Tag: The Silver Trumpet

I Need a Break from the News

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Both my wife and my editor agree I need a break from news, before it burns out my brain.

So I’m going to try to lay off for three days, hoping to recharge my batteries. I just hope this doesn’t cost me my audience. What with a new book coming out any day now (he keeps saying that!), I need all the views I can get. Keep your eyes peeled for The Silver Trumpet. It’s been with the printer a week now; what can possibly be taking so long?

And would you believe it? There’s another Silver Trumpet! I found out yesterday. It’s a children’s book by C.S. Lewis’ friend, Owen Barfield, published in 1968. Way too late to change my title now. *Sigh*

P.S.–I will, of course, keep publishing any comments made by you, the readers, on any news stories. So please feel free to take the podium!

 

Any Day Now!

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I received a notice this morning that The Silver Trumpet has finally gone to press. It’s Book No. 10 in the Bell Mountain series (starting, oddly enough, with Bell Mountain), so after you read this one, you’ll owe it to yourself to read the preceding nine.

What’s it about? Well, you’ll find out why the people of Obann have such a horror of the sea. There’s a big surprise in store for Gurun, the Queen. And an even bigger one for the army that marches out to sack the town of Ninneburky. And a divine vision has been given–not to sage or saint, but to a young chieftain of the Heathen.

The Silver Trumpet ought to be available in paperback, through amazon.com or the publisher (Storehouse Press, per The Chalcedon Foundation, http://www.chalcedon.edu )–in fact, I probably ought to go and check right now.

Time for Another Comment Contest

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I don’t know what else to do today, and we currently stand at 24,068 comments on this blog, so, what the heck, time for another comment contest.

This time the prize will be a signed copy of The Silver Trumpet, Book. No. 10 in my–ahem!–award-winning Bell Mountain series, for the reader who posts the 25,000th comment here. I consider 25,000 a milestone, and I’m throwing the contest open to everybody. Even if you’ve already won. And if The Silver Trumpet is the first Bell Mountain book you get, it may move you to acquire the earlier books in the series.

Actually the book ought to have been published by now, but it’s been delayed by several last-minute glitches. Still, it’s coming soon. I don’t know how soon, but soon.

Anyone can win with any kind of comment, except for the following: comments containing blasphemy or profanity, comments abusive of anyone else on this site, thinly disguised commercials masquerading as comments, or remarks simply too inane to be of any use to anybody. Other than that, anything goes.

How long will it take to ring up another thousand comments?

Well, we’ll find out. Soon.

Coming Soon! ‘The Silver Trumpet’

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Break out that World Fantasy Award! Here comes Bell Mountain No. 10, The Silver Trumpet! Like, real soon. Any day now. ‘Cause the editing’s all done, the cover art is squared away, and all we gotta do is have it printed.

Those of you out there in Media Land who want to line me up for an interview, you’d better move fast. I’m offering first dibs to Rush Limbaugh, but for everybody else, it’s devil take the hindmost.

Who are those guys up on the walls with the trumpets? Why can’t we find them afterward? And what the heck is this, with the ship? Did you say ship? There are no ships that sail to Obann! Haven’t been for a thousand years.

Yes, all sorts of things are going on in this book, and to find out what’s what, you’ve got to read it. And please use all means of persuasion at your disposal to get your family and friends to buy it, too. Just don’t get caught.

While Nobody’s Looking…

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Hi, Lord Chutt here–thought I’d sneak in while no one’s looking.

For those who don’t know, I’m one of the villains in Lee’s Bell Mountain books. It rather ticked me off the other day, when Lord Reesh got a say and I didn’t. He thinks he’s the primo villain in the series. Ha! Even that creep Ysbott is better than Reesh.

I may not be as flashy as some of the others, but I have a very special gift. People who are involved with me, for any length of time, go bad. Real bad. Left to their own devices, they’d be harmless. But I turn ’em into villains.

I admit I don’t know how I do it. It just happens. I understand you have some public figures in your world who contaminate everything they touch. It’s probably the same thing.

While I don’t appreciate speaking to a mostly empty house that I had to sneak into, it’s better than not speaking at all. As long as I’m here, let me urge you to get hold of these Bell Mountain books: there’s a new one, The Silver Trumpet, coming out next month, I hear. Read ’em and decide for yourselves who’s the baddest villain!

[The management now promises there will be no more commercials this year.]

Stuck for a Christmas Gift Idea?

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Yeah, I know it’s blowing my own horn, but I’ve got to do it.

Of course, you don’t have to wait for Christmas to give someone one of my Bell Mountain books. Any day of the year will do. There are nine of them in print so far, starting with Bell Mountain, and a tenth one on the way, The Silver Trumpet. You can order them via amazon.com, or just stay on this blog, click “Books,” and order them directly from the publisher at the Chalcedon Store (http://www.chalcedon.edu/store/). I do hope that link works; I tend to bollix up such things. But if it doesn’t, you can still find it on the “Books” page, complete with shopping cart icon.

Click “Books” and enjoy Kirk DouPonce’s wonderful cover artwork–and you can read sample chapters, too. That’d be better than me just saying that I write good books. Did you ever hear an author say “I turn out junk”? So take a look and decide for yourself. The target audience for these is “Young Adult,” ages 12 and up, but they do seem to appeal to all ages. I’m always surprised when people tell me their 8-year-olds really enjoy them, too.

And now this commercial has run long enough.

 

‘The Silver Trumpet’: Almost Ready

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If you’re wondering where I’ve been all afternoon, I’ve been right here at this computer, doing my part of the final edit of The Silver Trumpet. Our boss, Mark Rushdoony, hopes to publish it in January.

No one has ever published an error-free book, but at Chalcedon we come about as close to it as humanly possible. This will be my third time proofreading the book, and I’m only one of several proofreaders. Actually, it’s quite shocking when I discover–after the book is published!–a typo on a page.

Susan, my editor, had a rather complicated reaction to The Temptation. She’s worried about some of the characters’ welfare. Some of them are very definitely sailing into harm’s way. I pray that in the spring I’ll be ready to start writing the next installment of the story.

But first we’ve gotta get The Silver Trumpet into print!

At least the editing job takes my mind off WordPress.

Writing the Cover Blurb

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Now that I’ve got a cover for The Silver Trumpet, I have to write the blurb for it, which I did this afternoon.

Somehow I always find it a difficult task–sum up the whole novel in 150 words, and do it in such a way as to make someone want to open it up and read it. This always leaves me wondering if I should’ve kept it to 150 words in the first place.

Which brings me back some 30 years to my days as a horror novelist for a major New York City publishing house. They wouldn’t have dreamed of letting the book’s author write the cover blurb.

See that one up there? The cover copy on the back was written by someone who hadn’t read the book, or at best only skimmed a part of it. What you read on the back cover only slightly resembles the content of the book. I would have liked to complain, but that would’ve only made them laugh.

So Storehouse Press has me writing the cover copy for my own books, and the cover artist actually reads the book before he creates the cover, and everybody’s happy.

Next time you feel a book as given you a bum steer, please try to remember it’s probably not the author’s fault.

Flash! A Cover for ‘The Silver Trumpet’

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Kirk DouPonce has just emailed me his cover for Bell Mountain No. 10, The Silver Trumpet, and it’s a doozy. He painted the scene just as I imagined it when I was writing it. I don’t know how he does it.

I’ll have it displayed here, hopefully, sometime tomorrow.