Tattoos play a major role in The Demon Cycle series; the ink holds power when shaped into wards. It may be the most fitting and daring tribute to pay as a fan. So we are super excited to announce that Maria’s tattoo of Arlen and One-Arm (modeled after the beautiful French cover for The Warded Man) is done! Complete with an excellent forgery of Peat’s signature.

Here’s what Maria had to say about her experience choosing Arlen and One-Arm and what the process of getting such a complex tattoo is like:

Why did I choose this motive? I had to think about the right words for that. I had the artist first before I had the motive. When I first saw Benjamin’s work, I knew I had to get my next tattoo from him, and then I thought about the motive. Somehow, I found the L’Homme Rune picture, and I thought: Wow, that’s it; I need to get that. Then I asked Peter if he would mind if I stole that picture, and he said he’d only mind if I didn’t post a picture of it.

Then last year, in June or July, I went to the tattoo studio to fix a date with Benjamin in October. It’s not comfortable to get a tattoo in the summer because it’s so hot and sweating is not good for a new tattoo.

In August, I went to New York, and we met Peter there, and he signed all my books. That was a really cool experience, and I decided to put his autograph on my leg too.

The time went by quickly and October was there, and we had the first session. I was a little afraid of the pain, but it wasn’t that bad … but after 5 hours of getting tattoos it hurts like sh**. The healing process was okay, but the itching is even more annoying than the pain. But seeing how awesome the tattoo looked, I never minded.

Tattoo in Progress

After the First Session

In November, we had the second session, and this time it hurt a bit more. We did another 6 hour session.

After the Second Session

In January, we had the 3rd and last session, another 5 hours. It hurt again, and Peter’s signature hurt the most because we had to use thin needles for it. Now, two weeks later, it is healed and finished, and I love it. It looks so awesome, and I am warded against rock and mind demons now ) I’m looking forward to showing it to Peter in person when i’m in NYC again, maybe in September…

Oh and all sessions cost 800 euros together. That’s approx. 1,100 dollars …

Maria won Third Prize in the last Fan Art Contest for her beautiful tattoo. You can check out the original entry here.

Posted by Meg

As we know from Peat’s last blog post, Myke Cole’s book Shadow Ops: Control Point went on sale yesterday! In honor of Myke’s publication, Peat is giving away 3 copies of the book.

If you win, you will receive a paperback copy of the book plus a signed bookplate from Myke Cole himself and a challenge coin.

What’s a challenge coin, you say? Myke describes them as business cards that are actually more like shiny medals used in the military. He designed and commissioned (with the help of Peat) his own set of challenge coins based on the Supernatural Operations Corps in Control Point. Here’s what they look like:

Hop on over to Myke’s blog post to learn more about the making of these beautiful coins.

The signed bookplates and challenge coins will be sent out by Myke himself, separately from the books.

And so … the giveaway ….

The first 3 fans to respond correctly to the following question will win the book, the signature and the coin:

What did Myke originally want to call the “hydromancers” in Control Point?

The clock is ticking! Please leave your answers in the comments.

UPDATE: We will be giving away more copies of Control Point sometime next week!

I really enjoyed receiving and posting all the amazing artwork that came in throughout the month of December for the Fan Art Contest. We didn’t have a ton of entries, but it seems that each of the entries was chock full of hard work and exceptional artistic talent. So, first and foremost, Peat and I want to thank everyone who took some time to create something wonderful for this contest. Everybody will be receiving a prize for entering.

So, without further ado, the winners.

Grand Prize

The Grand Prize is a very special Stephen King Library Desk Calendar. A Science Fiction Book Club exclusive, this calendar features a gorgeous holographic cover, essays by awesome writers and facts, quizzes and trivia themed around Stephen Kind’s The Dark Tower. It has also been signed by many of  the contributors (including Peat!).

I am pleased to announce that the Grand Prize goes to Kym who created the demon horn from one of the last scenes in The Desert Spear with Leesha and Inevera and a beautiful warded box.

There is a lot more where that came from! Check out her full entry here. We also did another entry concerning the awesomeness that is Kym.

Congrats Kym! We are sending you this very special calendar.

Second Prize

Two copies of The Warded Man Graphic Audio Discs. Recorded like an old time radio show with sound effects and music, this is a whole new way to experience The Warded Man! Also, each winner will receive a poster signed by the cast AND Peat in shiny silver and gold pens.

Birte!

