L.S. Johnson's Blog, page 9

changes

I walked out of my day job on Tuesday, for Reasons. Still reeling from the shock of it, the anger and the hurt; still trying to work through the ramifications of it all. Thank **** for freelance gigs. 2017, we’re done now.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about women with antlers. Also spiders. But mostly women with antlers. Probably because of this:

I have about this much (holds up forefinger and thumb) interest in seeing Thor: Ragnarok. But I may go just for her. Or maybe I’ll just write somet...

Then/Now

Sixteen years ago today I was sitting on my couch in San Francisco, frantically calling my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, anyone I could think to reach out to. Both my parents worked in New York City and I could not reach either of them. That day they walked from their respective jobs (Canal Street, Midtown) all the way to Jamaica and were able there to get public transit back to Long Island. They didn’t get home until midnight.

It was a very long day.

The past four days were pretty long as...

Visualizing Leviathan

We had to come to the UK this week for a wedding, so we took advantage of the timing to do some research for Leviathan and explore the North Yorkshire coast.

Thinking about bays, and what might live in them.

You have to look for the older buildings, but I can see Caroline stepping through that little door and escaping the cold winds …

One of the hardest things, for me, is visualizing the size of spaces. In our time rooms and roads are generally open and broad; it’s hard to imagine coming o...

There and back again.

I am back. Sadly not from Helsinki, but from helping my parents move from New York to Florida. Like many New Yorkers, they swore all their lives they would never move down to Florida; like many New Yorkers, in the end it was really their best option.

Everyone in their neighborhood is from somewhere else. Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Ontario …. It’s rather like when I first moved to San Francisco: it was months before I met a born-and-bred resident.

All in all, it was a bittersweet time. I...

Winter is coming!

Harkworth Hall is on sale for 99 cents through August 7th, but it’s only one of many fabulous books on sale this weekend. Why not click on the image above and check some of these out?

Harkworth Hall is LIVE today

… and what a strange few months it’s been. Thank you to everyone who supported this little book, from its earliest readers through its creation and preorder. Your feedback, your skills, and your reviews are what made this possible.

So Harkworth Hall is now available for Kindle and in paperback, and for this week only the Kindle version is at an introductory price of 99 cents – why not give it a go? (It might even be coming to a bookstore or two near you! More on that next week.) It will also...

Vacui Magia is a World Fantasy Award Finalist

… and that is eight words together I never, ever thought I’d type.

I’m not sure I’ll ever tire of looking at this. I’m not sure if I actually believe it, still. Me myself and I, up there with all those folks … hey, let’s not set the bar too high or anything!

Thank you to everyone who believed in Vacui Magia, who reviewed it and foisted it on their friends and took the time to tell me how much you liked it. I wouldn’t be here without you.

And now to figure out how I’m going to get to San Anto...

It was the week before book launch …

… and all through the house,

not a creature was stirring,

because I was knee-deep in revision.

The view from July

Splitting my time between my story for E is for Evil and sketching out scenes for Leviathan, all while working my way through the last few episodes of American Gods. Because, um:

There is a sense, these days, of slowly emerging from a tunnel into light, a tunnel that stretches all the way back to the end of 2015. A faint glow that minutely increases each day after day after day after … it’s a fresh challenge to my natural impatience, but for once I feel like I have enough of a toolkit to cur...

Harkworth Hall ARCs

Now is a VERY good time to sign up for my newsletter, because on Sunday I’ll be offering subscribers ARCs of Harkworth Hall! If you’re interested, the signup is over there >>>> in the right-hand column, at the bottom. I am generally a lazy newsletter-writer, so you won’t be bombarded – quite the opposite – and I never sell, share, or do anything untoward with your address. Why not give it a try?