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What a week!  The past few days have been the reward that all writers work toward.

I spend a lot of time alone in a room with a laptop listening to the voices in my head.  Ha.  That's right.  Be afraid!  ;)

Now all of a sudden the December titles are real, actual books in real, actual stores -- and I'm out there, too, meeting new fans and old friends.  The process itself is long and slow.  That's not to say the work isn't enjoyable.  For me, writing is like playing both sides of a gigantic, involving, multi-level chess game.  I'm the good guys.  I'm the bad guys.  But the manuscript unfolds in increments over most of a year, followed by weeks of editing and rewrites and page proofs.  Every book is a marathon.

The funny part is that if you met me, you might be surprised to find that I'm a very normal, happy, boring family guy.  I've written this dark trilogy of sci fi thrillers because once you accept the premise of the books, that the only safe places on Earth are above 10,000 feet, things get tense in a hurry.  There's no way to write a Mary Poppins version of the end of the world, not if you're honest, and it was important to me to give the series as much reality as I could summon.    

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Author-turned-DJ Steven R. Boyett had a fantastic launch party event at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego this week on Tuesday, November 3, where he signed copies of both Ariel and Elegy Beach.

Fans lined up to have their favorite post-apocalyptic novel signed, along with the sequel fans have waited 26 years to read. Some even brought their original copies of Ariel, first published by Ace in 1983!
 
Boyett was thrilled to be in such good company--he'll be seeing some familiar faces at the LaJolla Writers Conference this weekend, where Mysterious Galaxy is selling books. Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore is beloved by both readers and authors who gather there to talk about the books, music, and everything in between, and once Steve got to talking about writing fantasy and DJ-ing Burning Man, there was no stopping him!

Check out some of the pictures from the event below:

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 Psst...going to San Diego for Comic-Con? Want to know where to find your favorite Penguin and DK authors (and editors)? Search no more! Here is our handy dandy sure-to-be-patented schedule of where we'll be, when. We don't have absolutely all the locations yet and some events are still being finalized, but hey, that's what the Comic-Con Events guide is for.

 This year you'll find us at three (count'em, three) different booths in the exhibition hall.

For lovers of all things Star Wars (and Marvel and DC), DK is located at #2913G, in the Star Wars Pavilion.

Our Young Readers division is at #2913R in the Star Wars Pavilion.

And you'll find your friendly neighborhood Ace / Roc staffers at booth #1117, where we'll have the most up to date schedule and we'll be giving away all kinds of samplers, bookmarks, buttons, and some truly capacious bags. We're right next door to #1119, home of stellar science fiction & fantasy / mystery / horror independent bookseller Mysterious Galaxy, where many of the Ace and Roc author signings will be taking place (and where there will be lots of terrific books).

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I've been thinking a great deal about urban fantasy tropes the past few months. Can you imagine what it would be like to live with a werewolf? Would he get mad if you insisted on cooking his steak? And what about the shedding? I´m thinking a new vacuum cleaner would be in order. You´d also need to put away the good silver forever. With a vampire, you´d have to keep blood in your fridge and see about finishing the basement, like, yesterday. If you were married to a fairy, you´d have to scour the house from top to bottom and get rid of the iron. I´m looking around my house, realizing it´s not very fairy-friendly at all.  No wonder I haven´t seen any since I´ve been in Mexico. -grin-

For the last four years, I´ve been immersed in another culture. In my daily life, I speak a different language. I do business in Spanish. If I order food, it´s in Spanish. Sometimes I find myself thinking in Spanish. I cuss in Spanish.  The folklore of Mexico is different, too, and it flavored my writing of Blue Diablo. (If you´re interested, you can find some examples here.) As I celebrate the release of Blue Diablo, I am proudest of the fact that I bring something new to the genre. Other people are already doing a brilliant job of exploring vampires, werewolves, and fairies (sometimes all of the above), so I wanted my contribution to the genre to be fresh and different. I´m delighted  to report that most of my ARC readers report they´ve never read anything quite like the Corine Solomon series.

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Ann Aguirre is our guest blogger during the week of April 6th. If you have any questions for Ann Aguirre, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information about Blue Diablo:

 "Gritty, steamy and altogether wonderful urban fantasy."-New York Times Bestselling Author Patricia Briggs

"Right now, I'm a redhead. I've been blonde and brunette as the situation requires, though an unscheduled color change usually means relocating in the middle of the night. So far, I'm doing well here. Nobody knows what I'm running from. And I'd like to keep it that way..."

Eighteen months ago, Corine Solomon crossed the border and wound up in Mexico City, fleeing her past, her lover, and her "gift". Corine, a handler, can touch something and know its history-and sometimes, its future. Using her ability, she can find the missing-and that's why people never stop trying to find her. People like her ex, Chance...

Chance, whose uncanny luck has led him to her doorstep, needs her help. Someone dear to them both has gone missing in Laredo, Texas, and the only hope of finding her is through Corine's gift. But their search may prove dangerous as the trail leads them into a strange dark world of demons and sorcerers, ghosts and witchcraft, zombies-and black magic...

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Far more than just a comic book collector's show, Comic-Con International 2008 held in sunny San Diego at the massive Convention Center was nothing less than a freewheeling, four day lovefest for all things comic, literary and fringe.

And luckily, I could count myself in as an attendee.

From a prime position on the floor, working in the Penguin booth to greet fellow comic lovers and readers, and to distribute some of our new reads and samplers, I was pleased to be in the middle of all the excitement, reveling in the spirit of community to be found there, gawking at the endlessly elaborate and clever costumed fans (one good looking Joker, Indiana Jones, and Cat Woman after another), and exploring aisle after aisle of offerings from small press vendors and artists-collecting a small mountain of freebies from the movie studios, networks, and the comic industry heavyweights present.

Posters, buttons, graphic novels, oversized bags and tees-my nearly bursting carry-on luggage was at the sheer mercy of its overworked zipper.

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Back home from Berlin, my vacation buzz is fading fast. I'm back at work, trying to nail together the thematic climax of a novella while fending off the attentions of two needy cats and picking up the threads of everyday life -- tax forms, a car that needs its annual maintenance check, grocery shopping -- you know the drill. At least I've got work to keep me busy; it beats the alternative.

For me, writing tends to be an obsessive process, coming in wild bursts punctuated by introspective silence. It leaks out of the time allocated for it and makes a sticky mess of my time management. Some other authors have apparently figured out a way to compartmentalize, but I don't work that way, and when I'm approaching the end of a project I tend to wander around in an absent haze, trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together in my head (or, if necessary, carve new ones to slot into the holes left in the puzzle -- after all, the pieces are all hand-made). I don't mumble to myself or trip over my own shoes, but I gather I'm quite bad company when I've got my head stuck in the engine compartment of a balky story; I can have entire conversations and not remember a word of them afterwards.

(My wife is forgiving; the cats, less so.)

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Berlin in the summer oscillates wildly between thirty degree heat and wind driving the rain horizontally across broad road and exposed platz alike. It's like Germany, but different: comfortably lived-in, extensively graffiti'd but basically tidy and sane, except for the football thing.

(We arrived near the climax of the European Cup, right after the semi-final that saw Germany trounce Turkey and go into the final against Spain. And the place went wild. Convoys of flag-flying cars and bikes honking their horns, crowds on foot shouting up and down the Ku'damm ... it's a potentially explosive mixture, and in England it would have ended in a riot, but in Berlin they just drank the bars dry and went home.)

I was there on vacation, so I'm short of publishing-related anecdotes to share with you. But it's hard to switch off the authorial observation engine (that keeps making notes and filing them away for future use), and Berlin gives you plenty of fodder for fiction. You can focus single-mindedly on relaxation and still find it impossible to ignore the urgent visions of a bygone century's futurism. Berlin is modern, by the standards of European capitals; it only really got going in the late 19th century, as the hub of a new empire obsessed with progress and competition. It's littered with the spoor of stale futurism, from the bizarre impaled geodesic dome of the Fernsehturm to the Bauhaus - archive. This is the country which brought us Vorsprung Durch Technik as a marketing slogan, where engineers list their PhD's before their names as an honorific, and the futures are never far below the surface.