Archive for the 'Clarke Lantham' Category
April 5th, 2013 by jdsawyer
Clarke Lantham, the hero of my detective series, lives and works around the San Francisco Bay. One of the features of the books that draws frequent comment is how much the Bay itself is a character in these stories.
Truth be told, it’s an intentional feature. I’ve been a lot of beautiful places in my life, even lived in a few of them (and some ugly places too), but there is something about the San Francisco Bay that can keep a soul fascinated for eternity.
If you’ve wondered what it is, and you want a taste, check out this video. It may explain a few things. Set aside about five minutes to just watch and enjoy. Moments of great beauty deserve undivided attention.
April 24th, 2012 by jdsawyer
Many of you have been asking how to get autographed paperbacks now that I’m not going to Balticon (or, let’s face it, any cons) this year. Well, I’ve crunched the numbers and discovered that I can get you autographed books for the same price you’d get them on Amazon (with about the same shipping rates, assuming you’re not a Prime subscriber).
So, here they are. Add each to the cart as you need to, then click “continue shopping.” You will also need to add your appropriate shipping option to the cart as well. Once you’ve got everything you need, click “check out” instead of “continue shopping.” The shipping options will cover your order of books. Please do not forget to add your shipping option to your order, or I will not be able to ship the book(s). If you are a dealer or want to order more than 10 units, email me privately for a discount schedule using the contact form.
Note: I CAN deliver to Balticon, as I have someone who has agreed to distribute the books there. I am not sending along general stock, only signed preorders. If you want Balticon delivery, please be sure to select “Balticon Pickup” from the shipping options.
Books
Shipping for Books
(Choose one only)
| Balticon Pickup (must order before May 14) |
$2.99 |
|
| Continental U.S. |
$3.99 |
|
| International shipping (includes insurance) |
$7.99 |
|
Posters
Note: Posters require special packing and thus their shipping is hard-wired into their buy button.
 Predestination Cover Art
Signed and Numbered Collector's Edition Poster
$12.00+shipping |
If you’re going, please do enjoy Balticon and raise a little hell for me. Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm!
April 3rd, 2012 by jdsawyer
So, as many of you might have noticed, we occasionally produce audiobooks through ArtisticWhispers Productions. Those of you that have may have also noticed that we haven’t put a new one out (or, at least, anything resembling a complete one) in about two years.
The hiatus is over. As of this past weekend, the following books have all moved out of the pre-production stage and into the production stage.
The books currently in production are:
Throwing Lead
And Then She Was Gone
A Ghostly Christmas Present
Smoke Rings
Free Will
Being In Production
Being “In Production” means that the project is currently being recorded. Some bits of pre-production might go on concurrently, for example…
Casting
All of the fiction books will be full-cast productions in the classic AWP style. Here are the numbers on the roles available for each book (bearing in mind that, since this is audio, actors can double, triple, or quintiple up on roles):
And Then She Was Gone needs 27 roles filled. 9 of these have five lines or fewer.
A Ghostly Christmas Present needs 14 roles filled, 4 of these have five lines or fewer
Smoke Rings needs 21 roles filled. About half of these are roles with fewer than five lines.
Free Will needs 118 roles filled. About half of these are roles with fewer than five lines.
What Happens Now
Starting later this week, I will spool out the open casting calls. These books will be available commercially, so if you wish to participate, in addition to having the ability to record clean audio and (for the more involved roles) the willingness to take live-direction, you must be willing to sign a contract detailing the release of your voice for commercial purposes and entitling you to payment.
Payment for these books, because they’re the first commercial round, will be on a deferred fee basis + royalties. Because payment is involved, you will need to include your Tax ID number on the contract and, when payment comes due, fill out the relevant tax forms.
Watch This Space
These are the first five of an anticipated 9 productions this year, and there will be a similar number next year. I’m looking to build a stable of actors I can work with medium-to-long term.
What Does This Mean for the Podcast?
The podcast returns with Free Will (rebooted) in late spring/early summer. I’m aiming for Balticon, but might overshoot or undershoot by as much as three weeks, depending on how briskly casting goes.
Free Will will be approximately 60 episodes long, and will start out as a bi-weekly podcast, ramping to weekly once the entire production is wrapped. As such, it will run for 13-19 months before we reach the end. Since such a long story full of cliffhangers will drive some of you around the bend, the full audiobook will be available for purchase by DragonCon, if not before.
Additionally, the initial chapters of the other books will drop in the feed so that you who subscribe can hear what’s going on in the productions that aren’t delivered to you on the feed.
