The Grand Prize, an original painting by Lauren K. Cannon inspired by Margherita in her Inevera costume with her face painted in, is in the works. Lauren and I have exchanged a few messages and picked a pose and color sketch, which will show our favorite dama’ting in the great Krasian temple of Sharik Hora.

Already, the three First Prizes, warded silver necklaces from Fotini Designs, are out the door and will soon be received by the deserving winners. They are gorgeous. Rebecca took a picture of one before she sent them out:

The dozen or so Second Prizes took a little longer, because the dice bags I initially ordered were WAY too small to hold a set of four of the warded Succor dice we had made. The dice look amazing, though, and each set of four will go out with a black velvet bag and a set of printed instructions taken as a quote from the book:

Succor

From The Warded Man:

“Let’s play succor,” Beni said. She pulled a tiny leather pouch from her pocket, rolling four wooden dice onto the floor of the loft. The dice were painted with symbols: flame, rock, water, wind, wood, and ward.

There were many ways to play, but most rules agreed you needed to throw three wards before rolling four of any other kind.

An interesting thing about the quote is the “many ways to play” line. Indeed there are, and more people should have a chance to. If you’re interested in a free set of Succor dice, come up with a fun game using them and post brief rules for it it in the comment section. Best five to come in the next week or so will win.

Ready… go!

I met Sarah in Australia last August when I attended the 2010 Worldcon in Melbourne (have I mentioned that I will be at the 2011 Worldcon in Reno, Nevada next month? I should do a post on that…). Sarah was feeling under the weather, but still managed to pull herself together and come into the city and visit the con to meet me. It means so much to me when people go out of their way like that, and I had a great time talking to and hanging with Sarah. She found me in the dealer’s room thanks to my ever-visible SPEAR shirt, and we had a great chance to talk one on one. She also attended a bunch panels, including a very awkward one where I found myself having to defend ‘sexism in comic books’ against some well-meaning but very poorly informed/read pseudo-feminists.

Anyway, Sarah is all kinds of awesome, as you will see below.

Heya Peat!

I don’t know if you remember me…but I met you as Aussiecon last year. I was the one who was sick but I made my way over to see you anyway and basically followed (stalked) you around for the whole day . When I saw you were doing a cosplay and you said we could do anyone I got excited. How many people have a horse they can dress up?

So, I give you my beautiful boy Clancy. I apologize for his lack of blackness but my mum refused to let me dye him black (much to my dismay).

I decided to make him a warded saddle and horns, but unfortunately you can’t see the wards on the horns in any of the photos . I was going to wrap his legs and neck in “armor” but Clance decided he was sick of being a plaything and started playing up so I had to put a halt to my creation. In case you haven’t guessed that’s me with him in the photos. I couldn’t decide if I was Leesha or Renna pre-wards. Maybe you can decide for me

I hope you like the photos!!

Sarah

This one is a doozy; months in the planning. I meant to start it last week, but found out at the literal last minute that Red Sonja: Blue was coming out two weeks ahead of schedule, and needed to scramble to make sure it had my full support.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I had fairly major surgery on my shoulder to correct a whole mess of problems, and while it went well, I have been in a sling/harness for weeks, with no release in sight. Starting physical therapy soon.

But you know what would cheer me up? A contest.

Ever since receiving cosplay entries in the Warding Contest, as well as people sending in Halloween costume shots and real live tattoos, I have wanted to do a Demon Cycle cosplay contest. check out some of the amazing things people have done:

Like the Homemade Hero Contest, this one has the potential to be a fair amount of effort, so I didn’t want to do it without a kickass grand prize, and some awesome runner up prizes. Signed books are nice, but if you really want one of those, there are other online options to buy one, or you can just order a signed bookplate or got to one of my signings.

Not so here. The grand prize is one of a kind, and even the first and second prizes are custom-made limited edition exclusives not available elsewhere. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Contest rules:

1) Dress up as your favorite character from the Demon Cycle books (or the one you most look like).

a) All characters great and small accepted, including demons and animals like Twilight Dancer.

b) Photos of multiple characters accepted (three maximum), but they must be extra awesome if you are going for the grand prize, as it will increase the expense and difficulty (more on that in a moment).

c) Red Sonja entries also accepted, but only in blue fur! (Not that I have anything against chainmail bikinis… lord no).

2) Take lots of digital pictures striking dynamic poses. Make sure they have decent resolution and lighting to show off your work to best effect.

3) Pick the best pictures and send to contest@petervbrett.com by August 1, 2011, six weeks from today. You will retain rights to all pictures, with the understanding that I will be posting them on here on the blog and twitterface.

a) It is not required, but you are encouraged to submit a note about what you envision your characters are doing in your cosplay/photoshoot.  This can be a fan-created scenario or a reenactment from the novels to help give context for the grand prize.

Speaking of which…

Grand Prize:

A print & digital file of an original custom digital painting by Lauren K. Cannon (AKA Navate) inspired by the character(s) in the winning entry, WITH THE WINNER’S FACE(S) PAINTED IN.

