Hunter Brown Nominated for Clive Staples Award - VOTE TODAY!

Each year, a select group of books are nominated by readers to receive the Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction (Named for C.S. Lewis the famed author of The Chronicles of Narnia book series). This year, we are happy to announce that Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow has made the short list.

There are 15 excellent books to choose from this year. It is truly an honor to be nominated alongside so many great authors. Please, take time to spread the word about this awesome award and be sure to Vote for your favorite TODAY!

Learn more about the awards by visiting clivestaplesaward.wordpress.com

Hunter Brown Wins Moonbeam Award for Pre-Teen Fiction Category

Our heads grew a bit today. It's not our fault...you can blame it on our publishers if you'd like. You see, it was their idea to submit our books to these silly award things that nobody wins. We tried to warn them - award winning authors are not just a dime a dozen and even though you believe in us...we're just not THAT good.

Boy were we wrong.

Early this morning we received a giggly phone call from an enthusiastic staff at Warner Press. Allan and I hovered over the speakerphone, listening intently to the buzzing hive of friendly publishing staff on the other end of the line. We stood slack-jawed, wide-eyed and white-faced as they told us "Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow" had just won a "Moonbeam Children's Book Award" in the "Pre-Teen Fiction - Fantasy" category!

It's true - see for yourself: http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1315

So, in a matter of moments we went from being plain ol' published authors (whoopee) to award winning novelists (Yahoo!) and all that entails.

Can you see now why our heads are growing? This is fantastic news that allows us to gain more exposure with our stories in the marketplace. We can even place a "Moonbeam" seal on our book AND several new organizations will be promoting us on their list of recommended reads for Libraries and other outlets.

Being a math whiz myself, I know what comes next: High Honors + Shiny Awards = More Exposure + Bigger Heads! However, since the award is only a shiny sticker and not something I'll be receiving on the red carpet in hollywood, you can pop my ballooning head now.

Needless to say both Warner Press and the Miller Brothers are very pleased to have received this recognition. Warner also mentioned that there are a few more awards we are in consideration for. We'll let you know if any more good news arrives.

Hunter Brown Radio Commercials?

Hey guys, Spirit 105.3 is doing a radio advertisement for our latest book Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire. It's part of their new "book club" promotion and they are looking for reviews from people who have read it. Post your comment on the Spirit1053.com website to help tell others about the book too.

http://www.spirit1053.com/familyfun.php?articleID=199

Author Chuck Black Visits with Miller Brothers

WIN ONE OF THREE COPIES OF CHUCKS BOOKS...WATCH THE SHOW TO FIND OUT HOW!


Today we're honored to have author of the Kingdom Series and the Knights of Arrethtrae join us for our LIVE webcast (3pm PST, 6pm Eastern). Chuck Black is joining us via chat as well as a prerecorded in-studio video interview we made with him this past Saturday.






If you've yet to read Chuck's work you are in for a treat. Join us at MillerBrothersBooks.com and click on Video Chat to join in. You don't need a webcam, just watch us host the show and chat with us via an optional chatroom.

First Pictures of Consuming Fire...

Hip-hip-hooray! The first shipment of Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire has arrived at the publisher's shipping dock today. As you can see, they are going fast. A few sneaky employees got their hands on their copies a few weeks early.

Don't worry, you can still pre-order your autographed copy TODAY for only $9.99 (with purchase of medallion) by visiting www.MillerBrothersBooks.com or direct from Amazon.com for only $11.19

So, why wait? It'll give you something to read whilst you eagerly await the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie.

Peter and the Sword of Mercy - Cover Art LEAKED!!!

So, I'm a huge fan of the Peter and the Starcatcher series. The books were co-authored by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson and are nothing short of amazing. After all, co-authored books ROCK! Okay, so the first three books are listed below and if you haven't yet read them start them right away. You'll be glad you did. (Besides, it will help you pass the time until our next Hunter Brown book comes out...right?)

• Peter and the Starcatchers
• Peter and the Shadow Theives - My personal favorite.
• Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

Anyway, I soon as I heard that they were coming out with a fourth book in the series (Peter and the Sword of Mercy) this fall I started frantically searching for the cover art. Nobody had it in any of the bookstores, however I was successful at spotting a cover on another blog. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Looks like they are flying over London in a train.

