Cool news from Chris

As I hinted earlier, there is indeed nifty news from the office upstairs (literally, I work in a converted garage, she works in the attic). My wife (Christina York, for those that didn't know) has just been offered an ALIAS novel! The title (at least on the proposal, and so far nobody suggested changing it) is Strategic Reserve. It's scheduled for release March of next year, so she'd better get writing!

Congrats, sweetie. I love you, and I'm darned proud of you!

Conan Book Three turned in

I've (finally!) turned in the third book in my "Age of Conan" trilogy, to Conan Properties. My thanks to everyone there, and at Ace, for their patience and support in what has been the most monumentally huge project I've ever worked on. I had no idea what I was signing on for here! I hope you'll all enjoy the finished result when they start appearing in stores this fall.

Completed covers with titles and copy and descriptions can be seen at the official site, www.conan.com

I'm now working on the plot for my second MechWarrior book, so I'm plenty busy the rest of the summer.

Also, I hope (knock on wood) to have some exciting news to share from my wife (and fellow writer) Chris soon.

Venom of Luxur - cover detail

Detail from the cover of "Venom of Luxur," artwork by Justin Sweet.

Reproduced by permission of Conan Properties International.

Venom of Luxur - Cover art

Cover painting for "Venom of Luxur," final book in my upcoming "Age of Conan" trilogy. Breathtaking artwork by Justin Sweet.

Reproduced by permission of Conan Properties International.

Heretic of Set - cover detail

A detail from the "Heretic of Set" cover by Justin Sweet.

Reproduced by permission of Conan Properties International.

Heretic of Set cover art

Cover for the upcoming "Age of Conan" novel (second in my trilogy) "Heretic of Set." Amazing art by Justin Sweet!

Reproduced by permission of Conan Properties International.

"Scion of the Serpent" cover art detail

Detail, "Scion of the Serpent" cover art by Justin Sweet.

reproduced with permission of Conan Properties International

"Scion of the Serpent" full cover art.

"Scion of the Serpent" full cover art by Justin Sweet.

reproduced with permission of Conan Properties International.

I've been sitting on this for a while now, but just got permission to release it. Cool, huh?

(Note added much after the fact: I was showing to someone at the local bookstore a couple days ago, and they pointed out something that I, and everyone else I've shown it to, missed in this painting. Look carefully at the background, and remember that this is about the evil snake-cult of Set. See anything?)

Age of Conan web-site

The web site for the Age of Conan, Hyborian Adventures MMORPG (to which my upcoming Stygian novel trilogy is a tie-in) has just gone live.

Lots of pretty pictures, web forums, press-material, and other goodies. Check it out.

Fortress of Lies German edition coming

The cover for the German edition of MechWarrior: Fortress of Lies, which will be out this fall.

New MechWarrior coming

Oh, one other development to report:

While I haven't gotten the contracts yet, I think this is official enough to report. I'm taking a two-book contract to produce two new novels in the new MechWarrior series. While I'd love to be doing a follow-up to my first MechWarrior book Fortress of Lies, the next book will pick up with a totally different group of characters. I'm supposed to turn the book in mid-summer, and I believe it will be out early next year. The second book on the contract won't appear until 2007, and I don't have a clue what I'll be doing yet.

But I have a lot of fun with the first book, and it's good to be returning to this universe.

Checking in from the mines

Book two of my "Hyborian Age" world-of-Conan trilogy, "Heritic of Set" has been turned in, pounded on (in a good way) by my editor, rewritten (mostly expanded actually, I added another 10K words), and turned in again.

I'm plugging along on the final book, Venom of Luxor. A life-threatening illness with Banzai, one of our two cats, has put me behind schedule. Fortunately, Banzai has taken a dramatic turn back from the brink, and is doing well this week. So is the book.

Back to work.

The Oscars with Howard

Steve standing next to the Howard Hughes's "Hercules" flying boat while attending an Oscar party being held there.

photo by Christina F. York

Tonight I took an evening off from the third Conan book to go with Chris to a special benifit Oscar party being held in honor of "The Aviator." It was held at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, about 50 miles from our home.

The Hercules flying boat is indeed a wonder. The mind simply has trouble grasping just how huge it is unless some point of reference is offered. When we first saw the plane, it was in the finally stages of assembly, and a workman was up on the horizontal tail, a surface that I'd guess is about the size of a tennis court. Every time he would walk to the edge of the tail so you could see him, the plane would seem to magically double in size. But when he walked out of sight, it seemed to shrink down again. The entire plane is a gigantic optical illusion.

