"Clay and Susan Griffith's Vampire Empire is Transforming Genre Fiction" Paul Goat Allen, BN Explorations.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Be Ormon

He's on the tv, so you can trust him.

One of our closest and scariest friends, Ormon Grimsby, host of the wildly popular Monster Creature Feature, is having a contest. If you win, you get a book. (It's not The Greyfriar, although we should get a give-away going with Ormon.) It's Bride of the Reaper by Charles Romalotti.

But the best part is, the contest allows (in fact, requires) YOU to be like Ormon. He has a super cool Ormon Grimsby mask online. Download. Print. Wear. Then take a picture of yourself in weird, interesting places wearing your very own Ormon mask.

And if you've never seen Monster Creature Feature on the television or the interwebs, do so.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Comedy is easy, Blogging is hard

We Don't Have That Much to Say!

We've been doing some blogging recently.

Not here though.

At other people's sites. Since the publication of The Greyfriar, we've written a lot of guest blogs at book sites. We've covered subjects such as vampires and steampunk and alternate history and writing as husband and wife. Just this past week, we've been doing a back-and-forth blog with fellow Pyr author Jasper Kent at Babel Clash, sponsored by Borders Books. And we did a "Take 5" article for the really cool sci-fi/pop culture site suvudu.com.

The take home message is -- blogging is hard. At least, saying something interesting in an interesting way is hard. It gives us great admiration for those people who blog frequently in a professional, thoughtful manner. Whew! Who's got time?!

Take Jasper Kent, our blog partner at Babel Clash...the guy shoots out tightly organized and well-reasoned articles about real topics on very short notice. Impressive. While it takes us forever to type up some glib chitchat about choking Peter Cushing. Maybe we just suffer from a bad case of "who in the world wants to hear what we think about anything?" And there is something to be said for that attitude; it keeps us from spouting off about every issue that crosses our minds just because we have access to a keyboard and the internet.

Still, there are so many people out there putting out fantastic blogs with great information and intriguing opinions. They keep up a killer schedule, posting new content with a speed that would by the envy of 24-hour news networks. They must be really fast typists, in addition to being very strong thinkers. We admire people who can wrangle their ideas into a creative presentation...frequently and on short notice.

We can spend an hour arguing about where to go for lunch. And still not come to a conclusion.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Short and Sweet

"The Greyfriar was awesome. I cried. There were cats."

That line is a small part of a very nice review on The Reader Eclectic. But we love that single line.

We are thrilled that our book is having such a strong emotional impact on readers. We've had reviewers talk about crying. They've talked about hugging the book. They've talked about being depressed that the book was over, or that there wasn't a sequel to begin immediately.

We are overwhelmed that Adele and Greyfriar (and the cats, apparently) are touching so many people's hearts.

Thank you to everyone.

Check out the entire review on The Reader Eclectic.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

The Greyfriar - Best Vamp Novel 2010

Thanks to the VampChix blog!

Michele Hauf has a terrific blog for all things vampire and paranormal. She was one of the earliest supporters of The Greyfriar, and we are thrilled she picked our book for this honor.

Check out her blog.

Morlock Ambrosius Free for the Taking. If you dare!

For all those folks looking for a great sword and fantasy hero, with as many dark flaws as heroic gusto, this is the man for you: Morlock Ambrosius. To me, he's the Dark Aragorn, a DĂșnadan, a wanderer who finds trouble whether he wants it or not.

I was a fan of  the fabulous fantasy author, James Enge, even before I became involved with Pyr. The Blood of Ambrose caught my eye on the table and the series is a must read for me now. It harkens me back to my pulp days when I was reading fantasy novels like Conan. Those stores were all self contained. I could read them in any order and I was guaranteed a fun romp with exhilarating adventures. James Enge has adopted a similar style.

Now Pyr is offering a free eBook in honor of publishing their 100th title and to my delight and yours, it's a short story of Morlock! So please take advantage of this great author and fantastic character.

http://pyrsf.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-epub-novelette-celebrates.html

Susan

Monday, December 13, 2010

First foreign rights sale

South Korea publisher to translate Vampire Empire trilogy.

We are very excited by our first foreign sale. Human & Books of Korea has bought the rights to The Greyfriar, as well as Books 2 & 3 in Vampire Empire. We're looking forward to seeing our books published in other languages in other parts of the world. We're unsure of the publication date yet, but thanks to Human & Books, and we hope the trilogy performs well for you in Korea.