Dragon Noir Cover draft

Win a copy of Dragon Noir!

You can play along in the comments here, or on facebook where I kicked the thing off yesterday. Comment for an entry, and I will draw a name at random on Sunday, July 19 and announce the winner. Then I will do it a second time and give away two copies of Dragon Noir, signed, and shipped to your door! If you play along on facebook, you can get your name in the hat a second time by sharing this post.  If you are one who has successfully avoided that particular brand of social media, put a link (wherever you want, blog, Google +, twitter, it’s the thought that counts, not the locale) in the comments to this post and I will put your name in the hat again.

Since that won’t take long, and you need something to occupy your brain until Sunday (oh, not that these will take that long!) here are a few links to good blog posts today. Click on the headlines to read more. 

Family Vs. Relatives

My first reader muses on what makes bonds closer than blood.

Friendship isn’t what I’m talking about either. There are lots of folks in some of my online groups that I don’t particularly like that I will travel to see. Because, no matter how annoying they can be they are the family of my heart. Relatives OTOH we see because we are stuck doing so. I honestly think we may need new words to describe these people.

Amazon H8ters

Amanda Green talks about some of the vitriol being directed at the behemoth company.

Oh my. The Amazon haters have been out in droves of late. Between those who are complaining that the new rules for payouts for titles downloaded and read via the Kindle Unlimited/KOLL programs and the media stirring up outrage over the supposed lack of “real” deals for Prime Day, it would be easy to think Amazon is nothing but a money-grabbing corporate whore. There are a few problems with this, of course. First and foremost is Amazon has never hidden the fact that it is a business and businesses exist to make money. The second is, from an author’s standpoint, the fact that Amazon has given us the power to make decisions about our careers that had been out of our hands for years. But Amazon is bad. Maybe if we repeat it often enough, we will start to believe.

Get Rich Slowly

Sarah Hoyt talks about something I have lived these last few years, multiple streams of income, and getting by on the strength of my wits and brain alone. It’s a terrifying journey, akin to whitewater rafting. When the rapids are high, you’re too busy fending off all the rocks coming at you to think anything other than a highpitched feedback squeal of ‘I’m gonna die!’ over and over at such a high rate it would take sophisticated machinery to slow it down enough to understand. When the river deepens and smooths out, you’re too busy preparing for the next rocky patch to think about the relaxing you could be doing. But this is the way of life for the artist, the creative.

But it’s not just writing.  My sons have dipped toes in art and gaming, and some of their friends are making money from podcasts and indie music.  The point is that if you are a creative, this is a great time to be alive.  You can reach the public directly and because “the public” is so large, even a small success is enough to live on, more or less.

Hence the older son’s “get rich slowly” streams which include starting work in many small fields and running it over many decades, so eventually it amounts to something.

Not to say everyone will succeed.  It still requires concentration and effort.  But it is, at least a possibility

God’s Wolfling Review

Jim McCoy gave me a really nice review on my last YA book. I’m putting a bit here, but he gets into depth with it over on his blog.

As someone who has a passion for this kind of thing, I’m going to start off this review by praising Ms Sanderson for the hard work she put into not just the writing of this book, but the research. She shows a lot of knowledge about various myths. We could argue all day long about whether or not things would shake out the way she thinks they would (and we WOULD and probably WILL because we’re nerds and that’s what we do. ) but she has obviously done enough work to at least make an educated guess. If her version of Fimbulwinter isn’t what I always expected, it works within the story and displays the concepts in her novel better than just about anything else could. Oh, and just for full disclosure, I’m an Irish lad myself and seeing some of the mythology of my ancestral isle probably did add to my enjoyment of the work.

