I wanted to post this on Tuesday, but I was distracted by the recent holiday. Naturally, I’m referring to National Guys in the Floral Department Day.

Every year around this time, if you go into any store with a floral department, you are likely to see a dozen or so men wondering aimlessly in the vicinity, browsing from flower arrangement to flower arrangement, obviously lost but unable to ask for directions.

Why do they do this? Well, it’s the law. And if any man in a relationship of any sort fails at this task, the consequences are serious indeed, let me tell you.

Stores plans for this day, and every year they stock up on pretty young attendants to help out the guys who don’t know what they’re doing. Except for the store that I went to, which had a fat dude telling a pimple-faced guy with a scooter—and this actually happened—that they didn’t have bouquets of roses half red and half pink. Meanwhile, I thought, if he wanted a mixture of red and pink roses for his one true love, he should have gone to a real flower shop and paid more than 20 lousy bucks on an arrangement. Then he could have swept her away on his scooter, fading with her into the horizon and the setting sun.

As for me, I chose a bouquet of a dozen roses for my Beloved, pink blossoms just beginning to brown around the edges.

She loved them, especially the brown spots. Apparently, I have her well-trained to expect almost no attention from me whatsoever. Congratulate me.

(I was just kidding about that last part, in case you couldn’t tell.)

I read something today that made me want to pull my hair out. As you may know, I’ve been looking forward to Holly Lisle’s upcoming fiction journal Rebel Tales, because I love Holly’s work, and I’m expecting Rebel Tales to reflect what she values in a good story.

Today, John Dye, the Rebel Tales SF editor, announced his first season’s theme and editorial requirements. On the subject of the latter, he writes:

I believe that the magazine, especially early on, must attract a majority readership before it can begin catering to niche groups… To me, this is simple nickels and dimes.

אוי (Or for you non-Hebrew readers, “Oy!”)

Upon reading this, I retched a little, and I swear I tasted something funny in my mouth.

(I’m sorry that I forgot to bring Jen Knox’s excellent memoir with me when I did the video. But she is giving away two copies, hosted on this blog.)

Don’t forget to check out the full giveaway listing at www.JTimothyKing.com (with more books coming, continuing into February).

A conscripted warrior-mage, lover of the outlander who ended her country’s 300-year war, rescues her nation’s worst enemy from death to battle her lover and end imposed peace.

Yeah… I guess that sums it up, if a book like Talyn can be summed up. But that short description really does the story no justice.

The cover blurb is a little better, which begins: “In a world where technology is magic, and war is the only way of life, Talyn is a soldier, one of thousands trained from childhood to protect her country from the monarchist Eastil, who would take away the personal freedoms of the Tonk.”

This is a story about the love of freedom, the abuse of power, the illogic of war, civility enforced at the muzzle of a gun, self-defense and defenselessness, and the forces that bring down mighty nations, and form and destroy cultures.

Today, I’m giving away an original hardcover copy of Talyn. And I’m giving away a copy of Hawkspar, the second book in the series, in another post. Because these titles prove the point that an author’s latest work should be the best she’s ever written. They don’t make these hardcover copies of Talyn anymore, but I managed to get my hands on one. Truthfully, I’m tempted to keep it myself. I opened the package and swooned, wowed, sniffed the pages— you know, all the things you do to a beautiful, new book. Besides, my mass-market paperback is already wearing out, and by the time I get done re-reading it and re-re-reading it, it’ll be in tatters.

I’m still working my way through Talyn, by Holly Lisle. If you recall, I did teasers for it twice before: here and here. I’m now about 7/16 through, and still singing its praises. A reading session with this story always leaves me that “Wow!” sensation that I love. Frankly, Holly has ruined every other book for me. I should be angry with her, but for some reason I’m not. Maybe she’s bewitched me, as her character Talyn has— Uh. But you’ll have to read the book for that. (Wouldn’t want to give it away, would I?)

