The first blurbs for BRAN HAMBRIC: THE FARFIELD CURSE have finally arrived! Blurbs, for those not familiar with the book business, are those prized and coveted reviews from Very Important People, especially reviewers and famous authors, that a writer receives about his or her book. These usually appear on the back of the book jacket.

Being a writer who has had a seemingly endless supply of good luck and an eternally wonderful agent and publisher, my first blurbs come straight from the bestsellers: KIM HARRISON and KAZA KINGSLEY.

Kim Harrison, bestselling author of The Hollows Series (with Dead Witch Walking), co-contributor to Stephenie Meyer and others on Prom Nights From Hell, and whose upcoming book Once Dead, Twice Shy is currently in my reading pile of ARCs, wrote:

Innocence gives way to danger as Bran pieces together his deadly past before his legacy can rise up to kill him in turn. With characters both silly and serious, Kaleb Nation has crafted a world vastly different from our own where magic sits next to cell phones, and gnomes really do travel. Reminiscent of Harry Potter, Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse is everything a young adult read should be.

Kim Harrison
Author of Once Dead, Twice Shy

Kaza Kingsley, bestselling author of the Erec Rex series (with Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye) whose latest book Erec Rex: The Search For Truth comes out in a mere 49 days, wrote:

Whimsy, magic, and suspense collide together in this breathtaking tale. The Farfield Curse is a story you’ll want to pick up, but not put down!

Kaza Kingsley
Author of the Bestselling Erec Rex series

I couldn’t be happier with our first blurbs and reviews of the book! They will soon be up on the pre-orders page and on the Bran Hambric site as well. There will be many more of these to come before the release on 9-9-09 (and perhaps a few… surprise… blurb-ers in the next month or so ). I’ll be posting them as they come in!

Also, funny how my first two blurbs came in from authors whose names also begin with the letter K. Coincidence? Or FATE.

37 comments »
Posted in Bran Hambric
Tags: Blurbs, Bran Hambric, Kaza Kingsley, Kim Harrison

Today I returned from school to find that my publishers have finally completed the copyedits for Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse! In publishing, a copyeditor reads a manuscript even deeper than a normal editor does, checking for everything from consistency mistakes to style errors all the way to the gritty commas and exclamation points (of which I had many). A copyeditor also helps me make sure that everything lines up perfectly, and really adds the final bit of polish to the book before it goes off to the printers:

Visualization for what Copyedits do

So, as today is Friday, and these edits are due on Monday, I am barricading myself in my apartment with the Lemony Snicket soundtrack, as much Anberlin as one soul can take, and all 115,000 words of my book. My goal: to attack it with as much ferocity as I can muster whilst living off microwave Mexican food and macaroni for two days and three nights. My editors left no stone unturned, as evidenced:

Copyedits for The Farfield Curse

Each red marking is from one editor, and each blue marking is from another. I have two days to read and approve each edit — and the photo above is just two pages out of nearly 400! (ADDED: It should be noted, however, that every single quotation mark in this entire novel had to be changed to a different style, so the majority of those marks above are from that!)

It’s actually one of the most important steps in this process. A copyeditor can’t even change anything in the story, but they correct so many tiny mistakes that even after years of my editing, most of the manuscript looks like the two pages above! I have to approve or reject each change to make absolutely sure that everything stays exactly the way I intended when I wrote the book.

In OTHER news, my friend Kaza Kingsley has her first two Erec Rex books being re-released on April 9! Kaza and I met just after I signed with my agent, and I saw her book EREC REX: THE DRAGON’S EYE at a local bookstore and decided on random to write to her. She replied to my email, and we became good friends over the internets (she later got me as the designer for her book’s official website!). By amazing chance, she later signed with my literary agent without even knowing, and he sold her series to Simon & Schuster for re-release. If you like books with epic quests and boy heroes and dragons, you should definitely check her books out next week!

