Kim Harrison's Blog, page 83
October 25, 2012
Ever-After tour freebies
EVER AFTER tour freebies are here!!
The EVER AFTER tour freebies came in today, and I had to share the instant I saw them! Holy Cow, I like them, and if you’ve read the first chapter available in the mass market of A PERFECT BLOOD, then you’ll recognize the one side as the coat check tag Rachel picked up at the Carew Tower with Quen. :-) I love it when I can bring a piece of the Hollows alive, and I think it turned out especially well this year. I tried to give it a little an art deco feel, which is the style the Carew Tower was designed with. They are okay, but as you can see, I write better than I design. -grin-
The other side is pure promotion with the cities and drop date, but I am cautioning you right now that the cities are not guaranteed. My publicist is wrangling it together right now, and I honestly think she’d have an easier time putting a bunch of cats into cat carriers. Keep a tight watch on the drama box and FB for any changes.
I’m especially pleased that they came in just in time to include them in the first order of tour t shirts going out this Friday. If you want to get in on this first shipment out to the readers, you have to place your order before noon tomorrow. How to place your order, and why you’d even want one of these bad boys They’ve been available for a while, and I apologize if this is the first you’re seeing them. They will be available until late December, but I don’t know when the next shipment will be going out to YOU.
The coat check tag will be included with the tour shirts, but if you want to get one for the price of a stamp, send us a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope to:
Kim Harrison
Ever-After tour freebie
PO Box 498
Dexter, MI 48130
USA
If you are not in the US, don’t bother putting the return postage on your SASE. We’ll take care of it because the US postal people make International Reply Coupons way too confusing.
Busy, busy
I may not be giving you a real post this morning as I’m working on some lengthy PR, and then there’s a dental appointment. (blahhh) But if you need something to do, I’ve been messing around on the front page of the website to fit in some links to Goodreads, and the EVER-AFTER page now has a synopsis on it. I’m trying to find a nice balance with the Goodreads links. I think the one under INTO THE WOODS is kind of in your face, but I like the drop-down menu. The little G’s I’ve used at the other books are kind of nice, but if you don’t know what they are, you don’t see them, which is why I put everything in a box for the link associated with EVER-AFTER. Got an opinion? Let me know. I’ll be messing with this for awhile.
See you tomorrow. 
P.S. Manic Monday-ers. Guy has contacted everyone who had a choice of an alternate book or funds refunded and is waiting to hear back from you by Friday noon, EST. If you sent him funds and haven’t got an email from Guy, then your book is already on the way to you. Thank you again for your understanding. It was shocking how fast they went.
October 24, 2012
Risking the Jinks
I know I’m risking jinksing it, but I think I might have gotten my little elm tree to hold its leaves through the fall. It’s still kind of early yet to breathe that sigh of relief, but I’ve only lost about half the leaves. The instructions (yes, the tree came with instructions) said if I brought it in soon enough, it might not drop them, and I’m tickled that I might have actually timed it right.
I’ve tried keeping little trees in pots alive before, and every time up to now they end up as dead sticks. Do I blame myself and wear the pin of “black thumb” or “tree killer”? No. Unless the neglect is severe, usually it takes a plant several months to die, so that pretty plant I bought at the store I can’t keep alive might not be my fault, but the place I bought it at. I had my doubts about this one, too, when it lost half its leaves early this summer due to transport stress, but it bounced back and I’d give it about a five on the one-to-ten scale right now. Ugly and in need of work, but the structure and bones are good.
The thing is . . . I want to be good at this so I keep trying, seeing the past failures every time I water it. But it’s only now when I have this tiny bit of success that I realize the baggage of dead trees in my past have slowed me down, made me hesitant when I should have been practicing this art a little more because of the failures, not despite them. So here’s to little trees and our desire to see them flourish. I shall go forth more confidently now, learning from the past dead sticks instead of being intimidated by them.
Writing is sort of like that.
If I can keep this little sucker alive, I’ll show you what happens in the spring.