As an author myself, I’ve noticed several typos in this printing of Talyn. However, that makes me feel a little better about the first time I saw a copy of From the Ashes of Courage. I flipped through to a random page and suddenly found the word “officialdate” staring back at me. How did that get in there?! I immediately went back to earlier proofreader copies, sought out that page… Yup. Even the earliest manuscript had that typo, every version right back to the beginning, and with all the reviews, every single one of us missed it before the thing went to press. Ugh.

Speaking of which, there’s only one day left to enter the two free giveaways of copies of From the Ashes of Courage, on Neil Shurley’s blog and Missy Frye’s “Incurable Disease of Writing” blog.

Driving up the Maine Turnpike this weekend, I took pause from, of all things, the landscape. Not just from the beauty of it, but I got a feeling that it was distinctly American. In Maine, the culture still retains some of the human community values that I often associate with the original Americans. And for just a moment, I could imagine myself dwelling on the unpaved American landscape, with pride.

I wondered what would have happened, had those of our progenitors not been decimated by disease in the 18’th century, how different might our history have turned out. And I promised myself I’d think about writing an epic fantasy or SF story about it, with a fictional people locked in the same conflict, facing the same issues. And then I discovered that Holly Lisle had written than story.

Actually, I don’t know yet that Holly has written the same story I wanted to write. I only know that over the weekend, I had a great deal of time to read. I picked up Talyn, which I had just started. And I found as the story developed that Holly was exploring many of the same issues I wanted to explore, and from a similar perspective. And I found that she had done so by creating a fictional world rich in history, culture, and human need.

And magic. In the world of Korre, where Talyn lives, people use magic as technology. Talyn herself is one of the Magics, a person who has a talent for magic, and in her job as a Shielder, she protects her tāak and her country from the magic attacks of the Eastils.

I’ve been absent, as you may know, because my computer’s mainboard died, and I’ve been busy with a new software contract, and our only working car stopped working, and then my computer’s hard drive died. (Yes, I’m getting tired of it all.) As a result, I hadn’t had have much time to write over part of June and the whole of July, and I truly missed writing. (But that’s another blog post.) I also didn’t have time to read, and I missed it, too. Now that life is returning to kinda-normal, I’ve finished reading Truffles by the Sea, which I loved, and A Time to Tell.

One of the beneficial side-effects of the software contract, of course, is that I have the money to do something I’ve wanted to for some time: an Internet-wide book give-away. I’m in the process of contacting numerous book bloggers, asking each if she’d like to give away a copy of one of my books. I can mail the books to the winners, but I need bloggers to host the giveaways and choose the winners. I don’t know that I’ll ever do a giveaway of this scale ever again. If you’d like to be included, please contact me and let me know.

For my next read, I long for a story that I’ll adore. That means something by Holly Lisle. Specifically, Talyn. I’ve left this book of hers sitting on my shelf for far too long, just because I haven’t gotten around to reading it. “Not your average fantasy book,” according to Robin Hobb. This book should’ve been an order of magnitude more popular than Twilight, were it not for Sturgeon’s Law. A book with as rough a birth as any book gets. An epic story born of an epic concept that was years in the making. According to Holly, “the best world I’d ever built, with the best cultures, the best people, and the best stories in my career.” I’ve just begun reading Talyn, but from the very first pages, this book effuses inspiration.

You wouldn’t think that I would need more books, judging from the size of my Goodreads “to-read” list, all of which I have on the premises or readily available to borrow. But the fact is that I’ve been looking for some engrossing, character-driven fiction to read, and on that score Holly has always delivered. Besides which, the Little One has wanted to read Fire in the Mist ever since I told her about it months ago. (I had read part of it online at the Baen Free Library, but that was before ebooks were convenient to read, and I’ve been longing to finish it myself.)

But that wasn’t the end of my book acquisition. I’ve also set up an account on BookMooch, have already given away 5 books from my “to get rid of” pile, and have already requested 2 more Holly Lisle books.

All told, here are the books I’m expecting (some of which I’ve already received):