Today I’m doing a Reddit-exclusive giveaway. Come check it out.

For those of you coming over here from Reddit, here’s what the bookplates look like:

The bookplate is a 3×4 sticker, signed by me, that can be put in the front of your copy of Promise of Blood.

If you’re looking for a signed hardcover, they’re available from both VJ Books and Goldsboro for international shipping. If you’ve already bought the book, don’t forget to add yourself to the Reader Map!

Two weeks ago I locked myself out of the house while taking the dogs out.

Not my finest moment.

The wife was at work, I was in pjs, and it was about forty degrees out. To keep myself occupied while waiting for wifey to get home (I had to kill an hour), I decided to take my twitter followers on a tour of my garden. I showed them everything that had wintered over – the blackberries, rhubarb, blueberries, and herbs.

Well, I finally got around to planting the rest of my garden, so I thought I’d share some pictures of the yard with you:

Last year we planted 27 Roma tomato plants in just one and half of those 4×8 boxes. It was a little… crowded. We ended up getting well over 150 lbs of tomatoes, the vast majority of which we turned into salsa, tomato paste, and spaghetti sauce. This year we’ve cut back and diversified with broccoli, peppers, and more cucumbers.

A word about compost: I keep two separate compost bins. One is for leaves and kitchen scraps. This will be turned monthly and added to my garden in the spring. It does great things for the soil. The other compost bin is for particularly weedy grass clippings, weeds from the garden, and leaves from the areas in which we have poison ivy growing. I could use those stupid garden bags to get rid of that refuse, but that seems like a hassle.

I put clean (not a lot of weeds) grass clippings on my vegetables to help keep weeds down and the soil moist. I put wood chips on the blackberries, blueberries, rhubarb, and raspberries, as they are permanent plants.

On Monday, wifey and I did our first hive inspection. We didn’t take any pictures of the inspection itself, but here are some of the bee yard:

The girls were looking a little rough after the winter, but there was some brood in the frames and even a couple of frames of fresh capped honey. We put the top brood chamber on the bottom (because the queen works her way bottom to top as she lays eggs), and added the honey supers. Hopefully the extra room will encourage the queen to lay eggs like crazy and in a month we’ll have a booming population.

I’ve had several people ask me in the last week where they can get a signed first edition of Promise of Blood. I can help you with that! Well, not me personally. But these guys can:

VJ Books (US)

Goldsboro Books (UK)

Both of these bookstores ship internationally.

Something I got in my email this morning that I thought was kind of cool: Promise of Blood is a staff pick at a Waterstones in the UK. This is the first time I’ve seen my book as a staff pick, so it’s very exciting!

I love seeing pictures like this, so feel free to send them my way! And don’t forget to add yourself to my Reader Map if you get the chance!

Promise of Blood has been out for (almost) two weeks now.

I think the launch went very well. Being a new author I have absolutely no context with which to put the sales numbers for the first week (I’ve gotten ebook and hardcover figures, but not audiobook), but my editor and agent both tell me that they are very good for a debut author.

The launch party on the 18th went off without a hitch. We had 115 people attend and I did my first reading/signing. It was a great deal of fun. I’ll say that both wifey and I were absolutely exhausted afterword.

I really appreciate that the Geauga West Library, the library where I spent many hours reading and exploring as a kid, was kind enough to host the event.

The blog tour I did over the last two months turned out to be a great success. I can’t count the number of people who’ve messaged me or mentioned in the comments to say they bought my book based off one of the guest posts or interviews. Thanks to all the awesome people who hosted me! You can find a full rundown of the blog tour on the right sidebar of the home page.

Reviews have been almost universally positive. Promise of Blood is averaging 4.3/5 on Goodreads, 4.7/5 on Amazon, 4.8/5 on Amazon UK, and 4.9/5 on Audible.

As a reminder, it’s a huge help to authors if you stop and leave a review or rating on any of the above sites. Even if you didn’t enjoy the book.

Book two, The Crimson Campaign, is due to my editor a week from today. I’m going through this week and tightening where I can. Honestly, I’m a little nervous about it going into production so soon but I think that overall it is an even better book than Promise of Blood. I’ve learned a lot about pacing and characterization over the last two years and I used what I learned to improve book two.

The update to the WordPress theme I’ve been using completely screwed up the site and rather than spend the time trying to fix that, I’ve decided to hunt around for a new theme. I’ve wanted something new anyway, so…

This site may undergo several changes over the next week as I try to figure all this out. I’m just glad it didn’t happen during the launch.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

I’ve introduced a new feature to the site: a Reader Map!

