If you ordered a copy of the book before March 15th, 2012, you not only got a wonderful story that you’ll treasure for decades and tell all your friends about (ahem) but you’re also eligible to win any number of fabulous prizes, including…

• A signed copy of my next book “The Red Boy” which will be published later this year. Five winners will be chosen at random.
• A Super! Secret! Sweepstakes! to win the ambiguously-described “nifty” prize. Two lucky people will be chosen at random.

In addition, if you bought a copy of the book, Aurohn Press will donate a copy in your name to the library or school of your choice. If you haven’t yet sent your library information in, click here to send it along.

And finally, if you ordered a Kindle version of the book . . . well, I don’t know who you are. But you’re still eligible for the contest, sweepstakes, and library donation. Please confirm your purchase by sending us an e-mail with your mailing address, library info, date of purchase, and a screenshot or photo of the title page of the book on your Kindle or iPhone.

Winners will be announced next week, so get your information in while the gettin’s good, y’all.

(Note: The aforementioned “nifty” prizes do not include an actual kitten or trophy.)

How about you?

This isn’t due to any kind of block, but rather a by-product of being too busy with getting The Cradle ready for publication, beginning edits on The Red Boy, and working through a number of time consuming projects and initiatives at the office.

Not writing is not a good feeling. I’ve gone through periods of low productivity before but still managed to write at least a little bit of something every day. Not writing leaves me a bit shaky, queasy almost. Not writing does odd things to my dreams. Not writing makes me feel disconnected, on the fritz.

It’s not a feeling I particularly enjoy.

The hectic pace has kept me away from most of my friends on Facebook and Twitter as well, which doesn’t help my feeling of disconnection at all. And, obviously, I haven’t been posting very much here as well.

And yet, there’s been some very interesting things happening on Pinterest. I’ve been posting there for a while now but it’s been very interesting to see it gain momentum over the past few months. My wife doesn’t typically jump on whatever Internet bandwagon happens to be passing by (unlike me) but she’s gone deeper than I expected when I sent her the invite. And together we’re doing our best to press back against the overwhelming tide of cupcake photos, quirky nail polish ideas, and hair braid how-to’s.

Or, as one of my colleagues put it: “You guys are the dark side of Pinterest.”

I have to admit, on a site seemingly overrun with babies-in-peapods reposts and virtually identical my-dream-kitchen boards, that sounds like a compliment.

Pinterest has some interesting creative potential as well. I’ve got boards devoted to each of my books — posting my take on the characters, hoping other people might want to contribute their own. I’ve also got a board with little fragments of story that occur to me, hoping that someone will start up a collaboration back and forth through the comments.

Fun stuff. This was the kind of world I was trying to find twenty-five years ago when I sat alone and awake until four o’clock in the morning, looking out my window.*

Not alone anymore.

“The prose is exquisite, as usual if you are at all familiar with Camp’s work. The characterizations are great again.”

It’s been a little over a week now since The Cradle went on sale and the response has been a bit surprising — lots and lots of people have been buying the book and a few reviews are even starting to show up on Amazon and GoodReads.

Overall, this is probably the best launch response I’ve seen so far. And I’m grateful to everyone out there who’s jumped in to show their support.

“I love this book. I cannot put this book down. I want to know more about Jee, and her new adventures in this book. TM weaves a tale like no one else. He lures and captures your imagination with enthralling characters and images that could be straight from the movie screen.”

There’s still a week left to order the book and get the special pricing, as well as a whole slew of special offers and giveaways.

It’s available in hardback, softcover, and Kindle. An ePub version and audiobook are on their way. I was disappointed in my original recording for the audio, so I’ll be spending the weekend re-recording that.

Ordinarily I’d be annoyed by this kind of a setback but the most excellent Michael Levy has graciously given his permission to use two of his compositions as accompaniment to the audio. This delights me to no end. I’ve been a fan of Michael’s music for a while now — he plays ancient music on replica instruments, capturing the spirit of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and beyond. It’s fascinating, remarkable work and I can’t recommend it all highly enough.

His new album Ode to Ancient Rome has just been released, but there’s a lot more where that came from.

