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First up, I'd like to remind everybody that Virtue is currently for sale for the Kindle . I published it for the Nook and the Kindle at the same time, but it's still not up at Barnes & Noble yet. I'm not sure why not, but it should be up soon (hopefully, tomorrow). Meanwhile, it is for sale at Smashwords in formats supported by the iPad, Kobo, Nook, etc. of you'd like to check out it there.  Eric and I finally got the vlog  up. It took three different takes, and lots and lots of time uploading. It's longer than I'd originally wanted (ending up at about 14 minutes), and I didn't even answer all the questions you guys asked. Thanks to everybody for all the great questions, and if you guys like this, we might try it again later. P.S. This is the super awesome shirt I'm wearing in the video that you can't really see: P. P. S. When Eric says, "Did they call him a question, and ask him Brad?" at the beginning, he meant to say, "Did the...

I published Virtue to Amazon and Barnes & Noble a few hours ago. I also uploaded the paperback version, but that won't be proofed and ready for like a week or so. Amazon and Barnes & Noble should be for sale sometime within the next 24-48 hours. UPDATED: Virtue is already for sale at Amazon!  Eric and I will be doing the vlog that answers your questions tomorrow (Saturday) and uploading it sometime that day. Virtue A Fairy Tale In a world filled with magic, love might be the final answer in the eternal battle between good and evil. When Lux is tasked with retrieving the virtuous Lily for his master, his entire world is put in jeopardy. Lux must battle goblins, demon dogs, and sea dragons to rescue the one he loves, and that's only the beginning of what he must face...  Virtue is a fairy tale for young adults with action, suspense, and romance. It contains mild language and some suggestive dialogue. Recommended ages 14 and up. Click here to read an excerpt Click here ...

My good friend/platonic lifemate/assistant Eric and I were talking the other day. He's obsessed with Rosie O'Donnell, and she has a feature on her blog called "Ask Ro." Ever since I've had a blog, Eric has been suggesting that I have an "Ask Mandy" feature. (That last part makes more sense when you know that he and Barry Manilow call me "Mandy.") Anyway, I have new book coming out next week. (A fun fairytale called Virtue . For more info on it, click: here .) So I thought now would be a good time to try out the "Ask Amanda" thing. Or "Ask Mandy," if you prefer. I've never much cared what people call me. I'm not like Bradley Cooper and insist you call me "Bradley" even though I'm an adult male. Here's how the "Ask Amanda" thing will work: In the comments section of this very blog, you write a question. If it's profane or illegible, I won't answer it. If it asks for a spoiler (i.e. h...

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Beat the Devil's Tattoo" Arcade Fire - "We Used to Wait" The Beatles - "Eleanor Rigby" Elliott Smith - "Miss Misery" Vampire Weekend - "Giving Up the Gun" The Beatles - "Can't Buy Me Love" Black Mountain - "Hair Song" Rogue Wave - "Lake Michigan"  Hugo - "99 Problems" Foster the People - "Pumped Up Kicks" The Beatles - "Baby, You're a Rich Man" Ida Maria - "Bad Karma" The Beatles - "You've Really Got a Hold On Me" The Raconteurs - "Salute Your Solution" Mumford & Sons - "The Cave" Ra Ra Riot - "Can You Tell" Led Zepplin - "When the Levee Breaks" Pete Torn - "Lose You" Amos the Transparent - "Greater Than Consequence" Nirvana - "Marigold" The Raconteurs - "Carolina Dreams" The Civil Wars - "Barton Hallow" Peter Gabriel -...

In a previous post I discussed how easy it is to invoke web services from a browser using Websphere web 2.0 feature pack. One of the things I noticed is that it seems to parse the WSDL every time a page is loaded, which isn't necessary if we take a few additional steps. WSDL2JS Most developers who work with web services are familiar with a utility which converts a WSDL into generated code for a given language. Something like wsdl2java will generate java, wsdl2perl will generate perl and so on. What about wsdl2js ? As it turns out, the documentation for ibm_soap mentions that the parser holds JSON markup in a variable - all we have to do is grab the contents of that variable ( smdString ) and save it off to a file. Below is code that will parse a given WSDL and then copy the resulting JSON into a textbox for easy access. <html> <head> <title>DsixE WSDL2JS</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="dojo/dojo.js" djConfig="isDebug...

I just realized that I never blogged about the interview I had on Better TV . But I'm doing it now. Back in February, Rhiannon Ally with the syndicated show Better came and did a piece on me. She was incredibly nice (as was her camera man), and I thought it turned out really great. Also, I need to give a shout out to Kyle who runs the Coffee House on Main where we filmed this. (He's also on the beginning of the video explaining what a Monkey Mocha is). He was incredibly gracious letting us film there, and he's let me do about a hundred interviews there. He's a super nice guy, and he makes the greatest iced latte in the history of iced lattes. So if you're ever in Austin, MN go to the Coffee House on Main , order a iced latte with raspberry syrup, and give Kyle a really big tip. You won't regret it. Here's the video for Better TV: And I just found about this - http://heathersauction.blogspot.com . There's a ton of cool stuff to bid on - from getting busi...

As you may have heard (or most likely, as you have not heard), my fish - Bruce & Wayne - died. I'm not entirely sure why they died, but Bruce had gotten black marks on his fins, so I think it may have been some kind of ick or fungus or something like that. But I will not be detered on my quest to have pets that are fish that don't die. So I went out and got all new stuff - new rocks, new tank, the works. My other tank was a hand-me-down from my mom, and I'm not sure if there was some kind of bacteria in there. To be safe, I thought I should start from scratch. I also got lots of fish medicine, so if the fish do get sick, I'm on top of it. And I got a goldfish owner's manual. I set up the tank the yesterday, because it told me I should let the tank sit for 24-hours before adding fish. Today I got my new fish. One is a calico goldfish, and the other is a fantail goldfish. They are pretty, and they will live forever. Here is a short film I made about them: Also, I ...

