Your free audiobook plus an online event with Luke Daniels
I should probably put in a disclaimer right away: The free audiobook is for folks who were paid subscribers last year, because the deal is you get to read them every month as I write them, but once I collect them the next year, yeehaw, you get to download the audiobook for free. If you’re not currently a paid subscriber, that’s cool, I appreciate you very much! But this next little bit here is me fulfilling my commitment to folks, and if you’d like to get in on this year’s stories about the Druid apprentices and enjoy the audiobook next year, please upgrade to a paid plan.
So paid peeps: Click on this link right here and then input the email address you used to sign up for Words & Birds. That should allow you to download The Great Big Bear audiobook file, which will download as a compressed .zip file in your downloads folder. You then double-click to expand it, and voila! The dulcet tones of Luke Daniels will fill thine ears, telling you stories. Once expanded, you can play it right on your computer or move it to a device, you do you! I hope you’ll dig it. I’ve given it a listen already and dang, Luke is good at his job. Made me laugh and I already knew what the jokes were.
If you have difficulty, don’t fret, Boba Fett! We’ll fix it. Just reach out to me with the issue and we’ll figure it out. But if your email is incorrect, it won’t let you download, and you also can’t download more than once.
BUT HEY, EVERYONE. I’m going to be doing a livestream on Tuesday—yeah, St Patrick’s Day—with Luke Daniels at 8 pm Eastern. You’ll be able to watch it on Luke’s Facebook page (Luke Daniels Audio) or my Twitch channel (I’m just kevinhearne on Twitch, easy to find and follow), and we are also hoping to go live on our Instagram pages too. Luke will be doing some readings from The Great Big Bear, promoting the audiobook to folks who aren’t already getting it for free, and we’ll answer questions and stuff. It’ll be a good time! If you’re an Audible member, you can preorder it now.
And heck, if you prefer print or ebook, you can preorder that now too! I have a couple of deals to point you at:
Deal #1: Print or ebook through bookshop.org if you’re in the USA. They offer you a discount in print AND a portion of your purchase (whether print or ebook) goes to support an independent bookstore that YOU choose! So you support a small business in your community (instead of a fascist billionaire) and maybe save some cash? DOUBLE WIN. Link for the print here and link for the ebook here.
Deal #2: Print-only offer for the USA and Canada: Preorder directly from Horned Lark Press. You get a signed copy, a signed bookmark, $3 off the cover price, and THREE STICKERS. One of Oberon saying “Ask Me About Gravy,” one of Starbuck saying “No Squirrels!” and a third one that’s a surprise which is directly related to one of the stories in the book. It’s super cute and is sure to make people wonder what THAT’S all about, and then you get to talk about books with someone and how cool is that? So here’s a pic of what you get, minus the surprise sticker because I can’t just go around ruining surprises:
So yeah. That’s the big news: audiobook download + Luke Daniels livestream on March 17, and The Great Big Bear is almost here!
But there is other news: Did you know there will be a story about the Polish coven in the forthcoming anthology PARANORMAL PAYBACK? It’s true. It’s told from the point of view of the youngest witch, but I promise that Malina will be there and she is going to bust out her hellwhip. This anthology is out April 14 and contains stories from a lot of big-name urban fantasy authors—you may have heard of Jim Butcher, for example.
Let’s see, what else? I have a brand new story called "Sinner’s Grave" in the anthology UNAVOWED, which is out now in ebook and will be in print a bit later this year. If that seems unusual, well: It is. This was originally a Kickstarter thing and it funded really well with super fancy print editions signed by all the authors and stuff like that. But if you just wanna read the stories, the ebook is a quick and economical choice.
I have another story coming featuring the Morrigan and Al MacBharrais meeting a Valkyrie in Glasgow…with cameos from Odin and Thor. That one is a hoot. The book hasn’t been announced yet or I would provide you a link, but it also has one heck of a lineup and all the stories are about valkyries, so, yeah. It’s metal as heck. More on that when I can share it.
And I am currently editing my next novel which also hasn’t been announced yet, so: Stay tuned.
As for what I’m reading: Y’ALL. I just finished reading a new one from Jason Hough. If you haven’t heard of Jason, the dude knows how to tell a story. And this new book, which comes out in July, was so much fun. It’s a modern spy thriller with a little splash of Cold War drama in there, which is of course lots of fun now that we’re no longer living in it. But I also dig it because the hero is so unlikely: An old locksmith a biscuit away from retirement. So if you feel like giving that a look, here it is:
Throw Away the Key
A former CIA locksmith turned glorified janitor is haunted by a botched Cold War operation with ramifications that extend to the present day.
Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith.
Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War.
Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him.
What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.
And the other thing? I’m rereading Project Hail Mary because I loved it the first time and I want a refresher before the movie comes out THIS FRIDAY OMG. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it.
Project Hail Mary
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.
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