————-
* And before anyone gets too smarty-pants with the “Maybe you’d be writing more if you weren’t on Pinterest” comments, you’re probably right to some degree. On the other hand, Pinterest isn’t really something I do during my usual writing times — it happens earlier in the evenings when my wife and I are unwinding after the day (hey, it beats watching television).

UPDATE: The deadline for the launch pricing and sweepstakes has passed. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the enthusiasm. This was the biggest launch turnout I’ve ever had and I truly appreciate all the kind words and support.

You can still buy a copy of the book, of course.

At long last, The Cradle is finally here! Picking up where Assam and Darjeeling left off, you can now read the next chapter in Jee’s ongoing adventures.

The Cradle is available in softcover, hardcover, and Kindle editions. To celebrate the launch, we’re offering all kinds of special pricing and goodies…

Enter to Win
From now until March 15, 2012, every purchase made through this site enters you in a drawing to win a signed copy of T.M. Camp’s next book “The Red Boy” which will be published later this year. Five winners will be chosen at random.

Super Secret Sweepstakes!
In addition, every order placed between now and March 15th, 2012, will be entered into a Super! Secret! Sweepstakes! Two lucky winners will be chosen at random to receive a surprise gift along with their purchase. Trust me, it’s awesome.

Support Your Local Library
Buy any of T.M. Camp’s books between now and March 15th and Aurohn Press will donate a copy to your local library (or school library) in your name.

Buy Now and Save
For a limited time you can order The Cradle at 10% off the cover price. In addition, if you order copies of Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology you can save up to 25% off!

Click here to learn more or buy your copy today!

The fine print: The aforementioned sweepstakes and special pricing are only good through March 15th, 2012. Shipping and handling rates are for US customers only. International shipments may require additional costs.

And then the Fates nudged everything back into proper perspective.

On Friday morning the call came that my wife’s aunt had passed away unexpectedly in the night. She went to bed on Thursday night and when her husband woke up the next morning, she was just . . . gone.

Claudia was a good lady. She took care of her husband and her three boys, doted on her four-year-old grandson. She had a wry sense of humor, a powerful bullshit meter, and a hearty laugh.

The sudden shock of her passing is still there for her family, eclipsing everything in life. The gods only know when the sun will shine again for them.

On Facebook, my wife had this to say…

“Cherish the people you love. Give them a hug and a kiss today. Sit with them for a while and just be together. Call your mom and tell her you love her. It matters.”

Amen.

At the very least, it gave me a chance to play in the #FactsWithoutWikipedia game for a while, producing gems such as these…

Like so many others, I’m joining the blackout on January 18th to protest the SOPA/PIPA legislation being considered by the US Congress.

If you don’t know what SOPA or PIPA are, let me summarize: SOPA and PIPA are ill-conceived, poorly drafted legislation created by people who readily admit their ignorance of the very technologies they are attempting to control.

Better yet, watch this…

No matter your politics, faith, ethnicity, or social class, you care about this.

I know you do because you are on the Internet right now.

You look at websites. You read blogs. You watch videos. You connect with friends on Facebook and Twitter. You read the news. You listen to music and read books. You do research. You buy stuff.

This legislation has the likely potential to dramatically, negatively impact how all of those things function. It has the potential to ruin everything that makes the Internet what it is.

This isn’t hysteria, this isn’t some crackpot fringe conspiracy theory.

Get the facts, take a look at who stands in opposition. And don’t forget to contact your representatives to make sure your voice is heard.

“I think what weird fiction tries to do, it’s unsettle you to some degree. But it also wants to make the world bigger than you ever thought it was, or could be.”

From a great interview with Stephen Graham Jones over at Weird Fiction Review.

First off, Lulu is having a sale between now and the end of the month. You can order any of my books at 25% off. Which isn’t half-bad, if you stop to think about it. It’s perhaps only a quarter bad. Or good. One of those.

Just use coupon code LULUBOOK305 at checkout.

And this review of Assam & Darjeeling just showed up today over at GoodReads…

“You have to think well of an author who acknowledges his debts to Dante Alighieri and the Brothers Grimm. While it is true that “Assam and Darjeeling” is suffused with those literary spirits, not to mention L. Frank Baum, “Touched by an Angel,” and a Greek myth or two, the quest at its heart is also an original and perceptive look at relationships, especially relationships between brothers and sisters.”

