What we’re releasing today is an imperfect work, with the idea being for it to be improved upon over the coming days and weeks, in response to your feedback regarding its design and ease of use. You’ll notice, for example, that the private messaging functionality is yet to go live, and that the registration process could be somewhat less clunky. Once you’ve registered, you’ll need to check the email account which you provided during registration for a message which contains your auto-generated password.

So, without further ado, I would like to invite you to check out the forum. Please feel free to post whatever you wish. It would be especially helpful if you could leave us your feedback here, under Forum Feedback.

(Please note that during the development phase, we secretly opened up the site to registered users for the first time. This is why about a half a dozen of you who are WordPress-savvy were able to register. Now that the forum page is no longer password protected, those users should be able to view the forum and sign in with your original login details.)

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

David

Last year, they let me scoop everyone and be the first to show off on the Peephole the incredible cover art for their translation of The Warded Man, l’Homme Rune. This year they are keeping up the tradition of awesomeness, this time with pure the cover art to La Lance du Désert, the French translation of The Desert Spear, which will be available in October this year. As with l’Homme Rune, the cover to La Lance is painted by the incredibly talented Miguel Coimbra. It is hotter than the Core and colder than a snow demon’s spit:

(Click to enlarge)

So I was grumpy, until two awesome things happened. First, my iPad arrived, just in time for the trip, despite the fact that it was not due till Saturday (too late to bring it):

And second, I received an e-mail entry for the Warding Contest from French Jess reminding me why I <3 her.

Hi Peat,

Hope you are well! I’ve seen that you are very busy this days! That’s great!

First I wanted to thank you and Dani for the bookplate! I stuck it in my Desert Spear and it’s just so beautiful! It made my boyfriend jealous!

I’m actually devouring the Desert Spear! I had no time to read in my trip to Corsica, always hiking (under the rain…), so I had to delay the beginning of my reading when I came back home! I’m almost at the end of the first part and GOD it’s good to be back in your world!!! I LOVE it so much! I’ll tell you what I think of the entire book as soon as I finish it

But I write for another reason! As soon as I saw on your website that another contest had began, I told myself “I HAVE to do something for this one as well”!

I love your contests, it’s always a lot of fun to find ideas and DO things, crazy, or not!

So I had a few ideas for this one, but I must wait until a go back at my parent’s where I got all my stuff to achieve these, so I started to seek more ideas that I can create while I’m here in South France! I was reading the first part of the Desert Spear when I finally had one. I love Inevera’s character, and am fascinated by alagai’s magic, so I decided to try to make my version of alagai hora! So I waited the night, slaughtered some demons, took some bones, and carved them with wards (I don’t have prophecy wards, so I took the Misc wards and the mind ward) and Krasian symbols I invented from Arabic alphabet. And then, all I had to do was close the curtains, light a candle, and cast the bones:

Have a good day!

And expect another message in a few day when I finish the Desert Spear!

Jess

It takes stones to put yourself out there and be a first responder.

I’m talking about people like Francois, the first of three contest entrants to have submitted something within 24 hours of my announcing the Warding Contest. He wrote:

The photo is of me when I was young and had Chickenpox. I thought I looked pretty bad ass so I decided to ward myself.

He also included a kickass “night” version:

The next hero is Francine from the UK, who writes:

Dear Peter,

I heard about your contest and think it’s a great idea and would be loads of fun to do so here’s my entry . It’s a picture of my guinea pig zucchini.

He’s completely warded against huma- sorry, corelings.

Love Francine!

Finally we have the brave Lisa, who says:

The contest is simple:

Step 1: Go to the Creations page on my website and scroll down until you  find the 18 black & white ward symbols designed by Lauren K. Cannon. If you hover your mouse over them, you can see them by name. Click to enlarge, and right-click to download.

Step 2: Ward something. Anything. You can use as many or as few of the symbols as you like. You can draw the wards yourself or use the digital files. You can also carve, etch, paint, tattoo, brand, stencil, cut, silkscreen, henna, airbrush, or otherwise render the wards. Any medium. Any object. You can go all the way from making a full portable Messenger circle to just warding your sneakers with a Sharpie during history class. Whatever. Just make sure that when you’re done, demons aren’t going to want to go anywhere near what you warded.

Step 3: Take a digital picture of whatever you warded and send it to peat@petervbrett.com no later than July 1, 2010. If you want to physically send your entry, let me know in the e-mail and I’ll tell you how to do that. Please include your full name and the mailing address you would like your prize to go to, should you win. (I promise not to be a dick and share your address with anyone or use it for any other purpose without permission.)

That’s it. Lauren and I will review the entries and pick our five favorites. The lucky Warders will each receive a print of the new Renna painting gracing the home page, signed by both Lauren and myself:

If there are a lot of entries, I will also throw in some other prizes, like signed books and whatnot.

More news to come as the story develops. Good warding!