show, and had a really great conversation about making sure children were exposed to music regularly at a young age and encouraged to explore it. (If you don’t have kids, this might not interest you, but I was two sheets to the wind and fucking riveted.)

Anyway, after the con I started listening to his podcast and he started reading my book, something that has benefited us both. I’ve been really getting into writing podcasts lately. They’re great for exercise when I want to keep my brain active. Finally been listening to the Desert Spear audiobook, too. It is so good. The narrator, Pete Bradbury, has the voice of a god.

There have been a number of very positive changes going on in my life, not the least of which being that I’ve broken through something of a creative snag with The Daylight War and am moving forward with confidence again, which has a positive ripple effect through the rest of my life. I finally wrapped up the story arc of one POV and switched to a new one: Arlen. I haven’t been in his head since the dramatic events at the end of The Desert Spear, and it’s like catching up with my best friend after being apart for a few years. My, how he’s grown.

In other news, Kim from Saskatchewan, who won a signed Desert Spear in the Warding Contest, sent me a really sweet letter. Attached to the letter was an absolutely STUNNING piece of fan art. I’ll let her tell you about it:

Dear Peat,

Firstly I would like to thank you for choosing my warded chest in your contest, it really was an honor and great surprise.  I would have been truly happy to receive another bookplate for my efforts!

Your books have been a miraculous source of inspiration, and your previous words of encouragement to a fellow writer have pushed me to do better and try harder.

I have not always been writing, but I think I was born with a pencil in my hand.  I have been drawing all of my life, though it wasn’t until I started playing D&D in 1989 that I began to draw people.  Our group had a few guys that did doodles of their muscular fighters, and I didn’t want to be out done.  It has taken me years to get where I am artistically, but there is still room for improvement.  Once I joined Deviantart I learned a lot of tricks and tools to help me improve, still struggling with realism but not for lack of trying.

That being said, my attempt at fan art for your glorious characters was punishing.  The perfectionist in me wanted to match the wards, then I had the thought – if a ward is backwards, does it make that area more susceptible?  Yikes.  Needless to say I took some liberties.  I used the wards from your website, and some from Lauren Cannon’s pic of Arlen, plus made many of my own.   I just hope my vision isn’t too far from your own…

Entitled “Another Night”, I chose Arlen and Renna for the final work, there just wasn’t room for a horse. I used stock photos as reference, credited with thanks on my Deviantart entry: http://kimoffet.deviantart.com/art/Another-Night-172795865

Sincerely,

Kim

Seriously, this picture is amazing. Kim worked entirely in pencil, the level of detail is incredible. This is dozens of hours of work, and the most detailed vision of Arlen I’ve ever seen. Even Lauren’s famous portrait of Arlen has him mostly covered. Kim’s picture really brings home how much Arlen has given up for his power. He can never blend in again. Even the expressions speak volumes about the relationship between the two characters. This relationship is exactly what I am working on at the moment in the new book, so the image speaks to me a thousandfold. It is fabulous.

Thanks, Kim!

Why so long? Well, right after my trip to Greece in 2007, I began writing full time, taking something of an income cut to pursue my dreams. Soon after that my wife got pregnant and lost her job in the same month. Between the pregnancy and the baby and trying to keep afloat, getting away hasn’t really been an option.

But things are a little better this year and Cassie is finally old enough to travel without too much hassle, so we are taking a week in the Caribbean with another couple and their daughter (who is Cassie’s age)  to unwind. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to it. It feels like I’ve been doing 6 things at once for years on end, and after all that multitasking, I am looking forward to re-learning how to unitask. If I do two things at once on this vacation, I want one of them to be sipping a frozen margarita.

I have some great books to read on the beach, including Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton and Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes, both of which are not yet released here in the States, but I have all my cool author connections now and pulled some strings. I’ll have my iPad and can write if I want to, but I doubt I’ll do much more than a blog post or two if people continue to submit entries to the Warding Contest.

Speaking of which, here are the last of the pending entries, the first from Dave in the UK:

Dear Peat,

I follow your peephole in hopes of scrabbling information on the daylight war and the painted man movie (is that still happening??) I usually ignore these kind of art contests because honestly I’ve never liked art and it has never liked me. However I was playing a game (Aion) and was sucking at it and I thought to myself: ‘if only I had more DPS (damage per second)’, but all my buffs etc were already up and my gear was already as good as it was gonna get and so I thought: ‘If I can’t improve my gear, or my spells, I could improve my avatar’.