Baum’s a comparison I’d not heard before. I don’t know that I measure up, but I sure do like it.

Read the rest of the review here.

Twine lets you create Internet-connected systems and objects anywhere you have WiFi. Compact, low-power hardware and real-time web software work together to make networked physical computing simple and versatile.

Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors.

Twine is a timesink of awesome. I want one. And then another one.

“Almost four million children in the UK do not own a book, according to a report by the National Literacy Trust.

…Poorer children and boys were less likely to have books, it added.

…About a fifth of children said they had never been to a book shop or a library.”

This weekend it became clear to my wife and me that the baby a bigger bookshelf. Sophie isn’t even two yet. She’s just learned most of her letters. We read to her every day, every night. On her own, without any prompting, she will go to the shelf and take down books and look at them. Sometimes she’ll do this for almost an hour.

She’s been to bookstores. She’s been to comic book stores. She probably has almost one hundred books of her own. Also a handful of comics.

I don’t say this to highlight what wonderful parents she has. I just want to put some context in place around how surprised and horrified I was by this BBC News article about the ever-widening gap between children and books.

Books were my refuge and my world as a child. They still are. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that some children might not have any books available to them at all.

Naive. Sheltered. Privileged. Yes.

Guilty on all counts.

It’s obvious. I hadn’t thought about it before now, but if you’re poor, you’re not going to have fewer books. You might never have books.

I know there are good organizations out there, people who are dedicated to doing what they can to correct this. At least one of them will be getting some money from us this holiday season.

I’ll let you know who as soon as I know, so you can do the same.

(And you can watch it for free on Hulu. Because technology is awesome.)

“And at the same time as this I’ve been working upon my novel Jerusalem which is at the moment on a pretty spectacular chapter where I’ve got a massive four dimensional hallway up above the world that is only above one area of the world geographically but it is above it in every particular moment of time. So it’s this immense hallway, two miles wide, a mile high, and running down it is a naked old man with a naked 18 month old baby girl riding on his shoulders, and they’re running down the length of time and they are seeing the big freeze when the Greenland ice shelf melts and the Gulf Stream stops, and then a bit further on there’s a sort of a more jungly area, where presumably the warming of the planet has kind of counteracted the cooling down that would happen in these latitudes if the Gulf Stream were to stop, and you’ve got post-humans, genetically engineered to survive in a world with less food, and then after a few more thousand years of pounding down this corridor there’s no more people any more. And then you start to get mega-fauna that have come up from the drying oceans, giant squids that are using their bodies as basically digital televisions, using the pigment cells in their skin to mimic their surroundings, and land whales that look as if they’re part goat! Because I found out that apparently when whales came up on to land for the first time, the thing that they were closest to genetically was the goat. So I’ve got these horned whales with hooves, dragging themselves through these clearings, you know, towards the end of time.”

I just finished rereading Moore’s first novel Voice of the Fire. It’s easily one of the top five favorite books on my shelf. I cannot wait to get my hands on “Jerusalem”.

Read the whole interview here.

Believe it or not, this is research for the next book I write after I finish my next book.

(Also, in case you’re wondering what I want for Christmas. Hint.)

Tonight I finally heard the end of that phrase thanks to Boardwalk Empire.

So there’s that.

(Best show on television, by the way.)

“The truth is, I find myself more and more going back to things I’ve already read and loved rather than taking a risk on something new.”

(Admittedly, a pretty awful admission for an author to make. I’m looking to break this habit. Add your suggestions to the comments below…)

In Soviet Russia the card punch you, comrade.

Google Music, on the other hand, had no problem with my library. It even grabbed all my podcasts. And it keeps synchronizing. But I’ll have to rebuild my playlists out there, though.

So, at this point, it’s Google Music for the win. Between that and Spotify, I’ve always got something good to listen to.

To be fair, I still use iTunes as my media hub. Music, movies, television shows, audiobooks, podcasts, apps . . . they all live there. Google just lets me access it over the network. And Spotify is just damn awesome for discovering new music, sharing with friends, etc.

(For what it’s worth, I still really like LastFM as well.)

