So Hidden Things officially releases tomorrow — I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people telling me that they’ve gotten notification their preorders are on the way, which is both very scary and very exciting. There have been quite a few reviews posted already (more on that in another post), but obviously that doesn’t compare to the number of people about to put their eyeballs on the story — I really have no idea what the end result of all that is going to be, so I’m going to focus on what’s going on right now.

“Right Now” Means…

This week is going to be kind of crazy.

Today, the Once and Future Podcast has a new podcast up, and it’s me, talking about Hidden Things! Well, it’s me and Anton Stout, and we’re talking about Hidden Things, Adrift, writing, City of Heroes, Tolkein, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, MMOs, fan fiction, lego, Skylanders, tabletop gaming, dice obsessions,  and pretty much every other nerdy thing you can pack into an hour and ten minutes.

Wednesday, I will be reading and talking and signing books at the Tattered Cover, a great Colorado indie bookstore. This will be my first public reading, ever, which means I will probably screw it up in some kind of hilarious fashion, and you should totally stop by to point and laugh and post pictures on Facebook.

Thursday, I will be doing an AMA, or “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s r/Fantasy, organized by the fine moderators of that subreddit. I will have more about this as we get closer to go-time, but as a pretty rabid redditor I have to say that I’m incredibly geeked-out and excited about this, and I sincerely hope THE ENTIRE INTERNET shows up to ask me questions about… you know… whatever. I mean, it’s supposed to be about writing, and Hidden Things and probably NaNoWriMo and gaming stuff but… whatever.

Thursday will also see me drop by for an interview with Chuck Wendig on terribleminds.com (direct link when it goes up), which will include a short story that I’ll be hosting here. Also, I’ll be countering his baseless slander and accusations with an interview of my own, with Chuck, posted up here on the same day.

Friday, I’ll be doing a reading/signing up at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins, another great indie bookseller. I’m excited about this one as well, especially since I really have no idea what to expect from this event, in terms of visitors and audience.

Next week, I’ll also be over at the Qwillery as part of their 2012 Debut Author Challenge.

The object of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge is for participants to read at least 12 debut novels during 2012 – one from each month of the year though you may read them anytime between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012.

(Last week, Hidden Things won the Qwillery’s 2012 Debut Author Challenge August “Cover Wars”, which I’m really happy about even though I had nothing to do with it — it’s just cool that other people liked it as much as I do.)

That’s it for now — I’m still trying to sort out September events coming up, but stay tuned.

I’m still fighting a Montezuma-grade case of ComicCon Crud, but I’ve staggered away from the sickbed long enough to right this wrong.

You see, I kind of stumped everyone with the wordfinder puzzle.

For those that need reminding, I once designed a title page for Hidden Things, inspired by a scene in the book. For reasons that remain an utter mystery, Harper actually decided to use it for its intended purpose, which made me really happy. Here’s my version, which is not as awesome as the version in the final print:

In the original version of this contest, I simply said “There are 23 words in this puzzle that relate to the story. Click on the image to get the big version and print it. Find them all. Circle them all. As one does. Send it back to me. Simple!”

Except it turned out it wasn’t so simple. To be honest, I couldn’t even do it without a list of the 23 words.

So, here is a list of the 23 words:

Hidden
Things
by
Doyce
Testerman
abandoned
bargain
childhood
clown
cornfield
dragon
goblins
guide
grief
jelly
music
family
friends
harlequin
lovers
regret
rhymes
satyr

Now then:

Click on the image to get the big version. Find all the words. Circle all the words. Send it to me. Win a signed ARC.

Simple!

 

Update: WHOA that was fast! Congrats to Paul Czege for extremely efficient use of his lunch break.

Those of you who’ve known me a long time know that I’m quite critical of any arguments that try to justify an ebook priced close to or exactly the same as a traditional print version of the same story. Yes, the story is the same, and the editing and formatting work is the same, and it’s entirely fair to want to see that cost recouped, but there is obviously no electronic equivalent to warehousing, shipping, physical printing, material costs of same, bookstore placement, or bookstore returns (an inexplicable practice unique to publishing and brick and mortar bookstores), and it irritates me to see those fundamental differences between the two mediums hand-waved away as “inconsequential to final cost.” They aren’t, and people aren’t stupid.

So, given that, you should understand that I was reasonably happy to see that the ebook and print prices for Hidden Things weren’t similar — the former being a third less than the later. Looking at it from a reader’s point of view, it seemed consistent with today’s market.

But I still would have liked to see the ebook price a bit lower, and it’s possible I might have made a few comments to my agent to that effect. I’m always going to be the guy that misses the days when I could pick up a copy of I, Robot for $1.25.

Understand, this isn’t about ‘moving product’ — it’s about reaching people. I don’t want to destroy the romantic illusion of the self-employed author, but the fact is I have a day job that pays the bills. I’m not excited about the idea that Hidden Things might make money (though I certainly want my wonderful agent and editors to get paid); I’m excited because very soon a lot of the English-speaking world will be able to read a story I wrote, and I think they might like it. People like to go round and round about whether someone is a ‘writer’ or an ‘author’ and what those words mean in ‘the industry’; bottom line, I guess I’m just a storyteller, and if I see a way to tell a story to more people, I want to try it.

Anyway: last week, Harper Voyager let my agent know that they’d decided to lower the price on the ebook of Hidden Things by two dollars (down to 7.99 from 9.99 — very close to half the price of the print edition). Today, that change took effect on all the sites where you can pre-order the book, and I am very, very happy.

Even better, all the awesome people who had already pre-ordered the ebook will automatically get the new, lower price as well, which makes me feel fantastic — as if we’ve been able to hand each of those great, supportive people a couple dollars.

So: if you’re one of those people, here’s that two bucks I owe you, and if you’ve been on the fence about a pre-order, maybe this will help.

I actually started writing a completely different post today (another book review), and then realized that I really, really ought to start talking about some of the stuff going on with my book. (I’m actually fairly bad at the business side of publishing (or bad at business as publishing practices it, which is different). That’s a topic about which I can (and probably will) write a whole series of posts.)

I won’t lie: I’ve been putting this off. I don’t know if it’s nerves or laziness or the bone-deep conviction that something will happen and everything will just go poof and vanish. Even now, as I’m writing this line, I want nothing more than to delete the post and go do something else. Weird.

So here it is:

I have a book coming out in September. It is called Hidden Things.

It’s being published by HarperCollins Voyager, which is a recent… thing (see: not good at pub business lingo)… that brings all of the US/UK/Aus sci-fi/fantasy publishing arms of HarperCollins under the same impenetrable force field.

Now, part of the benefit of working with HarperCollins is (obviously) working with some very smart editors (a quick scan of my inbox tells me they have to pay at least six people competitive wages to control my rampant use of semicolons and argue where punctuation should go in relation to double-quotes¹).

But another benefit is the fact that they have artistic, designer-type people who put together book covers for a living, and are quite good at it.

For example, they did this cover for Hidden Things.

I’m pretty happy with it.

…*plays it cool*…

OH WHO AM I KIDDING I FREAKING LOVE THIS THING!

You know what they say about not judging a book by its cover? Well screw that: you should definitely judge my book by this cover — nothing would make me happier.

Ahem.

Right. Sorry about that; got a little excited. If you need a bit more info, here’s a close approximation of the jacket blurb:

“Watch out for the Hidden Things…”

That’s the last thing Calliope Jenkins’ best friend and former lover says to her before ending a 2 A.M. phone call from Iowa, where he’s investigating a case she knows little about. Five hours later, she gets another call, this time from the police. Josh has been found dead; foul play is suspected. Calliope is stunned.

Especially when Josh leaves a message on her phone a few hours later.

Spurred by grief and suspicion, she heads to Iowa herself, accompanied by a road-weary stranger who claims to know something about what happened to Josh and who can — maybe — help Calli get him back.

The road is not quite the straight shot she imagined. Josh was involved in something a lot more complicated than a teenage runaway or deadbeat day, and Calliope find herself on a surreal road tip into — and behind — America’s heartland, hounded by once-magical creatures twisted by living too long just out of sight and the bogeymen in Calliope’s own troubled past.

See, what finally pushed me to the tipping point in terms of talking about all this stuff is the fact that I received a box full of advance reader copies last week, and I finally got to actually touch a hardcopy version of the story — to pick it up and feel the heft of it — and that helped me stop thinking that the whole thing was going to go ‘poof’.

It also reminded me that — more than anything — I want people to read this thing.

And that of course means I need to get the word out.

Which, you may recall, is the part of the stuff I’m bad at. Still, I’m going to give it my best shot. Here’s everything going on right now:

Hidden Things has its own special page on this site, right here, so that if I (or, should I be so lucky, you) tell someone about the book, there’s a handy link for more info. The Hidden Things sub-site isn’t totally done — I still need to finish up the Reading Guide page, but I’m taking a lot of allergy meds this week (stupid cottonwoods) and my brain is too dumb to come up with good questions — most of the pertinent stuff is there, and there are placeholders for the other stuff that I will fill in as we get closer to the date-of.

I bit the bullet, went back onto Facebook, and made up an Author Page… thing… It is here. Please don’t do anything crazy like making up a Facebook account just so you can see the page, but if you already have such a thing, well, you’ll be far more at home on that page than I am.

Finally, there are going to be some CONTESTS that will result in people winning ARCs of the book. As a matter of fact, there are already two contests going on right now, and there will be more soon.

Contest the First: A Simple Click It doesn’t get much simpler than this. All you have to do is:

• Go over to that Facebook page I mentioned and “Like” something therein. Like the page. Like the picture of the cover I posted yesterday. I don’t really care what you choose; there are little blue thumbs all over the bloody place — click one of em. Or, if you are not written in the Book which is Face…
• Tweet something on twitter about this blog post, and put a #hiddenthings hashtag on it, so I’ll see it. Or…
• If you’re on Google Plus, go +1 this post, as it appears over there. OR…
• Go to my Tumblr page and like or reblog this post.

Next Monday, I’ll gather up the names of everyone who did any of those things, put em in a hat, and pull a name out: that person wins a copy of the book. Simple.

Contest the Second: A Not-So Simple Click
This one is pure Facebook, since it’s not something I cooked up. William Morrow is currently giving away a bunch of themed prize packs of books. Hidden Things is included in the “Mystery/Thriller” package, because (I can only assume) someone at WM has a sense of humor. Go here, click the things that ask to be clicked, and you’ll be entered to win Fabulous Prizes.

Contest the Third and Fourth and So On: Which Haven’t Happened Yet.
In a few weeks, I’m going to ask for a bit more creativity in these contests: one of you will win an ARC for writing awesome twitter-length microfiction; a few others will win stuff (not just Hidden Things, but other stuff) for being all artistic and designery — that one will happen around the same time the San Diego Comic Con, where I’ll be signing stuff and sitting on panels and other things I didn’t do the last time I went. More on that when the time comes — I’d like to do all these things right now, but I’m told I should pace myself and start simple, which I have (I hope).

Now What Did I Forget?

Actually, I think that’s it. So…

Let’s have another look at that book cover, shall we?

*sigh*

She’s a pretty one, isn’t she?

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¹ – That actually ended up being a debate I won. Who knew I could hold my breath that long?