Belated, Updated

Dearly Beloved You Guys:

My high school football coach was fond of the zen phrase "There are no excuses; only reasons." Problem was, he belted out said gem of tranquility while exhorting me and other semi-armored pubescents to compromise each others' skeletal systems. Not. So. Zen. Like.

But these days, I've found that phrase bouncing around in my head, not so much because I've been feeling the need to sprint an oblong leather ball into a wall of my peers—though there was a moment in the DMV when said action seemed rather attractive—but because there's a lot that I've had to stop doing in the past two months. Chief among them, blogging. *Le sad French sigh*

Let me explain. In January, I began the clinical phase of my medical education. This consists of discreet 'rotations' into the major branches of medicine (surgery, pediatrics, internal medicine, etc). While on a rotation, nearly all of my attention is dedicated to helping my patients, learning, and not sounding (too) dumb in front of my attending physicians. There's also minimal progress to be made on my novels and research projects. That doesn't leave much time for navel gazing…or sleep. So non-essential activates, such as blogging, tweeting, facebooking, plotting world domination, etc., fall by the wayside. I'm not trying to make an excuse, only supply a reason. ::Tiny gong of football coach zen::

In the future, I'll post when I'll be away from the blogosphere and provide a diversion link to some wonderful blogs, such as How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends, for example.

Happily, this month is a research month and so I'm able to catch up with the online world. As such, I've got some wonderful bits of news to share. Here they all are:

Yesterday, I mailed off the completed copy edit for Spellbound to my editor at Tor.
Presently the US publication date for Spellbound is set as September 13th 2011.

Caveat: Publishers often move dates around by a few weeks.
I should have a UK publication date (and cover art) to announce fairly soon.


I'm honored that Spellwright has been nominated for two awards!

The David Gemmell Legend award for best fantasy, and
The David Gemmell Morningstar award for best debut fantasy.


The UK Hardbacks of Spellwright have sold out! If you'd like one, better search for a bookseller that has them on the shelves or in stock; there's not to be another printing of the book with extra U's until the UK paperbacks roll out in March.
The Dutch version of Spellwright (De Taal der Spreuken) is sold out and going into a second printing!
Nicodemus is now misspelling the German language! (Nicodemus Der Zauberverschreiber)
My novelette "Endosymbiont" is going to be translated into Polish by Nowa Fantastyka.
I've managed to make a few more posts on my research team's website, and it might be of interest to any medical types out there.