February News – GRAVEYARD SHIFT SOLD!

Not much happened this last month. Things were pretty quiet. Nah, just kidding. Things got kind of insane really quickly. I’m kind of working three jobs right now and it is madness. Let me ‘splain.

No. There is too much. Let me sum up.

First, I got to take in Alton Brown’s live show with my lovely bride. It was fantastic and fun and Alton is even more talented than I thought he was. If you get the chance to check it out, go see it!

Then, I kicked off the month by heading out to the Las Vegas Open Warhammer 40K Grand Tournament hosted by Frontline Gaming. The army I chose to run, a combination of Imperial Fists and Blood Angels is a lot of fun to play. But at 1750 points, some of the army’s synergy didn’t work and overall the list suffered for it. I still had a blast, but had to deal with some frustrations as games in which I had secure victories in turn five wound up going six turns and my army just couldn’t hang. So it goes.

The same experience repeated the following weekend at GenghisCon, at the local 40K RTT. At 1750, the army’s scoring units start getting decidedly ropey in the late game.  Ah well, I’ll be moving on to a new Salamanders army so keep your eyes opened for new pictures of those. Oh and I’ve finally started assembling my Blood Ravens monster army.

Now to the good stuff. (Notice how I’ve buried it down here, all nonchalant, like it isn’t a big deal?)

This is what the book is about. Oh, and more too, of course. It’s been compared to “True Blood” meets “Se7en” and no, I didn’t say that. But I think that’s pretty accurate.

Recently, my agent, the inimitable Sara Megibow of the Nelson Literary Agency, closed a very nice deal with TOR and sold my novel GRAVEYARD SHIFT. This is phenomenally huge. I get to work with Moshe Feder with the publication goal aiming at the first half of 2015. 

It still hasn’t sunk in yet. TOR! Wow.

So now comes some inevitable questions, like, what is GRAVEYARD SHIFT about?

Well, it’s about 90,000 words. [rimshot!]

Okay, seriously.  Here’s a bit of mock-up back cover copy I put together. I’m more than certain it will change before the novel gets into bookstores.

Alex Menkaure, secretly an immortal pharaoh, and his Roman vampire partner, Marcus, used to hunt vampires for the NSA.

That was before the discovery of a blood substitute allowed vampires to integrate into society and a Supreme Court ruling gave thousands of them sanctuary.

Now, Alex and Marcus are vice cops in a special police unit fighting to keep the streets safe from vampires, shape-shifters, blood-dealers, and anti-vampire vigilantes.

When someone starts poisoning the artificial blood, race relations between vampires and humans deteriorate to the brink of widespread violence and anarchy.

While the city threatens to tear itself apart, Alex and Marcus must form an unnatural alliance with a vigilante gang and a shape-shifter in a battle against an ancient vampire conspiracy.

If they succeed, they’ll be pariahs, hunted by everyone.

If they fail, the result will be the largest race-war the world has ever seen.

That’s about it. I can’t say much more without getting into spoiler territory. Suffice to say, that I’m very proud of the book and I know people will enjoy it. Now of course, its back to the grindstone with another round of edits, to ensure that this particular blade is as sharp as I can make it.