Riff Trax Live – Anaconda! Plus the Trick-or-Treat Bloghop, Living Dead Girl, Alex the Author, and Ninja News

Riff Trax!

This Thursday, October 30 2014 is the next RiffTrax Live - the guys from MST3K strike at 1997's ANACONDA!
You can visit their site for a theater showing the broadcast, and if you live near Durham, NC, you can see it live. That’s right – time to hit the road north! I’m very stoked to see Mike, Kevin, and Bill do the show in person. I’ll give you a full review of the experience on Monday.

A Little Halloween Tune

Since it’s almost Halloween, if you’d like a little scary music while you read the rest of this post, just click play and enjoy Rob Zombie’s Living Dead Girl:

Ninja News

We are VERY honored to have million-copy NYTimes bestselling author, Ruth Harris, at the IWSG Site today!

The IWSG has also expanded with a second group on Facebook – the IWSG Critique Circle.

The aim of that group is to put writers who want to exchange critiques and find beta readers in touch with each other. And of course, there's the support and encouragement with the WiPs. So check it out!

Jeff Chapman’s Give Me Your Teeth: A Fae Tale comes out this Friday on Halloween!

Like most children, ten-year old Jimmy wonders where the Tooth Fairy keeps all those teeth.

He learns there's more to his mother than he ever imagined, and the Tooth Fairy isn't so harmless.

You can pre-order it now on Amazon.

Cindy is looking for guest reviewers for Good Book Alert. In return for a review, the guest reviewer will receive one guest post on the site. In both posts, your book/bio information will be posted as well. Visit Good Book Alert for details.

Sylvia Ney is holding a NaNo contest and giveaway – visit her site for details!

J E Oneil alerted me to this freaky story –

The ghastly Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, is a salt lake—meaning that water flows in, but doesn’t flow out, so it can only escape by evaporation. Over time, as water evaporates, it leaves behind high concentrations of salt and other minerals, like at the Dead Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Unlike those other lakes, though, Lake Natron is extremely alkaline, due to high amounts of the chemical natron (a mix of sodium carbonate and baking soda) in the water. The water’s pH has been measured as high as 10.5—nearly as high as ammonia.

You have to see the stunning images of birds turned to stone by the water at the Smithsonian Mag! In black and white, they are haunting.

And thanks to everyone who weighed in on Monday’s post - Are Authors Killing Blogging? There were some really detailed and thoughtful comments weighing in on promotion overload. If you missed it, go back and check it out.

Trick-or-Treat Book Bloghop!

Hosted by Patricia Lynne

The theme is EBooks are the Candy. We’re giving away books to one or more lucky commenters.

Hashtag #trickortreatreads

My treat for one lucky commenter is your choice:

EBook copies of all three of my books or

One print copy of your choice (CassaStar, CassaFire, or CassaStorm) with swag or

One print review copy of Dragon of the Stars (when available)

Just say Trick-or-Treat in comments to enter – winner will be announced Monday.

Alex the Author

Since I’m trying to put more of me here, I thought I’d give a unique run-down of what I’ve written. Some of you might not know what I write. Yes, it is mostly science fiction, but of the lighter space opera variety. (Think Star Wars.)

Sometimes it's wild to look back and think Holy crap, did I do that? This journey wasn't planned. I mean, how do you predict all of this - the blog, the books, the IWSG, the friendships? I'm grateful for the opportunity though.

CassaStar
The original version was written in the 70’s when I was a teen. Thirty years later, I rewrote it, and the story will always have a special place in my heart. Yes, this book started it all. I wouldn't be here otherwise.

CassaFire
Readers wanted a sequel. And a female character. (Crap!) Fortunately, I had a short story I could rewrite and I knew the main character well now. I wrote this during NaNo 2010. So if you’re participating in NaNo this year, if I can do it, you can do it!

CassaStorm
This story came from scratch and took me a long time to pull together. I’m proudest of this one, especially the fact I was able to write a convincing ten-year-old boy. (And I don’t even have kids!)

Heroes of PHENOMENA
I was invited to contribute to an anthology that tied in with a CD. I chose the song Drakon’s Empire and wrote a short story called CassaFate. I actually had to cut words to hit the 1500 word limit. (That has never happened before. Trust me!)

Indiestructible: Inspiring Stories from the Publishing Jungle
I was also asked to contribute to this anthology. I wrote a piece about the power of networking and having an online presence. (I sure as heck wasn’t going to offer any writing tips. I wanted to help not hinder.)

How I Found the Write Path: A Compilation of Letters
My letter was Prepare for Changes. Yeah, big time!

Overcoming Adversity
This book was a fund raiser for Andrew, who sadly passed away. My contribution was My Friends, My Heroes

Coming soon -

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond
Available this December, this book features over a hundred articles on writing, publishing, and marketing. So much good information! Ironically the word count is higher than any of my books…



Dragon of the Stars
Available next spring, this story is separate from the Cassan universe. I took the story idea of the song Dragon on the Sea by Ayeron and wrote my own. (I don’t recommend doing that, as a book is much longer than a seven minute song…)

Crap, that’s a lot! And I didn’t even want to be a writer. I’m just a dude with many guitars. And even more clones…

Anyone else seeing Riff Trax? Ready for Halloween? (Any other Halloween songs you’d like to suggest?) Did you go look at the Lake Natron photos? Did you say Trick-or-Treat? And are you as stunned as I am that a man of few words actually wrote all that…?

Don’t forget next Wednesday is IWSG post day!