For a long time I wondered why nobody has created a javascript library for web services. There are all kinds of libraries for REST services, but they're not very developer friendly. I much prefer the structure provided by a WSDL, and with tools like wsdl2java creating stubs for my code is a snap. IBM's Dojo Soap Library IBMS's Websphere application server offers a set of dojo extensions in their web 2.0 feature pack (FEP) which includes a SOAP library. I decided to take a look at it and found that it is quite easy to use although there aren't many examples to be found on the web. There is a sample provided with the feature pack but it uses the declarative dojo notation which doesn't work for everyone depending on what the goal is. I opted to take a scripting approach since I already know how to invoke web services on the server side, and I wanted to see how it measures up in ease of use. Below is a simple example which retrieves data from a contacts web service I b...

My good friend Daniel Arenson just released a new book called Blood of Requiem (Requiem Fire, Book 1 ) , which is available now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble .  Not only does it have a ridiculously awesome cover, it's about dragons. For those of you in the know, I secretly love dragons (and a dragon makes a special appearance in my soon-to-be-released novel Virtue ). It's in celebration of all things fire-breathing and bad-ass that Daniel came up with this fantastic guest blog. Who is the Greatest Dragon? Fantasy is full of these scaly, fire-breathing beasts. They are arguably the genre's most emblematic creature. But who is the greatest among them, the toughest and baddest? Here I rank the world's top ten dragons from film, literature, and legend. (To be fair, I won't rank the dragons of my own creation – those who inhabit my novel Blood of Requiem – though they are pretty tough.) Who wins the coveted number one slot? Read on to find out! Ten: Norbert Hagrid...

Sigh.... This is a picture of my office from at my old house: This is a close up the fantastic Christian Bale poster that my mom got me (from France, oddly enough): In the process of moving, it was torn. I left it behind. I can only assume it is in the garbage somewhere. So now I don't have Christian Bale staring at me, looking vaguely disapproving. I wanted the poster as a motivational tool, and it really did work. In my mind, Christian Bale is like the human incarnation of perfection. People always take that to mean that I find him really attractive, when I don't, and I am in fact slightly terrified of him. But fear is a very good motivation. It's just anything he wants to do it, he does it, even if it seems impossible. Anything less than perfect isn't good enough. But he always manages to achieve it, which is what I find so stunning about him. It's like he's invincible. Anyway - the moral is, when I think, "I don't want to write this chapter right no...

Okay. Here's the deal. I've been waiting to break the news to you guys until I had everything squared away, and you might be upset at first, but honest, this is really good news. Here's the bad part: I'm not going to be releasing Lost Without You. I'll explain more about that in a minute. Because the really good news is that I'm going to be releasing Virtue in it's place, and Virtue is about a million times better than Lost Without You . I wanted to be sure that Virtue would be ready for release this month before I announced it, and it will be out by Memorial Day. AND I updated the Upcoming Projects tab to include all the books I'm releasing in the next year (including the release dates for Hollowmen and Swear .) The thing is - Lost Without You sucks. I wrote it like seven years ago, and I have a really strong emotional attachment to it for a a couple reasons. So I was blinded by how terrible it was until I was editing. When I started talking abou...

Here's the press release that went out today: Self-publishing phenomenon Amanda Hocking's USA Today bestselling TRYLLE trilogy, three young adult paranormal novels that the author previously published as ebooks, again to St. Martin's, for publication in both print and ebook starting in Winter 2012.  So what does that mean for you, the reader?  If you've already read the series, it doesn't change a whole lot. It'll just make it easier to get a paperback, if you want one, because the books will be in stores. If you haven't read the series, it will make it easier for you to find, and the books will have fewer errors. What does this mean for the Trylle Trilogy?  It will get a bit more polished with some editing (but don't expect the story to change. It will stay the same. It'll just be cleaner). The books will be more readily available for the people unable to find them and for the majority of the populace that doesn't have ereaders. And having pap...

Some fun stuff: I got a message from Paul Durham the band Black Lab today. I use their hit song "This Night" in the book trailer for Letters to Elise , and he likes it. But he also wanted me to let people know about their big radio launch for their new album Two Strangers (which I bought months ago, because it's awesome, and you should buy it too). So, you can get " This Night ":  here   and learn more about the band here: http://blacklabworld.com And you really should. I've mentioned them before on my blog because they really are an excellent band. Check out the song "Ten Million Years" if you haven't yet. And here's the trailer for the video, with "This Night" on it:  Also in fun news: I took a fan made quiz for Hollowland on Goodreads, and I totally got one wrong. Some of the questions were hard. If you want to see if you can beat my score, check it out: here . On a related note, hopefully within the week, I'll have a bl...

This is going to be a blog that contains both pictures AND words, which I think is the best kind of blog. I'm officially back to work. We are completely moved out of our old house, and our new house is almost entirely furnished. (Aside from a broken mirror and a missing nightstand). Eric fixed the internet this weekend (WOOT!), my office got painted on Thursday, and my wonderful family came over on Saturday and slaved away all day helping me and Eric put together our desks. I just finished getting everything put away, so I finally have a space that I'm comfortable writing in in this house. Anyway - as I said earlier, my family came over to help assemble my office and work on other stuff around the house. This was my mom, my step-dad, my aunt Cindy, my cousin Tina, her husband Corey, and their two kids Leyton and Miley, who are four and three. Not only did they help me do work (MAJOR SHOUT OUT to all of them - they did a ton and really made my house feel like a home), but they...