Sample Chapter of Child of Fire

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Here is the first chapter of Child of Fire. It’s under 5K words, and I’ll put the bulk of it under a cut to spare the sensitive and uninterested.

CHAPTER ONE

It felt good to sit behind the wheel again, even the wheel of a battered Dodge Sprinter. Even with this passenger beside me.

The van rumbled like a garbage truck, handled like a refrigerator box, and needed a full minute to reach highway speeds. I’d driven better, but I’m a guy who has to take what I can get while I’m still alive to get it.

The passenger beside me was Annalise Powliss. She stood about five foot nothing, was as thin as a mop handle, and was covered with tattoos from the neck down. Her hair was the same dark red as the circled F’s I used to get on my book reports, and she wore it cropped close to her scalp. It was an ugly cut, but she never seemed to care how she looked. I suspected she cut it herself.

She was my boss, and she had been forbidden to kill me, although that’s what she most wanted to do.

Continue reading

Here’s a list of things I did not intend to spend two full days on:

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1) Migrating my profiles, files and settings from my old computer to my new one.

That’s it. That’s the list.

It’s weird to deal with computer problems. For me, at least. It just sucks the life right out of me. I want the magic box to keep doing magic, and I feel so betrayed when it fails.

Cross your fingers for me.

Busy busy busy

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Things are still crazy here in me-ville. I have so much crap to take care of, and no time to do it all.

Still, there’s always time for health care reform links: Just because we have really successful government-run programs doesn’t mean the government is able to run a program successfully.

More interesting commentary to come.

Riddle me this, Mac Users!

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Does anyone know what to do with applications that simply won’t start? I click on something in, say, a finder window, the correct icon appears in the dock, bounces two or three times as though it’s going to start up, then shrinks down to nothing.

I have an application that I need to use, and it’s one of the ones that doesn’t works. I don’t even know if it used to work, because I’ve never tried to open it before. FWIW, I’m using a Mac Mini G4 with 1.4 Ghz and 512 MB RAM. The program that won’t open (iCal) came with the computer.

I’ve already tried repairing disk permissions and I’ve reinstalled the bundled software from the installation disk. Am I missing something?

Yay! Starred review in PW!

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Child of Fire just got a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Here it is, reprinted via them.

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STARRED REVIEW: Child of Fire Harry Connolly. Del Rey, $7.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-345-50889-8

Connolly’s gritty urban fantasy debut is not so urban: it takes place in Hammer Bay, Wash., where residents are thankful for the toy factory that stimulates their economy and are apparently oblivious to the frequent magical immolations of local children. Convicted felon Ray Lilly works for the mysterious Annalise Powliss and the Twenty Palace Society, hunting down people who use magic and the otherworldly predators whose power they channel. Callous Annalise and hard-nosed Ray have a complicated personal history that gradually comes to light as the Society faces off against factory employees, local law enforcement and other corrupt forces in the town. Unique magical concepts, a tough and pragmatic protagonist and a high casualty rate for innocent bystanders will enthrall readers who like explosive action and magic that comes at a serious cost. (Oct.)

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Holy crap, what a tremendous relief that is. Please do well, little book! Find lots of readers!

Mementos

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I brought some things back from the San Diego Comic-Con that I probably shouldn’t have: the folded cardboard name “plate” (what are those things called, anyway?), the program, the souvenir book, and so on. I couldn’t just toss them away, so I packed them in my luggage and now… here they are.

Thing is, I don’t have a place for them. And I won’t look at them again later, not really. At the moment they’re just sitting near my desk, getting in the way.

I couldn’t just throw them out, but now that I brought them home I resent them a little.

More pages to be done today.

this is not a subject line

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Finished today’s work and yesterday’s, too. The book wants to be written now, and is helping me push it along.

I also “finished” some promotional stuff Del Rey asked me to do for Child of Fire, for certain values of “finished” that involve another read-through to polish it up.

I was supposed to also work on Cool Thing That Would Be Awesome If It Worked Out, but time has already left, and so must I.

Books I have read. Books I will read.

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First things first: I’m not usually a fan of Megan McArdle’s political blogging, because it often seems like a triumph of preconceptions over evidence.

However! This interview with Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth, is pretty interesting stuff. I wish I’d seen it before I hit the bookstore today.

What’s that, you say? Bookstore? That’s right. I was about 12 pages from the end of The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay and it was so freaking good that I had to rush out and buy the next two, just in case they vanished from the bookstores or something. Now that I own them, I can read them at leisure (which means: right away).

I also bought Breakthrough Rapid Reading and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Speed Reading (because I’m a complete idiot). I’d tried to read the former once before, but I borrowed it from the library and I had to–no joke–return it before I was done. No, really, I’m not kidding.

I think, in an effort to embarrass myself into learning to read faster, I will blog about my attempt to learn speed reading. Nothing like a little humiliation to goad the lazy.

You know what I need?

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Organization.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been writing a book and I had to stop myself with a Wait a minute. What car is [protagonist] driving?

Because he has his own, but sometimes he’s forced to leave it somewhere and “borrow” someone else’s. Has he gone back for his little Ford or is he still driving that stolen Land Rover?

And what about cell phones? I know he ditched his early in the book, but he stole one, didn’t he? And his boss gave him a new one. Has someone else taken it from him since then?

I don’t even want to start on guns.

I need a simple way to keep track of the things Ray carries in his pockets. I could leave a separate file open on my desktop with a running tally of the things he’s picked up and discarded, but I know myself: I’d forget. What I need is bookmarks or footnotes or something.

Also, I’m planning to write an essay for John Scalzi’s “Big Idea” series, centering on Al Held’s painting “The Big N”. Lots to do and so little time.

OMG

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I hate Microsoft Excel so much.