Blógünder Schlock

While Howard is off in Australia I thought it would be appropriate to put up a blog post which applies to the rest of the world. You see we printed up a small supply of Plasma Cannon Safety Activity Books for GenCon and we did not sell them all. So now I have made them available in our store. These are print books on paper and supplies are limited, so get one before they run out.

If you are one of those folks who prefers to read electronically, we still have the Plasma Cannon Safety Activity Book available as a pdf download. All you have to do is make a donation of any size via paypal.

When you’re done paying, click “Return to the Tayler Corporation” and the thank you page will have a download link.

Not interested in coloring books? In the post book shipping clean up, we discovered some scratched and dented copies of Resident Mad Scientist. These books have been scuffed, bent, dented, or otherwise rendered unsellable as new. But we guarantee that no pages are torn or missing. You can find them in the clearance section of our store.

This should be enough to keep the rest of us busy while we wait with bated breath to find out whether Howard wins the Hugo on Sunday. If not, well, you can always go read the archive again. That’ll last you for days.

Howard is in Melbourne Australia this week and he hopes that any of you Schlockers who are Melbourne local will take time from your busy schedules to come and see him.

Schlock Meet & Greet
Thursday Sept 2, 2010
7-9 pm at Dragon Boat on the Yarra Restaurant
Cost: Whatever food or drink you order while there. No Aussiecon membership required.

Thanks to some local volunteers we have scheduled space at Dragon Boat on the Yarra restaurant for Schlockers to gather and dine together. As of this writing, the Facebook event page has ten confirmed guests. We’ve scheduled space for twice that number, so there is room for you. If there are too many attendees for the restaurant to seat at one table, Howard will be sure to circulate. He will also bring along his sharpie markers to sign objects and create sketches. Every time we host a Meet & Greet, we are impressed with what a kind, intelligent, and fun group Schlockers tend to be. So come meet your fellow Schlockers and make some new friends.

AussieCon Four, WorldCon in Melbourne Australia
September 2-6
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Cost: AussieCon Membership required to attend the following events. Rates vary. Single day memberships available. Check the AussieCon website for details.

This is Howard’s panel & presentation schedule for AussieCon. When he is not participating in one of the listed events, you can find him in the dealer’s room at the Schlock Mercenary table. (See also Tayler Corporation tables) Howard will be happy to sell you copies of Schlock Mercenary books that have been pre-imported to Australia for you. He will also be glad to draw pictures in books that you have already purchased.

Thurs Sept 2
2-3 pm Howard The balancing act of Speculative Fiction and Comedy
Room 219 with Tee Morris, Richard Harland, Howard Tayler

Fri Sept 3
10-11 am Howard Reading
Room 207 with Ika Vanderkoeck
4-5 pm Howard panel: From Print to Pixels, paper comics to webcomics
Room 211 with Foz Meadows, Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio, Howard Tayler
5-6 pm Howard panel: Military SF revisited
Room 217 with Toni Weisskopf, Howard Tayler, Jean Johnson

Sun Sept 5
11-12 am Howard signing Room 201

Mon Sept 6
10-11 am Howard Kaffeeklatsche Room 201
12-1 pm Howard panel: RPGs and storytelling
Room 211 with Will Elliot, Bob Kuhn, Howard Tayler, Jennifer Brozek
2-3 pm Howard panel: Forms of Government in Science Fiction
Room 213 with Will Elliot, Gail Carriger, Howard Tayler, Dave Freer

On a related note, I have to express my thanks to the many Australian Schlockers who inundated us with offers of help the moment we said that we would need some. I have spent lots of time corresponding with them in the last few weeks and can truly say that this trip will be a success because of their help. Thank you so much.

The wait is over. There is now an ad-supported version of the Schlock Mercenary app for iPhone and iPad. If you’re one of the dead-sexy folks carrying an Apple device around, you can now be deadlier, sexier, and smarter than ever before at no charge.

The app is right here.

This has the same basic feature set as the subscription app, with three key differences:
1) You don’t have to spend any money.
2) There are ads.
3) There is no 3-day read-ahead.

You still get all of the content that appears on the web — strips, footnotes, and blog posts — and you get the strips a full 1000 pixels wide instead of the 780px resolution seen on the web. Why the larger format? Because it looks completely awesome this way on the iPad, and it allows us to zoom panel-by-panel on the smaller screen of the iPhone.

You still have some questions, I know. Here is a FAQ:

Q: What about Android? Can’t Android users be deadly, sexy and smart?
A: Of course you can. JUST NOT YET. Gary at Plus 14, Ltd., is working on an Android version right now. We don’t have a release date.

Q: Who is providing the ads?
A: Google AdMob and Apple iAd, depending on whether you’re on iOS 3 or iOS 4.

