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Recent Reads: THE GREAT GODS
About twelve years ago, Daniel Keys Moran published a book for the first time in about twenty years. I spent hundreds of dollars to read it–I bought my first ereader to do so–and it was WORTH IT.
Last month, Dan published a novel for the first time in about, well, twelve years. This time I didn’t have to pay hundreds to read it because I already had an ereader, and also I subscribe to his Patreon (you can find him @FatSam) where he’d been giving us a chapter at a time over…IDK, a while, but actually most awesomely in the interim I’d gotten to be friends with him and got an advanced reader’s copy so I could read it all at one go in case I wanted to say nice things about it.
I did. :)
This is what I actually said, like, for quotage stuff:
I’ve waited twelve years for this book, and it was worth it. Daniel Keys Moran hasn’t lost his touch: The Great Gods is a homecoming for fans of the Continuing Time, and an engaging introduction to one of science fiction’s most fascinating literary universes for new readers. Not to be trite, but I laughed, I cried, and I’m going to read it again immediately to find the things I missed the first time.
Moran could write all 33 promised books of the Continuing Time and I’d still be left wanting more, but folks, this is a pretty goddamn satisfactory return to form!
—C.E. Murphy, author of “Urban Shaman”
All of that is entirely, wholly, absolutely true. I make no attempts at suggesting I’m a dispassionate observer; I *love* Dan’s books. They’re desert island books for me. Every few years I’ll look for something to read and I’ll start one of them because it’s a comfort read and then I have to read all of them (o woe is me!) and it’s lovely every time.
I cannot promise that everyone will like them as much as I do. And I’m coming with thirty years of history here, which means in my SOUL I want to tell you to start AT THE BEGINNING, or at least with THE LONG RUN, which is one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read.
If you liked it, I’d say read either THE LAST DANCER (which comes after THE LONG RUN) or EMERALD EYES (which comes before it). Emerald Eyes is…it’s worldbuilding, and it’s good information to have, but it’s not the most polished or cohesive of the Continuing Time stories. I haven’t read it in a while, and the last time I did, I seem to remember thinking it’s basically two different stories put together to be one novel. I’ll be re-reading soon and will come back to that thought if anybody wants me to, but anyway, the real point is that THE GREAT GODS is full of answers (or the beginnings of answers) to questions raised in the earlier books, so I think it’s worth reading in closer to publication order.
That said, I’m 100% sure it works the other way, too: if you read THE GREAT GODS first, when you read the others, they’ll fill in backstory for things mentioned in TGG.
Anyway this is all a very long way of saying I’M SO HAPPY THIS BOOK IS OUT AND YOU MIGHT LIKE TO READ IT TOO!!!! :)
THE GREAT GODS is currently available at Amazon. (I think it’ll turn up on B&N eventually and I’m trying to get him to put his stuff up on Kobo, so fingers crossed.)
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VERY BIG Walker Papers news!
So I have VERY BIG NEWS! News which you might have already heard if you follow me other places, but VERY BIG none-the-less!
I have gotten the rights to the Walker Papers back!!!
Now, I’ve learned that this is a degree of Writer Speak, so let me translate: I never *lost* the rights, per se. When a publisher buys your book to publish, they *acquire* the rights, which then can, after a certain period of time, revert to the author. It doesn’t happen automatically: the author has to ask, and there are generally a bunch of hoops the publisher can jump through to avoid returning the rights. In this case, though, they didn’t jump through the hoops, and just reverted the rights to me. I was VERY MUCH not expecting this, as I spent about fourteen years (not joking) trying to get the rights back to one of my series, and another is dragging through what I hope will be the only round of hoop-jumping.
But what it MEANS is that they’re fully mine to do with as I wish. What I wish is to republish them independently, and I’m pursuing doing that even as we speak!
I’ve just chosen a new cover model for a photo shoot to rebrand the whole series covers under, which is VERY exciting! I’m working with a couple of audio book companies to decide how we’ll be going forward with them available as audio books, and where. I intend to make print editions available, too, and all of this should get rolling really visibly sometime this summer!
I’M SO EXCITED!!! :D :D :D
P.S. a lot of people have asked, so let me clarify: this does not mean there will be new Walker Papers novels. Joanne’s story arc is done. It’s faintly possible that at some point there will be more books set in that world, but…not right now, folks. Sorry. :)
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Release Day: DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS
Apparently I have a BOOK OUT!
I legitimately thought DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS was out next Tuesday, but IT CAME OUT ON TUESDAY! Somebody tagged me on Twitter & I was like “oh they must have an advanced readers copy” and then somebody else did and then somebody ELSE did and I was like “wait” and APPARENTLY i have a BOOK OUT this week! °o°
DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS is available at Amazon || Barnes & Noble || Kobo || Apple now!
