Kim Harrison's Blog, page 44

New chapter release on Monday

No picture today. Yesterday, I watched my damaged tree come all the way down instead of the hoped-for topping. It was not a good day. I appreciate the new spot of sun and the care the crew took to protect/encourage the rest of my trees, but the loss hits hard. I will busy myself in planning out and planting sun-loving plants in the landscape bed it had shaded and everything will be fine. But even if I plant a tree to replace it, (which I did two years ago) I will never live to see it reach that grandeur–and that aches a little, like a phantom pain, maybe.

So, plant your trees early, my friends, and then plant them late for those who come after you.

Signed,

Kim Lorax Harrison

P.S. I’ll have a new chapter from The Witch With No Name on Monday. It’s getting close. Real close.

If you’d like to preorder, We have options!

Click to order

Click to order

is a great option as well, and if you go to the right page, they also have

 

Click to order

Hollows series opinion piece

Geekmom just did a fabulous series review (no spoilers for The Witch With No Name) for the Hollows. I never thought of Rachel as being a superhero, but the way Corrina lays it out . . . I can see it. :-)

I wrote the word the way I wished the real one was. Not one with vampires and witches, but one where bravery and fortitude wins out over greed and might-makes-right, and the power of redemption returns two-fold. Wish fulfillment.

Go check it out and leave a comment there!

click to read

Monarchs have arrived

For a while, I was starting to think they weren’t going to show, but my youngest spotted this one flirting with the milkweed that I gushed about a few weeks ago. It hung around long enough for me to get a picture of her. They only lay a few eggs on each plant, so if I’m really lucky, I’ll have a caterpillar in a few weeks. And I’d have to be really lucky, because I only have the one big plant and a few others nearby. They usually choose to lay their eggs on mass plantings of milkweed.

I’ll let you know . . .

The Undead Pool now out in MM. Ebook price drops

Hi all.

If you’ve been waiting for the mass market of The Undead Pool, it is now out on the shelves! And that means that the e-book price drops from the hardcover price to one more commensurate with the mass market.

I checked this morning, and both the Kindle and Nook price are 6.83 (U.S.)

Just in time for the last Hollows book as The Witch With No Name comes out in like days now. I’m marking it in days. Yay!

Oh, and if you’re looking to get a signed copy of The Witch With No Name, B&N still has their signed copy link active.

Click to buy The Undead Pool

Click to buy The Undead Pool

Last day to mail your tour T order in

 

Today is the last day to snail mail your TourT order in for the last Hollows Tour shirt. (Don’t panic. PayPal cut off isn’t until the 14th, and if you don’t get your snail mail postmarked until tomorrow, Guy isn’t going to throw it away. We’re flexible, not twisted.)

As a reminder, these are printed in batches and upon demand, so please allow extra time for processing. You must order before August 14 to make the cut-off for the last print run. No more shirts will be printed after that date.

Wearing one to a signing gets you into a “family photo” at the bookstore and bragging rights. Because Guy and I create, order, package, and ship these ourselves, we only make them available until shortly before the tour starts, and then they are gone.

This year, they sport Al’s demon graffiti butterfly. The back will list the tour cities. Also included in with the shirts will be this year’s freebie: a mockup of the property condemned notice that ends up on Rachel’s church.

Guy tried to bring the price down from last year, but the shipping is awful once you get outside the U.S. and it’s frustrating. We’ve tried to make it simple, and all prices include trackable shipping. Domestic will go priority mail. International shipments will go international first class. Here’s the details:

Unisex size. (I wear a medium. Guy wears a large.)

Sizes Sm to 5X

USA 19.95

Canada 33.95 U.S. dollars

International 37.95 U.S. dollars

Sorry, no discounts on multiple shirt purchases since they will be going out in individual packages. We’re only printing two batches, so please allow for extra time at the printers. If you feel it’s taking too long, contact Guy at coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net and include both the email your paypal is associated with and the size you ordered. (He organizes them by size.)

To order: PayPal the correct amount to Guy at coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net (If you accidently send money to a mispelled address, we will never see it.)

When you order, please tell Guy in the “email to recipient” box :

1. your size(s) you want

2. your name

3. your shipping address.

PayPal does not always supply the shipping address, and it gets confusing. If you do not tell us these three things, your money will be immediately refunded, and you will not get a shirt. We can’t be responsible for misdirected mail. If you’re using your brother’s PayPal, keep this in mind.

Don’t have PayPal? Guy will accept US checks or US bank money orders made out to Cold Toast Writings until August 1st. All international orders must be paypal. Snail mail your order to:

Kim Harrison 2014 Hollows Tour T

PO Box 498

Dexter, MI 48130

USA

Any questions at all, email Guy, at coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net and be sure to include in your correspondence your PayPal email, paypal transaction number, and the size you ordered.

Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, Mi

Geoff and Craig take another crack at The Undead Pool

Ha! My day is totally gone, and it’s only like eleven in the morning, but when I started hearing from readers that Craig and Geoff had discussed The Undead Pool again, I assumed that it was a rerun. No. No it wasn’t. Check this out.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/late_late_show/video/

Birds on a line

I managed to catch these little guys waiting for their mom to bring them back something tasty. I think it’s their third brood this year, which would be amazing with how cold it’s been. But when you have a good food source . . .

