Oh, I’ve got a cover for you… right here…

Thanks to the great work of Alex White, art director at Dragon Moon Press, I’m honored to reveal the cover for the soon to be released (more on the book release date next week) DMP print version of Murder at Avedon Hill. If you recall, I interviewed Alex back at Dragon*Con in September, and he claimed that he loved working with authors that had definite ideas and feedback. Well, he put up with my questions, suggestions, cries, and pleas, and in the end I think he created an awesome, eye-catching cover: one that will get readers to look at the book for more than five seconds… and then… we’ve got you, got you, got you… oops, channeling Katherine Hepburn from The Lion in Winter again. I hate when that happens.

Well, hopefully you understand why I’m excited.

It feels more real every day. Thanks for coming by to see the cover, and get ready for the push… you’re going to be flooded with content over the next two months.

I’ll be interviewing Alex again as we approach the book’s release, to talk with him about the process we went through, and also about his own journey finishing up The Gearheart.

April Fool’s Day Cover…

Yesterday Alex White told me that they wanted to change the cover, even though Gwen over at Dragon Moon Press had already signed off on it. They did some market research and said they needed more action on the front cover… you know… to really SELL it.

Sometimes I don’t know about this whole publishing thing. I mean, I can make a wood chipper work, but nobody in Caern has light blue socks!?

Sigh.

Donations (and a remembrance)

On the right-sidebar you will see two donate buttons. The first Paypal Donate button is for those that appreciate the website and the Murder at Avedon Hill podcast. Donations are greatly appreciated, but not expected. Donations to me are mainly used as beer money at conventions, so if you want to see me act crazy at Dragon*Con next year, donate away!

The other, and much more important button, is for those that specifically are donating out of appreciation for Tales of the Children.

Net proceeds from donations tied to Tales of the Children, be it here, on Podiobooks.com or from possible print someday, will go directly to the Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Fund.

On April 1st, 2007, podcaster Joe Murphy passed away from Leiomyosarcoma. I only met Joe one time, at Dragon*Con 2006, and his attitude, his zest for life, and his creative spark cemented my desire to enter this ‘world’ and podcast Murder at Avedon Hill.

Joe’s life was cut short by an insidious cancer that spreads through the smooth muscles of the body. Once it starts spreading, it’s rarely containable. Yet there is little publicized about LMS, even though it has such a high mortality rate. Heck, most application/program dictionaries do not even recognize Leiomyosarcoma as a word.

Joe Murphy, Dragon*Con 2006

If you do not wish to donate to a charity through a non-charitable site, I certainly understand. Please visit the Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Fund to learn more about this disease and to donate directly to the charity.

Thank you.

Short story in The Sovereign Era: Year One

Matthew Wayne Selznick wrote a wonderful novel called Brave Men Run. In fact, it was the first podcast novel I listened to when I started listening to podcasts back in 2006. In June of 2008 (if I remember right) Matt asked if I would write a short story for a live web-a-thon he was planning to do the day of his book release. I was so excited I wrote a first draft that was almost 10,000 words… hmm… he wanted 3-4K. Oh well.

I edited it down to 5-6K, I believe. It was definitely the longest story in the web-a-thon (Matt read seven stories I believe during his live show). I was very happy with the response I received from people about the story.

Flash forward to Friday, April 10th. The text that follows if from Matt’s website:

I’m very pleased to announce the release of “The Sovereign Era: Year One,” an anthology of seven tales written by authors who are pretty well known in certain circles — folks like J. C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, P. G. Holyfield, Nathan Lowell, Matt Wallace, J. R. Blackwell and Jared Axelrod!

This collection has its origin in the all-day web-a-thon I produced on the occasion of the Swarm Press release of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” On that day, I read each of these stories live on streaming video… but they’ve never been seen in print until now.

As of right now, the collection is available on this site in a bundle of eight DRM-free e-book formats and from Amazon.com for the Kindle. Soon enough, it will also be available in paperback in every online bookstore you’d care to patronize. To be honest, if you like e-books, I encourage you to purchase it in that format, since the authors involved stand to earn more of a percentage from each e-book sale.

In “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” we’re seeing a little of what happened in the months before the Sovereign Era began. The Sovereign Era’s beginnings are depicted in “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” I hope you’ll purchase “The Sovereign Era: Year One” and take in seven different glimpses into how things went in the months that followed. On behalf of the authors and cover artist Jeffrey Himmelman, I thank you very much!

For those of you that haven’t read Brave Men Run, it feels like a teen movie mixed with a superhero novel… The Breakfast Club and X-Men all rolled into one. Please go check out the anthology, and listen to or read Brave Men Run.

As for The Sovereign Era: Year One – electronic versions are already available for the book, and the print version should be out in a few days!

We’ve got a DATE!

Murder at Avedon Hill will be released on May 15, 2010. It might actually be on Amazon a bit earlier that this, but the 15th is when I would like people to purchase the book, if they are doing it on Amazon.com. This way we’ll make sure there isn’t any “out of stock” snafus as has happened in the past with Amazon’s database system.

If you have a podcast, a blog, or even just friends that you’d like to share info about Murder at Avedon Hill with, please send me an email (pgholyfield at murderatavedonhill dot com) or ping me on Twitter @pgholyfield. I’m setting up interviews and will send out promotional materials to anyone that might want them.

An audio update will be released in the next couple of days about this, and about a contest I’ll be doing for those purchasing the novel day 1.

This is actually happening! Woo Hoo! (wait, I’m supposed to be the reserved author… ).

Thanks for your continued support…. (yay!)