READ OF THE MONTH: Tess Gerritson's Body Double.
Wow! August already? Time is like a good bottle of cognac: It's tough to make it last.
As an update, we've been really busy and learning how to work the new website is going to take some getting used to. First we've had a very busy summer including trips to the Western Bison Association board meeting in California, a West Coast book tour for The Betrayal, a journey to New York for the 3rd annual ThrillerFest where we met with agents and publishers, then to the BMWMOA national motorcycle ralley in Gillette, Wyoming. In August we were off to Denver, Colorado, for the World Science Fiction Con--our first attendence at such an event in 13 years.
So far this year we've put over 12 thousand miles on our BMW 1100RT and over a thousand on the Moto Guzzi Norge. As noted in our new blog, we do many book events and a great deal of research on our motorcycles. Both of the bikes average right around fifty miles to the gallon, and riding cross country is our favorite mode of travel. At the BMWMOA rally our RT even received a blue ribbon for being an outstanding specimen. We were tickled, having made the Beemer into a perfect long-distance ride. By the time the RT is shut down for the winter the odometer will read close to 85,000. In all that time we have only had to replace one fork seal, and recently had to have the ABS system fixed. While the BMW is our long-distance ride, the Moto Guzzi is our take-the-afternoon-off-and-ride-to-Cook-City bike. Only this year we haven't been able to take an afternoon off to ride to Cook City. The Guzzi has only made Mike's birthday ride, and a trip to Denver to have a luggage rack replaced on a factory recall. Maybe next year?
Perhaps. We'll have to see how many books get written in the meantime.
Which, of course, takes us to our writing. We've finished the final, final revisions on the children's book: Children of the Dawnland which Tor should publish in June of 2009. We have also gone through page proofs for the upcoming hardback of People of the Thunder and the page proofs for People of the Weeping Eye in paperback.
Currently we are working on two new novels, one a traditional "People" book will be set in upstate New York and deals with the formation of the Iroquois confederacy in the early 1400s. The second is a novel about the de Soto expedition entering Florida in 1539. This latter is a novel that we hope will spin off into a new series: Contact: The Battle for America. The book is exciting in that we're taking a slightly different approach, writing in first person, and well, we've got Spaniards. The actual de Soto expedition was an abject failure. Native peoples won that first round rather handily.
With regard to People of the Weeping Eye and People of the Thunder, there have been comments from some fans that wish we hadn't split the story into two volumes. We didn't want to either. The grisly facts are that publishing is a business for Tor/Forge and the modern market is changing the kind of books being sold. Had we kept Weeping Eye and Thunder as one volume, the price would have been more than $30.00. So, dear faithful readers, be ready for the second half to land on bookstore shelves in January. In the future we will struggle to keep the page count down as a means of avoiding such problems.
As of this writing we still do not have a U.S. publisher for Comes a Green Sky. For you bilingual types it will be available in Germany next summer. Our literary agent is waiting until publishers get back from their August vacations to send the manuscript out to different thriller editors looking for environmental thrillers.
At the 2008 World Con we had a delightful dinner with Betsy Wolheim and Sheila Gilbert, our publishers at DAW Books. The occasion was to celebrate the 20 year anniversary release of Warriors of Spider. The book has been repackaged with a great new cover and can be picked up at Barnes&Noble as well as Borders and Amazon. If you've never read the Spider trilogy, this is your opportunity. We both offer our most sincere thanks to Shiela and Betsy for their constant support of our science fiction books. With a few exceptions the novels are as relevant today as they were when Michael wrote them in the late 1980s.
Also upcoming on the horizon is the 20 year collector's trade edition of Michael's Long Ride Home. This was the first novel he sold way back in 1987. Tor Books bought it three days before DAW bought the Spider trilogy. For more information on either of these titles, see the book section of the web site.
Upcoming events include a sell-in tour through the Southeast in October. This is currently being planned by Dot Lin in publicity, and we'll try to get events listed in the calendar as the schedule is firmed up. Also we will be appearing at the Deleware Book Festival. You can Google their website for updated information.
On September 5 and 6 the Rocky Mountain Bison Association summer meetings will be hosted by Red Canyon Ranch. We're looking forward to seeing old friends and feasting them on some of the best buffalo burgers in the country.
Also in September we have to bite the bullet and learn how to do Powerpoint presentations. This really eats the slimy banana as far as we are concerned. Slides worked just fine, thank you. Put them in the machine, push the button and look at the machine. Even undersophisiticated primates like us could do it. We have yet to see a powerpoint that didn't take twice as long, have some computer glitch, and bring up the wrong string of photos. Kathy has made the assumption that Mike is smart enough to figure this out. Mike has no assumptions left: he knows Kathy is assuming he's smarter than he really is.
In bringing this to a close, we would remind you that the fall elections are looming. If neither candidate is your cup of milk, please don't sit home on election day. No matter what the right to vote has only been won by blood and sacrifice. If you really don't like either party's offering, remember, you can always write in for the person you think would do the best job. Not worth while? Think about how the parties would react if twenty percent of votes were write ins!
Until next time, all the best and read good books.