Soon enough, it doesn’t seem so crazy. At all.

For me, Conspiracy Theory is that kind of crazy. In fact, I don’t even like to refer to it as crazy. So many theoretical conspiracies have turned out to be true over time that, on some level, I don’t want to dismiss things outright just because they go against the conventional wisdom.

And, having said that, I recognize I’ve slipped over the boundary once again.

“Welcome back to Crazy Town, Mr. Camp. Let me stamp your passport. Don’t forget to visit the gift shop.”

Reading this post on the mind control meta-messages in the movie ‘Labyrinth’ at the Vigilant Citizen website is a great example of this in action.

At the outset of the article, I was a bit “Oh, I don’t know…” about the premise:

Like many other fantastic tales, the movie conceals within its symbolism an underlying meaning and, in this case, it is rather disturbing. Labyrinth describes the programming of a mind control victim at the hands of a sadistic handler.

Yeah. I have trouble believing Jim Henson is, intentionally or not, providing material for the MK-ULTRA program.

But it’s an entertaining read. The Vigilant Citizen always adopts a reasonable, even academic tone that sets them apart from other conspiratorial bloggers…

But like many of these delightfully twisted fantasy movies, there is more to Labyrinth than meets the eye. By understanding the occult symbolism and references in Labyrinth, the movie becomes a big allegory for mind control, where each scene refers to a particular aspect of the process. What appears to be a young girl’s quest through a Labyrinth to find her baby brother becomes a metaphor for the internal world of a mind control victim that is being programmed by a handler.

…and by the end, I’m not merely on a happy day trip to Crazytown. I’m meeting with the local realtor…

What appears to be the defeat of Jareth is actually a victory as he successfully programmed Sarah’s internal world. It can be used, in her words “every now and again in her life”.

Yeah. Sarah’s not the only one who’s been reprogrammed, pal. Thanks.

I’m going to have to take a much closer look at Elmo in Grouchland now.

(For what it’s worth, the photos of Bowie drawing the Tree of Life and posing in Crowley-esque Egyptian garb was where I felt my mind shift into going “Oh. Yes. I can see it all so clearly now.”)

I’m doing my damnedest to have it available in time for Christmas. But it’s going to be tight. I’m not entirely sure I can make it.

Until things get sorted out, you can read or listen to the first twenty pages or so here.

Seriously. The video has naughty bits in it. And a naked lady. And pomegranates.

It’s also amazing.

Here’s Sovereign Syre in “Persephone Eats” (directed by JM Darling).

Persephone Eats from JM Darling on Vimeo.

(If you are offended, you only have yourself to blame. I warned you.)

Alan Moore on Harvey from Estate of Harvey L. Pekar on Vimeo.

(Guess what I just bought me’n the missus for Christmas…)

But for now, I’ll stick to saying how I’m disappointed, though not surprised, to hear that Tarsem’s latest film “Immortals” is an awful mess…

Here’s everything you need to know about Immortals, the new movie from director Tarsam Singh [sic] that’s (extremely) loosely based on Thesus [sic, again], the hero from Greek mythology: At one point, Zeus gets super mad at Apollo for interfering with the humans, so he blasts him through a stone wall. It’s built up as this huge moment for Zeus that shows how dedicated he is to allowing mankind to forge its own destiny rather than be shepherded by the gods, and clearly meant to be a big, pivotal moment for the film.

And then we see that the blast has left a perfectly Apollo-shaped hole in the rock as if he were a Looney Tunes Character. That’s Immortals in a nutshell.

(From the Comics Alliance review)

For the record, I love Tarsem’s The Fall. It’s a gorgeous, heartfelt piece of cinema that few other movies can match. I’m told that he had absolute control over every aspect of that film, from script to final cut . . . which might explain a lot.

I’d been planning on going to see “Immortals” in the theaters — a bit of a luxury these days, with a young toddler at home — based on the subject matter and Tarsem’s involvement.

Not anymore. I’ll probably be happier staying at home and watching episodes from the excellent Clash of the Gods or Jim Henson’s The Storyteller series instead.

My expectations are pretty high. Here’s hoping that the extra time they took to launch was to get it right.

Between a networked song library and my Spotify account, I’ll be one happy little fanboy.