The battle scenes in the book are well done. Sanderson does something that, quite honestly, TV shows and movies seem to capture better than most books in dropping us into the middle of a battle out of nowhere and making it believable. She pulls it off well. Oddly enough, I was thinking about this last concept last night while watching Star Trek:Enterprise and then read it today. Violence in the real world isn’t always presaged by anything definable or even noticeable. All too often in just happens out of nowhere. There is a lot to be said for the drama of two men staring each other down before the bullets start flying but a little touch of realism is even better. While we’re on the subject, Linn finds herself at times wrapped up in violence and wishing for a gun. As a guy who has read all of the Harry Potter novels multiple times and seen the movies more times than he’s read the books I find this refreshing. I mean, who hasn’t seen the assault on Hogwarts and wished for a M60 for use against the Death Eaters charging across the bridge? Add a few more points for further realism.


Comments

12 responses to “Win a signed book!”

  1. RealityObserver Avatar
    RealityObserver

    I guess this is my comment for entry (c4e?)

    Thank you for the links, they are much appreciated. It keeps adding to my list, though! Is there such a thing as a professional blog reader?

    Copying your random quote over to (yesterday’s) Hoyt post that I was just reading.

    1. Sadly, there isn’t a profession for just blog reading… but I have a list I glance at regularly, as part of my profession. It keeps me up-to-date on what’s going on, so I can adjust if need be (like the whole thing with KU, for instance). That, and it’s a great brain wake-up with my coffee in the am.

      I have your, er, name on the list!

  2. […] via Win a signed book! | Cedar Writes. […]

  3. Uncle Lar Avatar
    Uncle Lar

    Yep, I start every day with coffee, cheese crackers, and a list of regular sites to check.
    Thing is it’s now 2pm and I’m just getting to yours.
    Admittedly, there are issues at play. Been without electrical power last day or so, just restored late last evening, so a lot of catching up to accomplish. That, and the phone has rung off the hook all morning, what with one thing and another.
    I am about a third of the way through Dragon Noir at the moment. It quite literally saved my sanity as I was able to read it on my fully charged Kindle by camp lantern while waiting for an electrician to rebuild my meter box.
    Gots to say girl, you write really good stuff.

    1. Boo on the lack of electric, so glad you did have reading material. And it’s back on? For good, I hope?

      1. Uncle Lar Avatar
        Uncle Lar

        For good? Would not tempt fate by declaring so, but I do have a fine new electrical box that has been certified up to code and reconnected to the grid. Still, whims of fate and the tender mercies of the Huntsville Utilities Department, so fingers and toes crossed.
        Storm front Tuesday evening took out next door neighbor’s big tree, dropped the power lines, tripped local area breakers, and did enough damage to my meter box that the crew refused to reconnect my service until it was replaced. Not repaired, but total replacement. Legitimately, should have been about a four hour job, and that’s about how much work was put into it, but with missed communications and misunderstood directions the process took a solid 24 hours.
        Good news is no damage, other than possibly a half gallon of milk that might have been starting to go even before the outage, and my insurance has already cut me a check for the repair bill. Minus my deductable of course.
        It’s these little adventures in life that remind one what puny powers one has over the greater scheme of things.

    2. RealityObserver Avatar
      RealityObserver

      You need to position your blog list carefully.

      I put Cedar’s where I usually get to it about lunchtime – since she frequently has a picture of something yummy up. It makes a good reminder.

      (Unfortunately, lunch usually isn’t quite as yummy as the picture, sigh…)

  4. EgregiousCharles Avatar
    EgregiousCharles

    Do you still sell signed copies? I would like to fill out my signed copy collection whether I win or not. I’ve been looking forward to reading it but I can’d find anything about selling signed copies here on your new site.

    1. I do sell signed copies. Before, I’d run a periodic sale (usually at Christmas) but if you want one then drop me a line at cedarlila at gmail dot com letting me know what you want, and I will send you a paypal invoice. And wait until after Sunday, you never know!

  5. […] entry with the click of a button. Keep it simple for people to play, or they won’t. I then set it up on my blog, too, but again, nothing more than asking people to comment, and […]

  6. bojojoti Avatar
    bojojoti

    I’d enjoy the chance at a copy.

    1. I’ve entered you. I’ll be doing the drawing later today.