Blógünder Schlock

First a quick note: We have 40 more Schlock Mercenary ACEO cards from Series One in the store. These are the last of them. There will be a series two, but we’re not launching it until these are gone.

Some of you may have met or heard of John Brown before. He is a local friend and debut novelist who Howard helped interview in two recent episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast: How Not to Repeat Yourself, and Emotion in Fiction with John Brown. If you click the links you can listen to the podcasts right on your computer. They’re worth the time because John knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing.

John is celebrating the release of his first novel by giving away copies of his book Servant of a Dark God. He has kindly offered two copies for us to give away here at Blogunder Schlock. The winner must be willing to provide a mailing address via email. The simplest method for determining who wins these books is for us to draw names out of a hat. There are two ways for you to get your name into the hat.

1. Leave a comment here on this post between now and midnight on Sunday November 8. You will get one entry just for commenting. Only one entry per name even if you make multiple comments. NOTE: The first time you comment after registering, your comment goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved before it will be visible. This dramatically reduces the amount of spam in our blog comments. There is no need to comment again, we’ll see it and put your name in the hat.

2. We are curious to know how many copies of XDM and Schlock books are making it into friendly local gaming stores. If you visit your local gaming store and see our books there, snap a picture. Mail that picture to schlockmercenary@gmail.com and we’ll throw your name into that hat two times. (Yes that is in addition to adding your name for a comment.) If we get some good pics, we’ll be sure to share them.

So that’s the contest. Ready, set, go!

As is usual when we ship books to a major event, some of the books which returned from GenCon were damaged in transit.  Forklifts are not kind to books.  We are now offering these scuffed, dented, or bent books for sale in the store at discounted prices.

As you can see from the photos, most of the damage is minor.  Your book could get as much damage from being carried around in in a backpack.  We guarantee that no pages will be torn and that all pages will be present and accounted for.

On a tangential note, we’ve put up a special item for auction this week.  A fan bought a book from us at WorldCon.  Then he paid Howard to draw a picture in it.  Then he gave the book back to us on the condition that we offer the book up for auction.  So we are now auctioning off a unique copy of XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery with a drawing of Howard rejoicing at being paid three times.  We’re starting the bidding low since we’ve already been paid twice.  Happy bidding!

XDM Pre-orders are closed. Tracy, Curtis, and I signed two pallets of books on Monday, and I think we’ve got a few left over.

I’m going to be taking some of them to Dragon’s Keep. That’s right, on Wednesday (the day comics arrive) by 2:00pm you can get a Pre-order edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery at Dragon’s Keep in Provo. As an added bonus, I may be able to draw a picture in the back for you.

In other news, watch this space for:

* My WorldCon Schedule! See me in Montreal!

* My GenCon Indy Schedule! See me in Indianapolis!

* Some auctions, maybe! Including one of only three upside-down-bound copies of XDM! Tracy got one, Curtis got one, I’m going to draw in mine and then sell it because I want to have an iPhone.

As you may have noticed I’m not going to be at Comic-Con this week. Go see my friends in the Webcomics Pavilion, including the Blank Label Comics crew in booth 1330, sandwiched between Penny Arcade and Keenspot.

The only reason I’m not closing pre-orders right now is because the stamp I just made for the “Triply-Autographed Pre-Order Edition” is cool enough to drive a few last-minute sales, so like any good mercenary I’m stretching out that last minute.

Neat, huh? Don’t worry, GenCon Indy Attendees! If you’re planning to pick up XDM at the show, we’ll be using a very similar stamp there. In fact, if you imagine the words “GenCon Indy” in place of the word “Pre-Order” you’ll know exactly what you’re getting.

So… XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery pre-orders are still open. We can’t leave them open past about 10:00am Monday (Mountain Daylight Time) because that’s when Tracy, Curtis, and I start signing (and stamping!) books.