I am a huge fan of Birte. And her entry to the Fan Art Contest was no exception. Combing words, music and painting, Birte created a beautiful story. This is just a small portion of her creation.

Go to her original entry to see the rest of her fantastic mural and listen to her beautiful composition. Birte is also quite prolific. You can check out all other Birte-related posts here.

Margherita!

We love Margherita. She was the winner of last year’s Cosplay Contest with her beautiful reenactment of Inevera. For the Fan Art Contest, she created something really special: a Warded 2012 Calendar. She chose a ward for each month and decorated the finished product. Here are some choice shots of her calendar.

She also sent the whole thing to Peat! Quite the New Year’s gift.

Congrats to Birte and Margherita! They both made complex and beautiful projects that Peat and I found absolutely stunning.

Third Prize

Renna T-Shirts designed by Lauren Cannon (otherwise known as navate) and printed by Graphic Audio.
And the shirts go to …

Maria with her seriously kick-ass tattoo modeled after the original French cover of The Warded Man.

You can click her name to check out her original post. She later went back and got the rest of the tattoo done … complete with an excellent forgery of Peat’s signature. Check it out …

Carol for her beautiful sketch of Twilight Dancer. I am a huge fan of Twilight Dancer, and Carol’s picture is spot one and detailed.

Check out Carol’s other posts here.

And the rest!

A set of four warded dice in a velvet bag.

Congrats to everyone else! Check your mailboxes for these very special dice.

Like I said in the fan art blog post, fan art can come in all different mediums allowing fans to tap into awesome amounts of creativity. Birte, from Germany, has created some incredibly unique compositions inspired by The Desert Spear. This is what she had to say:

I wrote this piece after reading The Desert Spear, and it shows one important aspect of the storyline: the fight against the demons, but not on the actual combat level, but more on a level of the mind. The music sort of describes the concentration and the fear as well as the determination that drives the characters to act.

Each instrument represents one individual character: the flute is Leesha, the violin is Rojer, the cello is Jardir and the piano is Arlen / the painted man. I chose the flute for Leesha because for me it is a very female and strong and clear instrument. I can think of no other sound that might fit her better. The violin for Rojer explains itself. What else could be better? Jardir got the cello because I felt he needed something deeper, yet an instrument that still sounded very melodic and would be able to play difficult and fast scales and figures. I also believe the sound of a cello is quite sexy.

Arlen / the painted man got the piano, because he is the most complex character. By giving him an instrument with two lines in the system I sort of wanted to show his two identities: Arlen and the painted man. The piano is also an instrument which can be played very virtuously. It shows his strength and knowledge and his way of moving but also his solitude, as the piano is often used as a solo instrument, and only very rarely as an equal to any other instrument in a larger group (not counting accompaniment for any other solo instrument).

It begins with sundown. Rojer loves the sun and daytime so much, that of course he notices the approaching night first. Next is Leesha and after her Jardir. The last one to greet the night is Arlen. The joyful major of the day soon becomes a dark and melancholic minor. Everyone is readying themselves for battle. The long part with the repeating fast octave figure paints the picture of fear, excitement and expectation. Each character to his or her own extent, changing slightly at the end of the figure.

Jardir is the first to start his mental dance in the fight against the night. With sure movements, that are nonetheless very elegant and lyrical, he dances with his spear. Imitating Jardir’s last musical movement Arlen is next to stand up to the demons. His is a slightly more brutal approach in the beginning that still seems to lead to something simple. He then again is imitated by Leesha in his last movement. Her melody is not at all brutal: after stumbling a bit with Arlen’s method, she quickly finds a sure and straight way to fight in her own way. Rojer is last to develop the will to fight. There is actually a small intermezzo, showing again the anxiety of the men, Leesha being the one who is keeping the balance before the “nervous breakdown”. The flute is gliding above the tangled melody of the other instruments and is sort of the one thing the ear can really concentrate on for a moment. The others are never absent till then. Suddenly Rojer appears with a complicated high figure. At first he seems nervous and a bit unsure but very soon he discovers a small motive that is quickly picked up by the others, thereof guiding the battle that everyone fights on his own and all at the same time, but still this motive I call “courage motive” pops up again and again until the piano, that has temporarily vanished, seizes a solo. It shows the loneliness and determination of the painted man; his solitude and his exact and deadly movements that flow like water.

In the end all the instruments come back. I wanted to show that, in order to achieve something, everyone has to be pulling into the same direction. They have to stand together, at least in their determination.

