We’d been planning a trip up to Knoxville for a while to meet up with Lee Ellis, author of the Kildash series, and one of our newly signed authors at Three Ravens Publishing.
We’re working through edits and prepping to re-release the series before unleashing book 4 onto the world. He still has it self-published for the moment through Amazon, but once we’re ready for the repub He’ll take it down, and fingers crossed that Amazon will transfer the reviews.
It’s a great Sci-Fantasy series that the kids and I enjoyed listening through the audio for book 1. The narrator is the voice of the series, so we’ll continue with Tom after a planned Kickstarter to pay for his awesome skills.
You can currently pick up the Kildash series on Amazon. When we re-release it, we’ll be going wide so that more folks can find it and it can make its way into the library system.
Why hasn’t he taken down the books yet since we’ve signed him and the series? Simple, because I told him not to. No sense in him losing a chance at some coin or promotion while we’re prepping for the re-release.
And when we met up with him, it turned out that he had one kick-ass ride that he’s been working on. A 1989 Carmero Iroc-Z. And she purrs like a kitten till he gets on it.
The original plan was to meet up, have lunch downtown, and talk about his series. Then we were going to go over to Union Avenue Books to see what it would take to get his titles into the store, along with other Three Ravens titles, and to set up a signing.
Well, turns out there was a Tennessee/Florida game going on yesterday, and the downtown area was stupid packed with people, so instead we sidetracked to the SoKno Taco Cantina.
The grub was well worth the drive to South Knoxville.
Street tacos, a good selection of beers on tap, and a great atmosphere. The cost was very reasonable with the amount of food we got. Hell, if it were closer it could easily become a writing hangout for me.
While we were going to be up there, I figured, two birds – one stone. So we swung by the Brown Squirrel Furniture store on the way up, so I could drop off a copy of my latest book, Burning Roads.
Why the hell would I drop off a copy at a furniture store?
Easy, because I wrote the location into the universe. The 2072 Car Wars duplicate of the location has it as something akin to a Buccees truck stop that we named Big Bill’s Dine and Dash. It was just a quick little blurb mentioned in Burning Roads, but both Christopher Woods and David Hensley have scenes a bit more extensive going on at the location.
And how could we ever wander out way up to Knoxville without hitting up the Knoxville location of our favorite used bookstore chain? You won’t find much better than McKay’s Used books.
How can you not love a warehouse of used books? We were really surprised that the layout was the same. The original one we visited just after moving to the Chattanooga area was replaced by the one we frequent often. Guess when they expanded, they wanted to keep the brand recognition going on.
And, you have a few locations to check out. On the way home last night, I tossed out the question, if you visited three McKay’s bookstores in the same day, would it cause a rip in space/time? We could pull it off. Hit up either the Knoxville or Nashville branch, tap Chattanooga and then hit the other one.
Actually, now that I’m thinking of it, you’d want to hit it up in the order of Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville in order to score the extra hour crossing over into Central time heading to Nashville.
Picked up a nice haul of books and games, including eight vintage 60s Mack Bolan books for $0.50 each. Can’t beat that with a freaking stick.
And after we got home, we set up to play a big game of Ticket to Ride. My evil mother-in-law kicked our asses on her first game. But it was so much more fun and challenging than the little New York version of the game we’ve been playing.
And then in other news, I’m getting my old music show back. I’ll be DJ’ing Wednesday afternoons from 3-5 PM Eastern on Scifi.radio, playing music that fuels the muse. I’ll be sharing writing craft bits and pieces, and getting tidbits from some of the veterans in the industry, as well as news from other small presses out there. Tune in and listen on their site, app, or other listening options they have available. There will also be a live chat through the Scifi.radio discord server.
Now, for those of you interested in seeing the next chapter of “On the Wings of a Weeping Angel” my current work in progress, you’ll find it below for the Paying subscribers.
Until next time, y’all take it easy. Keep your Heads up and your Pens sharp.
William Joseph Roberts (aka Hillbilly)
And don’t forget to check out my Substack page for behind-the-scenes stuff and chapters as they come about.
The Squirrels’ Nest is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Get 20% off a group subscription
Copyright © William Joseph Roberts 2023, all rights reserved
Chapter 2
Go to substack and subscribe to see the working content.