You there, Schlock reader! Odds are good that if you want an autographed copy of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery you’ve already ordered it, or plan to get yours at GenCon. Thank you!

I know that for many of the rest of you a role-play supplement just isn’t “your thing.” That’s fine. I don’t want to sell you stuff you don’t want, don’t need, or won’t like. But you can still help us…

Between now and Saturday we need you to identify friends who role-play (easy indicators: do they have dice in their cubicle? Do they make jokes about gaining levels at work?) and send them this link. That’s not the store link. That’s a link to a glowing review from one of the writers at Role Playing Pro. But it’s not the only one!  There’s another one here!

Tracy, Curtis, and I have been trying to tell people how fantastic this book is, but I don’t expect anybody to take our word for it. Today, though, we have some solid feedback from the target market, and it would appear that this book is every bit the “must-have” supplement we’ve been saying it is.

Pre-orders close on Saturday. Monday I’m sitting down with Tracy and Curtis and we’re signing all the pre-ordered books. The next time the three of us will be together will be at GenCon, and then who knows?

So, the call to action. Find friends who role-play, and send them those book-review links. They don’t have to be Schlock readers. They can be players of any table-top RPG — D&D, Shadowrun, GURPS, World of Darkness, Paranoia , Final Redoubt — anything. This book will help them. Samuel and John said so.

Posted by Sandra Tayler
Howard will be attending two major conventions in the month of August.  We do not have all the schedule details yet, but we want to let you know that he’ll be attending so that you can make your travel plans accordingly.

Anticipation (Worldcon 67) in Montreal Canada August 6-9.  Howard will be attending the convention and appearing on many panels.  I will be attending too, but not on panels.  This will also be the site for the Hugo Award announcement.  Important:  We will not have a dealer table at this event and have not been able to arrange for another dealer to sell our books.  We can’t bring piles of books with us through customs.  If you want books signed and sketched by Howard, you will need to buy them in advance.  We are looking into arranging a Schlocker meet and greet that is separate from the convention.  It will probably be on Friday August 7 but exact time and location are yet to be determined.  Montreal locals are invited to speak up in the comment thread with ideas and suggestions.

GenCon Indy in Indianapolis August 12-16.  We will post Howard’s full schedule at a later date.  He will be on many panels and presentations.  When he is not presenting, he will be at booth 1921 signing books like crazy.  This booth is located on the main aisle right across from the big Wizards of the Coast booth.  This is the Margaret Weiss Games booth which will be selling both XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery and all of the Schlock Mercenary books.  We’d dearly love to sell out and not have to ship any books home, so stop by early.

Howard will NOT be at Comic Con San Diego this year.   With Worldcon and GenCon back-to-back, another event was one event too many.  Howard is sad to miss it, but happy to retain some shreds of sanity.

Nine pallets of XDM arrived at the Tayler House today. You can’t have yours yet, though, because Tracy and Curtis won’t be back in town to sign pre-orders until next week.

In order to only stock for immediate demand we needed to shift six of these pallets off to our warehousing facility. This meant getting on the Schlock Hotline and calling Jon Krupp, who generously donates a forklift and a truck every time big things need to be moved.

In the spirit of X-treme Dungeon Mastery he brought an X-treme truck. I had never seen one of these before, and I had my doubts.

Here’s a link to the full photo-stream of XDM X-treme Pallet Shifting, including several shots of that lifting operation in progress. I confess… I’m far more nervous around this kind of heavy machinery than I am around firearms. Somebody needs to point a firearm at you to kill you with it, but heavy machinery has a mind of its own.

I’m pretty sure there’s a comic gestating at the end of that last paragraph somewhere.

Speaking of comics, here’s one last freebie from within the covers of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery. It’s in a chapter about describing the effects of magic…

If you didn’t laugh, that’s okay. You probably lack the reference frame.

If you did laugh, you really need to buy the book.