Q: Are you making decent money on the ads?
A: It’s been two days, and we have a whopping $1.75 to split between us. Our plans for wealth and world domination hinge upon you telling all your friends how cool this app is.

Q: Is the subscription app going away?
A: No. We’ve heard from many of our subscribers, and they love going ad-free while supporting the cartoonist and the app developer. We still have ideas for fun subscription-only things, too.

Q: How hard is it to switch back and forth from the subscription version to the free version?
A: It’s all handled in the same app. When your subscription expires, you’ll start seeing ads and you’ll not be able to read 3 days ahead. When you buy a subscription the ads vanish and you can see into the future.

Q: How much of the Schlock Mercenary archive is stored on my device?
A: Only the strips you’ve read in the app. These have been pulled down from the server by the app. This cache can be flushed if you need the space for other stuff, but that means longer load times between comics if you go back to re-read.

Q: Why isn’t the whole archive downloaded at once, and kept on the device forever?
A: Because Apple doesn’t allow apps larger than a certain size to be distributed via 3G, and the full archive would take this app to about 70 times Apple’s limit. Besides, with 700 megs of Schlock you wouldn’t have room for as much of your deadly, sexy, smart music.

Your party of adventurers hangs in chains over a glowing crevasse, a hungry dragon barely visible below. A crazed sorcerer stands on the precipice and rants about how his revenge against you, his arch-nemeses, can finally be made perfect.

You have no idea who this guy is. In fact, you’re positive you’ve never crossed this particular cracked magister before. All you want to do is get back to the tavern where you dimly remember you hadn’t finished your drink.

That’s the opening of the new X-Treme Dungeon Mastery module, Quest for the Tavern, which launched at GenCon 2010. Tracy Hickman, of Ravenloft and Dragonlance fame teams up again with his son Curtis Hickman, professional magician, to craft the only role-play module in which you, the X-treme dungeon master, must sit back and watch your players perform sock-puppet theater as part of their desperate race to figure out what’s going on, and how to put a stop to it. All the illustrations in Quest for the Tavern were created by Howard Tayler, with cover colors by Travis Walton. The reports of Howard giggling maniacally as he drew are probably exaggerated.

Like the XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery guide book, this adventure module exists to bring back the fun. It uses the deceptively simple XD20 role-play mechanic for skill checks and combat resolution, but an X-treme dungeon master worth his salt can adapt the story, traps, foes, and general mayhem of this module to any game system. We had a great time putting it together, and we hope you’ll have a blast playing it.

This 44-page module contains:

• Construction sheets to build a scale model bridge puzzle
• 7 maps
• An anvil game you’ll never forget
• 15 illustrations
• 20 charts, tables, & diagrams
• Sock Puppet Theater scripts for your players
• 56 footnotes
• 33 rooms of mayhem
• A surprisingly nefarious evil plan. This guy really must be stopped…

XDM: Quest for the Tavern is available now at the Schlock Mercenary Store, where all kinds of other fine products are sold.

GenCon is pretty big. Not quite Comic-Con big, but big enough to get lost in. We don’t want you to get lost. We want you to come to Booth 1921, directly west of the WoTC pavilion, so you can pick up your copy of Quest for the Tavern, a brand-new adventure module by Tracy and Curtis Hickman, which I illustrated.

With that in mind, here is a map.

This is just a crop, though. Click on it and it will take you to a bigger map!

You’ve found us! Huzzah! What else can you buy from us at GenCon? We’ll have plenty of Schlock books on hand (all of ‘em, including boxed sets) as well as stickers, magnets, and t-shirts. Oh, and the miniatures, which I mentioned yesterday! We’ve even made hard-copies of the The Strohl Munitions Plasma Cannon Safety Activity Book. We’ll have Writing Excuses CDs, and of course we’ll have copies of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery which you can get signed by Tracy Hickman and sketched in by me. Describe your RPG character, and I shall do my best to render a bust in Sharpie.

I will draw on anything you buy from us. I will also draw on Schlock books or XDM books that you bring with you. Time permitting, I’ll do some free sketches. I’ll also have the last 30 of the Series One Schlock Mercenary sketch cards, which I will lovingly illustrate in full color while you wait. Those will be priced at $30 for this show – a 40% discount!

But you can’t get any of that at GenCon if you can’t find us. Booth 1921, right across from WoTC.

I MADE A MAP FOR YOU.

As you may already know, there are iPhone and iPad apps available for reading Schlock Mercenary on those devices. We partnered with Gary Henson of Plus 14, ltd. for those apps, and he has opened the kimono a bit to let you look at the development process and the business process, including our returns. Full disclosure!

If you’re a cartoonist with comparable readership, this information may prove invaluable. If you’re an aspiring iPhone developer hoping to take over the world, it will crush your dreams a little.