Conan book turned in

I turned in the second book in my trilogy set in the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan, "Heretic of Set" on Sunday. Now working on the third book, "Venom of Luxur."

Three guys walk into a room...

(I posted this earlier today on the news server at sff.net, but I'm preserving it here for posterity)

Three guys walk into a room. One is a television writer, and the other two are science fiction writers who have been hired to help him on a genre project...

TV Guy: Okay, our basic premise is a love-triangle. There's this sailor who's in love with a girl. He's not much of a looker, but he's honest, hard-working and good-hearted. His rival is a mean, violent brute of a guy three times our hero's size, and this is a violent society they live in, so they have to fight for her attentions.

SF Guy 1: So he doesn't have a chance.

TVG: (Smiles) So you'd think, but...

SFG2: Does he have a laser pistol? Some kind of rail gun? Maybe a sentient sea-bottom mining robot as a sidekick who...

TVG: No, no, no, we don't have any of that high tech stuff in this show.

SFG1: I thought this was a genre project?

TVG: Well, it is, but...

SFG2: ...because the thing about visible light lasers is, they aren't actually great weapons because the energy doesn't penetrate and can be reflected. There are some ablative armor systems that...

TVG: No lasers!

SFG2: Sorry. What about the robot?

TVG: No robots. None. Just listen a minute. The little sailor is always able to beat the other guy in a fist-fight because...

SFG1: Is this a martial arts thing? Because I failed gym in high-school and...

TVG: (Sighs) No, there are no martial arts. Just old-fashioned, bare knuckled fighting.

SFG2: That makes no sense then. Because he's just a little guy, and this other guy is much larger. (Smiles.) Wait! The sailor grew up on a heavy gravity planet, right? Well let me tell you why that doesn't work either...

TVG: Both of you, just shut up and listen for a minute!

(Silence)

TVG: (Smiles) Okay then! Here's the twist. The little guy always wins because -- wait for it -- he gets super strength from eating canned spinach.(The Science Fiction guys stare in stunned silence for a while.)

SFG2: That just doesn't work. It's just -- spinach right? Spinach is good for you and all, but super strength?

TVG: We've got this great scene where he lifts a battleship and...

SFG2: No, no, no, that just doesn't work. There just isn't enough food energy in a whole field of spinach.

SFG1: Well with sufficient mechanical advantage and some very complex rigging...

SFG2: The friction in such a system alone would render it unworkable.

SFG1: Show me the math on that! Look, I've got five bucks here. Let's run up a computer simulation and...

TVG: Please, please! There are no levers. No rigging. He has super strength. It'll be a great scene. Very visual and exciting. And remember, this is really about the love triangle, so it's also kind of (grins) Freudian, if you get my drift.(SF Guys stare at him for a moment)

SFG2: He'd have to be converting the mass of that spinach directly into energy somehow.

SFG1: Does it have to be spinach? What if there were an alien plant...

SFG2: One that somehow naturally concentrates fissionable uranium...

SFG1: So he has a fission reactor in his stomach?

SFG2: Maybe just radiothermal, in which case instead of uranium you'd want...

TVG: It's spinach! Just plain old spinach! The kind you get in a can, in the store!

SFG1: Frozen retains more of its nutrients.

TVG: (Sighs) He is not going to carry a brick of frozen spinach in his shirt.

SFG2: Spinach gives him super strength?

TVG: Just go with that premise for a while, okay?

SFG2: Regular old spinach?

TVG: That's right. Just take that as a given.

SFG1: Okay, that's allowed. You're allowed one.

SFG2: So why doesn't the big guy get his own can of spinach?

SFG1: This isn't some alternate world where spinach is a rare commodity is it? He's right. The big guy could just get a can of spinach and beat the snot out of the little guy.

SFG2: Logically, he's bigger, he'd be even stronger, right? I mean, is this proportional to muscle mass or...?

TVG: It only works for our hero! Okay? Just him.

SFG1: So he's some kind of mutant then, with natural super-strength, but the spinach is a catalyst...

TVG: He's not a mutant!

SFG2: Okay, he's in the Navy. What if he volunteered for some kind of secret nanotechnology program...

TVG: Look, he's just a guy. It's just spinach. It only works on him. It's a simple love triangle, a classic rivalry...

SFG2: That's just stupid. Look, you've established a premise here, and the rules say you have to...

(Later that day)

A man and two women walk into a room.

TVG: Okay, our basic premise is a love triangle...

Romance Writer 1: Oh! That's great. I can see why they brought us here, Jill!