When it comes to combining creative talents, fan Birte Widman is a pro. She took on not one but three characters during the last Cosplay Contest. And then, just for good measure, she sent in her Arlen Cosplay. Make sure you check out her other amazing contributions, both artistic and musical: two original tracks inspired by The Warded Man as well as some beautiful cover art.

As her submission to the Fan Art Contest, Birte combines her original music and mural art to tell a unique Demon Cycle story.

Here is what Birte had to say:

Hello Peat,

I’ve been composing music that describes the shape of these wards and their function. As there was a lot to do, I only managed to write down the music of five defensive wards: water demon, flame demon, wind demon, sand demon and snow demon (which I simply had to add, as it is winter right now).

The idea behind the composition is that, once you have a theme you can basically do anything with it: You can orchestrate it in countless ways, you can put it into another key, to combine it with another theme, in short create a musical demonattack storyline for any given situation. For Example: a flame demon runs towards the wards, but is thrown back by a rock demon that wants to be there first. A wind demon drops from the sky and intends to enter the protective circle, but the wards throw it back and it collides with a fellow wind demon etc…

In this particular composition I left the themes mostly unchanged and only worked on their variation a little. Instead I concentrated on the orchestration of these. That was due to a lack of time on the one hand and on the other it was the first orchestration of this music and it was easier to change less, but to turn my piano sketch into a musical piece that would sound whole.

Listen to her beautiful composition as you look the different parts of her mural and follow along with her story.

Now to the piece in detail: As always there is a basic storyline.

Night falls over Thesa. The last bell rings and soon the corelings rise from the core and begin to stalk the earth.

A man sleeps in a well protected ward circle.

A horde of flame demons spy him and run towards the suspected prey, spitting fire and making crackling noises. The wards work and throw them back. A wind demon drops from the sky and wants to carry the man away. Only the faint beat of its massive wings warns of its arrival, but the wards throw it back as well. The man has set up his camp by the shore of a lake and there is a water demon that has spied his blurred form above the water. The rippling water announces its coming and soon it tries to catch that human with its tongue, but bounces off the wards. Its attempts remain fruitless. The circle is well warded.

There is a man in the desert as well. A messenger, lost on his way and weak from a lack of food and water. He has collapsed within a hastily put up portable circle. A pack of sand demons, that roam around old travellers roads, have picked up the man’s trail. Running over the dunes they followed his scent and now they spy him in his circle. They start attacking the wards. They can feel that the net, that throws them back, is not very strong. It would not hold for ever…

Far up in the icy mountains, another messenger has set up his camp under an overhanging rock that is covered in icicles. His horse’s breath forms white clouds in the freezing air. A heavy snowfall sets in and the snow scrunches beneath the horses hoofs as it moves. But the horse is not the only creature moving. The low growl of a predator sounds over the snow. Though the man has heard stories told about these corelings of ice, he had never truly believed in them. He knows that his circle doesn’t contain the defensive ward he needs. His only chance is his shield: His friends had wanted to mock him by painting said ward on in bright ink. He only spots the demon as it moves and the firelight reflects off its icy white scales; otherwise the demon is invisible in the snow. Though there is little hope, the messenger holds up his shield and stands at the very edge of the circle. The demon attacks. The horse flees as the horny tail of the coreling rips open its flank. Several times the demon is thrown back by the ward, but the man knows that he cannot stand this brutal fight much longer; the day is still hours away and he has been on his feet in the thin mountain air all day. Finally the demon manages to get past his wards and pulls away his shield. The messenger pays dearly for his disbelief in the old stories about the death of the mountain, the snow demon.

Musically, I sort of composed along this line, only flowering it at the very end after the appearance of the snow demon, with a last confusing mixture of all the wards at the same time, mixing the themes and pushing them to the climax. Besides the music there are also some sounds. I wanted to create the feeling of really sensing the situation. For example you can hear the growl of the snowdemon, the flapping of the wind demon’s wings and the rippling water as the waterdemon tests the wards. But also the crunching snow, the rustling of sand and the crackling of the flame demons’ approach. I hope you like it. As I said, you can basically do anything with the themes I found for the wards. This is the first possibility.

Greetings Birte

Birte also created these excellent snow demons out of real snow! A perfect entry idea for a winter art contest.

Wow! Thank you to Birte for entering with such spectacular artwork and music. I love how the music, words and mural all tell a story. Amazing job!