Chris

Watch Miller Brothers LIVE on Webcast Wednesday!

Today, Wednesday July 22nd at 3PM we begin our Weekly Webcast Wednesday program on MillerBrothersBooks.com. We'll celebrate Allan's Birthday (a day late) and talk about the new book coming out on 9-9-09. Join the conversation via live chat and we'll look forward to seeing you there.

Just visit http://www.MillerBrothersBooks.com and click on the Video Chat tab to join in. It's that simple.

See you soon!

Ten-Gallon Sam Top's List of "Family-Friendly" Books

We were honored today to hear that Focus on the Family has recently chosen our children's book "The Legend of Ten-Gallon Sam and the Perilous Mine" as one of their top ten Family-Friendly Books of 2008. For those of you who are not familiar with our children's books you can read more about them by visiting the http://www.heroesofpromise.com/ website or read the review on Focus on the Family's website.

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/book_reports/top10/2008.aspx

This announcement came as a total shock as we had no clue we were even in the running for the Top 10 listing.

Dragons in our Midst Movie

Our author friend Bryan Davis is meeting with a major motion picture company in 45 min about distributing a film adaptation of his book series Dragons in Our Midst. Please pray for him and his producer as they pitch the storyboards (which, by the way, look amazing).

New Codebearer Challenge is LIVE!!!

Fellow Codebearers, the next level of the online game is now active. It is called "The Chamber" and it takes the book codes to a whole new level.

Visit www.Codebearers.com today and try your hand at it now.

Giveaway?!?

GIVEAWAY!! A fellow blogger is giving away the first book in the Passages series by Paul McCusker, Darien's Rise. Contest ends July 30th. Click here to post and for rules for the contest.

Block Party on July 3rd

We had a great time at the block party tonight. Sold some books, got a tan, made some friends and even met a couple of budding and published authors who I look forward to chatting with again someday soon. Oh...one more thing...shortly after setting up our display Allan got stung right on the elbow by a rogue bee with a temper tantrum. It was a hit and run kind of thing...we never saw the bee again. This is why I am afraid of bees.

The event itself was somewhat of an eclectic collection of several events all rolled into one. Part classic car show, part church carnival, part 4th of July celebration and part vendor fair. Somehow on paper it doesn't sound like it could work, but...by golly it was a HIT!

The event was hosted and directed by the Tacoma Alliance Church and a friend of ours from Lighthouse Christian Books. It was sponsored by Home Depot and had quite a good sized crowd turn out. Of course, Free Hot Dogs and Hamburgers were an added bonus. There were bounce houses for the lil' ones and dunk tanks for the older. While I didn't get to leave our booth very often, my 4 year old pretty much summed everything up by saying the part that he liked best was "everything!" He had a blast.

The evening concluded with the inflating and launching of a red white and blue Hot Air Ballon (which was amazing to watch) and a stellar fireworks show put on by the Tacoma Rainers directly across the freeway from the event (which we unfortunatly couldn't stay to watch - the kids were far too tired by 10pm). Wow, what a night!

We may have even booked a few school visits for this next fall. (Which reminds me if you know of a teacher or librarian at an elementary or middle school in Washington State...have them give us a call.)

We'll definately plan on visiting this event next year.

The Miller Brother's are Going Nuts on the Radio!!!

Join us on the air, July 11th 2009, for our scheduled interview with Bongo Rod and the Coconut Hut Radio Show. All we can say is that the interview is entirely unscripted and "a little bit nutty". If you've ever wondered what the Miller Brother's favorite junk food is, or how Chris Miller sounds with his nose plugged you might want to tune in.

Visit www.coconuthutradioshow.com to listen live!

New Website Homepage Released

We released an updated homepage today on the www.Codebearers.com website. Included in the new homepage design is a sneak peek at some concept artwork from Book 2 in the Codebearers series (Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire). More changes to come soon, but hope this gives you something to talk about as we build up to releasing new content around the next book.

To be clear...

That previous post was on April 1st! There will be no animated Code"bears" series. All in good fun! Have a blessed week everyone...and keep an eye out for some more Codebearer challenges coming your way in the next few weeks. The next phase of the challenges starts soon!

Codebearers books spawn new animated series!!!

