This Wednesday, at the World Fantasy Convention, I’ll be presenting a two-hour workshop on writing query letters. I did this same workshop at LTUE in February, and it was very well received. February’s class was in person, of course, and this week I’ll be teaching via Zoom.
This is not a theory course or a lecture, participants should come with writing material and expect that they will emerge from the two hours with a written query letter and a knowledge of what to do with it next.
Elder Nick Benson, from Blackfoot, Idaho, introduced me to the idea that you could make your own barbecue sauce. We were in Brescia, Italy, in 1993, and barbecue wasn’t exactly to be found on the shelves at the time. On the other hand, you could find Coca-Cola. Also, we had ketchup — I don’t remember whether that came from the local grocery store, or if someone had picked it up at the Air Force base nearby and given it to us. In any case, those two ingredients became the sauce that we basted over chicken and thick-cut, oven-roasted potatoes, to feed to our congregation. I’ve been making BBQ sauce that way since, when I want to slow-cook meat, except now I also add rum.
Add pepper, boil a long time. Pro tip: the Coke pours out a lot faster if you punch a second hole in the top.
There are places and institutions that exist persistently in my dreams, in significantly different form from how I actually experienced them. One of them is our house in Idaho. In my dreams, but only in my dreams, we remodeled the house, switching the master bedroom from one end of the house to the other and then extending the house out the back.
I am thinking of this because I dreamed of that house last night. In my dream, I was in the area, so Emily messaged me that she had realized he had left a quilt at the Idaho house, so I should go ask to get it back from the new owners. I met one of the new owners (the husband of the couple), and he was willing to give me back the quilt–for a price. I negotiated hard and got him down from $50 to $9.
But because he insisted I pay him for what was mine, I decided not to tell him the secrets about the house that I had planned to share… like the secret rooms over the master bedroom, which they still had not discovered.
I’ve dreamed of the Idaho house before. The dreams are different, but in the dreams, we always expanded that house, which in real life, we never did.
The OFFICIAL deadline for submissions has passed.
If you and I already talked about having extra time or a later deadline, no worries, keep working.
If you’re close, and still want to submit, message me and let me know. We’ll give you a few more days, no problem.
But the main update is this: we received a huge number of excellent submissions. We’re very excited.
As you may know, my novel CITY OF THE SAINTS is an action adventure steampunk romp set in a steam-powered Kingdom of Deseret in the year 1859. Someday, I will revisit that specific setting. In the meantime, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be co-editing with James Wymore an Immortal Works anthology of Mormon Steampunk. See below:
PRESS FORWARD, SAINTS
Call for Submissions
Immortal Works (editors James Wymore and D.J. Butler) hereby call for submissions for an anthology of MORMON STEAMPUNK to be called PRESS FORWARD, SAINTS.
Here is the deal:
1. The writer’s religious affiliation is completely irrelevant. We don’t care; we don’t even want to know. I really want to emphasize this point. This is not an anthology for Mormon writers only.
2. The story does not have to be set in any particular world. The story must be in some sense “Mormon” and in some sense “Steampunk.” We’ll try to interpret those categories both broadly.
3. If your story is faith-promoting (Mormonism is “true” in the story), we’ll stop reading it. If it is mean-spirited (Mormons are all idiots), we’ll also stop reading it.
4. Stories should be at least 2,000 words long and generally no more than 8,000 words.
5. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2018.
6. Authors will not receive up-front payments. Authors will share in the revenues from sales of the book over time and will receive one (1) complimentary author copy.
7. Send submissions to david.john.butler (at) hotmail.com. Include the words “PRESS FORWARD SAINTS SUBMISSION” in the subject line.
If you watch my Twitter or Facebook feeds at all, you know that back in August and September I recorded a music CD. This is me (mostly), performing the songs and other music in my epic fantasy novel WITCHY EYE. Jumping through the Createspace / Amazon hoops to get this album available has been surprisingly tedious, but it is now done!
Here, first of all, are the “onliner notes” (yeah, I slay myself) for the the album, including lyrics and even guitar chords!
Here is the Amazon page. Man, is that not the most low-frills landing page you have ever seen? I’ll have to figure out how to get a cover image there, at least.
Here is the Createspace page, if for any reason you prefer to buy through them.
Oh, and yeah, I added it to my LinkedIn profile. I am a folksinger now.
A word about price. The minimum list price I could set for the CD and still distribute through Amazon is $9. I chose $10, because Dan Dos Santos, the cover artist, let me use the Witchy Eye cover art on the album, and didn’t charge me for it up front. But we agreed if I sold a bunch of copies, I’d pay him for the rights out of the profits… so it’d be a cheat to sell it for no profit.
Frankly, I’m not trying to make more money for me with this CD… I’m trying to give you more Witchy Eye. Plus, it’s fun!
The crone fixed her yellow eyes on Gnat, and suddenly she spoke in English. “Baroness De Minimis,” she croaked, in a voice that sounded clogged with mud and twigs. “My young men will give you safe passage. You should not expect that this means peace between our peoples.”
Gnat showed no reaction to this sudden speech, though Sal took two steps back in surprise. “Your folk are relentless and hungry.”
“And your folk are delicious.” The old ghoul laughed suddenly, showing yellowed and broken teeth, but still enough sharp points to tear flesh when she needed to.
(From my WIP, THE LIBRARY MACHINE (third and last book in The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)).
I’ve been in Houston and in Fort Worth in the last two weeks, hitting a variety of bookstores to meet staff and sign stock. This week, I finish my tour of Texas by tagging along with Larry Correia as his opening act for the signings of his most recent Monster Hunter International book. Come see me at any of the following:
August 1, 5:30 pm – THE TWIG, San Antonio (with Larry)
August 2, 7:00 pm – HALF PRICE BOOKS, Austin (with Larry)
August 3, 2:30 pm – MONKEY & DOG BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, Fort Worth (solo)
August 3, 7:00 pm – HALF PRICE BOOKS, Dallas (with Larry)
At all of these, I’ll play a song or two, read, sign books, and hang out. Come see me / us!
As this post publishes, Christopher Husberg and I should be nearing Las Vegas on the first leg of our world tour, reading from and signing copies of our epic fantasy novels. Okay, “world” is an exaggeration, but “the west coast of the US” is not.
Here are our scheduled stops (all times are in local time, mostly Pacific), including links to event pages on Facebook and elsewhere:
July 10, 7:30 pm — MYSTERIOUS GALAXY in San Diego, CA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1904908309778387/
July 11, 7:00 pm — BORDERLANDS in San Francisco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1060968547370107/
July 12, 3:00 pm — READER’S GUIDE in Salem, OR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/124617148116263/
Eventful: http://eventful.com/salem/events/dave-butler-and-chris-husberg-book-signing-/E0-001-103468436-4
July 12, 7:00 pm — THE BOOK BIN in Salem, OR
Here’s the Facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1412468238845837/
July 13, 7:00 pm — POWELL’S at Cedar Hills Crossing in Portland, OR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/168827533651515/
July 14, 7:00 pm — UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE in Seattle, WA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1893171527638715/
July 15, 7:00 pm — REDISCOVERED BOOKSHOP in Boise, ID
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1075679579231735/
Blog: http://www.rdbooks.org/event/david-butler-christopher-husberg
Whew, that’s it!
We hope to see you! We’ll read, sing, sell, sign, talk, and generally make merry at every stop. On top of the scheduled stops, we’ll be opportunistically looking to hit other bookstores along the way, and as we find copies of our books in other stories and sign them, we’ll tweet the location for your convenience.
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