A Whirlwind Week: Tor.com, new interviews, reviews, and more!

It has definitely been a whirlwind of a week, ending with the pleasant surprise of staying in the top 10 in the first few days of voting at Tor.com for the Seventh Throne for Best Novel, The Seventh Throne for Best Cover Art, and An Island Sojourn for Best Short Story (from Dreams of Steam II).

I'll just quickly mention that voting is open until this coming Friday, and if you are familiar with The Seventh Throne, or An Island Sojourn, please take a minute to vote at the Tor.com poll site. Just scroll down the page and enter your vote like a blog comment, in a format like: The Seventh Throne by Stephen Zimmer for Best Cover Art, etc.

The cover art category is an interesting one, as you can judge the quality of cover art very quickly. In fact, here it is:



So if you haven't read the book yet, but think the Cover Art is a worthy candidate for Best Cover Art, please go to the site and drop a vote for just this category.


The link to the voting page is:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/01/vote-in-the-torcom-2011-readers-choice-awards


The past week contained a number of brand new reviews and contests, most of which are still active, as well as some new reviews of the eBook short stories recently released in the Seventh Star Singles line.

If you'd like to read a new review of all four of my new short stories, here is UK-based reviewer Daniel Cann's take on them:

http://www.danielcann.com/index.php/books/chronicles-of-ave-annals-of-the-rising-dawn

Here's a little recap of some of the blog sites with interviews and contests:

Edi's Book Lighthouse
Eva's Sanctuary
A Book Vacation
SciFi Guys
The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia
I Smell Sheep
Ali's Bookshelf
Jess Resides Here


Every one of those great blog sites has a unique interview, as I do every interview from scratch. Check them, out and please bookmark and follow these great blogs!

With most of them it is easy to enter the contests, usually just involves leaving a comment. As of right now, I think only the Eva's Sanctuary contest is over. The rest are wide open. :)

I also have an update on the third Fires in Eden Book. I met with my editor yesterday afternoon, and I'm happy to report that she was extremely pleased with this book! She indicated that it delivers strongly on the things set up in books one and two, that the pacing is great, the new elements introduced compelling, and the copy was clean. I was extremely happy to hear this, as I've been working very hard to bring you the best Fires in Eden book yet!

This week will be a busy one, with a bookstore appearance next Saturday in Horse Cave, Kentucky at Two Bears and a Dog Books, a great independent bookstore. I'll blog more about this visit next week, but it will be a mid-afternoon appearance, covering the times of 12 to at least 3pm.

Thank you again to all who have taken the time to vote in the Tor.com 2011 Reader's Choice Awards! I'll be checkin' in again soon!

Voting Open on Reader's Choice Awards-The Seventh Throne Eligible

The Seventh Throne is eligible for the Tor.com Reader's Choice Awards Best Novel and Best Cover Categories!

This is just a note to let you all know that the 2011 Reader's Choice Awards at Tor.com are now up for voting. My novel The Seventh Throne (Book Three of The Rising Dawn Saga) is eligible for the Best Novel and the Best Cover categories. I also have a short story eligible, "An Island Sojourn" in Dreams of Steam II: Brass and Bolts.

I want to make sure my readers know about the contest, and if you feel inclined to vote, all you have to do is scroll down the page on the Tor.com site to the Post Comments and put in the book title/name and category.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Click on this link to go to the voting page:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/01/vote-in-the-torcom-2011-readers-choice-awards#

Traveling Adventures to the Edge of South America

Been writing, working hard, and doing a little travel, so this is going to be a pretty big post. LOL Well, what do you expect from an epic fantasy author, other than an epic-scale post, right?

So, the new year has hit the ground running, but I'm going to back up just a little bit.

I got a nice surprise from my mom, along with my sister, in the way of a trip that took us to Panama, Costa Rica, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, and across Carribean waters over the holidays. The weather was certainly a lot warmer than it has been at home in Kentucky.

I love traveling, and this was my third trip to this region in the last five years, added to a trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Alaska. I've always felt that travel is of great benefit to writers, and I find myself drawing off of my international experiences all the time.

Going through the Panama Canal was a real amazing experience, seeing how the locks work, getting a sense for how it operates, and getting a good feel for the size of it. They are in the midst of building some new locks/gates at the moment, so there's a great deal of construction going on, but the operation is really impressive.



Furthermore, I got to have a spider monkey on my shoulder. Friendly little fellow who stood still for some pics too!





Costa Rica was, as I imagined, beautiful. I got to go into a rain forest and kept imagining velociraptors (as one of the Jurassic Park Movies was shot in Costa Rica, LOL). Got to see a noble sloth, howler monkeys, and all kinds of fun stuff. Really beautiful country and the people there were super cool. One thing I found funny was the popularity of Axel Rose. We got told that many people in Costa Rica have named their boys Axel after the Guns and Roses lead singer! LOL Guns and Roses must be big all through Central America, as they were the only rock band being displayed in some t-shirt shops we saw in Panama, haha.



I absolutely love the Carribean Islands. Always have found the people living there to be super friendly. There's a really laid back air to things around there. I've been to a large number now, including St. Martin, St. Thomas, Tortola, Barbados, Dominica, Grand Turk Caicos, and others, but I have to say that my fav is still Dominica.

Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire all had a different feel to them than many of the other Carribean islands. Less rainy by fair, with a more arid type of environment (Cactus plants are everywhere), they sit below the hurricane belt. We encountered perfect weather on all three of them. They are all largely their own countries, having gained varying degrees of independence from Holland (these were once part of the Netherlands Antilles).



As you probably know from my posts and updates, I have the 4 new short stories out now in the Seventh Star Singles line, 99 cent eBooks that are affiliated with the various authors' novel series. I have three in the Chronicles of Ave, which go with the Fires in Eden Series, and I have one in the Annals of the Rising Dawn, which goes with the Rising Dawn Saga. I'll probably do a series of posts about the stories individually so I can put them each in the right context.

The latest Fires in Eden book is in the edit phase, and I really think those of you who are reading this series are in for a very special installment. I'll be talking a little bit more about this new one in the coming months, but wanted you all to know where things are at with it.

I'm doing only a couple of January appearances, and then in February doing 2 conventions, with ConNooga and MystiCon, before a very busy March as the convention circuit kicks in full gear.

Going to be a very busy time, but I will be keeping you all posted. Expect a few more eBook short stories too...including some in the horror genre! :) more on that very soon....