So… go read what Gary wrote.

A quick FAQ:

Q: What about Android?
A: We’re looking into it now.

Q: What about going ad-supported as well as subscription?
A: We’re also looking into that.

Q: When you say “we…”
A: I mean “Gary.” I can code my way out a wet paper bag, but only if you hand me a butter-knife made out of HTML 1.0.

Q: What about e-book format?
A: It doesn’t lend itself well to the panel-serving system we’ve built. Neither e-book nor PDF will work well for serving Schlock books to mobile devices.

I should point out that the iPhone Schlock app has been totally worth it to me, because it gives me a quick and easy way to find reference strips when I’m bringing characters back who I haven’t drawn in a while. That’s not a reason for you to rush out and buy it, no, but I totally love this app.

Also, my version lets me read all the way to the end of the buffer.

I love good Fan Art, and this chupaqueso and Tacobufa cup (complete with fiddly-bit) are good enough to eat. Or drink out of. They come to us from Sarah K., who writes:

I recently bought the box set. When I realized I had my very own fiddlybit I just had to do something fangirly for you. When re-reading the series in book format I saw the recipe for Chupaquesos and was inspired. I wasn’t surprised to find that other folks online had the same idea so I brought it up a notch … I created the logo in Illustrator with the slogan from a banner hanging near Brad when he was waiting in line to get some grub back in the early days.

The fiddly-bit in question is the user-installable hypernode included with each boxed set (“Munitions Canister I” in the store.) Note that hypernet service varies in cost by provider, and may not be available in all areas (and certainly not during the early 21st century.)

I was going to title this post “Your Book is in the Mail,” but I used that exact post title on June 9th of 2009 when we shipped Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance. But the sentiment is the same.

At 1:30pm today your copy of Schlock Mercenary: Resident Mad Scientist was in this mail truck. We were quite surprised when the mailman got it all in there (the passenger seat was full, too.) It’s amazing how motivated you can get when you realize that you’re just a couple of cubic meters short of only having to make one trip. I can’t say for sure that our mailman was a champion Tetris player, but I bet he’d do just fine if he only had to deal with four sizes of heavy rectangles.

It occurs to me that I misspoke earlier. Your copy of Schlock Mercenary: Resident Mad Scientist was only on that mail truck if you pre-ordered it. A very few of you got copies early at Balticon, and I have it on good authority that some of you haven’t actually ordered it yet.

Well, it’s not a pre-order item anymore. Order it, we ship it. And we’ve got other cool stuff in the store too, like those new vinyl stickers and a bunch of prints that are positively droll.

While thanks are clearly due to anyone who supports our ongoing adventure by shopping at the Schlock Mercenary store, we now owe special thanks to all the volunteers who helped with the shipping Monday morning. We made record time, and we couldn’t have done it without your expertly rendered assistance. Thank you!

Provo, Utah, USA: Our big shipping day will be on Monday July 12th 9am – 3 pm. We’re looking for up to 25 volunteers who are willing to come to Dragon’s Keep and help us put books into boxes. We’ll also need one volunteer with either a van (with seats removed or folded down) or a truck to help us haul materials from our house to the Keep. This person will need to be willing to start at 8am. (We got a vehicle. Thanks.) As usual, we’ll provide lunch and snacks. If you want to be part of the shipping crew, email me schlockmercenary at gmail.com.

Melbourne, Australia:
Update: We’ve gotten lots of volunteers. You Melbourne folks are awesome. Further communication with volunteers will be via email. Thanks!

Howard will be in Australia for Worldcon and a few days surrounding. The travel plans are not completely set yet, but Worldcon runs September 2-6. We’re looking for 3-7 locals who would be willing to help with travel logistics and running a booth during the convention. There may be other things as well. If you’re a Melbourne local and are interested in volunteering, please email and introduce yourself schlockmercenary at gmail.com.

I scripted, penciled, and inked two weeks of comics this week. We took delivery of 5,000 copies of Schlock Mercenary: Resident Mad Scientist. I signed 1200 of them, and have sketched in around 150 of those. I took half a day off to see a movie and blog about it, but that’s feeling more and more like “work” these days.

Today is Saturday, and I do not get a day off. I need to throw some madly cool illustrations at the first ever XDM Dungeon Module, The Quest for the Tavern, which will debut at GenCon in just six weeks. Oh, and I probably ought to sketch another hundred books or so. By the way, Resident Mad Scientist is available at Dragon’s Keep now, if you live in Utah. I’m too busy to try to coordinate an official “street date,” so it’s a staggered release, starting now. Your pre-orders will ship on July 12th, just as soon as I’m done putting pictures in the sketch editions.

Gotta run. If there’s no rest for the wicked, I must be a horrible, horrible person. Sandra? By that criteria, she qualifies as the Bride of Satan.