Ni hao! Apparently, that’s how they say hello over in Taiwan…or at least, according to Wikipedia, that’s how over sixty percent of the population says it. I’m not sure about the other forty percent, but I suspect their greeting has something to do with textiles (one of the nation’s major industries!).

Three very cool events have occurred over the past several days that I wanted to share. The first is that the awesome folks over at The Mortuary have named my sophomore novel HOUSE OF SKIN their February Book of the Month Club read. I’ve been lurking over there for months and have found several great reads via their book club. That’s caused me to feel seething jealousy toward other authors a fervent desire to have my book chosen for  a group read, so the fact that they’re doing HOUSE OF SKIN is very cool news indeed.

The SECOND piece of cool news is that some other Samhain Horror authors and I have become cult heroes in Taipei. Okay, maybe not, but one of the awesome people at Samhain sent me a tweet that featured THE SORROWS in a Tapei store. And since I can’t figure out how to post a tweeted pic, here’s the logo of some Taiwanese textile show:

Okay, so perhaps I’m not going to be offered the key to the city of Taipei any time soon, and no, I haven’t yet received a fan letter in Mandarin…but still, it was neat to see the global reach of Samhain.

And finally, I was pleased to learn that fellow author Alan Spencer named HOUSE OF SKIN one of his favorite reads of 2012. Alan is a great guy and a heck of a writer whose work you can check out right here.

So that wraps it up. There are several updates on the horizon and loads of big news to share soon, but for now, I’ll say, “Zai jian!” (accent marks omitted because I don’t know how to make them in WordPress…or in any other software, for that matter…could a brother get a little help here? Anybody? PLEASE?!?!)