Alamo City Comic Con's Young Adventurers

This October, Alamo City Comic Con has announced a brand new programming track, the Young Adventurers!

Young Adventurers is a celebration of children's literature featuring Yours Truly, Holly Black, Matthew Cody, Bruce Coville, Melissa Marr, and Obert Skye.

Friday will be the Young Adventurers' Writing Workshop, a day long series of workshops and sessions with all of the authors above. This is a ticketed event, limited to 75 attendees, so sign up now.

Then Saturday and Sunday will be panels and discussions of children's books in two days of kids & kids' lit themed programming. The Saturday and Sunday events are open to all Alamo City Comic Con attendees, so bring your kids or your kids-at-heart and join us for what's going to be an amazing weekend.!

Alamo City Comic Con is held in San Antonio, Texas the weekend of October 28th to the 30th. See their website for ticket and hotel information. Meanwhile, here is their press announcement about Young Adventurers as well as bios for the stellar author guests (though I don't know who that first guy thinks he is). Also worth noting, the great David Liss (The Coffee Trader, Randoms) will be MCing and moderating the Young Adventurers programming! Check it out:

Alamo City Comic Con and Barnes & Noble have partnered up to provide ACCC2016 attendees a whole new and exciting experience: YOUNG ADVENTURERS! Held at the Henry B Gonzalez Convention Center from October 28th-30th, 2016, our Young Adventurers experience focuses on 6 award-winning middle grade authors. Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles series, The Modern Faerie Tale series), Bruce Coville (My Teacher Is An Alien, Unicorn Chronicles series), Lou Anders (Thrones & Bones series), Obert Skye (Leven Thumps series, The Pillage trilogy), Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely series, The Blackwell Pages series), and Matthew Cody (Supers Of Noble Green trilogy, Will In Scarlet) will be in attendance to meet fans, sign books, and offer children's programming (panels) that is open to all ACCC attendees. SPECIAL LIMITED-SEATING EVENT: On Friday, October 28th, join our special guests and emcee, David Liss (Randoms, The Day of Atonement), to get first-hand knowledge of the ins and outs of creating best selling works. Our in-depth WRITERS WORKSHOP is limited to 75 attendees, so act fast to secure your seat to this unique and informative event geared towards amateur and professional writers alike. For more info, and to stay up to date. Keep up with the Facebook event Page.

Lou Anders:

Lou Anders is the author of Frostborn, Nightborn, and Skyborn, the three books of the Thrones & Bones series of fantasy adventure novels written for boys and girls ages 8 to 80. The first book, Frostborn, has been nominated for the Beehive Book Awards, the Golden Sower Awards, the Young Hoosier Book Awards, and the Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Awards. Recently, Anders was named the 2016 Children's Writer-in-Residence at Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. He is also a Hugo Award winning editor and a Chesley Award winning Art Director. He and his family reside in Birmingham, Alabama. You can visit him online at louanders.com and ThronesandBones.com, on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr, and on Twitter at @Louanders

Holly Black:

Holly currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a Tudor cottage with a secret door. There, she enjoys caffeine, reading, and revelry. Holly is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), The Modern Faerie Tale series, the Curse Workers series, Doll Bones, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, the Magisterium series (with Cassandra Clare) and The Darkest Part of the Forest. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award and a Newbery Honor.

Matthew Cody:

Matthew Cody is the author of several popular books including the award-winning Supers of Noble's Green trilogy: Powerless, Super and Villainous. He is also the author of Will in Scarlet and The Dead Gentleman. His books have appeared on Amazon, Bank Street and the New York Public Library Best Books of the Year lists. He is currently at work on a new trilogy for young readers, The Secrets of the Pied Piper, and book one, The Peddler's Road, is available now from Knopf Books. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and son.

Bruce Coville:

Bruce Coville has published over 100 books for children and young adults, including the international bestseller My Teacher is an Alien, and the Unicorn Chronicles series. His works have appeared in a dozen languages and won children's choice awards in as many states. He is

also the founder of FULL CAST AUDIO, an audiobook publishing company devoted to producing full cast, unabridged recordings of material for family listening. Mr. Coville lives in Syracuse, New York with his wife, illustrator and author Katherine Coville.

Melissa Marr:

Melissa Marr is the internationally bestselling author of books for teens, children, and adults. Her books include the faery series, Wicked Lovely; a children's Norse mythology series (The Blackwell Pages, co-authored with Kelley Armstrong), Graveminder (dark fantasy), and Bunny Roo (a picture book). Additionally, she has co-edited several fantasy anthologies. Her books have been published in 28 languages and have been bestsellers in numerous countries. Prior to being a writer, Melissa taught university literature, worked an archaeology dig, and worked at a daycare. She is the mother to three children, and most of her books were written for them.