Guy and I tried to cut out of work early yesterday to catch a movie. Leaving early didn’t happen and we ended up going to the later show, but we did get there. We saw Lucy, which I enjoyed, but my writer brain thought the pacing was off with too much in front, not enough in back. I’m not complaining because what was in front was most excellent stuff. I just wanted more in the back to balance it. The sympathetic  hero/guy came in too late as well. I wanted more of him, though to be honest, I can’t see where to put him where it would work. That he was capable but superfluous was probably the point. (Well done! I love using the framework of the story itself to tell the story, and this was a great example of it.)

I’m wondering if it was written/directed by someone who wasn’t using “American” storytelling, or someone who was who was trying to emulate an off-continent technique, because even though the pacing was not familiar, it was excellently executed, enough that I could go along with the idea that we only use 10% of our brain. Braaaank  Where do you think all that memory is? Using the countdown to 100% was a great pacer, so I’ll believe the mythology for the span of the movie; and that of course, makes it acceptable. I’d recommend it if you’ve not seen it yet. Oh, and now I’m looking forward to Interstellar, one of the previews, as well.

Hey, I found last-releases’s dating quiz while clearing out a few things on FB. It’s still live if you want to take it. I got Trent. (laugh)

Click to go to the quiz!

 

P.S. I went and looked it up. It was a French guy who directed it. (grin)

urban forest

My house is situated in an urban forest. It’s an old forest, most of the trees ten to twenty decades on either side of the 100 year mark. The majority of the old ones are sugar maples, and the greater part of them have twin trunks, meaning they’re vulnerable to wind. And when one goes, it leaves a gap for the wind to get in.

The forest is starting to unzip, and yesterday, I listened to the sound of buzz saws again as the latest storm took down two more tall ones on our street. “Treeman” is coming out next week to top off my street tree that took out a pole last month to prevent the remaining trunk from taking out the pole again, but now I’m eying the four other megaliths surrounding my property, wondering when they will be going.  Guy and I already took down the one tree that threatened our house. Two of the remaining are structured well and are of a different wood, but the others . . . It’s only a matter of time.

I studied this in school. I knew this was going to happen when we bought the house. I have been planting replacements the last couple of years. I just didn’t expect it to happen this soon.

 

Got a smart phone? Want an e-book?

Happy Monday! I’ve got a new way for you to get the ebook of Black Magic Sanction for 1.99 if you already have the paper version. It’s a new app called BitLit, and I’m eager to see how it works. The theory is that once you have the paper version, you can get the e-book through your  smart phone without needing a receipt. (Which is great if you bought your books more than a year ago, because really, who keeps their receipts that long?)

Here’s what Shelf Aware said about BitLit last week:

And here is Harper’s promotion:

[ download BitLit ]

[ hc.com ]

So if you know someone with a smartphone who’s been thinking about trying the Hollows, here’s another way to do it for less than the cost of a sweet coffee. :-) Oh! And apparently it will work on Nook or Kindle, too.

I’m liking this year’s tour

It’s July, which means in the Harrison Household, we’re watching the Tour de France every night for the better part of three weeks. That’s right, three hours of cycling every night, for 21 days. (And before you judge me, check out the required uniform.)

These guys are impressive for a lot of reasons. When you crash, you don’t go to the locker room and sit the rest of the game out. You get back on the bike, ride next to the med car, get your skin stuck back together, and finish riding the 100 miles left. Then you get back on the bike again in the morning and do it again.

It’s not a job that you can do as a hobby, but one you have to be totally invested in to compete. You have to monitor your food intake for possible accidental steroid ingestion, there is constant attention in regards to your physical state just so you can compeate. And it’s not like you can go into the gym for a couple of hours, and call it good. You have to get on the bike and do it, for hours at a lonely time. It’s a lot like writing in that respect, but whereas authors get chair butt, cyclists get to wear spandex–and look good in it.

I like the balance of the team and individual that cycling has where there is a goal, but it’s the individual sacrifice and skill that makes it happen. It’s a game of strategy, not just a bunch of guys out in a group. Each team has a leader, who’s generally strong all around, but can give a good sprint at the end and win the stage. He’s helped up to the front by the rest of the team, who draft off each other, the front guy pealing off when he gets fatigued to let the next guy pull until they reach the end, and the leaders of every other team fight it out for the last 100 or so meters.

That’s the theory.

This year, a series of crashes have pulled out many of the leaders of the teams that were expected to win, and in some teams, the leader backup. The result? There are no more expectations. Let me say that again. There are no more expectations–and as a result, EVERYONE thinks they might have a shot at a piece of glory. Everyone is doing things outside of their normal responsibilities of the team. Everyone is pushing themselves, having the chance in this short span of time to show that they can do more than shunt bottles from the car to other team members or ride 150 miles just so they can pull the rest of the team for a scant hundred yards.

They are riding. They are doing what they love. And they are crashing. They are failing. They are getting their hopes snatched out from under them. But this year . . . they are trying beyond what everyone expects of them. And every now and then they cross that line first–because they saw a chance to shine and they took it, ran with it, made it their moment.

The best part? Even when it doesn’t work, they are getting the chance to show they have what’s needed to get the job done.

Don’t buy into the lie that just because others can do it better than you that you can’t do it as well.

Do.

Shine.

Fail? The med car will stitch you up.