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!

Howard will be at Worldcon for the full convention.  We provide this handy schedule reference if you wish to track him down while you’re there.

Thursday August 6

3:30-5:00 pm Webcomics You Should be Reading P-524B

Friday August 7

12:30-2:00 pm Create a Superhero  P-510B

2:00-3:30 pm Writing Excuses Podcast P-513C

5:00-6:30 pm SF Comics for Children  P-513A

6:45-Late: Schlocker Meet-up  Les Jardins Nelson 407 Place Jacques-Cartier in Old Montreal.  We will be departing the convention center at approximately 6:45 pm and walking over to the restaurant.  This event is separate from the convention.  We will stay at the restaurant to eat and visit as long as we can without causing a problem for the restaurant staff.  At which point we will either break up for the evening or find a nice open place to sit and visit longer.  Howard will tweet the ongoing location of the Schlocker Meet-up as things progress.  Watch his twitterfeed on that evening for up-to-date details.

Saturday August 8

6:00-6:30 pm Signing 3-283S Stop by and Howard will draw you a quick sketch either in your book or on a handy piece of paper if you don’t have a book.

7:00-8:00 pm The Pantheon: Essential Graphic Novels  P-513A

Sunday August 9

10:00-11:00 am Running a Web-based Business P-512DH

12:30-2:00 pm Writing for a Living P-522B

3:30-5:00 pm From Base to Noble – Why Self-publishing has no Stigma in Comics P-513A

8:00-10:00 pm Hugo Award Ceremony

Sandra will also be attending the convention, but other than attending the Schlocker Meet-up and the Hugo Ceremony, her schedule is not set.  She will be participating in The Great Worldcon Scavenger Hunt sponsored by Anthology Builder so tracking her down may be worth the effort.

I don’t get much opportunity to read these days. Especially not this particular April, with XDM eating my free time for lunch (and dinner, and bedtime snacks, and breakfast, and second breakfast…) But I am trying.

For instance, I’m listening to The Wheel of Time on audiobook while doing inking, coloring, or other image prep. After over forty hours of that (2.5 books in) I’m hooked, and Michael Kramer and Kate Reading’s voices are now writ deep across my brain. Sometimes I hear them when I’m drawing, even though the iPod is playing music. (You two need to cut that out, okay?)

Brandon Sanderson, the author who will be finishing Robert Jordan’s epic, is a friend of mine. He and I podcast with Dan Wells over at Writing Excuses, and we hit the gym together a few times each week. And during all this time he has NOT told me how the epic ends (I haven’t asked, he’s not allowed to, and he’s honest to a fault.) He did warn me last year that it was going to be significantly longer than the 250,000 words he originally contracted for. Tom Doherty’s decision to split that last volume into three volumes was definitely the right one. Brandon has talked to me about it at length, and blogged about it in what I feel is a must-read for the hard core Robert Jordan fan.

But I digress… I have books I’m trying to read, rather than listen to. Today I’m picking up Contact With Chaos by Mike Williamson. I’ve liked Mike’s previous books (the six of them I’ve read, anyway) and this one is proving fun, too.

Also on the stack: Walter H. Hunt’s A Song In Stone. If you dig historical fiction, or anything Dan Brown-ish, this book should be perfect. Oh, and it’s still in print in spite of the fact that the Wizards Of The Coast imprint under which it was printed was canceled. The whole line is just “Tango Uniform” to quote Walter. Fortunately you can find the book pretty easily through Amazon, and your local bookstore should still be able to order it.

I’m halfway through The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and I’m not sure I’ll finish it. The concepts are brilliant (though the book is not nearly so groundbreaking as it claims to be) and have already changed the way I think about my career path. This one was a gift (not sure from whom, but thank you!) and I’m glad I got as far through it as I did.

I’d tell you more about the stack of books on my nightstand, but I’d rather be reading than blogging. Blogging feels too much like work, and it’s Sunday after all.

Okay, podcast junkies… here’s another audio interview, this time with Tom Racine of Tall Tales Radio. Tom has interviewed me before, and I like talking with him. I think the interview went well, but to be quite honest I can’t remember what I said. But I had fun! I’m downloading this to my iPod now, and will listen to it later today while I work. Yes, this is a symptom of me loving the sound of my own voice…

UPDATE! I’ve listened to it, and I said lots of clever and important things. The sound of my voice is not soothing, though. It’s more like talking to me on the cell-phone, which isn’t surprising since that’s how Tom was talking to me.

Also, there’s a new piece of XDM artwork over there for you to admire. Go look!

In a recent interview with Brian and Justin of Comics Coast-To-Coast I said that pre-orders would open in “about two weeks.” (aside: I also said some other stuff. Listen to the podcast! My bit begins about 10 minutes in.)

“Within” about two weeks would have been more accurate. The plotter proofs arrived today, we examined them, and we are now confident that the printer is going to deliver to us the 5,000 books and 2,000 slip-cases exactly like we want them.

