Jonathon Mast: Author

Finding a Book to Read

Ask me what I’m reading.

Go ahead. I dare you.

Did you ask?

Here’s my answer:

I DON’T KNOW!

[maniacal laughter of a man breaking down]

I Don’t Care About Commas

My editor/wife yelled at me.

A lot.

She yelled mostly about commas. “Should this comma be here? It feels right, but is it right? The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t help!”

And then she tore my arm off my body and beat with it, using the flying splashes of blood to form a summoning circle for whatever hellish human created commas in the first place. She has plans for that fool. Terrible, amazing plans.

The reason she yelled at me and decided I no longer needed an arm?

Well, first, I wrote the thing she’s editing. It’s my fault that there’s anything to edit in the first place. So the sentence with the offending comma? My fault.

Second, I don’t care.

Does the comma feel right? Leave it there.

That’s why I’m not an editor. Editors need to care about these things. Correct usage matters.

Next Time On…

Dragons have come to Londinium.

At the end of Dragons of the Ashfall, Patty shoves her way onto the Gear, the ruling council of the city. She and her dragons aren’t leaving. The city needs them. Some kind of conflict is coming. The Well-Dressed Man lurks in the shadows.

All that takes place at the conclusion of Book One of The War of Leaves and Scales. Oh, uh, spoilers. Sorry about that.

Honestly, just read the book. It’s a good book. I might be biased, but it’s got a lot of adventure and heart and a protagonist who’s scrappy. She also deals with a lot of guilt, is incredibly loyal, and has to figure out how to feed a dragon in a steampunk setting.

So, that’s book one. That means there’s a book two, right?

Where Giants Fall

Dreanna isn’t running away. She’s getting help. Really. If she just wakes the Stone Dragon, she can save her beloved city, Lith.

Now if only she could convince her dead sister that she really, really isn’t running away.

You can preorder Where Giants Fall now. It includes my short story, “A Dance of Stones”!

Every Day… or Else!

Seven months. Seven novel rough drafts. Several revisions. I have been working my butt off. It was my goal to finish another novel revision before February arrived so I could tackle the next novel in the new month.

And then this week my brain said, “NOPE!”

I opened up the file. I looked at all the notes from my editor. I should note that the edits are genuinely helpful and simple to follow, so this has nothing to do with her. But I looked at the notes and shut down.

Well, that’s fine. I can take a day off of writing. So I turned to other activities.

And then a second day of that.

And then a third.

Ugh.