the league of reluctant adults

I can't tell you exactly how the word Zaomancer first popped into my head, but I can give you a good idea. Usually those moment of character creation happen very much on the back burner for me. Eric Courtney, from my Void City series, came from some point between High School and college when I was playing in a friend's roleplaying game. Eric's mad, murderous daughter Greta just showed up on the page as I wrote, but the protagonist of my new novella happened on a three-way call one afternoon. I'd just heard about the death of a very cool guy in fandom. Giving his name might be a little disrespectful as I'd just met him and spoken with him for all of thirty minutes (valuable minutes I hope readers will find once they see the epic fantasy I've had lurking on my WIP list for the past several years). My friend Rob and I were talking about random stuff and my friend Richard cursed. "What's wrong?" I asked "I have to resurrect a database," h...

So... The Avengers was frick'n awesome! (That's not really what this blog is about but seriously... HOLY CRAP that was a great movie) To loosely tie the movie into the topic at hand, The Avengers is a movie where the comic book characters translated very well to the screen. It's a hard thing to do, to take something which looks good drawn and make it look equally awesome on the screen. Marvel has been doing a fantastic job with the jump from page to screen lately. Some things changed... Banner was trying to discover a super soldier serum rather than creating a Gamma Bomb. But it worked. Getting back to that picture up there of the French cover for ReVamped by yours truly, though. One cool thing about translations is that they sometimes give you even more than you bargained for. Nick Fury, for example, is made so much cooler via Samuel L. Jackson's portrayal that, in the Ultimates universe at least, Nick Fury now even looks the same as his movie counterpart. "Jerem...

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 ...

Even at the holidays, especially at the holidays, the writer's muse can run amuck. Maybe it's the upcoming release of Burned (A Void City Novel) by J. F. Lewis (hey, I see that guy in the mirror sometimes) at the end of January or the fact that I've been working on two different books set in that universe, but there are times when I'm so in writer-mode that normal everyday things can be rendered horribly funny because I realize how one character or another would react to them. On the way home from lunch, for example, we were listening to Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth" and this whacked out impatient driver zoomed into the lane behind us, then around and past us... It infuriated my wife... And in glow of that anger, I was struck by the visual of happy Christmas shoppers in a hollywood-like surreal moment, walking down the sidewalks of Void City as Greta, one of my more murderous vampires, drove down the street in Fang, t...

What is that guy talking about with a post title like that? I don't know, and I *AM* that guy. Seriously though, as much as I want to impart revealing secrets about writing and set fire to the hive mind of the internet with knowledge of the ages, what I really want to do is bounce around like a happy puppy. The first draft of Hunted (Void City, Book 4) is done! But also, I gotz magic cats and crazed scheming steam punk robots! For a while now, I've been working with the guys over at Ignitus Innovation, Inc (formerly The Wandering Men) on a web comic idea. At Crisis Con last year, I was talking to Ashy about wanting to write comics (Marvel Comics, if you're out there, I have the first three issues of a Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy miniseries already written) and Ashy mentioned that they were interested in doing a web comic that tied in to the their Untold RPG. I asked what the setting was like and he asked me to sit in on a demo later that evening. I did and as a result, G...

When I started writing the fourth Void City novel (currently titled Hunted) I had a problem. Wererats were nearly what I used to fix it, but that would have totally wrong. See if you can follow my thought process: In any ecosystem, when one natural predator dies out or is diminished, the ecological niche they occupy is taken by another predator. So... with the reduction in the total number of vampires in Void City after the events in Crossed (Void City, book 3), it seemed only natural, that I bring in wererats. Until I started writing it and the wererats didn't show up. I didn't know why they wouldn't show up. They simply didn't. I had a problem and my conscious brain didn't know it, but my subconscious totally thought I was being a moron. My subconscious was all about the chupacabra. I caught myself googling them and complaining about how much cooler they could be... and then going back to trying to shoehorn wererats in book 4. When I finally tried putting t...

