Updates and Newsy Things

If you pre-ordered the next novel in the Ascending Mage series (Ascending Mage 8: Arctic Front), you may have been surprised to receive a cancellation email from Amazon.

Upon postponing the release date for AM8–three times (whoops!)–Amazon made the decision to cancel the release and refund customer pre-orders. This is unfortunate for us and for readers, but within the parameters of their rules.

To be clear: we’re still continuing with writing Ascending Mage 8: Arctic Front (along with the rest of the ten-book series). It’s just now delayed to release in early 2021.

We know you’re eager to see what Ember Wright does next, and we’re eager to tell her story! Sometimes, the germination process just takes longer than planned.

Bear with us (lame pun intended, if you notice the cover art featuring Brevar, the changeling polar bear); you won’t have to wait (too) long for the Arctic Front to arrive!

All the best laid (pre-order) plans…

As the headline suggests, we’re delaying the release of Ascending Mage 8: Arctic Front…yet again.

We really dislike doing this, especially to our growing base of loyal readers, eagerly waiting the next story in Ember Wright’s journey of kicking ass. We’re sorry to make you folks wait yet another month!

I wish I could blame Covid-19 or the culture war or the other subversive events swirling around us like the opening scenes of a post-apocalyptic movie. 

The reality is that I’ve been distracted. Which, to a squirrel masquerading as a human, turns out to be easy to do.

Earlier this year, RaeLea and I planted 1,000 trees on our acreage outside of Bismarck (where we hope to build a home someday). Perfect timing, since it’s turned out to be a record drought for the county (can you detect the sarcasm?). It’s a four-hour round trip to FraeLea Pond and we’ve been making it regularly, in a desperate (and seemingly losing) attempt to keep those baby trees alive by weeding and watering them, which is a two-day affair each time. 

Because that wasn’t enough of a distraction, we also purchased a fixer-upper house from elderly hoarders. Before we can even start ripping out 1960’s wood grain paneling and repairing the leaky plumbing and faulty electrical wiring throughout, we’ve got approximately five bazillion semi-truck loads of trash to haul out to the city landfill.

Is anyone in the market for partially-decomposed taxidermy or worn out shoes, by chance? 

Anyway, the distractions are plenty and your writers are just undisciplined enough to let those distractions derail deadlines.

We’ll get this next story finished, we assure you! It’s just going to take one more month to make it happen.

Thanks for bearing with us!

And incidentally, you can still pre-order Ascending Mage 8: Arctic Front (and you always have the option to cancel the pre-order):

Saturday’s experience at the iMagicon convention in Minot, North Dakota was at least twice as active as the previous day. (Read our debriefing for Day One here).

We chatted with dozens of aspiring writers and earned some more readers. These interactions helped us refine our elevator pitch by observing reactions. The (current) best tagline seems to be:

Our stories are modern fantasy set in North Dakota, centered around Minot. 

As most of the convention attendees are from the local area, their eyes light up when they recognize sites around the area: businesses in downtown Minot, nearby small towns, farming communities, and local history. All of these very real places are woven into our fictional stories, making them accessible even as they add a sense of mystique to our surroundings.

It turns out, that’s exactly what our readers are looking for! 

While the iMagicon convention appeals mostly to gamers, we’ve been happy with the opportunity this in-person event provides us as we’ve refined the above “pitch” and connected with potential readers. 

I mentioned cosplay in yesterday’s post. Most of these costumes are homemade, and the enthusiasm these entertainment fans possess is infectious. While so many of us nerdy types are introverts, all you need to do is ask a cosplayer about the character they’re modeling, and the passion boils to the surface!

I even remembered to snap a few photos of these talented cosplayers today…

First up, we have a Valkyrie. This young lady built her costume from scratch (as with the others you’ll see here today). Each piece of scale armor was carefully molded and snipped and painted and glued.

Next up was a woman dressed as Hellboy. Or, as I told her as she walked past, “I love your Ron Perlman costume!” She had a good sense of humor and didn’t think I was an idiot (or she’s just a really great actress). She was happy to tell us how she built out the Right Hand of Doom, with individually articulating fingers (the middle finger, appropriately, preferred to stay extended while the other digits recoiled). For our part, we offered tips for removing oil-based body paint (I’m guessing she’s not going to use my suggestion of engine de-greaser).

As impressive as the Ron Perlman lookalike was, we were really blown away by this lady, who came with her own epic sound track playing on loop beneath her body armor. We heard her arrival minutes before she strolled down the aisle. She was, we were informed by another passerby, a boss-level baddie from a video game.

I’m now inspired to get my own sound track so I can announce my arrival in style. The armored skeleton dress might also have to figure into my evening wear somehow.

Badass as the above boss lady was, this insectoid-looking fellow won the day’s cosplay contest. Based on a Japanese anime character from the 80’s (or maybe it was the 90’s, forgive my brain for becoming mush), his power move was to unclasp his chest plates to reveal glowing pects. I suggested he could earn some impressive beads flashing that getup at Mardi Gras next year.

Even at a relatively small event such as iMagicon, an incredible variety of passionate creativity surrounds us.

We lost our virginity today.

You might be thinking “about damn time, loser.”  Or you might be thinking, “I’ve always suspected the 40-year-old virgin was real, and that you’d be it, Frank.”

Or, perhaps, you’re thinking, “Eww, gross. Too much information.”

But you’re reading this, so the click-bait headline must’ve worked.

You’re of course aware of Comic-Con, the global brand synonymous with gaming and comic book enthusiasts. You might be aware, too, of the many smaller conventions around the country modeled after that mega gathering. While we were aware ourselves, we’ve never attended one before.

