Today I’ll be doing a Google+ video chat hangout with fellow fantasy author Brian McClellan. The event description says: Join these two writers as they talk about their newest books, the epic fantasy genre, and writing as a career in a live, online event on May 1st! We’ll be taking audience questions via Google Hangout and Twitter.

The hangout starts today at 1:00 p.m. Mountain time (19:00 GMT). We’ll send a link out on the social media networks right before it starts, so you can watch it live. There will also be a recorded version later.

Audible has started a “What We’re Listening To” author campaign that I’m participating in. You can go here to see the list of all the participating authors and what audiobook each of us is currently listening to, and what we have to say about that book.

Paste Magazine did an article on me, and it ended up the cover story! Check out the cover illustration too.

My assistant Peter has now uploaded all of my tweets for April.

I appeared on the Authors Think Tank Podcast talking about my laws of magic. Check it out!

Writing Excuses has two new episodes. Both of them are “microcasting” episodes where we briefly touch on several questions submitted by listeners.

The first episode, with guest Eric James Stone, covers:

• Should you submit your prologue along with the first chapters?
• What do you do when you’ve got some professional sales under your belt, but can’t seem to get more?
• How do you manage scene/sequel format in a multi-POV novel?
• Is passive voice really that bad? How do you tell if you’re using it too much?
• What is the threshold for deus ex machina?
• How do you maximize the emotional impact of a character death?
• If you’re a discovery writer, how do you go about becoming an outliner?
• When someone asks what you do for a living, how do you answer them?
• How do you get out of the beat-by-beat, this-then-that blocking of action?

The second episode covers:

• Can I have a rule-based magic system and a mystical system in the same universe?
• What are your pre-writing methods? (Can of worms — it’s going to get its own episode)
• What’s the first thing you do once the first draft is done?
• When approaching real-world issues, how do you avoid being preachy?
• What’s the best advice you can offer to someone who’s just starting to write?
• Does it help you to experiment with weird narrative styles?
• What are your least favorite tropes?
• Should you fully edit your first few “practice” books?
• How do you know if you’re writing too quickly?
• How do you tell the difference between a weakness in your craft, and a story that requires stylistic rule-breaking?