After a long streak of avoiding murder investigations, Dublin limo driver Megan Malone thought her life had finally settled . . . but even her Irish luck can’t keep her out of trouble forever.It’s been over a year since Megan found herself entangled in a murder—much to everyone’s relief, including her girlfriend Jelena and Detective Paul Bourke. So when a body of a young woman quite literally lands in her lap at her favorite Dublin café, Megan tries to do the right thing and leave the crime-solving to the police so she can enjoy the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. After all, she has no connection to the victim. Or does she?
Megan’s latest client, world-renowned romance novelist Claire Woodward, is fascinated by Megan’s own history of catching killers. Claire also just happens to be the murder victim’s literary mentor. So maybe Megan can just sort of stay on the periphery of the case while trying to help out? Just a wee bit without causing too much fuss? Even Detective Bourke would approve since he has personal reasons not to trust Claire. The investigation leads Megan to the victim’s writing group, who think that Claire has plagiarized the poor young lady’s work. And when another member of the group is found dead, Megan will have to step up her sleuthing before the killer decides to write her off for good.
This book has a lot of sentimental value for me. The cafe, Accents, was my writing cafe until it was a victim of the pandemic. I’d always intended to set the 4th book in the series around Accents, and decided I was going to ANYWAY, even if it’s not there anymore. At least it can live on in fiction. And the baristas lent me their names for the book, which was delightful and charming of them, so they, too, are immortalized in thanks for all the wonderful hours I spent there. ♥
A number of my writer friends also lent their names to this book, which made it great fun to write. I love it all so much. *beams*
DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS is available at Amazon || Barnes & Noble || Kobo || Apple now!
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a small Aldi accident
For Reasons, once a week I am stuck in an Aldi for approximately 90 minutes. Aldi, for those who are not familiar with it, is a German grocery chain that also carry Stuff. The Stuff changes twice a week, and covers a wide range of Possible Things You Never Knew You Needed, or sometimes, Things You Really Needed And Can Get Here At A Decent Quality And Fairly Affordable Price.
Normally I’m fairly brave about this situation and do not come home with Stuff, but I had a small Aldi (smAldi?) accident this week.
See, there was only one ultrasound jewelry cleaner left, and I’ve been thinking about getting one for ages, and, well, if I didn’t get it then clearly I wasn’t going to be able to, right? Right. So I had to.
In case you were wondering, my earrings are (after three rounds in the cleaner, and some scrubbing with a toothbrush) *very* sparkly. (They had not been cleaned in a very long time. We will not discuss it further.)
The Cute Yarn: there was only one package of this and someone had opened it and it in fact only had 4 of the skeins in it, possibly not even all 4 colors, but I found the others randomly distributed through the rest of the two bins the other (non “bright” yarn) packages were in, and I thought it would make a brilliant color-block scarf to go with the AMAZING wool coat that I, uh, do not fit in.
(In my defense, I ordered the coat from the States & was genuinely trying to buy it to fit me as I am, not as I would like to be, but I forgot sizes in the States run smaller, so…it’s too small. But not so much too small that I couldn’t fit into it if I did get to where I would like to be, so I kept it as #Goals. Plus sending it back would have cost a lot.)
There was also less cute but very handsome denim yarn that I didn’t take a picture of, but there was ALSO *DIFFERENT* cute yarn for making into silly hats, and…I was weak.
I don’t even knit that much, guys. *grimaces* And, like,yeah, I get that collecting yarn and knitting are two different hobbies, and in my defense I have a pretty small yarn stash (even if you include what I inherited from my mom, it’s not that big), but…it was really cute and suggested Specific Projects which seemed within my skill set.
Not the denim yarn, though. It had a Sekrit Hidden Patten which turned out to be for a shawl that’s way out of my pay grade. But who knows, maybe I’ll either learn, or decide on something else to do with it. :)
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triumph, of sorts
The past two months have been full of travel and sickness, not necessarily in that order. It has not been conducive to work, so now I’m stressed about that, but the only thing to do is actually get work done, and instead I’ve been trying to get my website a little more functional. I mean, it was functional, but there were some back end problems that had gotten to the point that I felt guilty about it, as I’d been coasting on the good will of friends for a super long time and am afraid I was causing them issues. So hopefully that’s been resolved now. It did not go as smoothly as one might have wished, but it went, and now it’s done. Triumph, of sorts.
Hopefully having dealt with that will leave my mind somewhat clearer for work, although the same could be said for a multitude of other long-delayed tasks that are cluttering up my mind and physical space and allowing me to distract myself from the actual job at hand. I recognize this is partially a case of “cleaning the kitty litter is more fun than working,” and that one way to solve it is to not work at home because there is no kitty litter to clean in a cafe, but of course that comes around to the irritating fact that I have a magnificent workstation at home and surely JUST USING IT shouldn’t be that difficult. And of course my beloved cafe at which I used to write was a victim of the pandemic, and there is no suitable replacement, so I’m suffering in that regard, too. *hand to forehead, etc, etc*
Right. Website dealt with. Off to do the next thing now.