Obert Skye:

Obert Skye is the bestselling author of the Leven Thumps series, the Pillage Trilogy, Witherwood Reform School, and The Creature From My Closet. He can be found at www.obertsky.com

Reflections from the Road: Mythicworlds 2016

This past weekend, I was honored to be a guest of  Mythicworlds 2016, which was held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport. This is a music-and-costumed focused, Celtic and other mythologies themed weekend. I participated on two panels, gave a Thrones & Bones presentation, ran a demonstration of the Thrones & Bones board game, and taught my ScripTips writing workshop.

The convention was a blast, in no small part because friends Duane Wilkins (bookseller extraordinaire at Seattle's University Book Store), Pierce Watters (of Paizo and the Pathfinder Role Playing Game), and Todd Lockwood (world famous artist and author of the upcoming and brilliant novel, The Summer Dragon) all came down to hang out. And my friend, fabulous author Melissa Marr, was already there as a fellow guest!

As an added bonus, I got to spend some time Sunday morning chatting with Einar Selvik of the band Wardruna about his work with Norse runes and his music, which is played on reconstruction of Viking instruments.

Thanks to Robert Gould, Emilio Miller-Lopez, and Jason Pitzl-Waters for putting on a great show! And thanks to everyone came out and everyone who picked up copies of Frostborn and Nightborn!

Review: Loki's Wolves

Loki's Wolves by K.L.  Armstrong and M.A. Marr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two years before Magnus Chase appeared on the scene, kids were already tackling the threat of Ragnarok and taking up magic weapons to save the world. K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr's Loki's Wolves is a fantastic and fast paced adventure about a group of eighth graders who discover that, as descendants of the long-vanished Norse gods, it's up to them to face down the Midgard Serpent and prevent the end of the world. Matthew Thorsen is the stand in for the god Thor, while Fen and Laurie Brekke are the children of Loki. They team up on an impossible quest, looking for more descendants, and hoping that their own lives aren't bound to tightly to the fates laid out in the old sagas. I plowed through this book, and the cliffhanger ending has me eager to jump into the next one. Highly recommended for fans of Norse mythology, action adventure tales, middle reader fantasy, and, naturally, you-know-who.


View all my Goodreads reviews

Reflections from the Road: FaerieCon 2015

This past weekend, I was excited to be a guest at my first ever FaerieCon, where I joined such fabulous authors as Melissa Marr, Holly Black, Kami Garcia, and Kelley Armstrong. FaerieCon is a faerie/celtic themed event with a strong emphasis on music. The internationally famous  German band Faun appear every year, as well as bands like the marvelous Woodland. This year's FaerieCon had a Norse sub theme (explaining my appearance there), and featured a performance by Einar Selvik of Wardruna, the Norwegian band who play on traditional Norse instruments and whose music has been featured on the TV series Vikings.

After an early morning flight Friday morning, I arrived just in time to make a panel with Melissa Marr, Holly Black, and Kami Garcia ostensibly about the Faerie Marketplace, though it turned into more of a writing instruction panel. After which a friend I haven't seen since I was in college drove up to hang and found himself dragged to an Author's Tea where fans and authors gathered to sample tea and eat cookies, and he was nearly smashed by Wotan the Faerie Smasher. Then it was goodbye to my old friend and hello to four new ones, with a fabulous dinner with the three aforementioned authors and Kelley Armstrong. And after dinner Scotch.

Saturday was a full day with a panel entitled "Sex & Politics in Modern Fantasy" (hello? Children's book author!), an absolutely jammed packed/standing-room-only panel entitled "Norse Culture & Mythology in Modern Fantasy," a signing where I signed books for most of an hour, another Author's Tea, and a Faun concert.

Afterwards, I ended up giving an impromptu two-hour session of my ScripTips course to several interested parties in the bar, and then more Scotch, and then wine in a suite where the various band members were hanging out. And then suddenly it was 4:30 am.

Sunday yet another college friend drove up from DC to meet me for breakfast. Then I had my final signing and I'm happy to say we sold out of Frostborn and nearly of Nightborn! By this point, enough people had heard about ScripTips that I volunteered another session (in exchange for coffee and beer, which is considerably cheaper than my usual fee) and I taught another two hours to a group of about eight to ten people (who were very smart and very fun to teach).

The evening ended with an acoustic show, in which various members of Faun and Woodland played, bracketing a solo performance by Einar Selvik that was transcendent for this Norse-enthusiast.

And there ended a fantastic weekend!

Thanks to organizer Robert Gould, all the other authors, my two old college buddies, the tireless booksellers and convention staff, the Hunt Valley Inn, my drivers Cybele and Kim, all the musicians, and Wotan the Faerie Smasher for an unforgettable time.