This lead to a quick new character customisation of what I imagine Arlen to look like, going off to an area where other players would not scoff at my posing and self named ‘Deliverer’ and then posing while taking screenies. I settled on a screenie of my toon pointing at the screen; used paint shop pro to erase the index finger and reform it into a fist, while also recolouring the robes to the brown priest robes I imagine Arlen in; and finally got some wards I had left over from my painted man video and inserted them.

Chances are I won’t log onto the Deliverer again but hopefully they are character transferable, funnily enough the names Arlen and Arlenbales were already taken, go figure.

From Dave

The next entry came to me in the form of a link from Google Alerts, pointing me to the blog GRRuMblers, which is apparently dedicated to being mad at George RR Martin for taking a long time writing his next book. My thoughts on that topic are well documented, so there’s no need to get into them further here.

Blog writer KrKreuk did a post about the warding contest in which she put in some pretty funny entries:

Pictured here is a brave man carefully applying Water and Swamp wards to our ocean’s buoys.  These buoys are meant to stop the oil slick from reaching our shores.  All that is required is the warding of the existing system of buoys along our coasts, and the oil (as well as the oil demons) will be stopped in their tracks. In fact, I don’t know why BP hasn’t begun implementing these, as the threat of oil demons is real along our coasts:

When someone asks you what time it is, you usually have a pretty standard response: look at your watch and tell them what it says. You can even tell them 5 minutes ahead (or behind) if you’re feeling obnoxious.

However, with one of these special Warded Watches, you have another option to the question “What time is it?”

“TIME TO KICK SOME DEMON ASS!” It doesn’t even matter what time of day it is.

Now water resistant up to 100 feet, as well as water-demon resistant (because of the Water Ward):

This exciting new item found at your local convenience store helps protect you from the ultimate demon known to man; children (and real demons).

Take of this what you will, but the wards were specifically chosen for this item. They include wood, swamp, and palm wards along the base, with a mind ward towards the tip.  At the head there is a lone Bludgeon ward; a man’s last line of defense in dire times when he finds himself abruptly kicked out into the night for whatever reason.

These wards are specially designed to resist the most resilient diseases, as well as prevent unwanted conception.  Consumers will be pleased to find that this item comes in a variety of sizes, so get yours today:

One week left to enter, so keep the wardings coming!

The old Peephole has gotten a bit cobwebby the past couple of weeks, and I apologize for that. To say life has been a bit hectic would be a vast understatement. For starters, I flew to London on April 15 to do some signings and promotion for The Desert Spear, which is now in its FOURTH week on the London Times Hardback Fiction Bestseller List (#9, #15, #13, & #12 respectively), as well as to attend London Book Fair and finally meet some of the international publishers I’ve been working with over the last couple of years.

Unbeknownst to me, there was a rumbling in the icy north.

The trip started as usual, with me frantically packing at the last minute, trying to remember and pack everything I could possibly need for the trip, while keeping my luggage limited to two relatively small bags. I managed to make it to the airport on time, miraculously remembering my ticket and passport. I breezed through security, checked the airport bookstores for the Warded Man mmpb (nope), and made it to the gate two hours before my flight. I was set to use the time constructively writing a last-minute guest post for RT (Romantic Times) Book Reviews, but I foolishly decided to sit at the bar and have a drink whilst writing on my phone. Minutes later, I was engaged in conversation with a South African farmer living in Texas and an ex-singer/dancer who was now an IT recruiter. It was an enjoyable enough chat, but hardly conducive to working.

I was feeling guilty about the post being late as I boarded the plane, and started pecking away on it while the plane sat on the tarmac.

And sat.

And sat.

Apparently, some jackass on the ground crew drove his vehicle into the plane, breaking some seal. It took two hours to fix, and another to do the paperwork. In that time, I finished the Romantic Times piece and e-mailed it off. You can read my RT Bookreview Guest Post here.

The plane finally took off, and I contented myself with editing the latest draft of my buddy Myke’s book Latent, watching Sherlock Holmes on the airline entertainment system, and starting Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie (and if you’ve not read Abercrombie, get to it so we can discuss!).

I knew I needed to sleep so I could function through the day when the plane landed early in the morning in the UK, but I was too wired and sleep never came. I noticed on the in-flight map that we were taking the long way around the British Isles, circling to come in to Heathrow from the south. We landed 3 hours late at about 9:30 UK time to learn that all Heathrow airport was in chaos, and that all flights for the rest of the day were being diverted/canceled due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland spewing tons of ash high into the atmosphere above British airspace.

WTF?