I love seeing the cool people who buy my books and the variety of places they live, so I’ve introduced this Reader Map that will allow us to see your name, a picture of you with the book (or your kindle with the book on it!), and where you’re located.

I should also mention that Orbit put up a very cool book trailer for Promise of Blood late last week. I’m normally not a fan of book trailers, but I think they outdid themselves.

A couple other items of note:

You can read the first four chapters of Promise of Blood sans-Facebook now.

I was on the Speculate! Podcast and The Skiffy and Fanty Show last week.

I’ve added a few more items to the Blog Tour. In case you missed them on Facebook or Twitter last week, take a look at the right sidebar.

*The new map has caused something screwy if you view this site through an RSS feed. We’re in the process of trying to fix that.

Promise of Blood is out in bookstores today all around the world!

Reviews have been pouring in the last two weeks and to my delight they have been very complimentary. You can check out quotes and links to them by clicking “Reviews” on the left sidebar.

You should be able to find Promise of Blood at your local bookstore, favorite online retailer (in both hardcover and ebook), and available in audiobook from Audible.com.

To celebrate the book launch, I’m giving away 100 signed bookplates. The bookplates were designed by Isaac Stewart – the same awesome artist who did the maps and chapter headers for the book – and printed by Bookplate Ink.

*Edit: I am COMPLETELY OUT OF BOOKPLATES. Thanks for the show of support. They should be going in the mail on Monday.

These are first come, first serve, and available in the US only. Email me at brian (at) brianmcclellan (dot) com with the subject BOOKPLATE. Include your name and address and within the next week I will mail you one of the below bookplates, complete with my signature.

Not interested in a bookplate? Want the real thing? Well, we can do that for you. A couple companies have signed copies of Promise of Blood for sale and they both offer international shipping:

VJ Books (US)

Goldsboro (UK)

What’s been going on the last week, you ask? Well, I’ve continued on with my blog tour with the following items: I talk about Learning to Write from Brandon Sanderson over at Rob’s Blog o’ Stuff. Rob then interviewed me later that same week and we talked about muskets, fan fiction, Highlanders (there can be only one), and cats. Typical stuff.

I had a longer interview by Paul Weimer over at SF Signal at the beginning of the month, and on Dark Matter Fanzine I talked about Researching Reality for a Fantasy World.

I was Goodreads’ Debut Author Snapshot for April, which was super cool.

Orbit has posted another map from Promise of Blood up on The Powder Mage Trilogy Facebook Page. Don’t forget that “liking” that page will allow you to read the first four chapters of the book.

More reviews are pouring in. You can see any of the ones over at Goodreads by following the link, but some of my favorites are at The Founding Fields, SciFiNow, and Fantasy Book Critic – all of which were very complimentary.

Just two days left until the international launch of Promise of Blood.

Wow. I can’t believe it’s that close.

I could say I’m not freaking out at all, but I’d be lying. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I first decided I wanted to be an author ten years ago and it is now almost upon us. Go about your way – I’ll just keep breathing into this paper bag.

… is available for pre-order! You can find it by following this link to Audible.com. It doesn’t look like they have the excerpt up there yet, so if you want to hear the first three minutes of the book you can go here. It’s read by the wonderful Christian Rodska, who worked on the Horacio Hornblower novels.

This week I continue on with my Spring Blog Tour. On Monday I enjoyed a chat on the Reader/Writer Podcast with Ben Delano, where I talk about beekeeping, learning the ropes of fantasy writing under Brandon Sanderson, and my debut novel. Follow the link above to give it a listen.

This morning The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf and Book Review was kind enough to have me on. I wrote about Industrialization in Epic Fantasy and how I used industrialization within the world of PROMISE OF BLOOD.

That’s all for now, but more will be coming. The schedule is packed this month. If you’re not sick of hearing me go on by now, you will be in two weeks.

Giveaway entries closed last night at midnight. All in all we wound up with 216 requests for the book, which really blew me away!

The winners were Lian Zhou of Singapore and Joshua Karl of Lawrenceville, GA.

Congratulations, my friends! I hope you enjoy the books. They are signed and packaged, waiting for a trip to the post office this afternoon.

Sorry to everyone who did not win. Remember that PROMISE OF BLOOD is available for preorder in both hardback and ebook wherever books are sold (and should be up for audiobook soon). Launch date is April 16th. Just two weeks away!