And, of course, Dealing In will return, as I sense we’ll have quite a lot to talk about as the story unfolds.
Future novels will podcast after Free Will wraps, but there will always be more content available than what’s going through the ‘cast. You all have spoken loudly, and we here around the Bay have heard your cries.
Stay tuned! More in a couple days.
Update: Free Will casting call has posted. Find it here
February 3rd, 2012 by jdsawyer
Ladies and gentlemen 
and those who prefer neither title, I am very proud to announce the continuation of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries.
This is the biggest one yet, ringing in at nearly the same length as Predestination, and the adventure scales with the book. Teaming up with his assistant Rachael and his new squatter Nya Thales, Lantham gets to match wits with alien hunters, Chinese assassins, and FBI agents in his attempt to solve an apparent alien abduction before the only witness is…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the back-of-book copy, to give you a better feel for what’s going on.
The California Academy of Sciences, a bastion of integrity in scientific public relations, has agreed to play host to one of the most valuable travelling exhibits in the world: a Mars rock with microbial alien life. But the attention it’s drawing isn’t just international, it’s interstellar. When a commando team of gray aliens steals the rock and abducts a security guard, in full view of the cameras, the head of the security contractor has only one place to turn: Clarke Lantham Investigations.
Clarke Lantham already turned down an alien-related job earlier in the week, and has had his fill of kooks, cranks, and crooks of all kinds. Unfortunately, with an old client suing him, a employee to pay for, and a new ward chewing through his finances, he needs the paycheck. This time, though, he’s not the only one looking for a missing person: the FBI, Lloyd’s of London, and the Chinese Ministry of State Security are all breathing down his neck.
From the dark underbelly of the Tongs slave trade to the shark-infested waters of Bolinas Bay to the skies far above the concerns of mere mortals, Lantham races against spies, assassins, and conspiracy theorists to find the missing man–and the treasure that went with him–before the theft becomes a diplomatic incident between the world’s most fearsome superpowers and the alien overlords they allegedly support.
When the field gets that crowded, someone’s bound to get hurt. But even that might be okay for Lantham…if he didn’t have to sleep on the couch.
Read the first couple chapters here.
Then, grab the book and dive in. It’s available right now through Read the rest on your Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.
I hope you have at least half as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Enjoy!
January 7th, 2012 by jdsawyer
Being that it’s the beginning of the year, I’ve been a busy boy laying my evil plans. Since some of you have asked on twitter what’s looming on the horizon for the next few month, here’s a tentative schedule (subject to change if I work faster or get bogged down):
Audio
January:
Launch a Kickstarter campaign in concert with Gail Carriger. Yup, we’re gonna be working together on something audio-oriented (this will happen toward the end of the month).
Recording Free Will (big project) and the first 3 Lantham audiobooks
February:
Free Will podcast re-launches (probably. If not Feb, then early March, as I’ll be travelling in late Feb).
March:
Commercial release of the first (or more) Lantham audiobooks
April:
MAYBE the DF10 soundtrack, if the timing works out with me and Schadey
Ebooks
January:
Throwing Lead (the long-awaited “Gun Book”) will see the light of day this month.
Silent Victor (Clarke Lantham #4) will also show up late this month.
Chicken Noodle Gravity (Lombard Alchemist #2, featured last month on Escape Pod) will release as an ebook
There are two other short stories as well that will release, assuming I can find time to do the cover art.
February:
The Auto Motive (Motives, book 1–a steampunk urban fantasy YA adventure series–might release after I get back from my travels in March)
He Ain’t Heavy (Lantham #5, again, this is a maybe)
March or April:
The Summer Town (standalone Southern Gothic romance/horror)
Sunday Morning Giraffe (Lombard Alchemist #3, short story)
Several other short stories, perhaps as many as five
April or May:
Probably either Student Culture or The Last Uploader (both standalone SF novels, both currently in progress)
Paperbacks:
Janurary:
Down From Ten
Predestination (re-release–we had problems with the printer that have dogged us for months on this one)
Sculpting God, Vol. 1
A Ghostly Christmas Present/Smoke Rings (Lantham #2 and #3 in a single ace-double style volume)
February or March:
Throwing Lead
Free Will
Silent Victor
April or May
The Auto Motive
He Ain’t Heavy (assuming it winds up being long enough for a solo paperback release)
The Summer Town
The Last Uploader or Student Culture
— —
Projects that might jump to the front:
The book version of Principles of Contracts (with lots more content and a better title)
A podcast to accompany Throwing Lead
— — —
Like I said, this is all tentative and subject to change at my imperious whim. The stuff slated for January is basically a lock, the stuff further out is less certain. There’s also more going on behind the scenes here that is not directly tied to writing output, some of which will produce results that you’ll see on the blog and in other places around the ‘net.