We're thrilled to announce that after months of pitching the idea of an animated series based on the Codebearers books, we've finally landed a deal with a major network! Of course, as with all TV adaptations, a few minor modifcations were required to swing this deal, but we still think the heart of it stayed true. In the end it boiled down to droping an extra "er" at the end of Codebearer to make the deal. More details will be forthcoming, but for now, enjoy the sneak-peek at this exciting new animated series... and let us know what you think of it!

Book 2 Wrap Up

After countless cases of Mt. Dew, Mocha Frapachino, Gatorade and Shaklee Energy Tea drinks (a.k.a. creative juice); after dozens of late-nighters, all-nighters and giant night-crawlers (a.k.a. "fangworms" in the book); after hours of blood, sweat, tears (yes, we did cry) and good ol' fashioned writing, rewriting and re-rewriting, Allan and I have at long last managed to put the wraps on the final draft of Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire. Phew!

We shot the file off to our loving editors at Warner Press who will now begin the process of making us look good through the magic of editing.

If all goes well on the illustration side of things our book should be coming out 9.9.09. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

As soon as we get the greenlight to share the first chapter we'll give those of you who helped with our blog tour (or those who bought the medallions) FREE access to read the first chapter extra "special" early!

Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow is #1 Book on Blogs

According to Technorati, Hunter Brown took the #1 spot as the most popular book on blogs today. Thanks to all who have been chatting about our book out there...please keep spreading the word!

http://technorati.com/pop/books/

Customized Product Display!

A couple nights ago I spent several hours overhauling a standard book display to customize it with graphics for our Hunter Brown books. It was a fun project and the end result turned out alright. Let me know what you think. (Click the images to enlarge)

The picture of the second Hunter Brown book cover is attached to the header with velcro so that I can remove it and replace it with whatever the newest book cover will be.

The hardest part was lining up the giant tiled image that makes up the header. It took nine 8.5"x11" sheets of paper to create the image (which I mounted on black foam board with spray glue). The tiles were unforgiving when it came to lining them up perfectly. It was difficult to to make the image turn out right - but I think it turned out okay despite the difficulty.

Posting from your cell phone is fun! :-)

Ping.FM - A great way to update social networks!

I have to admit. Keeping up to date on my blogs and social networking sites has been a bit overwhelming at times. That's why I started looking for a tool that would allow me to better manage my time, by posting once to all of them.

My search turned up several solutions like Fuser.com, Minggl.com and SocialMedian.com but none of them did exactly what I was looking for. I was about to give up, when I came across Ping.fm and I have to say this is the closest thing to perfect as I can imagine.

Imagine, being able to post messages to all of your blogs and social networks with one click. Now, imagine being able to update your moods/statuses with one click as well (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn). This is what Ping.FM offers...but it's only the beginning.

With Ping.FM I can even create customized groups of social sites that I can post to using special tags that I assign. This way, I can update my facebook and myspace blogs without updating my professional accounts on LinkedIn or my company blog.

It's a fantastic service that promises to provide quicker access to my many points of contact with friends, regardless of where they check for updates from me.

Pictures and video can also be included in your messages/blog posts, but they didn't stop there. Ping.FM takes things a step further by allowing you to post to all of your sites/blogs via txt message if you would like. Blogging on the go!

Oh yeah, did I mention its FREE! I for one am pretty excited about this tool. A must have for multi-blog, multi-profile people who are losing their minds.

I just joined the Ping.fm movement. I'm updating my blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter posts all from one place! Suh-weet!

Consuming Fire Cover Design...Work In Progress!!!

Okay, so we're long overdue for a blog update. I figured it should be an exciting one when at last it is time to post something. So...here it goes.

Allan and I have been hard at work on the new Hunter Brown cover. After a multitude of choices for layout and colors we've finally found a concept that we like pretty well. Keep in mind what you are seeing is an incomplete concept (there are still minor adjustments to be made) but I'm anxious to hear what our fans and friends think of the direction we've taken.

So, this is your chance to tell us what you think...before we finish it up.

Things to be done:
1. The wardrobe on the girl is incomplete
2. The lighting on Hunter's back is not set
3. Hunter's hair is still...uh...ungroomed!
4. The medallion needs to be modeled.

Hope you are all getting excited about the new book. It's in its first round of edits at the publisher...we'll keep you posted.