So lets say you dress up as Abban the khaffit, and win the grand prize. Based on your winning photo, Lauren will paint a custom commission of Abban, using photos of your face to put you in the picture, possibly surrounded by demons lurking in the shadows…

Same goes if you want to pose with your friend or lovah as Arlen and Leesha rolling around in the mud, like Zaboo did for Codex and Fawkes that time on The Guild.

You probably already know who Lauren K. Cannon is, but in case you’ve been living in Antarctica for the last few years, she is not only the designer of the wards you see plastered all over my work. She did the cover/interior art for The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold, as well as the homepage art for this site. You can see more of Lauren’s work on her website, her Deviant Art Page, and her sketch blog. Some samples of Lauren’s awesomeness:

First Prize

Winners will get custom warded silver necklaces from Fotini Designs:

You may recall the fabulous Fotini as the maker of these gorgeous items:

Second Prize

Winners will get warded dice to play Succor, the game Arlen, Renna and Beni play in the hayloft of Harl’s farm in the beginning of The Warded Man.

Samples of these limited edition, custom items will be posted when they are ready.

Third Prize

Winners will get signed books and bookplates.

Go forth and cosplay!

But I just got this awesome box of Brayan’s Gold samples from Subterranean Press and they are so damn gorgeous I want to give some away. Dani is busy with the baby, so it’s me or nothing. What’s an author to do? Deny his readers the chance to win such a prize plum? Bah. I just need to do something quick.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a contest idea. This blog has such an amazing history of cool and creative contests that I am hesitant to suggest anything that might be lame by comparison, and I’m not ready just yet to retread the classics like Fan Art, Take a Picture with a Book, and Haiku Review just yet.

I was lamenting my struggle on my twitter feed (see also Tweephole, on the top right of this page), when I got a great suggestion:

@darkmobius @PVBrett first one can go to person who comes up with best contest.

Done and done.

So. Come up with the idea for my next contest in the comments section of this blog, and I will send you a signed copy of Brayan’s Gold.

A few parameters:

1. Keep the bar for entry low. The last contest was somewhat labor-intensive, and while that yielded incredibly awesome results, I want this next one to be something as inclusive as possible. Brayan’s Gold is a limited edition book, rare and somewhat pricey, so there should be an even playing field to win a copy. You may be a skilled pottery glazer and think and warded pottery contest would be awesome (and now that I think of it, it would) but I’d like this contest to be something most anyone could participate in with minimal investment of time or money.
2. The contest should encourage creative fun entries I can post on the blog.
3. I reserve the right to use other suggestions for future contests without sending out a book every time.

READYSETGO!

Apologies for not saying that in the last post with the sincerity it deserves. 2010 had massive ups and downs for most everyone, it seems. Like skiing the hardest trail on the mountain for the first time. The one you talked about as a kid like a ghost story. We fell on some of the icier moguls with bruises to show for it, but each time we got our shit back together, clicked the bindings back in place, and nailed the next few, making it to the bottom on both skis. (Sorry, snowboarders, I’m old school. But respect, yo.)

I know my first post of the year was something of a negative one, but I don’t want anyone think that I’m setting a tone for the year, because we are on the chair lift right now, heading for the slope again, and one of these times we’re gonna kick that trail’s ass top to bottom.

Note: If you live somewhere that doesn’t get a lot of snow, substitute your own insane local sport for skiing. Odds are the metaphor will still work.

There is still lots of undocumented 2010 awesome yet to come in meantime. Still need to post pix and comments from my trips to Australia, Portugal, World Fantasy, and other adventures. There are also lots of little bits of reader awesomeness, like Luke Fielding.

Long time peepers may recall that a few months ago, Luke sent in his fan portrait of a Fire Demon, which was pretty damn cool. I wrote him and thanked him, and was informed that he was starting a project even more amazing, a sculpture of a Mind Demon.

His e-mail to me:

Hello Mr Brett,

I am currently sculpting a model of a mind demon, and I wondered if i could clarify an aspect of their appearance.

I am working from your picture of a mind demon, and wanted to ask you about the upper head aspect of a mind demon. Is that like a brain texture? I know it throbs so i’m guessing it is somewhat elastic but i’m not sure if it is an exposed brain or not. It is probably irrelevant, and sorry if it is.

Sorry for subjecting you to a possible tedious detail, but i am a perfectionist and details are important to me artistically.

Thank You

Luke

So I wrote back, answering his questions and showed him the awesome illustrations done in Poland by artist Dominik Broniek. Soon after, I started receiving progress pix, up through the final paint job. Check it out in all its bitchin’ wonder:

ConFusion

Last but not least, I want to mention that in less than two weeks I will be the Special Guest at ConFusion, January 21-23 at the Detroit Marriott Troy in Michigan. ConFusion is an annual SF convention that brings in a lot of big names in the genre. This year’s author track is filled with big names like my friends Paolo Bacigalupi who has won more writing awards than I knew there were, and John Scalzi, an awesome writer in his own right and beloved President of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Along with several other writers and pros, we will be doing panel discussions, signings, doing whiskey shots at the bar, and the like.

It has been noted to me that the con is also sponsoring a charity chili cookoff entitled One Ladle to Rule Them All.

If that’s not a reason to get off your couch and come out, I don’t know what is.

Happy New Year!

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