Here’s the latest version of the cover for The Children of the Sun. Really coming along!

In other awesome news, I am ahead of pace on the second draft and expect to have it all finished and sent off to Lauren by the end of the weekend!

Whoah, it’s been way too long since I updated this here blog. The good news is: that’s because I’ve been hammering away at The Children of the Sun! Between that and my full-time job, I just haven’t had a ton of time for the peripheral stuff. I have been posting to my facebook page, though, so if you’re into that sort of thing you should go “like” me so you can get those updates! In the meantime, here are some updates on various projects:

The Children of the Sun

Man, this book is a beast! There’s just so much stuff that happens. I think you guys will like it and come out feeling satisfied at the end, but it’s hard to tell when I’m in the midst of the drafting process. On that note, I have trimmed an amazing amount from the first draft, almost 25,000 words, with more to go. I basically went in and did massive surgery, first, before I started the second draft. This left a lot of gaping holes that need to be sewn up (I literally deleted two entire chapters and also nuked a character from the book), but trust me: the resulting book will be leaner, meaner, and a better read. It’ll also focus more on Two, which is good since she’s the star!

I’m more than 65,000 words into the second draft now, and humming along. Every time I finish a chapter, I spend the next day going through it and then send it off to my editor, Lauren. This will let her get started on the easy stuff (punctuation, grammar, typos), and then when she has the full manuscript in hand she can help with things like flow, consistency, and outright story errors. She’s good at that stuff, which is an immense relief when you’re working on a massive novel and are no longer sure that what you’re writing even makes sense!

I’ve set some very aggressive word goals for myself for July. I don’t know if it’ll QUITE be done by the time I head for France in August, but that’s OK … long plane rides are a great excuse for writing. I’ll be posting progress updates here more frequently moving forward. Also, Karla‘s cover is coming along beautifully and I’ll be posting more images soon! She’s way past the sketch seen above.

The Broken God Machine

Well, the good news is: The Broken God Machine is out there in the big, scary world of agent submissions. The even better news is: it’s already had a bite. An agent for a prominent New York firm requested the full manuscript and is reading it over. Additionally, an editor at St. Martin’s Press (a division of Macmillan) is taking a look as well.

Now, the most likely result is that both of them pass on it — that’s just the way it works. But still, it’s pretty great to be getting some interest. Should be hearing back from one or both of them pretty soon. Wish me luck!

Non-Fiction Work

I’ll be doing some more cocktail articles this summer. I’ve got one already submitted to Primer that chronicles the history of the Daiquiri. After that will be a Tiki Drink roundup, and then a history of the Margarita. I’ll be posting here as the articles go live. I also am doing some spirits reviewing over on my Tumblr.

More coming soon. Stay tuned!

Well, it took a lot of time and hard work, but Blood Hunt has officially been released on time (actually, it was available a few days ahead of time on a couple sites). I’m incredibly excited to have this book out there and I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on it. I think it’s a better book overall than TBTB, and I hope you all will too!

Complete information can be found on the brand new II AM Trilogy website, but here’s a quick eBook availability list:

• Kindle – Available
• Nook – Available
• Smashwords – Available
• iBooks – Available
• Sony – Coming Soon
• Kobo – Submitted. Coming Soon
• Diesel – Coming Soon

Note: Smashwords has formats that can be read by the Sony and Kobo readers, so if you have a PC-to-device cable, you can buy the book from Smashwords and not have wait!

The book is also available in print from CreateSpace, and soon from Amazon. Also for a limited time I am offering signed copies via the Blood Hunt section of the website. These copies come at no extra charge, but I do include shipping in the price.

The best thing you can do to help Blood Hunt succeed, other than buying it, is rate and review it anywhere and everywhere you can think of! There’s a complete list of places that it’s available for review in the Blood Hunt section of the II AM Trilogy Website, so please check it out!

Thanks again to my awesome editor Lauren and my awesome cover illustrator Karla!

Now to get back to The Children of the Sun …

Well, it’s been a busy August.

Blood Hunt prep reached a frenetic level in the past few weeks as I scrambled to assemble the various documents necessary to create the Kindle, Smashwords (who distribute to Nook, the iBookstore, Sony, and so forth), and print versions of the book. I’m pleased to say that as of today, there’s nothing left for me to do — it’s all in the hands of the people whose job it is to go over the book and approve it for distribution. I see no reason it won’t be approved by all of the above, and it should be available in most places on the expected launch date of September first. Awesome, right?

It almost wasn’t. Awesome, that is. It was almost terrible. I had a cover artist lined up and he started working on his illustration months ago, back in May. Unfortunately, something happened — I don’t know what — and he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I sincerely hope he’s ok, and I waited as long as I could to give him a chance to answer my emails, but eventually I had to move on.

Fortunately, I had spoken in the past with the very talented Karla Ortiz [blog], who was one of my finalists for the original website artwork job for The Blood That Bonds. I ended up going with Garry Brown, who has a more graphic style, for that particular project, but I thought that Karla’s painterly style (her fine art is magnificent) would work well for a book cover. So I sent her a desperate email, hoping she was both interested and available for some freelance work. It turned out that she was, and that she didn’t even mind the ridiculous, three-and-a-half week deadline that I was proposing.

