Flametoad

When I get busy, Flametoad.com is usually the first to suffer. I had two major deadlines in the last week, so unfortunately that meant you readers were neglected. The good news is that with those two deadlines are behind me, I should be back in the saddle.

I have quite a lot to talk about. So much, in fact, that I’m not sure where to begin. I suppose those aforementioned deadlines would probably be a good start. As I’ve written in the past, the print edition of Last Rites of the Black Guard is being released next month. I had expected to be done with layout by the end of January, but illness and various other things put me about two weeks behind where I expected to be. It got down to crunch time though, and I finally finished layout on Tuesday. This was then followed by a few more days or wrangling with our printer to finalize our contract. All of that stuff should have been done in January, but I’m not the only one who has been terribly busy. At any rate, I was finally able to place the order for our proof copy on Friday, so that particular hurdle has been cleared. We should have information on the advance orders right around the time the proof comes in. Hopefully we won’t have to make any changes and we’ll be able to place the order right away. As it stands right now, we’re still in good shape for our March release.

The deadline for getting our proof ordered was followed immediately by a deadline to submit info on 12 to Midnight’s June release. Now that the info has finally been submitted, I am free to spill the beans on this super-secret project. We are publishing an anthology of horror fiction called Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX. We were fortunate enough to get Matt McElroy of Flames Rising as the editor, and we have several excellent writers who graciously agreed to contribute stories.  The pressure was in having to produce a book cover the same week as the final layout for Last Rites. I feel like the cover I came up with was fine, but given more time I could do better. I’ll be talking a LOT about Buried Tales over the next few months, so I don’t feel compelled to go into too much detail right now. It’s a labor of love, a dream come true, and a nerve-wracking experience all at the same time.

In other news, on Friday I finally broke down and bought a refurbished e-book reader. I went with the Sony 505. It was way cheaper than the Kindle, uses pretty much the same screen technology, and is compatible with the “universal” e-book format “ePub”. Honestly, I hope to upgrade to the new Plastic Logic e-reader when it’s released around this time next year, so I didn’t want to spend a fortunate on a device that I would be selling on eBay next year. Of course, all of this is dependent on my actually getting the thing. When I checked my order status later it said “waiting for inventory”. Apparently the online store in question had a rush of orders and sold out. Razzle frazzle! I’m really excited about getting my first real e-book reader. I hope it comes through!

In other, other news, I got pretty an amazing Valentine’s Day present from my wife– a new truck! Okay, yes we’ve been shopping for a new truck for the last month. But Saturday was the day we actually found one. Mrs. Flametoad wanted to keep her car, so that means I get the shiny, new (to me) pickup. It’s a 2007 Toyota Tundra double cab with the big 5.7 Liter V8 engine. It’s more truck than I need, but it gets better gas milage than my 10 year old F150, even though I’m going up from the smallest of the V6 engines they put in F150s that year to the biggest of the v8s they put in the Tundra. It’s also kinda nice having anti-lock brakes for a change. Needless to say, I’m really excited about my new wheels!