Above, my first attempt at a portrait on my new Wacom drawing tablet. This is of Amboise Bierce, the author of the The Devil's Dictionary, of which inspired my own Writer's Devil's Dictionary, which is found in my collection Book by Author. I drew freehand in a program called Krita, a great free and open-source Photoshop-style software. It felt a bit weird to draw on a tablet and see the results on a distant screen, but I'm liking going digital.

And below, a landscape with no particular relationship to any of my writing, except, I guess, it's possible there's a nice bit of woodland depicted somewhere in one of my books. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Tangential Gecko News

--DARPA Z-Man Program Demonstrates Human Climbing Like Geckos--

"A gecko is able to climb on glass by using physical bond interactions—specifically van der Waals intermolecular forces—between the spatulae and a surface to adhere reversibly, resulting in easy attachment and removal of the gecko’s toes from the surface."

DARPA article

This Gecko ability gets a passing mention in my short story There's more to Life than Biology. It was only a matter of time before we, non-bond-interacting humans would find a way to take advantage of the biological superpower of our lizard friends. They're good for more than selling insurance!

Find the short story here in this book: Book by Author

Two books. .99 cents each.

From May 22 to May 28, my scary-fun novel Invasive Species is on Amazon's countdown deal, meaning that it costs only 99 cents, which is a savings of $200,000 (if you were planning to instead buy a mid-size house in certain areas of the US).

Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZ6ZMJS

Also, my short story and sundries collection Book by Author is always only 99 cents. Here's some praise for two of the stories contained within:

I received over a hundred entries, which was great, but it took me much longer than expected to read them all. I was overwhelmed by the high quality of the submissions, which made it tough to choose the winner. After weeks of excruciating deliberation, I finally went with the quirkiest entry I received. The fifty dollar prize goes to Mike Mayer for his story “Boundary Line,” a gripping tale of a kidnapping gone horribly wrong. 
-JA Konrath, author of the Jack Daniel Mystery series 

…the editor of BioMedNet's News & Comment section love it so much, she laughed out loud and demanded I tell you she read it to her children during dinner time. 
-Laurie A. Zamprelli Pasiuk, fiction Editor HMS Beagle (in regards to There's More to Life the Biology) 

Find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDQKX0S

And if you don't like discounts or short stories, you can buy my comic-fantasy novel A Barbarian for Dinner for its normal (though highly reasonable) price. What's the book about? To find out, use this equation: "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" PLUS "One Foot in the Grave" TIMES the classic fantasy genre EQUALS "A Barbarian for Dinner." 

Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Barbarian-Dinner-Mike-Mayer-ebook/dp/B00JVBL404/ref=la_B00KEXRB7I_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400785878&sr=1-2

Book by Author

A short collection of short stories coming up soon. More info to come, but for now, here's the cover: