News & Blog

The November issue of Locus is on magazine shelves now and features a review of Dying Is My Business! The review isn’t currently online, only in the magazine, so I can’t link to it. But here’s a snippet:

Kaufmann…combines elements from myth, fairytale, horror, and even ’30s film romance and detective stories, for an imaginative, appealing take on urban fantasy that seems uniquely suited to New York City, past and present.

I love it! Also, a 1930s detective story-style hat tip to Nick Mamatas for letting me know about the review.

I’ve got two more big appearances around the Web today! And they both coincidentally involve the number 10.

First, I answer ten questions for Blackbirds author Chuck Wendig over at his blog, Terrible Minds. Here’s a snippet:

I learned some hefty lessons about plotting. I love great characters and I love emotional arcs, but I’ve always been a plot-heavy writer. So I thought writing a chase novel would be a breeze. Cue the loud buzzer and the giant red X from Family Feud.

Then, I’ve also got a Top 10 list — “Top 10 Immortal Heroes” — up at one of my favorite book blogs, All Things Urban Fantasy. There’s a free giveaway there, too, if you’d like to win a copy of Dying Is My Business. Just saying. Here’s a sneak peek about one of the better known immortal heroes on my list:

The question of whether Superman is immortal has been debated by comic book fans for decades. The theory is that Superman will never age or die as long as he has access to our yellow sun. The opposing viewpoint says Superman isn’t immortal per se, he’s just aging very, very slowly thanks to his superpowers, much like Wolverine. Possibly disproving both theories is the fact that Clark Kent grew up. If Superman can’t age, or ages very slowly, why isn’t he still the baby Ma and Pa Kent found in a corn field? The debate rages on. But all you really need to know is this: When Doomsday killed Superman, he didn’t stay dead very long. Whatever the reason for it, Superman appears to be immortal, borne out by the fact that in the comics he’s still alive in the 853rd century!

Did I mention there’s a free giveaway over there, too? Go check it out!

If you have one of the few copies of Dying Is My Business with the misprint I described here, you can now read or download the missing pages as a PDF: Pages 309 – 341

The rest of you can consider this a free, completely contextless, spoiler-heavy excerpt from the book’s climax!

There’s a great new review of Dying Is My Business over at Tor.com! It’s got a lot of good candidates for pull-quotes, but this one is probably my favorite:

Dying Is My Business is a solid entry in Nicholas Kaufmann’s new urban fantasy detective series. Wherever he takes the next books, I’ll be there, front and center.

It’s a good review, but I feel a little weird about one part of it. The reviewer makes certain assumptions about the characters that aren’t supported by the text, and those assumptions happen to be about issues that are important to me. But I’m probably just being a grump unnecessarily, which has been known to happen. The review is pretty great, and Tor.com is read by hundreds of thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans, which is also pretty great.