October 23, 2012
Yellow
It rained last night, pulling the last of the leaves off the tree outside my window and plastering them on the roof, walk, and lawn. There are a few trees across the road that still have their leaves, and my two little trees of orange are holding their own, making the world yellow today both above and below. If the sun comes out, the yellow on the ground is going to subtly shift the color of the sky to make it look exotic to those who care to look for it. I’ve heard it said that the sky in the Arizona desert is the same as the one on the African plains–the color of the ground and the wide expanse working together to shift the perceived color of the sky. I believe it, because that Arizona desert sky is still imprinted in my memory as being unique, and I’ve not see it for at least two years.
If I’m lucky, I get one or two “yellow” days a year, but I never noticed them at all until I spent a few falls in the woods where the shift in the sky color was so obvious it reached out and smacked you. Now I have to look for it. Wait. I hope for a bright enough sky with a carpet of yellow to reflect the clear wavelength back up. Needless to say I don’t let Guy rake our lawn outside my office window until all the leaves are down and I have the best chance. All Guy knows is I’m very casual about the leaves until early November. -grin-
Some might say that I’m inventing things to see, that there can’t possibly be enough yellow on the ground to shift my perception of the sky. But the way I figure it, we see what our mind wants us to, what it expects, and does that make the experience any less real? So I’m hoping that the sun comes out today and gives me a glimpse of . . . yellow.
October 22, 2012
Manic Monday, lightening round
Want a signed Harrison book? In celebration of the mass market of A Perfect Blood hitting the NY Times list, I’m giving away signed copies of the hardcover for postage and handling.
We’ve got about 70 of these, so between noon and 1:00 EST today, paypal Guy your address and the appropriate shipping and handling to coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net and if you are among the first 70, we will send you a signed hardcover of A Perfect Blood. We think this will take about an hour, but if they are all claimed before the one-hour window, I will repost here and at FB and of course refund any paypal monies that slipped in the meantime.
Again, wait until noon, EST, or your money will be refunded. Put Manic Monday in the subject line so he doesn’t get them confused with the Tour T’s being offered right now as well.
USA will be $4.10
Canada is $10.70 and will take a few weeks extra shipping time.
International is $19.95, and it might take up to six weeks.
Everything should be in the post by Friday. Seventy pieces of mail take some time to address.
Make sure you put your current address in at the notes to seller space. **** No address in the notes to seller space, and your money will be refunded.****
As for me, I had a great weekend with decorating and moving leaves around, but I ate way too much sugar. I think it’s the shifting seasons that pull me into bad eating habits. It’s either that, or I’m in the kitchen a lot more. But regardless, it started Friday night with me making shortbread for dinner, then doughnuts and a carmel apple for breakfast on Saturday, and ending on Sunday with making (and eating) maple sugar candy for dinner. (recipe in The Hollows Insider) I tried pouring the candy into pumpkin molds this time, and it worked out fantastic. After fifteen years of making this recipe, I finally think I might have this down. Dude, this is really good stuff, but if the only thing it has in it is maple syrup, whipping cream, and butter, you know it’s not good for you.
I think I’ll be eating cereal and yogurt today.
October 19, 2012
Manic Monday on . . . Monday
Yup, I figured Guy had enough rest from Comic Con, and we’re going to have a you-pay-postage give away for a hard cover. Check back Monday for the details, and have a great weekend!
Graphic novel Blood Work now available as an ebook!
Did you know? Neither did I! But as I walked through the booths at Comic Con, I found this card at the nook booth!
Now, it’s bent and nasty from spending a week in my suitcase, and apparently my scanner is older than I thought, but you get the idea. What I like is that this is one way they will be selling ebooks at your brick-and-morter store if they’re not already. You pick up the 5 X 8 card (which is way cool for collecting) and take it to the front and you walk out of the store with your new ebook, a collector card, and a social experience that we all miss by sitting at home or office clicking buttons.
I just thought it cool when I saw it up there on the stands, and the best part? It means that the Del Rey technology for graphic novels has improved such that you can get Blood Work for your nook. The rest of the platforms such as Kobo and Kindle are sure to follow. It’s only a matter of time.
