Blog Tour: New Jersey! And pre-release housekeeping.

Newsflash! Although the official publication date of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is February 25, I found out yesterday that the release date is actually February 3rd. What this means, I think — remember, this stuff is new to me, too — is that the book will actually be available in many stores in ::ulp:: about two weeks. Which kinda blows my plan of posting a 30-day countdown clock, because I don’t actually know when people will be able to get this thing. On the other hand, screw the countdown clock; my book!! is coming!!

What this means is that I’m shifting into hardcore promo mode. I’m not doing a video trailer, but I did get an amazing radio-producer friend of mine to put together an audio trailer that, not to mince words, kicks ass. I will hopefully be running that on some of the better-known SFF podcasts and elsewhere in the next few weeks (and posting it here). Am finalizing my plans to attend several cons in the next six months — ICFA, Wiscon, and Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention to start — and do several local readings, including one at Flights of Fantasy Bookstore in Albany, KGB Fantastic Fiction, and Lady Jane’s Salon. I’ll be going on Hour of the Wolf again — by myself this time! And I’m gearing up for a launch party, for which I’ll be contacting friends and colleagues in the NYC area in the next few weeks.

All this and I’m still motoring along on Book 3. ::whew:: Going to be a busy next few weeks.

A few people have asked me if I’m doing a book tour; the answer is no. Frankly, I’m a debut author with not much of an established audience, so a book tour would be pointless at this stage of my career. And there’s the bigger problem of money, since like most authors I have a book tour budget of, uh, nothing. I’ve got no problem sleeping on friends’ couches, but travel is the clincher, and I just can’t afford much of that. So yeah, although I saw this article, and I’ve got amazing friends who I know would come through for me… I just can’t afford to visit any place that’s more than a few hours’ drive away. And I’ll be borrowing my father’s 17-year-old hooptie, Whoa Nellie, to do that much.

What I will be doing, though, is a blog tour! See, in the last few months several review and fan sites (and one mainstream newspaper!) have contacted me about doing interviews, and most of those will be coming online in the next few weeks. Some won’t be publicly accessible — I’ll be in the March Romantic Times, frex, which is subscription-only. But where possible I’ll send you over to watch me babble on other peoples’ blogs. And since I wish I could be there to do these interviews in person, I’m going to do a little roleplaying, and pretend that I actually am. ‘Cause I’m a writer, see, and imagining things is what I do.

And to kick things off, here’s the first of them, on the blog of writer Shveta Thakrar, who contacted me like a bajillion months ago to do an interview; now that’s enthusiasm. She’s in New Jersey, which I visit all the time; it’s actually quite pretty once you get past the Turnpike. I rather like her interview style, because in between the usual questions she asked me about food! And the state of the SFF publishing industry. But food! Check it out.