And if you’re an Antithesis fan, don’t worry. I start work in earnest on Avarice (Antithesis #3) in April.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled Internet 
October 17th, 2011 by jdsawyer
The time has come. There’s too much going on not to have a mailing list and a newsletter, so I’ve taken the plunge. Newsletter readers will get quarterly (and sometimes more-than) updates and general goofiness from me delivered directly to their email boxes. Two weeks later, an edited version of those newsletters will be posted here.
Edited, you say?
Well, yes. Subscribers to the newsletter will get the occasional special preview, discount coupon, contest, and other such goodies that won’t be available to anyone else. Those items will be clipped out of the newsletter before it’s posted here. But other than that, it’ll be about the same thing.
If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter, simply email me at feedback _at_ jdsawyer.net, or use the contact form on this site, and say so.
So, if you’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I’ve been up to for the last year and a half, wait no longer. You can now download the inaugural issue as a epub, mobi, and PDF.
October 14th, 2011 by jdsawyer
You met him in 
And Then She Was Gone, you got to know his family in A Ghostly Christmas Present. Now, the hard-boiled snarkfest continues as Clarke Lantham tackles the two most perplexing mysteries of the universe: FBI fugitives, and romance.
Clarke Lantham has a checkered relationship with holidays, and this New Year’s Eve is no different. His space is cramped, his personal life is on the skids, and his business is once again under assault from lawyers and bill collectors.
But it’s not all bad. The year from hell is ending tonight, and he has his office to himself, and when an old girlfriend shows up with a chance for a $50,000 reward and a New Year’s Eve reconciliation, he jumps at the chance. After all, things can only get better, right?
Yeah, right.
Read the first chapter here.
Or, buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.
April 16th, 2011 by jdsawyer
It’s tax weekend, and if you’re like most 
Americans you’re madly rushing to get your forms (or extensions) filed. Of course, if you’re not American, you’ll have to deal with taxes sooner or later anyway. In either case, chances are you’ll hit the end of your weekend and be forced from the gorgeous spring weather to the inside of an office, or a warehouse, or a truck–and that’s when you’ll really need a bit of a vacation.
As your fantasy travel agent, allow me to offer you a guided tour of the San Francisco Bay Area like you’ve never seen it before: through the eyes of detective Clarke Lantham, sentenced to the hell of the suburbs in his quest to find a missing teenage girl. For the first time in paperback from AWP Mystery comes And Then She Was Gone, the adventure described by Gail Carriger as “full of snappy one-liners I’m dying to quote” and by Seth Harwood as “a mystery so dark and complex that you could lose a molar biting into it.”
Now available from AWP Mystery in paperback, And Then She Was Gone is a tense, funny, action packed adventure that sticks its fingers just under edge in order to flip it over. The handsome new edition rings in at 214 pages contains the full text of the ebook edition, plus a map detailing the geography that plays such an integral role in the story, along with a sample of the second Clarke Lantham novel, A Ghostly Christmas Present.
Now, it’s true that you can buy the novel at Amazon now, and you’ll be able to find it in bookstores this fall, but for you loyal folk that read my blog, it’s available for a special rate. Until May 15, buy your copy by clicking here and using the coupon code Q38WV4AS, and you’ll receive $1.50 off the $9.99 cover price.
Finally, for those of you who run vending booths at conventions (or who work in bookstores) and would like to carry And Then She Was Gone, shoot me an email from the Contact Form and I will send you the AWP Books wholesale pricing schedule.
I’ll see you between the pages!
November 28th, 2010 by jdsawyer
The blurbs from fellow authors and reviewers for “And Then She Was Gone” have started coming in, and I gotta share a couple:
“…a strangely beautiful noir for the future. And Then She Was Gone has all the history of the genre…packed with the trademark Sawyer intelligence.” Philipppa Ballantine, author of Geist
“…the parody of noir that noir didn’t see coming…And Then She Was Gone is full of snappy one-liners I’m dying to quote” –Gail Carriger, author of Soulless
I’m going to go off and be thrilled for a while. If you haven’t found out what all the excitement (and laughter) is about, you can find out for yourself by buying And Then She Was Gone for yourself at either Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon. Enjoy!
