the league of reluctant adults

I f you have been paying even a little bit of attention to my various feeds, you know that BURNED: A VOID CITY NOVEL is out today. And today or at least this week is when I need you to buy it. On previous book releases, I've kind of been a bit subtle. I snuck around to various bookstores (both the indies and the big guys) and stealth signed all the copies they had in stock. I have never been that comfortable with saying, "My books are awesome and funny and sweet and twisted. If you love them, buy ten copies each and pass them out to your friends." I still don't like to refer to my Facebook Fan Page as a "Fan Page", though I've started to do so, because calling it a Reader Page was confusing people. But the market is changing. And only the writers with die hard fans are surviving. I'm not good at blogging about every clever thing under the sun and making the every day seem magical. I do it when I can. Whether it's talking about how The Elder Son ...

Hi folks! I'm in Boston, having just finished my duties at Arisia 2012. I've officially hit my con wall and am holed up in my room, watching Zombieland and catching up with EVERYTHING that has slipped out of my grasp out of the last few crazy weeks. I'll blog about everything when I get back, but until then I wanted to give you a little sneak peek of what's coming at you . . . In only two days! For on January 17th, Orbit will be releasing SOMETHING WIKKID THIS WAY COMES, a digital-only short story starring Capitola, Shar, and Moo, the ladies of Triptych that you met in Tempest's Legacy. I had so much fun writing this story and can't wait to share the ladies with you. They're a bit different from Jane, and I'm hoping they'll have lots of adventures in her Trueniverse. Below is the cover, which you can click for the story's Amazon site. You can get it from Barnes and Noble here, and on the day you can get it from Orbit Short Fiction .

Kelly Meding has hairy armpits. (Let that sink in a moment.) Do I know this because I hide out in her shower? No. I know this because while going through my website stats the other day, that particular phrase came up as a pointer to my blog. And as much as I might love to blackmail Kelly with some super hairy armpit pictures, the truth of it is that I've got her name on my sidebar (as I do all the Leaguers)...and I tend to post scantily clad men about once a week. So somehow the browsers are putting those two things together and churning up my blog as the answer to their Urban Fantasy author hairy armpit utopia. Now, note that I've never actually mentioned armpits on my site (until very recently when I noticed this interesting trend), but over the last few months I've seen an increased number of visits to my site - all based on hairy armpits. Which is sorta scary in its own right, but I began to dig a little deeper and I have to admit to being a *little* bit...

I had a couple different ideas for League posts today. The first was to do something related to the cancellation of soap opera "One Life to Live" (which airs its final episode today, after 43 years on the air) and how that relates to current changes in the publishing industry. Instead, I just did a brief message on my personal blog . Option two was to do some sort of promo post for the release of WRONG SIDE OF DEAD (Dreg City #4), which comes out January 31st. Finally, I looked at the calendar and realized that not only is it the 13th, but it's also.... It's that funny day that pops up a few times a year and has gotten a bad rap. I'm sure I'm not the only person whose mind immediately goes to one thing when someone says Friday the 13th. Handsome devil, isn't he? In my curiosity, I decided to check out the history of this particular day. I mean, I'm sure the movie's writer didn't just arbitrarily choose Friday the 13th as the title. Wikipedia...

I'm often asked by some of my younger readers what you need to study in college in order to be an author. This is also often paired with, "Do I even have to go to college?" While you don't need to go in order to be a writer, I absolutely recommend college. It's awesome. You'll find people you didn't know were like you and groups of all interests, ranging from Star Trek LARPers to Young Republicans to Republican LARPers. And although I learned a lot from my classes, it's the experiences that I feel really shaped me into becoming a writer. That, perhaps, is the biggest thing you need to write: LIFE. You need to experience people and places and events. Those are what feed good writing. My writing is filled with funny scenes and commentary on human quirks, and again--a lot of that ability to observe and appreciate the absurdity in the world came from college. Here are a few of my favorite wackiest experiences from my time at the University of Michigan. (I ...

Mwhaha!   It's almost here! One of the many weirdnesses about writing is the long wait between when the book is written and when people can actually read it. That aspect has been particularly rough with this book, because there are so many things in it that i wasn't even sure if readers would ever get to see. In fact, the book starts off with one of them right up front. A comeuppance. If you want to see what I mean a little early, here is the first chapter of Burned: A Void City Novel by J. F. Lewis (due out January 31st, 2013):      Chapter 1 Eric: All A Part of the Plan   Vampires burn.   It’s a rule.

*Cross-Posted from Kevin's Blog* Today we have a very special beer to pour into a very special glass. The beer is "imported from Vermont," which makes it sound exotic somehow. (Hear that, everybody in Vermont? Your neighborhood is exotic.) The brewer of Hill Farmstead Anna—Shaun Hill—is something of a world-renowned chap who lives in the exotic realm of northeast Vermont. Anna is a honey saison brew that I can't wait to try. Hill Farmstead crafts many small-batch, interesting beers. Thoughtful ones, too, like  Phenomenology of Spirit .  The glass into which I shall pour the honey saison is emblazoned with the logo for Atticus & Oberon's Sausage Fest. I've received many requests to sell these, and after looking a wee bit into setting up something on my website, it appears that it will take far more of my time and energy than I can afford. Instead, I'll set up a shop with Cafe Press, so you can put the Sausage Fest on a shirt or hat, glass or shooter, wh...

Use ‘LOL’ or ‘ROFL’ I used to be soooooo down on LOL. An LOL hater! I felt it was dishonest, because, who among the people writing LOL truly were laughing out loud? Maybe 1%! And I felt sure none were ROFLing! So this made me not like LOL, or ROFL. But now I’m a user—and some might say abuser—of LOL. Seriously! ROFL!! Especially on twitter. No, I haven’t begun to laugh out loud, but my understanding of LOL has changed. It just means I think this is funny, or I mean this to be funny, in a medium that has no expression. I used to not see it that way, but I do now. Now I am an LOL LOVER!!  Aren't you glad you are reading this fascinating post? Now for the next exciting item: Ever write 'tho' or  'thru' I used to not ever use these sorts of abbreviations of though and through, even if it was on something for my eyes only, like I would lose my self respect as a lover of words and an English Literature person. It just seemed tawdry, lazy, and WRONG! But, now with t...

For me, 2011 could've ended better. Last night, I was at a restaurant when this guy at the next table offered a toast to his dinner companions. "Here's to health, wealth, and happiness." I jumped up and knocked the wine glass out of his hand. "You naive bastard," I screamed and yanked his lapel. "Don't you know that 2012 is the end? Haven't you heard about the Mayan prophecy? Worldwide volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, financial collapse, Obama martial law, Armageddon...the forthcoming zombie Apocalypse!" That's when the Taser hit me and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in jail. Right now I'm blogging from my lawyer's office. But I take comfort that we Leaguers are especially prepared to take advantage of catastrophes. We're like Mormons in that we stock supplies to survive any emergency.(Actually, all we keep are guns and machetes. If we need vittles, we'll take them from you.) In fact, we're lookin...