We all judge books by their covers. Though we hopefully remain open-minded about what we’ll find on the pages within, the cover inevitably creates a first impression –– helps frame our expectations, and sets the context. That obviously makes covers terribly important, and with Champions, we’ve already discussed some of the effort that went into […]
I do most of my reading these days on either an iPad or Kobo, and sometimes a Kindle. All of these devices give me a certain amount of control over how the book appears –– font, size of font, margins, etc. I’ve come to appreciate the flexibility, just as I’ve come to happily ignore the […]
“When do you find time to write?” This was a question I used to get a lot in the old days, and to which I’d crafted a reasonably good –– if over-simplistic –– answer: “Between midnight and 2:00 AM.” That reply was rooted in the truth. For quite a few years (particularly as a student) […]
It’s probably no surprise that today’s Author Note is about our 30th anniversary gift from Kenneth –– the Meet & Greet tickets to the Lionel Richie concert at Casino Rama. I’m not someone who generally goes to concerts on this scale –– the closest would have been The Irish Rovers tour that took them to […]
Yesterday, Stephanie Shylock wandered into the ‘Breakout Books under $5′ category on Apple’s U.S. iBookstore. It’s always good to see a title take on that sort of position –– this year we’ve been very kindly featured by the folks over at Kobo, and now it’s Firebox‘s turn to represent the Champions of 1941 for our […]
Today is my 30th wedding anniversary, and if you’ve read Kenneth’s post from last Thursday, you’ll already know that thanks to his conniving and my credit card (which he has since paid off), thirty years and one-day after we danced to “Three Times a Lady” at our wedding, Peter and I will be attending a […]
When the Defense Command Fleet moved against Mercury, Wolf, Lion and Cyclops were tasked with a special job. Depending on whether you asked Wes Pellew, Mik Mikaelsen, or Ken Barron himself, you’d get different historical comparisons for their task: it was either sinking the Belgrano, or challenging the Graf Spee. The latter was my favorite […]
People who are familiar with the Iceberg Publishing story know that this labor of love is an after-hours initiative. Since the very beginning, all three partners have been either full-time students (in the case of Kenneth in the early days) or have had full-time jobs. For the most part we’ve kept these different aspects of […]
Disclaimer: this is a completely off-topic author note about my parents’ love story, their upcoming thirtieth anniversary, and my scheme to have them meet Lionel Richie. Regular author notes will resume next week. Only crazy people get married in the fall in Newfoundland. That’s not a scientifically-proven fact, just a common sense assessment; given the […]
I’ve had more than a few conversations recently about the choices we make and how we make them… about what it takes to stay committed to a dream when it’s impossible to know how long the journey will take, or if its realization will be all that we expect or hope it to be. Strolling […]
So that’s it; with the release of Dragons this morning, the first season of Champions is now complete. I use that word season mindfully, because so much of the structure of this new series has been informed by the rules of television production… and I think that’s a good thing. One of the questions I often get […]
Yesterday afternoon, my Aunt Laura (Laura Morry Williams) launched her third book in Ferryland, the outport community on the southern shore of Newfoundland where my mother and her six sisters and seven brothers grew up. Published by DRC Publishing, Over the Fence: Stories from Outport Newfoundland is a compilation of commonly themed stories. The book […]
The origin of the question “What would Mike Strong do?” is a story in itself, but as the release of Dragons approaches, it’s more important that we consider the question: “What does Mike Strong do?” Of course, the venerable Colour Sergeant has a reputation. For instance, his actual rank is just ‘Sergeant’ because he was […]
This past weekend Kenneth updated his Facebook page status with the following post: It’s rare that I’ll find myself a week behind a book deadline. Been that sort of September. Writing (a first draft at least) tends to be a mostly solitary undertaking, but when it comes to actually publishing a book, the process usually […]
Iceberg has been very fortunate to find thoughtful and dedicated readers over the years, and these fine people never fail to surprise us. This week, perhaps the ultimate Defense Command fan Keith Pine Sine –– who may have read every DC novel more times than I have, and I wrote the damned things –– presented […]
The decline of cursive writing is a topic that’s been receiving a fair bit of attention lately. I have some sympathy for the position of schools that have chosen to remove it from their curriculum. How do you justify continuing to dedicate limited resources to teaching a skill that’s required less and less, over ones […]
Next week sees the launch of Dragons, the final installment of Champions for 1941, and returning in that book is one of my favorite guest-characters: Flight Lieutenant Douglas Bader. The double-amputee RAF pilot who refuses to quit despite his two ‘tin legs’ is still the first officer aboard Skipper Miller… and indeed, we’ll see even more […]
All my posts this week have been about my mother, Mary Louise Barron. I’m going to continue that trend for my Friday note, but move to a subject that’s quite a bit lighter than those I’ve been focused on so far. Because my mother didn’t like to have her picture taken, I have fewer photographs […]
Every writer probably has a favorite author, and though I’ve admired many –– favorites like H. G. Wells, C. S. Forester, Bernard Cornwell, and David Weber –– if I were asked to select just one to be my role model, it would have to be America’s storyteller, the incomparable Louis L’Amour. Some of you might […]
As regular readers will know from Monday’s Author Note, my mother, Mary Louise Barron (Morry) would have celebrated her 85th birthday on September 8, so it’s perhaps not all that surprising that I’ve been thinking of her even more than usual the past few days. Truth be told, I’ve indulged in much reminiscing, and told […]