Tomorrow is the Day

King Henry Price, honored and learned graduate of the Institution of Elements, has settled back into his normal life, running his Artificer shop, creating new designs, selling old ones, and ignoring the occasional explosion when testing goes haywire. He's been minding his own business...only when he happens across a bunch of bullies picking on a woman, he can't resist the opportunity to smash faces, can he?

King Henry never expected the bullies would be part of the Coyote Nation, he never expected that he could be starting a war, and he surely never expected one of his lost sisters would be on the other side.

Jordan Josephine Price...found you at last.

The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes will be released officially tomorrow, March 13th (I spit on you, bad luck numbers), though you'll probably be able to grab it later today if you check for it, since who knows how long Amazon's KDP will have something "in review" or not.  Probably not even the designers.

There's also some price changes going about.  The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady is going to be at 99 cents for awhile to try to attract every possible reader and...it will be having 4 free days from the 13th to the 16th!

Now I need to write the third one...

Cat Killing Coyotes: The First Sentence

Now that we're almost into March and the release of the book is fast approaching, I suppose it is time for me to start the promo, pump up, pimping posts again.

So here we go...first sentence of The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes:

There are days when I wake up in the morning and I just want to kill someone.

Release date is still moving around, think early April at the latest!

New Covers for FOUL MOUTH...again

It took four versions for me to end up with a BETROTHAL cover I can tolerate until I'm making the big bucks and can pay for true awesomeness on the artist front, so I suppose it's not really a surprise that I'm now on attempt number four with the FOUL MOUTH books as well.  This time, I actually like what I've done and I think they'll hold in there until the coming millions of readers actually find the series.

Fanged Lady:

Little King Henry:

We'll launch the Cat Killing Coyotes cover next month sometime in the pre-release build up.

Foul Mouth Second Drafts

All writers have different methods to get to the end of the road.  For me, the second draft is all about readying the novel for the rest of the process.  It's about coming back to the work with fresh eyes after a break, looking at it objectively, marking the parts where there can be additions, marking the parts that need rewrites, and removing the junk a first draft will always have.

1. Reverse Readthrough - I don't write Foul Mouth books chapter to chapter.  I write the "school" story first, then the "shop" story, and only mix them later.  When I start editing I put the emphasis backwards, starting with "shop" then going through "school", to try to balance the focus.  Usually this readthrough has some typos fixes, the occasional inspirational or clarifying sentence, but nothing large or earth-shattering.
2. Passivity - probably the most important part of editing, this is a word by word search of certain phrases that hold back and create a flat boring read.  I'm looking for "was", "wasn't", "weren't", "were".
3. Words That Suck - also a word by word search but here it's just my personal pet peeves, the words that the writing mind uses as a crutch but the editing mind should nix.  I don't like "thing", "obvious(ly)", "sudden(ly)", "because", "no doubt", "well", "stare", "smile", "mumble", etc.
4. "That" Edit - one word.  Often worthless and unneeded, get it out of there.
5.   Character Edit - For "Fanged Lady" this was focused on Annie B, only her scenes, trying to focus on her dialogue and focus on the scenes from her point of view.  For "Cat Killing Coyotes" it will be T-Bone.
6. Chapter-By-Chapter Edit - The first time I get to read the novel as the reader would, chapter to chapter, switching from "school" to "shop".  Here's where I mark addition places and rewrites for the third draft, probably more typo fixes too.

Foul Mouth 2's First Draft is Done

Talk about a weight off my shoulders.  Of course I had BETROTHAL even before I got around to FOUL MOUTH, so it's not strictly the sophomore jinx, but this was a tough one.  Mostly because so much of what's going on is set up work for the later novels in the series and the contained plots keep blowing up in our hero's face.  How does one write a novel about mistakes and failure without the novel itself becoming a failure?  It's a conundrum, but one I think solved.  There's a lot of great scenes in this one.  Maybe thee outright funniest scene I've written so far in my writing career.

Next up will be three to four months of editing.  Maybe one rewrite on a chapter.  Nothing huge.  Which means...May?  I guess.  Hard to have a firm release date as an Indie.

The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes, coming soon to a Kindle near you.

Reviews and More Reviews

A group of reviews came in for my books and since I'm trying to be lazy and not create any content for this website at the moment, here's some links for you lot.

THE BETROTHAL

Bee's Knees Reviews (5 stars)

With a quick-witted, laugh out loud, book you're bound to read with a smile on your face.

Miss Lynn's Books and More (5 stars)

If you like romantic comedies then you will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Butterfly-o-Meter Books (5 stars)

It's become my no.1 emergency read for those bleah moods, it's instant good mood.

THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY


Reading and Writing Urban Fantasy (5 stars)

The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady is now all cozy in my shelf of the top ten favorite books I have ever read.

Stories of My Life (5 stars)

I wasn’t sure of this book when I got into it, which only goes to prove how sometimes you just can’t go cover shopping: because, could you please say “LOVE” a little louder?

So far it looks like people like them.  The wait for the first dreaded One Star Review continues...

Where We've Been...Where We're Going

This has been a completely whirlwind year for me.  I started out thinking:  get published.  Even though I was interested by the new Indie movement, even if I saw the artistic advantages it contained and maybe even the financial advantages it might contain in the future, I didn't jump immediately into the pool filled with under-edited and badly-covered sharks.

I think some of the reluctance came from how much time I'd been building to the whole agent/publisher hunt.  I started working on BETROTHAL in May 2008 with that goal and suddenly it was January 2011 and it would take me a few more months to accept that the publishing world had changed while I'd toiled away on my first two books.  Borders ready to die, Kindle dominate.  Big changes in the air.

January/February/March wasn't a total waste.  Lots of good ideas sprang up in that period, first as short stories and eventually as novels I'll one day write.  It also saw me hit up many literary agency and short fiction magazine in futile gestures towards a dying paradigm.  It was this process itself that cured me.  That set me on my different new road towards becoming an under-edited/badly-covered shark myself.

The tradition route of Agent--->Publisher is the most chaotic...badly-developed...system I've ever seen.  By the time I actually sent out my query letters I was praying not for success, but for rejection.  If the query letter stage was that mismanaged then the rewriting and publisher seeking probably would have caused me to go brain dead.

As those letters were browsed and thrown away across the country probably without even a minute's examination I turned to this new invention and got to work.  I can't believe how artistically freeing it turned out to be.

In the last six months I've published two novels in two completely different genres, one taking advantage of the new technology in its footnotes and the other taking advantage of not having an editor tell me how many times I can curse per page or that I'm making the main character too rough.  I've published a short story which I'm able to give away for free to thousands.  I've published a novellete, the first of a series of serial novelette/novellas that also takes advantage of the new technology.

That's a hell of a year, but I've also learned a lot more:  I've learned how to make not-so-bad covers, I've learned how to use fonts and type, I've learned how to convert ebook files, I've learned all the joys of formatting, I tweet, I blog, I review in my own take-no-prisoners style and I've figured out the whole reviewer-blogger network...which, okay, reminded me a bit of the agent thing with all the different rules for requests, but don't tell them that.

Oh...there might have been something else going on that I don't talk about any longer too.

This is the proudest year of my life...but I've got a lot of life left in me.

What does RR have in store for you over the next few years?

Tons of stuff.

First and foremost will be The King Henry Tapes.  FOUL MOUTH 2 will be finished in the next couple months and FOUL MOUTH 3 is already outlined.  Actually the whole series is outline, if not chapter by chapter, then generally the flow of all 12 books.  Expect lots of King Henry Price over the next few years.  And Ceinwyn Dale.  And some T-Bone.  Maybe a little Annie B...

I've started a sequel to THE BETROTHAL.  I don't have a firm idea on when it will be done.  I'm kind of iffy on the sequel and while there's some Funny so far in the draft I have some fears for it.  Mostly I just saw a trailer for another "American Pie" movie and I really don't want to end up doing that...  If the sequel doesn't meet my standards I'd rather scrap it than just pump something out for quick cash.

EATERS will continue.  SLIME DINNER and SETTLE DOWN are already coiling around in my screwed up little brain.  There might be more after those two, one of the fun things about writing a serial is I don't write with the future, I just let to story go where it may.

Then there's the biggy, my first...I guess I'd call it more complicated novel.  We'll just call it CHAINS for now, though the title will change by the time it's done.  You'll hear more about it in 2012, for now, my plate is very full.

FYI, Little King Henry is Free On Amazon

"Little King Henry" joins "Prime Pickings" to be free on Amazon.  Generally these things run for about a month from what I understand, so get them while you can.  "Prime Pickings" should just about be up.

Little King Henry by Richard Raley on Amazon
Prime Pickings by Richard Raley on Amazon

The Asylum Map

I don't feel like it's really needed but some asked for it and here is a ultra quick paint.net created map of the Asylum grounds.  Not to scale or anything, but you get the idea where the buildings/areas are at.

Click to Enlarge

Anne Boleyn, Vampire Baroness

In the words of the annoying mancer giving her problems:

Anne’s head tilted from one side of her shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘B’ on her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through to me.

“King Henry Price?” she asked again.

“I already answered you.”

“I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly, aren’t you? Broken nose…so many scars. There’s nothing perfect about you. I thought with all the rumors about you being a hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.

“Women have no standards at all anymore. They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to ‘get to know people’ I think the phrase is.”

“Rumors…” I said.

I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup, she wasn’t there for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission? Could have worked for the government…but then maybe not with the clothes she was wearing. She might have been related to Welf too. All possibilities, none the correct answer.

“Look at his little brain go click,” Anne said. “So cute.”

I glanced at the ‘B’ one more time. “If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along my teeth.

Something shifted in her. The second gear that Asylum women have when they’re about you put you in place. “You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick your little ***. Understand, King Henry?”

Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who could volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of volunteering me without mentioning it to me? All of them. That didn’t help…

“Get out of my store before I build up the anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho *****.”

That’s when she punched me in the face so hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled with glassware.

Read more on Annie B in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Meet Tyson Bonnie, Electromancer

In the words of the only other Ultra in town:

“Yeah, yeah.” I put the box back under the counter. “Takes about two hours to full charge using static electricity, quicker if you find a piece of carpet and start rubbing your arm against it. Theoretically you could attach it to a power-pad but I wouldn’t recommend it—too much power too quick might blow the containment field.”

“Wow, King Henry,” Tyson said, his face all lit up as he swung a lazy punch across his chest that was far too much arm and not enough body torque. “This is awesome. It’s just how I imagined it.”

“Speaking of that, satisfy some curiosity on this…how did you imagine it?”

A brief bit of embarrassment crossed his lit up face, his forehead crinkling. “Stole it from a fantasy novel.”

“****…”

“I know, you hate the things.”

I shook my head. Hated them? Nope, I was jealous that they had it so easy with their ‘magic’. The Mancy’s a long way from some wand flipping and twirling. “Next, you’ll want me to make you a lightsaber.”

His eyes got bright with crazy dreams. “Could you?”

Read more on Tyson in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Meet Ceinwyn Dale, Aeromancer

In the words of her favorite student:

“I ain’t going to your school, lady.” 

“Why not?” She was genuinely curious. Ceinwyn Dale, always the interested observer. 

“I’m not a freak. I get by. I got a life. So I fight, who gives a rat’s ***?” 

She picked up my iPod and browsed through the playlist. She had beautiful hands. Not a body part most guys notice, and Ceinwyn Dale had some others that were pretty noticeable, but her delicate fingers and sapphire fingernails drew the eye when she used them in front of you. Nimble manipulation, just like the rest of her, turning those fleshy stubs into the finest tool, skinny and elegant. “Is this the entirety of your reasons? 

“I got a girl.” 

“And you love her?” The smile quirked extra. 

“Sure. I guess.” Love wasn’t a big emotion in the Price household. We had trouble managing giving a ****. 

“Or do you just like what you get to do with her?” 

“That too.” 

One part about Ceinwyn Dale I started figuring out during that first conversation is she mocks everyone but she treats her kids the same as she does adults. Which I wasn’t seeing much of back then. It was inclusive and part of the reason she’s such a good recruiter. 

“You’ll have to give her up.”

Read more on Ceinwyn Dale in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Meet King Henry Price, Geomancer

In his own words:

I was screwed up beyond all repair by then.  Only reason I hadn’t been to Juvie was that I had an extra something the other delinquents didn’t have, not that I realized it at the time of my crimes.  All I knew was that I was lucky.  Yeah, cursed more like it.  But back then, it sure was nice to be sitting in the shopping mart contemplating stealing some magazines or candy bars or Chinese-assembled electronics when a display magically fell apart to be a distraction I desperately needed. 

Cigarettes and electronics had been my steals of choice right before I was co-opted into another life and if it wasn’t for the Asylum, I’d be well on my way to lung cancer by now, or dead twenty times over.  Not from hard stuff like you’re thinking—worse I can admit to is bumming some weed when I could—but from fighting.  I loved to get into a fight.  Still do. 

Here I am twenty-one years old and I’m lucky to hit five-foot-eight on some very generous tape-measures.  Back then, middle school and elementary ****holes with babysitting teachers and cruel lunch-ladies, it was even worse.  Some district counselor got all doctor on me and diagnosed it as a Napoleon Complex; that I was trying to prove I was tough despite my size.  But it wasn’t that. 

I liked to fight.

Read more on King Henry in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know who you're talking about...

Little King Henry is OUT

Little King Henry, my short story set in The King  Henry Tapes world has been released.

Little King Henry by Richard Raley on Amazon
Little King Henry by Richard Raley on Smashwords (FREE)

Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady is OUT!

It's out!

The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley on Amazon
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley on Smashwords

Get a sample at least to meet King Henry Price, he'll rock your world...

The King Henry Tapes: The Asylum

School stories are everywhere. Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ender’s Game, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller, and Veronica Mars to name a few I liked. Talk about popularity. Even X-Men, Star Trek went back to school in the last couple years and Spider-Man is joining them next summer.  There’s something about the high school situation that draws us back to do it all over again and again and again in fiction, and again and again and again we eat it right up.

For my school I created the Asylum and an Asylum needs patientst ...here is a first look at the Asylum:

Child’s Name (Mancy Type)

King Henry Price (Geomancer)

Heinrich Welf (Necromancer)

Valentine “Boomworm” Ward (Pyromancer)

Asa Kayode (Hydromancer)

Miranda Daniels (Aeromancer)

Estefan Ramirez (Electromancer)

Debra Diaz (Electromancer)

Curt Chambers (Spectromancer)

Malaya Mabanaagan (Spectromancer)

Quinn Walden (Spectromancer)

Ronaldo Silva (Cryomancer)

Raj Malik (Cryomancer)

Hope Hunting (Cryomancer)

Miles Hun Pak (Sciomancer)

Eva Reti (Sciomancer)

Naomi Gullick (Floromancer)

Preston “Pocket” Landry (Floromancer)

Timeeko Lewis (Floromancer)

Nicholas Hanson (Floromancer)

Sandra Kemp (Floromancer)

Patrick “Rick” Brown (Faunamancer)

Jesus Valencia (Faunamancer)

Jessica Edwards (Faunamancer)

Robin White (Faunamancer)

Athir Al-Qasimi (Mentimancer)

Isabel Soto (Corpusmancer)

Samuel Bird (Corpusmancer)

Yvette Reynolds (Corpusmancer)

Jason Jackson (Corpusmancer)

Nizhoni Sherman (Corpusmancer)

To find out more about the Asylum, get ready for THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY on September 1st!

The King Henry Tapes: The Mancy

I used elemental magic for THE KING HENRY TAPES. It’s very common, pops up again and again in fantasy and provides a good base.  Only I didn’t want to just be lazy about it, I wanted to add my twist to it just like I did the all the rest in THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY.

I ended up with this, something very much in the Magic System school of thought...here is a first look at the Mancy:

Mancy Type – Element (Ultra Title) 

Necromancy – Death (Bonegrinder)
Pyromancy – Fire (Firestarter)
Geomancy – Earth (Artificer)
Aeromancy – Air (Winddancer)
Hydromancy – Water (Riftwalker)
Electromancy – Lightning (Stormcaller)
Cryomancy – Ice (Winterwarden)
Sciomancy – Shadow (Shadeshifter)
Spectromancy – Light (Beaconkeeper)
Floromancy – Plant (Forestplanter)
Faunamancy – Animal (Beasttalker)
Mentimancy – Mind (Mindmaster)
Corpusmancy – Body (Facechanger) 

To find out more about the Mancy, get ready for THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY on September 1st!