Recently, one of my readers stopped speaking to me. I didn't know about it until later when everything was okay again. Another one of my readers, when they reached the offending part of CROSSED that had so upset the other reader, threw the book across the room. A third, I'm told, stood up when he reached that portion of the novel and shouted, "Noooo!" at the top of his lungs... in the middle of the night. (I think I owe his wife an apology.) Then there was the reader who sent me an angry and impassioned email, begging me to undo what I had done... if, in fact, I didn't already undo it later in the novel. A few posted things on my Facebook fan page about it. Of course, they're fine now. Each of the readers I mentioned finished the book and were pleased by what they found at the end, even if it wasn't the ending for which they were hoping (or expecting). And I like to think I held up my end of the writer-reader bargain. The closest I've ever come ...

Out in the dark, a trio of killers celebrate Halloween in the vampire tradition. To them, Trick or Treating involves naming costumes, refereeing valid targets, and verifying kills. The vampires in my Void City books do not sparkle, and Eric is anything but a classic hero. Nevertheless, he might just rise to the occasion in this fun short story ... You'll have to read to find out, but don't start here. In the spirit of trick or treating and going from house to house for candy, I've decided (on the spur of the moment, really) to serialize a Halloween tale, posting different sections (as I write them) on various blogs. How many parts will there be? I have no idea, but I do promise this: The story will be done and all the sections posted by Halloween Night. Part 1 can be found over at Paranormal Haven (along with a contest that runs through 10/27/2010 at 11:59 pm cst) Part 2 is located at Pocket After Dark (where you can also read STAKED, the first Void ...

I can't give you all the details yet, but the Top Secret Web Comic Project is coming along nicely. All I can say right now is that I'm writing it and it's set in the universe of a very cool up and coming roleplaying game. I just got the first concept sketches for one of the main characters. I won't tell you the character's name yet, but she's cool and a very powerful magic user. The artwork was done by Laura Sloan ( http://bumberparty.blogspot.com/ )and though she will not be doing the artwork in the comic, I just had to share her cool concept art. No sketches of the steam punk robot yet, but when I get them (and get permission to post them) you'll see them. :) The concept she was given was: part Egyptian Mau, part Red-tailed Hawk, and part Wolverine. I think she did a wonderful job. So what do you think?

Since I know you guys love food porn, here's a link to my blog post over at Side-show Freaks about coming up with "For Want of Chocolate" (think vampires + chocolate) and how I can't sell short stories.

Because someone dared me, here's how I think it would go if Eric (from my Void City series) tried to explain the birds and the bees to a still-human version of his daughter Greta: Eric: But you already know... Greta: Well, yeah, but I still want us to have The Talk. All daughters get to have The Talk. Eric: Fine. You remember the book "If you give a Mouse a Cookie"? Greta: Ye-es. Eric: It's like that. Greta: No it isn't. Eric: No. It absolutely is... Eric: If you give a boy a kiss, he'll want to touch your cookies. If you let him touch your cookies, he'll want to unwrap them. If you let him unwrap them, he'll want to put them in his mouth. And THEN, if you let him put them in his mouth, the boy will want to pet your kitty. But if you let him pet your kitty, he'll want to see your kitty. And of course, if you let him see your kitty, then he'll want to feed it. And if you let him kiss you, touch your cookies, unwrap your cookies, put them in his ...

So I had this book come out on Tuesday and I suppose I should have been all over the place shouting about it (You can read the first chapter of ReVamped over in the forums , BTW), but instead I've been mostly knuckled down trying to get book three ready to ship off to my agent so that Shawna can whip out her mystic evaluator and say "It's perfect" or "Needs a few fixes" or "OMFG! Why the hell am I your agent? What is wrong with you? Why did you write this? I may be sick." And I suppose that I could be writing something clever about why I think that a vampire car would get more miles to the gallon if it was running on an oil executive's blood or why it's really funny to have a vampire break up a prostitute ring run by pint-sized vampiric pimps, but I'm not. Can you tell that I like to bury the lead? Instead, I wanted to take a moment to be amazed by the impact fans can have on the venues they love. I'm not sure how many of you read ...