Until now.

The iMagicon is a home-grown version of Comic-Con in miniature. It’s a celebration of the culture whose origin stories include superhero comics and console gaming. At these gatherings, devoted fans engage in cosplay (dressing as their favorite characters in movies or video games), compete in LAN parties, and meet up with like-minded friends.

Some of them even buy merchandise.

Artwork, custom-made mock-swords, and of course comic books are all peddled by vendors. We became aware of this convention when a local author friend, Bill Heinzen (if you’re into epic fantasy, check out his books), encouraged us to attend. We made excuses about being hermits and skipped last year’s convention. As we slowly built a small but loyal readership, we heard from fans who further urged us to show our faces to the public. “Your Ascending Mage series takes place in Minot, after all.”

Lobbying our egos, the conspiracy was effective. We registered for iMagicon 2020.

Of course, then the pandemic happened and the whole world went into synchronized lockdown. The convention in Minot was postponed to August, which brings us to today.

We didn’t know what to expect for our first convention, so we adopted the New Zealand tourism motto: “Don’t expect much; you’ll love it!” I’m told that’s not really their motto, but everything we know about the island nation we learned from Flight of the Conchords and The Lord of the Rings. 

Anyway, with that in mind, we were pleasantly surprised.

We were told by veteran vendors and convention organizers that Friday is the slowest of the three day event, so we were pleased to sell a couple handfuls of paperbacks on this first day. More than simply focusing on sales, however, we found this event thus far to be an excellent way to connect with readers in person.

While mostly a gamer-centric convention, a subset of iMagicon attendees are fiction readers–some of them voracious readers at that. Many of them are aspiring writers themselves. I found it satisfying to hear their enthusiasm when they shared their ideas with us and asked us about the writing and publishing process. Nurturing creators is such an important part of the process, after all.

Along the way, we may have earned a few new fans, too.

One gentleman downloaded our free prequel novel on the spot. An hour later, he returned, picking up a copy of Ascending Mage 1. He was, apparently, sold on our storytelling style. He returned later with a friend who he proceeded to pitch our series to. His friend listened attentively, read the back cover description, and bought a copy for himself.

Those are the kinds of experiences you just can’t replicate through Facebook ads.

As great as that experience was, the highlight of our first day was meeting existing readers of our series. Some of them had corresponded with us via email and social media over the past year. Getting to see them in person, to chat about our favorite TV series and authors…that was pretty magical.

Yesterday, we jested about the fantasy of being dragged away by fans wanting to buy us beer. Imagine our surprise when exactly that happened! Locals Paul and Shauna stopped by our booth and offered to buy us a beer. “Free beer” is one of the best phrases in the English language.

This lovely couple invited us to their favorite drinking hole: Ebeneezer’s, an Irish pub in downtown Minot. They had a corner table reserved where we joined them after the close of the vendor exhibits. We enjoyed Guinness (what else but Irish beer?) and a house specialty: bangers and mash. They turned out to be charming people who we’re privileged to consider our newest friends.

And that summarizes the benefit of attending a convention like this, as authors: it’s an opportunity to earn new readers and build relationships with existing fans. Book sales really just serve to subsidize travel expenses.

We may not have expected much, but we sure are surprised by the wonderful people we’re getting to meet!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Considering the lack of email correspondence from us and the fact that we’re all suddenly living in the early scenes of a post-apocalyptic novel, you would be forgiven for assuming that your authors were floating through the slimy Spirit World, evading blind giant squids and hoping for a certain heroic blonde mage to come rescue us.

There might be something to that, metaphorically.

The release of Ascending Mage 7: Prairie Poltergeist happened just as the pandemic brought about by the virus-that-shall-be-misnamed began to sweep the globe. RaeLea and I obligingly went into lockdown for six weeks (not a hardship for two wannabe hermits), tapping savings to pay the bills as we watched book sales dry up.

We had lofty goals, making use of this time in quasi-quarantine. Chief among them, Ascending Mage 8: Arctic Front would get teased out of our brains and onto the page.

Here we are in late August, and the release date for AM8 got bumped back to September 29. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Being a decent storyteller means being observant, which means being sensitive to one’s surroundings. This translates into creating authentic characters in realistic environments. It also means absorbing a lot of negative crap, too.

And let’s face it: 2020 has had crap to spare. Truckloads of the stuff.

It proved challenging to focus on creating fiction when the world feels, at times, like it’s crumbling all around us. I don’t need to recite the list of surreal events happening over these past five months. We’re all living it, after all. We can’t escape it, not really.

And yet…

Escapism is exactly why we enjoy fiction. It’s an escape from the toils of our everyday lives.

Fiction can be instructive as a sort of mental simulation for scenarios in life we (hopefully) won’t have to ever experience directly.

Though the way things are going, if a horned deity from Aedynar did show up on Earth and decided to set off a series of natural disasters, would any of us really be that surprised? It is an election year here in the United States, after all.

In other news, as you read this your authors are currently in Minot—yes, that Minot—setting up a vendor booth at our first-ever convention! The iMagicon Convention is going on from this Friday (August 21) through Sunday. Learn more on the iMagicon website. If you’re in the area, be sure to find us and say “Bloody Hell!” Or, you know, you could just say “hi”.

Here’s a glance at the display poster we’re going to have out in front of our booth. Does she look familiar?

We’ll be posting updates on our website at the end of each day—assuming we’re not dragged away by adoring fans wanting to buy us rounds of Shiner Bock. We don’t just write fantasy, we live it!

And for our part, we’ll try not to be such strangers anymore. 🙂