And just in time, too, because the sequel to it, Blood Crime, is out the day before Halloween. If you’ve missed me talking about the graphic novels, this is one way to get your Kisten fix. They are set before the regular books start in that golden year where Rachel interns under Ivy in the I.S. These are near to my heart as we get to see Ivy begin to fall in love and fight between what she’s been told she wants and what she really does. I scripted both books, meaning I wrote the dialog and said what I wanted in each box. I also helped pick out the artists. They were truly a breath of fresh air for me, and I was able to work with texture, color, and perspectives in a way I can’t in the regular books. If you get a chance to look at one, I hope you like what you find. Kisten never looked the way I saw him in my mind, but Rachel and Ivy were spot on as was Piscary.
October 18, 2012
Back at home, and back on the lists!
Believe it or not, I have just got back from New York late yesterday after taking the opportunity to fly to SC instead of MI to truck a van of stuff from storage back North. Guy and I had a smidgen of a color tour, first from the air which isn’t as pretty as you might think unless you’re looking at the shades of turned earth (which were beautiful), and then a slow two-day slog back over the same territory in a rental truck. Oddly enough, on the way back there’s a spot of color in the smokey mountains and then a strip of blandness where the leaves are past their peak, and then another spot of color right around lower MI. I didn’t miss my one-year-old little trees turning, which I was afraid I might. They were green when I left, but I know little trees turn fast. As expected, they are fading fast, but I did see the orange and can imagine their glory in fifteen years or so. It’s going to be breathtaking, especially if the hundred-year-old yellow trees around them hang on a little longer. We’ve had an arborist out to help us with them and he says they’re healthy, but nothing lives forever unless you’re one of those dawn redwoods. :-)
So today I’m back in my beloved office and looking at a week’s downtime in the past, more than ready to get lost in the Hollows for a few weeks–the music is on, the rain is a soft hush, and the leaves have made the world yellow up, down, and in between in a slow steady drift. Ahhhhh, simple needs are anything but simple, even if they make for happy people, and I’m happy today with a slow excitement for what is going to land on the page.
But I said I was back on the lists, and that makes me happy too and it is one of the most complicated things in my life. My editor called with the news yesterday that Into the Woods will be debuting on the NYTimes hardcover fiction list at thirteen, tied with book twelve, which I think a delightful number this time of year and with this kind of book. Anthologies are devilishly hard to predict, and to have readers excited enough and a publisher willing to help promote it has given it a very nice birthday number. Thank you, guys–you’re the best. I worked to give you something to become excited about, and you made the effort to get out and pick it up on that first week or two.
A Perfect Blood, is again on the lists, too. It’s been out three weeks and debuted at fourteen, has left the list and come back this week at thirty on the mass market. Again, thanks to the readers and a proactive publisher. I think that SafeCo (?) has it available for a ridiculously low price, and I saw it in Walmart for only pennies more, which makes me happy. Some of you have waited so long. If you’re only now reading it, I hope you find it worth the wait. It’s only going to get better from here on out. :-)
October 17, 2012
Fresh Fiction chat today at 7:30 pm central today
I’ll be having a live chat tonight at 7:30 pm central tonight over at Fresh Fiction, and I hope to see some of you there. But until then, I found a nice article on the Justice is Served panel from Comic Con. Check out some of what we talked about!
RT book reviews: Justice is Served
October 16, 2012
Angels Ink is on the shelves today!!
Today’s big news is ANGELS INK is out and on the shelves! If you haven’t heard me talking about Jocelynn’s latest work, well, it’s fabulous! I’ve actually gotten a very early read at the sequel, and it just keeps getting better. ANGELS INK is set in a universe where magic is out in the open, much like the Hollows, but from there, Jocelynn goes wild, with a non-stop pace and a developing romance thread to keep it spicy. :-) If you don’t see it on the shelves, ask for it, because it’s probably in the store somewhere. You might have seen Jocelynn’s work before in the Dark Day’s series. This one starts out a little lighter, but you know Jocelynn. It’s going to get ugly, and then the real trouble starts. To find out more, jump on over to her blog where she’s been having contests and such. Jocelynn Drake
My big news is that tomorrow, I’m having a phone-in conversation with the readers of the Fresh Fiction blog! I’m not sure how this is going to go, but I do believe there will be a way to ask me a question, be it by phone or email, or FB post. I’ve never done an online event with them, and I’m eager to find out how this is going to work, but do keep checking my FB, as that is where I’ll be posting updates. The chat is tomorrow at 7:30 pm central.