The rest of the trip was series of up and down adventures I will relate soon, all with the overhanging threat of being stranded abroad indefinitely. Attempts were made to book a cruise home on the Queen Mary 2 (sold out) and even on a cargo freighter (also sold out). I was seriously entertaining the idea of taking the Eurostar to Paris, followed by an overnight train to Madrid, then flying to Boston and taking a train back to New York City, and then a subway to Brooklyn.

I get tired just typing that.

But then, by some twist of fate or divine intervention, UK airspace opened back up the day I was set to leave, and my flight went off on time without a hitch. We made it through the ash cloud and back to New York safely. While I was waiting in line at Customs, I took my phone out of flight mode and downloaded my e-mail, only to find an even greater miracle.

The Desert Spear made #35 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list!

That’s right. Arlen and Jardir are now Times bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Best coming home present EVER.

]]> http://www.petervbrett.com/2010/04/25/two-timer/feed/ 6 http://www.petervbrett.com/2010/04/14/mind-the-gap/ http://www.petervbrett.com/2010/04/14/mind-the-gap/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:04:40 +0000 PeatB http://www.petervbrett.com/?p=3052

As I’ve mentioned, I will be flying out to London tonight to do some signings, see some old friends, and attend the London Book Fair. You can find more information on my trip, including signings and how to join me on Saturday for a walk in the country, see here.

In the meantime, a couple of great spoiler-free interviews have gone live. The first one I mentioned yesterday, but it’s worth repeating because I think this is one of the best interviews I’ve ever been given. It’s with Simcha at SFF chat, whose thoughtful and probing questions were really amazing. The permanent link is here: SFF Chat Desert Spear Interview.

Also, author Kevin Hearne interviews me on his site Writer’s Grove, with 3 serious and 2 funny questions, including the age-old question: Who would win in a fight, Chuck Norris or Gandalf? See interview here: Writer’s Grove 3:2 Interview with Peter Brett.

Desert Spear US Release Day yesterday went really well. As per my usual habit, I went to every major bookstore in Brooklyn and Manhattan, signing whatever stock they had and inserting signed bookplates. My feet are literally blistered, but after a full day of subways, yellow cabs, and miles of walking, I managed to sign 81 books, mostly The Desert Spear, but also some of The Warded Man mass market paperbacks that had been reordered since my last round a couple of weeks ago. The MMPB just went back on press today to meet the incredible demand there’s been for the book. I am so happy to see it doing well on my home turf.

If you’re interested in scoring a signed copy, here’s the breakdown:

1. B&N – Brooklyn 7th ave.
Signed & Plated 4 Warded Man mmpbs. Desert Spear not stocked yet, and the sales guy refused to look in the back for it. >(

2. B&N – Brooklyn Court St.
Sold out Warded Man mmpb. Signed & plated 4 Desert Spears.

3. Borders – Broadway @ Pine St.
Signed & plated 3 Warded Man mmpbs & 1 Desert Spear

4. B&N – Warren St. a block or two from Chambers
Signed & plated 2 Desert Spears

5. B&N – 8th St. and Ave. of Americas
Signed & plated 3 Desert Spears

6. B&N – Union Sq
Signed & plated 5 Warded Man mmpbs & 7 Desert Spears

7. Borders – 2nd & 32nd
Desert Spear not stocked yet, and the sales lady refused to look in the back for it. >(

8. B&N – 3rd 54
Signed & plated 1 Warded Man mmpb & 8 Desert Spears

9. Borders – Park & 57
Signed & plated 2 Warded Man mmpbs & 3 Desert Spears

10. B&N – 86 & Lex East side
Signed & plated 4 Desert Spears

11. B&N – 82 & Bway West side
Signed & plated 2 Warded Man mmpbs & 8 Desert Spears

12. B&N – 66 & Bway
Signed & plated 4 Desert Spears

13. Borders – Columbus Circle
Signed & plated 4 Desert Spears

14. B&N – 5th 46
Signed & plated 4 Warded Man mmpbs & 6 Desert Spears

15. Borders – 33 & 7th
Signed & plated 1 Warded Man mmpb & 5 Desert Spears

I will be going around to London stores this weekend to do the same thing, so if you live in the area and are interested in signed first edition books, be on the lookout! The Desert Spear UK edition is entering its second printing as well, so get a first edition while you can!

Oh, and all the bookplate orders up to April 10 or so have been fulfilled, so expect them soon if you ordered one. There are still a bunch left if anyone is still interested.

Follow me on twitter while I’m gone: @PVBrett

Supergirl incognito:

Flirt:

Bundled:

Playin’ with Ben Grimm: