NEWS

June, 2007: The best place to check on my appearance schedule and latest release info is the E.E. Knight blog, Bohemian Word Werks. Frankly, livejournal is easier to update and I'd rather spend my time writing.

Author Appearance - Nov 3-5, 2006: Robert E. Howard Centennial World Fantasy Convention, Austin Texas. Convention.

Author Appearance - Dec 8, 2006 12:30PM: DePaul University Bookstore, Chicago, IL (in the Loop). Signing.

Author Appearance - Dec 9, 2006 1:00PM: Uncle Hugo's Bookstore, Minneapolis, MN. Signing.

May, 2006: Valentine's Exile will be on bookshelves soon. My first hardcover (at least in the English language)! Penguin/Roc just bought three more Vampire Earth novels, so readers will get to follow the series at least through #9. The sixth volume, called for now Valentine's Cause, is slated to appear in July of 2007 as a hardcover.

December, 2005: Valentine's Rising is out and Valentine's Exile will be released in hardcover on June 6, 2006. The publisher has switched cover artists to Digital Artist Steve Stone.

July, 2005: I'm pretty happy with how the RPG looks. It's not perfect, but it'll make a fun world for gamers and an interesting read for Vampire Earth fans. Finishing up Vampire Earth 5, now tenatively titled Valentine's Exile.

May, 2005: Valentine's Rising has been edited, though the text still needs to be copyedited and formatted for publication. They've given me an early version of the cover and you can get an early look at it here. Sorry about the scan quality. Shelf date is December 5, 2005, so I suppose my readers can ask Santa to stop at the bookstore on his rounds.

February, 2005: Thunderbolt will be appearing on the shelves soon. By now you know my Standard Plea: if it's possible, buy it in a store where you pluck the book off the shelves and hand money over to a cashier. That effects reorders which leads to a more prominent display for my titles which leads to more readers. And so on. Plus you get the added bonus of meeting a bookstore worker; they're almost always interesting. God knows, they're not working in a bookstore because of the big paycheck. They love books.

January, 2005: According to a source at the Spanish publishing house, La Factoria, Wolf did well enough that they want to put out Cat in 2005. It's going to be a busy year, with Thunderbolt in March, the German Wolf ("Blutrot") in July, the Russian version sometime, Spanish Cat and then a double whammy in December with Valentine's Rising and the first Dragon book in December. I have much to be thankful for, primarily readers who have read my work, liked it, and passed it on to others. That's the best way to make sure you see more books to read.

November, 2004: The "still wrangling over the title" high fantasy about the dragon looks like it will be released in December 2005 as a trade paperback. All the editorial work is done on Tale of the Thunderbolt and the cover is quite cool, now we just have to wait.

October, 2004: Page proofs are in for Tale of the Thunderbolt, scheduled to appear in March of 2005. Penguin also made an offer on a high fantasy I'm quite proud of, a story centered around a young dragon.

August, 2004: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Lost Cult makes its appearance on store shelves this month. I'm proud to be even a small part of the Lara Croft franchise -- I'd never have thought, playing the game back in the late 90s, that one day I'd be telling Lara Croft stories. I always buy myself a little memento for each book finished, for Lara it was a available-only-in-Germany statue of Lara in short-short cammies and a black top, what I called in the book "her lucky backpack" perched on her muscular shoulders, gun in a good two-hand grip in pointed-up ready position (though they insist on putting her finger on the trigger for some reason, something a trained marksman never does until aiming). She looks down at me from the shelf with this little Mona Lisa smile. Publishing slows down in the summer so there's not much news other than that the contracts for the foreign editions of Way of the Wolf have been signed.

June, 2004: Way of the Wolf won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel in science fiction, fantasy, or horror over Memorial Day weekend at Balticon. It was my first time as a guest of honor at a convention and Stephanie and I had a fantastic time thanks to the generosity and efforts of the con organizers. Azbooka will be publishing Way of the Wolf in Russia (in hardcover, no less, but the Russians know literature) in the near future, and I believe the Spanish edition comes out in November.

May, 2004: Choice of the Cat is on the shelves. Looks like I had a wider release than I got for Wolf. There's been some good press, and I have interviews at SFReader.com and SFsite. A couple of local papers did articles about the release. In the midst of all this stuff, and visiting bookstores, I'm working with Liz at Roc getting Tale of the Thunderbolt into shape for March 2005. The first draft of the Vampire Earth Role Playing Sourcebook is nearing completion as well. Players will use open-source Action! rules from Gold Rush Games-- after a bit of modification to match the world.

April, 2004: Way of the Wolf won its first award with a Darrell win for Best Novel at MidSouth/DeepSouth Con in Memphis. The Darrell is a juried prize given out by the Memphis Science Fiction Association. In other news, Choice of the Cat comes to store shelves May 4. It does help the author more if the book is bought in a bookstore because it effects reorders, but a sale is a sale is a sale, go to Amazon or B&N.com if that's the most convenient way for you to get it. Even more news... Knaur, a German publisher, will be doing the first translation of Wolf shortly, and Spain will follow. Best of all, a deal for three more VE books is also in the works over at Penguin, so fans are now safe through Book #6.

March, 2004: Busy times getting manuscripts ready and delivered. A lot of people have helped me along the way. Heinlein said you can't pay them back, you can only pay them forward by helping others, and that's what I'll be doing starting the end of this month when I teach Writing the Genre Novel at my old junior college Alma Mater, Harper College in Palatine Illinois. I'll thank just one person though, my former (I was going to say old, but she's far from old) instructor Mary Dalton, who heads up the Writing Studio program at Harper.

January, 2004: Thanks to Way of the Wolf, I'm eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The award will be handed out at the same ceremony as the Hugos during the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention, Noreascon -- should I make the final list. In other news, a short of mine called Sunk by Naval Gunfire will be appearing in the anthology It Came From the Cinema, to be published by Hellbound Books this fall. It is a creature feature inspired by the 1954 Big Bug movie Them!

December, 2003: Vampire Earth made its first visit to the bestseller list this month with an appearance by Way of the Wolf on the Locus list. The list is weighed rather heavily toward specialty booksellers so it is meaningless in terms of money but it is gratifying to know that I'm selling. I posted no news in November because I was busy with the Cat copyedits and finishing up my Lara Croft:Tomb Raider manuscript. Looks like the publisher has named it Lara Croft and the Lost Cult, which is succinct, always a Good Thing. My original title was Lara Croft and the Cult of the Cataclysm.

October, 2003: Choice of the Cat is off to the copyeditor. Firm release date is May 2, 2004. Wolf did well enough so that Borders, which wasn't originally carrying the title, added it to what looks like almost all of their stores. It appears that Wolf is selling well at the specialty stores, I was on the top ten bestseller list at Galaxy Books in Australia and #2 for the month of September at Basilisk Dreams of Ottowa Canada. Thanks, staff and readers at Basilisk! I'd also like to add a personal note of appreciation to VE fan Gary Franklin, who worked very hard to design and host a new forum for me. As if that weren't enough, he's creating a new map of North America under the Kurian Order with most of the different Freeholds and Kurian Zones laid out. Should be awesome, given the quality of the (unpaid) work he's done so far.

September, 2003: WorldCon went well, all the copies of Wolf at the dealer tables sold out. My editor Laura Anne gave me some first-book jitters advice and emotional support. It won't be on the shelves for long. Paperbacks tend to appear and disappear quickly, so if you enjoyed it please mention it to friends, coworkers, family, whatever. Even if it isn't sitting on a store shelf it can easily be ordered, warehouse stocks mean it will show up quickly. It's better for the author if it gets purchased at a bookstore rather than Amazon because it effects future orders, but any sale helps. Thanks for your support!

August, 2003: I am now holding in my hand my first Roc edition of Way of the Wolf. Whew! I guess the dream's come true after all these years--sharing shelf space with so many other authors I've admired since I started reading specfic. In other news, there's an interview with me in Eternal Night webzine. I'll be at WorldCon in Toronto over Labor Day Weekend. Don't be shy about saying hello.

July, 2003: This has nothing to do with Vampire Earth but I'm posting it anyway...I've been hired to write an original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider novel. Del Rey is the publisher and it will be on the shelves in July of 2004.

May, 2003: Choice of the Cat has a release date of May 2004. It is my understanding that the third volume has also been moved up but I don't have a date yet. Review copies are out and there will be a very short piece about me in the July/August issue of Pages magazine.

April, 2003: Got my cover art at last. The artist is a talented young Spaniard named Koveck. My scanner isn't that great so I'll apologize in advance...and you can find the art here.

February, 2003: Looks like the Way of the Wolf release date is at the end of August, just before Labor Day. I'll be at WorldCon in Toronto when it comes out. I've seen a rough draft of the cover and it is fantastic, when they've finalized it I'll post it here.

November, 2002: It is official, the Vampire Earth series is going to be marketed by Roc. Way of the Wolf: Book One of the Vampire Earth comes out in its first mass-market issue in August of 2003, with others to follow in 2004. I'm sorry it takes so long, there's no simple answer, it just does. Feel free to write Laura Anne at Roc and tell her you're waiting (and waiting).

But don't worry. All of you who've so patiently waited for Choice of the Cat will see it and the third volume. It's as hard for me to be patient as it is for you all. Right now I'm revising the fourth in the series, I'm thinking of calling it Valentine's Rising.