By the way, I had to turn in another project for my photography class today! The assigned concept was to show motion with shutter speed, either by freezing it or by having a little bit of blur. Tell me what you think of these (click to see them bigger):

36 comments »
Posted in Bran Hambric, College, Writing
Tags: Bran Hambric, Kaza Kingsley, Sourcebooks, Writing

Alright people, I’m pleased to announce that I just received the official cover art for the upcoming Erec Rex: The Search For Truth, straight from my friend Kaza Kingsley herself! Take a look:

Right off from the front, I’m picking up on some clues. First off, this book has something to do with bees:

Also, if you zoom in on the title, you’ll notice something else:

Gasp! There’s a secret word hidden behind the title! It appears to spell out Trwyth!

Barring the possibility of a cover artist with terrible spelling and a bad eraser, I would be led to believe that this is a clue to something inside the book. Kaza also let some clues out as to what will be in the book in my interview with her a few months ago. The third Erec Rex book is set to be released this year on October 1st, and if you want to stay up to date, check out the Official Erec Rex website.

5 comments »
Posted in Authors
Tags: Erec Rex, Kaza Kingsley

I very rarely put up author news from anybody save for Stephenie Meyer (because obviously most of my readers are fans of her). However, this is something so superly awesome I’ve got to put up these photos.

If you’ve hung around this blog long enough, chances are you’ve heard about Erec Rex and his author, Kaza Kingsley, who I was lucky enough to interview a while back. Kaza and I are good friends and I just ran across these photos on her site of the Thailand launch of her series:

In this first one, Kaza stayed up around 4 AM to do a live teleconference with the crowd waiting to get her books all the way around the world (she’s on the big LCD screen). Those big letters are the Erec Rex logo in Thai. Check out the size of that mammoth display behind them that extends off into infinity.

People dressing up as Kaza’s characters. There are even more of these photos here. And Kaza’s got it all over at her site.

What’s more, Kaza’s Thai publishers have their own Erec Rex site up at http://erecrexthai.com . Although I can’t read it, I did scan through each page, and guess whose name came up in English on this page?

3 comments »
Posted in Authors
Tags: Erec Rex, Kaza Kingsley, Stephenie Meyer, Writing

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Lots going on:

1. Signed up a few new affiliates for the show
2. Got a new site for the show
3. Kaza Kingsley said she will be playing my Erec Rex video at schools coming up this year on her tour.
4. My first Izzy video has gotten over 4,000 views
5. My Man-gibon video has gotten over 1,070 views in 3 days, and I didn’t even send it anywhere.
6. My inHumanities test wasn’t half bad. Luckily I knew Frankenstein pretty well.
7. Caught up with somebody I haven’t talked to in many years
8. Finally heard a Amy Winehouse song other than Rehab. Bought it.
9. Cooked a roast and took video proof
10. Rearranged my room so my video camera has better lighting and I have an L-shaped desk. I call it the Studio. My roommates call it the Office.

I have a ton of photos and video clips of this place but I have to get them all together before I get them up, which will be after the math test I am dreading today. Writing and English is my strong subject. Math is not.

During a certain class, I am often distracted by writing in my notebook the latest quote from a certain professor. I ended up with a list that certainly won’t look like homework when he checks it. Example of something the professor has said: This formula is as useful as those movies about the woman who every time she sings the flowers grow and the ravens turn into robins.

Or: I much prefer addition over subtraction, because as my grandmother always said, addition is bright and happy like the sun, and subtraction is cheap and tawdry like the moon.

Or: If I am feeling really evil tomorrow, this will be on Friday’s test.

3 comments »
Posted in About Me, Authors, College
Tags: Amy Winehouse, College, Erec Rex, Facebook, Frankenstein, Kaza Kingsley, Magibon, Mangibon, Radio Stuff, Texas

Inspired by the famous Lemony Snicket’s “12 Books in 120 Seconds” and with a touch of near-midnight madness, I made my first video summary of a book. My first pick is naturally Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, by my friend Kaza Kingsley.

If you were subscribed to my YouTube Page, you had the special privilege of getting to see this 2 days before anyone else. I only spent an evening on this video but I do think it still turned out pretty good. I am trying out a variety of videos so I may be doing something different next…or another book review.

6 comments »
Posted in Authors, Videos
Tags: Erec Rex, Kaza Kingsley