I sent her some excerpts from the book, a couple of character descriptions, and a few other items and ideas I thought might help, and she got to work putting together some thumbnails — small, rough drawings of potential layouts. Here’s the original thumbnail that I ended up going with:

I made several suggestions to Karla about how I’d like to see the drawing evolve, and she came back with this second thumbnail, which I thought was pretty awesome:

Happy with that, we went to doing the full sketch, which is a more detailed line drawing that she would use to paint the final piece. Here it is:

It was at this point that I made what Karla described as “the most awesome request ever” — I asked her to not make Two too pretty. Karla is a video game artist and has to spend a lot of time drawing women who are supernaturally beautiful, and while I’ve always described Two as cute, she’s definitely not a fashion model. I felt it was important to contrast her a bit more against the exquisitely pretty vampire she shares the cover with, to show that Two is a human being who has not been perfected by decades of exposure to vampire blood. Excited to draw a “real” woman for a change, Karla went back and made some changes to Two, resulting in this sketch:

I liked that very much, and so we were ready to proceed to full painting. After a couple of days, Karla came back with this mostly-finished piece:

I thought it was gorgeous, and only had a few small tweaks (for example, mentioning that Two’s eyes are green). She also wanted to put some more detail into the hair, the background, and a few other areas. The final illustration looks like this:

Now it was my turn to do some work — I do my cover layouts myself, and had actually been working with Karla’s sketches and thumbs to block out the type the way I wanted it, so it didn’t take long to pull everything together into the final cover. Here it is:

And that’s the story of Blood Hunt’s cover illustration evolution. Huge thanks again to Karla for getting everything done in such a short amount of time. She rocks!

Oh, and who is that lovely vampire leaning over Two’s shoulder, who seems both ready to attack and yet oddly gentle in her touch? I guess you’ll have to read the book and find out.

September first. Watch this blog (and Twitter, and Facebook, and the website) for information on how to get it!

Well, speak of the devil … I post yesterday about how the proof is coming in the mail, and it shows up! It’s looking awesome, and I’m very pleased with the overall quality. The paper used for the covers is sturdy, the printing excellent, and everything looks very much like a trade paperback you’d find in a book store.

I need to make a few tweaks, resubmit the PDF, and re-order another proof, just to get things perfect. That means that I’ll have two proofs, so I’m probably going to give one away (signed and personalized) in a contest. More info on that coming soon.

Here are some pics. I included a DVD for size comparison!

I’ve finished up the PDFs for both the interior and exterior of the print edition of The Blood That Bonds, and sent them off to CreateSpace, the company I’m using for print-on-demand services. They’ve printed my proof and mailed it, and I should be receiving it sometime soon. While I’m pretty happy with my formatting, it’s unlikely that I’ve made zero mistakes, so I’ll probably have to repeat this process at least one more time, but we’ll see. The good news is: the book is really close to done, and will be available to fans soon.

I’m considering buying  a chunk of books myself, signing them, and making them available to people. If this interests you, you should definitely keep an eye on my writing twitter, and on the TBTB fan page at facebook for updates and info.

In the meantime, here are interior and exterior images for you to check out!

Oh SNAPS!

If I was rich, and I sadly am not, I would pretty much spend my entire day hiring artists to draw my characters. That and writing. And making websites. And probably playing some video games. Oh, and drinking bourbon.

So if I guess I was rich my days would remain basically the same … except for the paying artists part.

Times flies when you’re incredibly busy with multiple different projects, ranging from making beer to working on your next novel. There’s plenty going on in the literary world of Christopher Buecheler, though, and I want to make sure everyone stays up to date. Here’s the scoop:

The Blood That Bonds

I’ve chosen a cover artist for the Print-On-Demand version of The Blood That Bonds. His name is Adrian Dadich, and he is quite awesome. Look:

Please Note: This is not the TBTB Cover. Just an example!

See? Awesome. Also, my friend and editor Elise has already sent me the first chapter of TBTB, freshly edited, which I can now use to begin preparing the print manuscript. Hooray!

Blood Hunt

I’m still in the middle of a feedback round after finishing the second draft of Blood Hunt. I’ve already gotten a lot of useful thoughts from people, but there are still some more responses left to collect. I anticipate beginning work on the polish draft — the one that will get sent out to agents and publishers and such — in early 2011.

The Broken God Machine

I’ve finished all of my notes for the second draft The Broken God Machine and am about to begin active work on that project. I am hoping that I can make a strong push in November / December and finish it off before the start of the new year. At that point it may already be polished enough to begin submitting it.

Misc

I’ve decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year in favor of working on TBGM. Trying to cram a 50k-word novel in around my current other writing projects just seems like it’d be incredibly stressful and not at all fun, and if I’m not having fun doing NaNoWriMo, there’s not a whole lot of point in doing it. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a comback in 2011!