The folks at Star Pirates have been itching to get me to design ads for them for over a year now. Unfortunately for them I’ve been too busy to pay much attention to advertising — which is kind of strange, because you’d expect a good mercenary like me to be taking to that particular revenue stream like a fish takes to water, but I digress — so they had to go stand in line for slots via Project Wonderful.

By way of thanks to them for their persistence (and apology to them for not being able to follow through) here is linkage: Go play Star Pirates! There’s a “Tagon Toughs” fleet out there for you to join, even. Their imagined future is a bit darker than mine, but the game is still a thematic fit with Schlock Mercenary. That’s why I’m letting them use some of my stuff in their ads.

While we’re on the subject of me not being able to follow through… Sandra’s sister Nancy has invented the salvation of short speculative fiction. I promised her some artwork, but have yet to deliver.

So what is this miracle project? It is Anthology Builder, and it lets you assemble a print collection of short fiction, selecting stories from among hundreds of reprints from popular magazines. Then you pick cover art, drop coin, and your customized anthology is printed on-demand and sent to you in the mail.

How will this save short fiction? Let’s describe the problem, first: Most short fiction is published in magazines with a very limited circulation and shelf-life. Once published, those stories rarely see reprints in anthologies because the market is a too small to support more than a few runs of mass-market paperbacks. The result is that authors have little incentive to write short stories, so they don’t. The art form stagnates.

Enter Anthology Builder: Print-on-demand (POD) technology makes it possible for extremely small print runs to turn a profit, in turn making it possible for these short stories to be marketed to the niche that loves them. This means that authors get residual royalties for work that is technically out-of-print, and that incents them to create similar work. The art form again blooms.

(On an only-slightly nepotistic note: Anthology Builder now has three Sandra Tayler stories in it.)

Anyway, Nancy asked me if I’d like to contribute cover art for Anthology Builder, and even though this is something I’d get paid for I still haven’t managed to submit something. Too busy making comics, I guess.

I’m checking out the new website over at xtremedungeonmastery.com (your official source for all things XDM) and what do I see? A page spread, right there where anybody can read it without buying it.

It looked almost exactly like this.

And if you clicked on it, you got a version that was large enough to be completely readable. Except the footnotes. They were incompletely or “squintily” readable.

Not to be outdone, I posted the same stuff in here. Go! Click! Read that page spread, and marvel at the wit and wisdom of the Grand Masters of XDM. But you’ll not proceed past mere marvelling. In order to truly bask and absorb you must take the heroic journey yourself, returning with the elixir, the sacred prize… in short, you’ll have to buy the whole book.

You may now pre-order your autograph edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, by Tracy and Curtis Hickman, illustrated by Howard Tayler. Tracy Hickman is the co-creator of Castle Ravenloft and the popular Dragonlance series. His son Curtis is a practicing magician. And me? Me you probably already know.

If you play table-top role-playing games like D&D*, Rifts*, Shadowrun*, or GURPS* then XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery is the best game supplement you can buy. Its principles will make anybody a better game-master, and will turn good game-masters into small gods. Its principles will also make for better players, so whether you’re running a game or playing in one you will benefit from this book.

And if you just want to read it for the sheer entertainment value I promise you that it’ll hold up just fine. This is not a dusty reference tome. This was written to be read, learned from, and above all enjoyed.

But that’s not the only new thing in the Schlock Mercenary Store this morning. You may have heard that Under New Management has gone into a second printing. We’ve fixed the typos, tweaked the cover and spine, and are now opening pre-orders for numbered sketch editions. We only did 300 of those the first time around, so some of you may have missed out.

And that’s STILL not where it ends. We also have Tagon’s Toughs t-shirts coming back to the store, and a new shirt that I’m not going to spoil for you here. Why not? Because it uses a punchline that won’t appear on in the comic until August. If you want to read it now, go window-shopping.

(*Note: D&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, and GURPS are all other people’s trademarks, and they want you to know that.)