The contracts are signed and in the mail, so I guess I can finally make it public. At long last, The Drowned Forest is finally coming! It's slated to come out sometime this winter from Flux, the young adult imprint of Llewellyn Publishing. Now I just have to finish the last round of edits. I actually got the editorial letter several months ago, but the edits have been unforgivably delayed by my student teaching. Still, The Drowned Forest is gonna be a book. Yay!
There was only one problem. Saturday was also Free Comic Book Day!
So, without much deliberation at all, honestly, I decided to spend Saturday helping out at Haven Comics. Instead of taking a victory lap in my cap and gown, I sent the day cleaning, decorating, and ringing customers up.
Of course, I also got to catch up with friends, talk about Iron Man 3, eat a bunch of cake, and meet cool new people. Even though I was exhausted by the end of the day, I'd had a blast. And next Saturday, I'm helping out with another Haven event, a signing for comic artist Andy Price.
The truth is, working at Haven has never felt like work . . . it feels like hanging out with some of my best friends. They're friends who have supported me through school and always cheered me on. Because of that, no graduation celebration would have felt complete without them.
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And for anybody who snorts at all this and thinks Superman is outdated and overly idealistic--who calls him a big, blue boyscout--I dare you to listen to John Williams' opening theme for Superman: The Movie and not feel a little tug on your heart-strings.
Happy birthday, Superman. Long live truth, justice, and the American way.
Since starting my student teaching, I've had to lock up my Cabinet of Curiosities. However, I'm reopening it temporarily, since Charles Fréger's work is the exact sort of stuff I had in mind when I started writing those posts. Photographer Charles Fréger spent two years traveling around Europe, capturing the last vestiges of pagan culture. He's turned his images of ancient rituals and costumes into a book and gallery exhibition, both titled Wilder Man.
Slate has an awesome gallery of some of Fréger's photos along with commentary from the photographer:
There was a slight touch of universality because a lot of the groups were doing something similar without knowing one another. Because many of the festivities were focused on animals and vegetation, you could photograph someone dressed like a bear for example in Portugal or Spain or Romania. To me this was really exciting and interesting.
I've ordered Fréger's book from Amazon, but it's going to take one to three months for it to arrive! Grrr... this is no way to tease your loyal customers Jeff Bezos!
I originally wrote "Lord of the Tattered Banner" for an anthology of orc stories to be edited by Scott Oden, a good friend of mine and a great writer in his own right. Sadly, that anthology never came to be, but the story has found a home at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, an ezine dedicated to bringing the pulpy, swashbuckling sensibilities of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs into the 21st century."Lord of the Tattered Banner" is about an orc soldier named Fengr who doesn't want to do anything except fight, drink, and gamble. The story is what happens when other orcs start believing Fengr is destined to become their champion and deliver them from slavery. You can read the whole thing for free by clicking here.
By the time they took Orsten Keep, the pretender had already escaped over the mountains with half her army. After the battle, the smell of blood and smoke lingered. It was a strangely fertile smell, like fresh-tilled earth.
Fengr Tall-As-A-Mounted-Man felt his war-rage cool, leaving him with the familiar, limb-trembling exhaustion. He couldn’t rest, though. The plunder would be picked clean within an hour. Every soldier who could still walk trudged through the battlefield harvesting jewelry, gold teeth, and bits of nice leatherwork. . . .
In The Sinking World, artist Andreas Franke places Baroque courtesans aboard the sunken SS Stavronikita, creating haunting images of life and decay.
The Sinking World is a traveling exhibition that includes Franke's pictures of the Stavronikita as well as another ship, the USS Vandenberg. Among its other stops, the exhibition has been put on display on the Stavronikita itself, where it's only accessable to scuba divers.
From the exhibition's website:
A traveling salesman, the Stavronikita fell victim to a devastating fire over 20 years ago and with no hope for recovery it was lowered into the silent depths to lie there - fossilized into an artificial reef which one thought would sleep for all eternity.
But life clawed at the ship. For decades the sea enwrapped it with strange and splendid furnishings. A blinding submarine magnificence moved in, assumed command of the desolate freighter and made it vibrate with life. . . . This swarming, decadent parade of life conquered the mind of Andreas Franke when diving on the premises of the SS Stavronikita. The well-known Viennese artist, who is famous for his meticulously construed photographic stagings, became possessed with the desire to make the
Greek freighter into his next stage and thus the successor to the USS Vandenberg. He would create surprising, bizarre and equally bewitching images by combining photographs of the wreck with sceneries produced in a studio.
But life clawed at the ship. For decades the sea enwrapped it with strange and splendid furnishings. A blinding submarine magnificence moved in, assumed command of the desolate freighter and made it vibrate with life. . . . This swarming, decadent parade of life conquered the mind of Andreas Franke when diving on the premises of the SS Stavronikita. The well-known Viennese artist, who is famous for his meticulously construed photographic stagings, became possessed with the desire to make the
Greek freighter into his next stage and thus the successor to the USS Vandenberg. He would create surprising, bizarre and equally bewitching images by combining photographs of the wreck with sceneries produced in a studio.
For now, I just want to show off the two prints I got from Oliver Nome's Friends of Oliver campaign. Now I just need to find a place to hang them.
Well, okay. My friend Carly delivered it to me, and it looks an awful lot like the unofficial city watch badges this guy makes, but Carly insists that it came from Commander Vimes himself, and that's good enough for me.
Fabricati diem, pvnc!
A couple months ago, Big Josh told me he'd ordered $500 worth of My Little Pony #1. I didn't say anything at the time, but I thought he'd lost it. Haven isn't a big store, and $500 is more than we bring in some weeks. And he spent all that on one comic!? A comic that most of our regular customers aren't even that interested in? Hoo boy.
Well, it took several minor miracles to pull it off, but our Pony Party exceeded all our expectations! Not only did we sell through that initial order, but we had to scramble to get more books from the wonderful people up at Midtown Comics. It took a lot of effort from a lot of people, but special thanks has to go out to Kalisa and Judson. These two guys worked harder than anybody to bring this all together.
Now we just have to figure out what we're gong to do for My Little Pony #2! (Yeah right. We're not doing anything for issue #2. In fact, if anybody even mentions ponies to me in the next three months, I'm shipping them straight to the glue factory.)
The coloring table was a hit with fans of all ages.
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