This Friday, March 27th, at around 8:00am Mountain Time we’ll open pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance as well as for slip-cases which are designed to fit the first five Schlock Mercenary books. Scrapyard will be $15.00, $25.00 if you want a numbered sketch edition, and the slipcases will be $5.00.

If you want to buy a boxed set — all five Schlock books in the slipcase — we’ll happily sell you that for the nice, round-numbered price of $100.00 ($110 with a sketched Scrapyard inside). But we can only sell 500 boxed sets, because we’re down to our last 500 copies of Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management.

Please note that these are pre-orders, and that we don’t anticipate shipping books until the first week in June. The schedule may get advanced into late May, but I’d prefer to set everyone’s expectations in an appropriately conservative manner.

I’m enjoying my vacation.

(non-sequitur: As I typed that last sentence my beanie-monkey fell off of my auxiliary monitor, bounced off the Wacom tablet, and hit the floor. Just so you know.)

My good friend Richard Bliss (marketing guru extraordinaire and unwitting mentor) sent me a gift, courtesy of the geniuses at JibJab. It’s an extremely accelerated version of “It’s A Wonderful Life” with new faces. Enjoy!

My buddy Bob “Mountain of Lovin’” Defendi (game designer and Writer of the Future) has now posted five episodes of Death by Cliché. For your convenience, links! One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. I am listening to four and five while painting some Warmachine figures. The laughter interferes with the detail work, but containing myself is good practice for preventing those pesky beverage-out-the-nose events.

Finally, in the last two days I’ve knocked down an entire week of comics and finished the scripting and penciling for the Schlock Mercenary: Out From Under bonus story. It comes out to fifty-one rows’ worth of work. Err… play.

Ahhhh, vacation. Merry Christmas, everyone!

(Update: After posting this I picked the monkey up off the floor and carefully repositioned him. The photo is proof.)

EDIT: Okay, I’m an idiot. The first time I wrote this post I thought today was Wednesday. It’s not. Or at least, as of this writing it’s not. I’m updating the content accordingly…

Attention, all ye supporters of the fine arts!

(No, wait. You fine-art folks… pay thou no attention at all. I’m looking for those more interested in obtaining the hurried scribblings of a hack cartoonist…)

The auctions mentioned in my previous post close in just twenty-three and a half hours! Act now!

For those interested in fine art (come back!), especially literature, Death by Cliché, Episode 3 is now available. Also, there is a new episode of Writing Excuses online.

Last Tuesday I pointed Schlockers worldwide at Bob Defendi’s new audiobook podcast Death by Cliché. Bob’s server groaned under the load and then expired.

Bob now assures me that the technicians in charge have correctly configured things, and are standing by for your traffic on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Bob was so confident, in fact, that he dares you to try to take his server down.

No DDoSing, though. Just go listen to Death by Cliché, Episode 2. And if you haven’t hit DbC Episode 1 yet, you ought to start there.

Episode 2 has one of the greatest moments of the whole audiobook in it: the expository “DOOOM!” sequence.

My friend Bob Defendi, who is known professionally as “Robert J. Defendi,” wrote a hilarious novel that leverages gamer clichés for effect. Now Bob has done the funniest possible thing with it — he has recorded himself reading it to you.

Bob has a great voice. I role-play with him weekly, playtesting his Echoes of Heaven game setting, and Bob’s mellifluous baritone becomes incalculably imposing in person. The man is quite literally twice my size. You don’t need to imagine that when you hear him read, though. Just sit back, relax, and listen.

The first installment of Death By Cliché is a double-header, which means you’re getting seventy-eight minutes of audio-book. Thereafter Bob will be releasing a new episode each week. I loved the book when I read it. I’m looking forward to listening to it and loving it again.

Bob is also our guest this week and next week over at Writing Excuses, but don’t take that mix as any indication of what his voice can do. Poor Jordo had to fade Bob waaaay down so he didn’t drown us all out, and I think he overdid it. Bob is so loud in person that Jordo couldn’t tell what was coming through the headphones, and what was just rattling his skull from across the table.

Enough of me prattling on about the wonders of Bob’s Voice. You go listen to it, then come back here and try to tell me I’m wrong.

UPDATE: Okay, it looks like Bob’s server caved under the load. We’re not sure if this is a configuration issue, or the weight of a good Schlocking. For the time being, I’m mirroring the first episode of Death By Cliché right here.

I haven’t mentioned it in weeks, but that doesn’t mean the Schlock Mercenary RSS feed has gone away. Au contraire! It is alive, well, and being fed some 2,300 times per day. There is also a separate feed for this blog, which is unsurprisingly not nearly so popular. It tops out at around 72.

Other RSS-ish things that you don’t need RSS to get: Writing Excuses is now into Season 2, and Episode 6 is up! Join us for a discussion on “Endings” and get a sneak peek into the process I used to tighten up the impending climactic ending for Book 10 — Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse.

Finally, don’t forget that we’re running a “free shipping anywhere on the planet” sale at store.schlockmercenary.com. All you have to do is spend $100 or more with us. Forget 700-billion-dollar stimulus packages. I can get stimulated with a C-note and a shipping address.

(Note: please do not take that last sentence out of context.)