The second book in my II AM Trilogy of vampire novels is FREE today (Weds) and tomorrow (Thurs) on Amazon.com. This means that along with The Blood That Bonds, which is always free, you can get 2/3 of the trilogy for the low low price of zero dollars!

Already own Blood Hunt? Well, it still makes a great gift for the book-loving people in your life, especially combined with TBTB!

You can snag Blood Hunt for free right here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JDGUS4

And The Blood That Bonds here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002R5B0WI

And if you want to complete the set, you can get The Children of the Sun for $2.99 here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009ZCSDA8

I’ve got a new liquor article out on Primer. This one’s all about gin, and covers sixteen different entries into that vast category. I go through each and give notes on the nose and taste, as well as running them through a “Martini Test” to see how they play with vermouth and orange bitters. Here’s a quote:

The first time I ever tasted gin, to the best of my knowledge, was a sip of a Sapphire and Tonic my good friend Nora was drinking. I took my sip and tilted my head, considering, and then I told her: “this tastes like cologne.”

My opinion’s changed a bit in the years since. Gin – spicy, juniper-y, citrus-y gin – is delicious, and if you don’t think so, then I submit you simply haven’t found the right gin yet. You need to find your gateway into that world, and from there your tastes will expand until, like me, you one day find yourself sitting in front of sixteen bottles of the stuff and thinking each of these is completely different.

Already a fan of gin and looking to branch out? Not currently a fan and curious if there’s anything you might like? Just want to read about booze? Well, this article’s got you covered. Go check it out!

After careful consideration of my sales numbers, I’ve come to the following conclusion: few people are buying my books on iTunes or Barnes & Noble.

So, I’m going to try an experiment. Amazon offers a program called KDP select in which authors can add their books to certain promotions that may help to increase sales. The catch: they require exclusivity. This means I have to take any books that I want to enroll in their program off all of the other sites that sell them.

I’m not super-fond of this. I think it’s a sleazy attempt by Amazon to acquire a monopoly in the eBook industry, and I have resisted going this route for a long time for that reason. However, as sales on Nook, iTunes, Sony, Kobo and the rest have dwindled while my Kindle sales remain strong, it has become more and more apparent that Kindle is the dominant eBook platform of our times. In fact, even a large chunk of my iPad/iPhone readers use the Kindle app, rather than buying through iBooks.

With all that in mind, and since I know all of my most-loyal readers have already picked up Blood Hunt and The Children of the Sun, I’m going to give Amazon’s KDP Select program a shot with my vampire books.

This will not affect The Broken God Machine. That book, when it comes out, will be available for all platforms simultaneously, just like my other books have been. This is strictly about the II AM Trilogy. Update: this will also NOT delete any copies that have already been bought. If you own a II AM Book on the Nook or from iBooks, you will retain it.

I’ve begun the process of removing the books from other services. Once they’re gone, I’ll enroll in KDP Select for 90 days and see how it goes. Then I’ll reevaluate and decide whether I want to put the trilogy back on the other websites or not.

Update: if you don’t have two reviews to link, it’s cool … you can apply anyway. I have an idea for what to do.

Hi Guys,

I’m looking for two more people to become “trusted readers” — this means you get to read my first and second and third drafts and give me story feedback, ideas, “I hated this part” thoughts, and so forth. This is an unpaid thing … you’re basically trading some feedback for the chance at an early look at my upcoming work. You’ll also get thanked in the acknowledgments of anything that goes on to be published.

You will have to sign a very simple non-disclosure agreement. It’s a two-page contract in very readable English that just basically says “I totally won’t steal Chris’s books and give them out on the internet.”

In 2013 you will at definitely get to read The Broken God Machine before it comes out, along with the first draft of Monster Hunters, and probably another first draft. If you’re going to apply, please link me at least two book reviews you’ve written at Amazon, Goodreads, your blog, or similar. If the reviews can’t be linked (like Barnes & Noble or Apple), please describe how I can locate them. IE: “go to this book’s page and look for the user ‘TotesLuvsVampires’ … that’s me!”

Interested? Go to my contact form to get in touch.

Wow, how has it been two months since I last posted here? Time flies, my friends, especially when you’re working on a bunch of different stuff. Let’s cover all that work, shall we?

The II AM Trilogy

With the exception of an upcoming contest, I’ve put the II AM Trilogy to bed by creating a compilation eBook that contains all three titles in one file, and by redesigning the website. Note: if you’ve already read TBTB, Blood Hunt, and TCotS, there is nothing new in the collection and you should not feel any need to buy it (unless you want it all in one file for some reason). This is just a way for interested new readers to get the whole thing at once instead of having to download/buy three different ebooks. It’s not intended as a cash-grab from people who already paid for my work.

You can get more info at the new II AM Trilogy website. There’s also a FAQ, the full historical timeline (starting at 5000 BCE and going all the way to present day), and some other fun stuff.

The Broken God Machine

I’ve completed the final draft of The Broken God Machine, making substantial changes to the narrative that I think really help the book. It will shortly be going out to my advance readers for one last, quick round of feedback, following which it will head for my editor Lauren. We’re looking good for an early fall 2013 release! I’ve also engaged a very talented illustrator to do the cover. You should check out his website!

More on TBGM in the coming weeks.

Monster Hunters

The original draft of Monster Hunters is a fun book and I like it a lot, but it’s severely flawed from a structure standpoint: basically the climax happens in the middle and the whole last third of the book is stuff that really should take place before said climax. This is what happens when you write a novel in 30 days with very little thought put into it beforehand beyond “this girl kills a werewolf and gets recruited by a school that trains monster hunters” …

So I’m restructuring it, basically by cutting and pasting the chapters and then reading through and changing stuff that no longer makes sense (like the climax happening in February when, in the new order of things, it should happen in June). After that, it’ll go out to my advance readers for their first round of feedback. I have no idea if I will ever release this book, let alone when, but I’d like to at least advance it along the stages.

