Young Rojer is perfectly imagined in Stefan’s portrait. The motley, the fiddle, the red hair. It’s like stepping into his childhood in The Warded Man. Great job! Check out Stefan’s Arlen portrait here.
Feeling inspired by all the wearable fan art floating around these days? Want to try your hand a creating a cosplay, warded outfits or a coreling cap? We’ve got some very special prizes to bestow on folks who want to give it a shot.
We will be giving away 3 original Warded Man hardcovers with the brand new cover.
We will also be giving away covers on their own. You can wrap them around your hardcover Warded Man to match the other two books.
And, of course, the freshly minted The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Goldfrom Voyager. This beautiful little book was made to look like a messenger’s journal from Thesa.
All books will be signed! And don’t forget to check out the contest guidelines before entering.
The shading job is spectacular. The fire demon almost looks extremely demonic and the rock demon doesn’t look like he’s messing around. These make me think of how awesome a comic book or graphic novel of The Warded Man would be.
The first entry is in for the Wear Your Wards Contest, and it is adorable. Sara warded this onesie in purple ink to chase away any demons after her daughter Sofia.
Amazing job, Sara! I love that it matches her stripped legwarmers. She would be the talk of the town in Thesa!
Peat is going to be awarding some pretty special mystery prizes for this contest, so be sure to get your entry in by May 25th at 11:59pm! And remember, anything goes as long as it’s wearable. We want to see your Demon Cycle fashion sense!
Back in January of 2012, the ConFusion convention in Detroit had Epic Fantasy as it’s annual theme, calling together such a gathering of my fantasy rivals (curses upon them) that I snarkily suggested on twitter we should all get together for a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It was a joke, but the response was so overwhelming we decided to make it happen.
With such an epic gathering of egos, the only person I knew who could instill some sense of order to the chaos was USCG Lt. Myke Cole, who just so happened to be debuting his own fantasy novel that month. The two of us begged, borrowed and stole to put the event together at the last minuteand film it. You can read more on the first game (and watch it!) here.
At the time, I didn’t expect that many people to be interested in watching a bunch of professional nerds sit around eating Doritos and playing D&D, but close to 25,000 views proved me wrong, and a tradition was born.
This year, with help from the con staff, we planned a little further in advance. After cringing at the low quality of the first recording, I kicked in a bit of a budget from my own coffers to hire some real camera and sound people in addition to Erin McConnell, the fantastic editor who turned the first recording into something watchable.
There was no shortage of writers lobbying for the final seat at the table, but I like to do something special each year for the Worldbuilders charity, and after chatting about it with charity founder Pat Rothfuss, we decided to auction off the seat off to a fan. the lucky winner was Dave Wohlreich, who (thank heavens) turned out to be an awesome addition to the game. We also hope to release a small number of DVDs of the event for the charity at some point later in the year.
You may notice that all the players in this year’s game are wearing Hawaiian shirts. This was done in solidarity for 2012 player author Jay Lake, who at the time was running an Acts of Whimsy campaign on Kickstarter to raise money for genome sequencing to help battle his recurring cancer.
This video comes at a difficult time for Jay and the SF community that loves him. Last week, Jay received his terminal diagnosis, and has begun making end of life plans. He speaks quite frankly about it, and a wide range of other things, over on his blog, which I encourage you to read. Despite everything Jay is going through, his outward face throughout the ordeal has been one of vast courage; an inspiration to us all.
Special thanks to our ConFusion liaison Dave Kletcha, video editor Erin McConnell, Producer Zack Takenaga and his film crew, Pete Mitchell who provided the song “Critical Hit” (You can buy the full album here), and of course my assistant Meg, who coordinated the whole project.
So what you waiting for? Indulge yourself for the better part of an hour and see what happens when fantasy authors hang out:
