So I haven’t updated since mid-October. Anything happen since then?

Here’s where things stand with me:

I’m back because The Dragon Round comes out next week, June 13, in trade paperback, and once again S&S did a wonderful job, including allowing me to make a few last minute corrections and changes. Thanks, Megan. If you read and like it, let me know, either personally or by leaving a nice, honest review on Goodreads and at the etailers.

And check this out from Powell’s downtown!

I love Powell’s. On top of that I scored six books by John McPhee.

For a little promo, I’ll be on two panels at BooksNJ 2017 this Sunday, 6/11: Traditional Vs. Self-Published from 3:40-4:15 and Worlds Beyond Reality: Fantasy and Science Fiction from 4:20-5. I’m looking forward to it.

Sadly, S&S turned down the DR sequel, The Dragon Tower, for a variety of reasons, all of which make perfect sense to me, disappointing as that was, so now I’m working on something new. Three things, actually. Which will get done first, I’m not sure. 

While I’ve had a surprising amount of success writing spec fic stories, I’ve put those on the back burner because I want to continue writing novels, they’re the bread and butter, and stories take up just as much time. Even a 750-word flash story takes 3-4 days. Which is frustrating because I was getting used to the churn of submission/rejection/occasional acceptance, plus the money. But you have to think long-term, which can provide the greater satisfaction.

Nonetheless, I’ve updated by short fiction page to address my most recent pubs.

In addition, I have a new job. In December, I left Amacom for Thomas Dunne Books, where I’m now an executive editor. The pace has been insane (I just put my third crash of the year into production), but incredibly rewarding, seeing as the first crash, John Kasich’s Two Paths, was a NY Times bestseller.  The second crash is Amy Knight’s Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder, and the third is Bandy Lee’s The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Both are important and promise to be newsworthy, especially if Trump takes a page from the Putin playbook and  starts killing his critics and/or if he goes insane, respectively. I’m also working on President Carter by Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Adviser Stu Eizenstat, William Shatner’s next book, Live Long And…, Bill Press’s From the Left and Bernie Sanders’s next book. And many, many more. I love going to work.

So not much success to report, but a lot of writing, in part thanks to my new Chromebook, which is such a fantastic device.