Also I’m renaming it from “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters” to “The Monster Hunters – Book 1: The Werewolf at the Window” … but since the name’s never been official anyway, it really doesn’t matter much!

Non-Fiction

HUGE gin roundup coming to Primer soon. I submitted it at the end of March so it’ll probably be up in late April or early May. Sixteen gins with full tasting notes, plus I did a martini test for each one. It’s a fun, informative read (I think).

The Future

With The Broken God Machine about to leave my hands for a couple of months, my thoughts are turning to starting a new book. I’ve spoken before about a revenge thriller set in a partially flooded, future Brooklyn, and that’s what I’ll likely be working on next. It should b a standalone book, like TBGM, and I’m expecting it to come in at about 95,000 words, also like TBGM (that’s a bit longer than The Blood That Bonds). Sometimes these projects have a tendency to grow, though, so we’ll see. At 1,500 words a day, I should be able to crank this thing out in about two months. Which is just about the amount of time Lauren needs for editing TBGM. Serendipitous!

That’s it for now.

I’ve written up another article for Primer Magazine, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Learn how to craft six delicious champagne cocktails, some old classics, some newly created by yours truly. Here’s a quote:

Take it from a guy who married a French girl: Champagne is the way to a woman’s heart. There’s just something about sparkling wine that’s inherently romantic. Maybe it’s the special glasses. Maybe it’s the tickle of the bubbles. Maybe it’s the way that it turns any occasion into something of a celebration. Whatever the reason, it’s hard to go wrong with a cocktail that features a healthy dose of bubbly.

Sparkling wine, particularly drier varieties, will mix with just about any liquor under the sun … or stars, if you want to stick with the romantic theme. France’s classic Kir Royale, perhaps the most famous Champagne cocktail, is nothing more than an ounce or so of crème de cassis(black currant liqueur) added to the glass before the wine is poured. You can do this same thing with a wide variety of liqueurs, and most will produce something nice, albeit a little one-dimensional. We like extra dimensions here at Primer, so we’re featuring recipes that are a little more complex, subtle, and nuanced.

You can check out the full article over at Primer!

Primer Magazine has posted my latest article. This one took a while to put together, as I had to hunt down and research a variety of entry-level Irish Whiskies (and a few at higher price points). Then I had to perform the arduous task of tasting all of the whiskies while taking notes, which I did multiple times for each brand. Arduous, I tell you!

But thanks to my tremendous sacrifices, a pretty good article was born. I can’t claim that I made it to ever possible Irish whiskey in the $20 range, but I did cover six good ones. Here’s a peek:

There was a time not all that long ago when Irish whiskey was the most popular liquor in the world. Sadly, a number of factors – including two World Wars, the Irish War of Independence, Prohibition in the United States, and Irish distilleries’ refusal to accept the speedier production capabilities of the Coffey still – led to its downfall. Today, only three distilleries remain in Ireland, responsible for all of the Irish whiskey featured in this article, and all that can be found on liquor store shelves across the world.

But after decades of struggle, Irish whiskey is making a comeback in the United States and abroad. The number of brands is growing and stores are stocking more and more varieties. Best of all, Irish whiskey is still inexpensive compared to scotch or even most bourbon of similar quality. Basic, blended whiskies from Ireland are perfectly drinkable, even neat, and can be had for eighteen to twenty-five bucks a bottle.

You can read the whole thing over at Primer!

They’re celebrating James Bond’s fiftieth anniversary over at Primer this month, and I couldn’t resist contributing a cocktail article about arguably the most famous drink recipe known to man. “Vodka martini, shaken, not stirred” has been quoted countless times in the last five decades. But is the drink itself any good? And what about Bond’s original drink of choice, the Vesper?

Here’s a quote:

Bond’s go-to drink might be the most famous cocktail recipe on earth – or at least the most-quoted – but it’s probably not the best. Bond liked his martinis dry, which meant little or no French vermouth, and the switch from gin to vodka removed a whole host of botanicals from the equation. The shaken-not-stirred part? That won’t “bruise” the alcohol (which is nonsense), but what it will do is both dilute and aerate the drink substantially more than stirring. The funny thing is: this has a much more profound impact on a gin martini, where the aeration changes the aromatic notes, and the dilution has a noticeable impact on flavor. Vodka is made to be flavorless, for all intents and purposes; all you’re doing by shaking instead of stirring is reducing the alcohol burn.

You can read the whole article over at Primer!

A lot of readers are starting to report in that they’ve finished The Children of the Sun and so far the response is overwhelmingly positive! This is just a reminder that if you’ve finished the book and liked it, please please please go rate and review it. Doing so helps me move up the standings, move up in searches, etc. It really helps me immeasurably, and I greatly appreciate it!

Here are places you can review/rate TCotS:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• iBooks (note: you have to have iTunes installed to actually rate)
• Smashwords
• GoodReads
• Shelfari

Remember: you don’t have to have bought the book from a certain place to rate it there!

That’s right, I’ve released the third book in the II AM Trilogy 12 days early! You can get The Children of the Sun as an eBook or a print book (including signed copies) right now! What are you waiting for? Oh, a link? Here it is!

Note to my Nook fans: I’m very sorry but Barnes & Noble is taking forever to approve the book for sale. As SOON as they approve it, I will update the II AM Trilogy site with links (and post an update here, on Twitter, etc). If you want it right now, the standard Epub version or the Smashwords Epub version will work just fine with your Nook.