Sorry for the lack of blog updates lately. After a great weekend in Detroit for ConFusion, I was hammered from all sides this past week with promotional work for upcoming book launches (Desert Spear paperback, novellas, etc.), and some other awesome things I’m not yet at liberty to discuss. Plus lots of work on The Daylight War, particularly a 6500 word Inevera POV excerpt that will appear March 1 in the US eBook, and in April in the UK mass market paperback.

ConFusion was a blast. It was located at the Detroit Marriott Troy, off exit 69 on Big Beaver Road, Just past the Hooters.

No, seriously.

I got to finally meet my cyber-buddy Pat Rothfuss, as well as hang out with the likes of Paolo Bacigalupi, Cherie Priest, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Doselle Young, and others, including the good folks of Subterranean Press, like my convention handler Yanni and her adorable baby Calista, who helped soothe my own baby missing. Here’s a shot from the first panel with Cherie, Doselle, John, Paolo and me at right.

I am struggling to find an assistant here in Brooklyn to help me out so I can focus more on writing and find time to blog more. In the meantime, here are some neat things that have been accumulating:

First off, Arthur, a two-time contest winner (Warding and Homemade Heroes), sent me his plushie One Arm, and as promised, I put it in Cassie’s crib. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at the results:

I also finally sent out the last of the HH contest prizes, namely the grand prize set to Mia. This took me almost 2 months mainly because Mia asked me to do a sketch of Bruna in her copy of The Great Bazaar. Seeing as how there are only like 1500 copies of that book in existence and they are now eBaying for like $500, you can understand how reluctant I was to start scribbling in one. Finally I managed it, and I think the result was pretty cool:

Last but not least, I got a letter  the other day from Bill X, who won the Daylight War tagline contest on the forums:

Hey Peat,

I woke up today and my wife said she had taken the best photo for me. My lilone xander was doing his usual playing Clone wars on wii dressed as vader (Don’t ask lol). He went to sit down and my wife had to remind him not to sit in my chair without making sure it was empty. He spotted my new signed copy of TWM and sat to look at the bookplate. Wife just couldn’t resist taking a pic since id be so proud of his advancement into UBER-Nerd land with me! Thought you would get a kick out of it.

BillX

That’s all for now. I will pick winners for the Limerick and Suggest a Contest contests soon, I promise!

Treading water…

Posted on January 31, 2011 at 4:26 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Cassie, Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Events, Fan Art, Fans, Great Bazaar, Homemade Heroes, Life, Messenger, Movie, The Daylight War, Warded Art, Warded Man, Writing
6 Comments »

***SPOILER ALERT***

This post contains fan art depicting many scenes in The Warded Man and The Desert Spear. If you are still reading and don’t want to know what happens until you read it, tread carefully. I don’t think seeing the art will really ruin anything, but that’s a subjective thing. Proceed with caution.

Deviant Art (DA) is like facebook for artists, ranging from amateur to professional (and often line between the two is VERY hard to guess). There are so many incredibly talented amateur artists on DA that I am filled with joy at the creative power of humanity united under the internet.

I’ve had a DA account for a a few years, first created created so I could comment on Lauren K. Cannon’s original Arlen painting back in the day.  I have used the account quite a bit since, looking at and commenting on  the occasional bit of fan art google alerts pointed me to, as happened on Friday morning when a random alert pointed me to this incredible piece of pro-grade fucking awesome, Renna Tanner strangling the life out of  a wood demon:

This amazing pic is by Claire Adele. You can see more of her art here:  http://a-d-e-l-e.deviantart.com

On a whim, I checked the mail on my DA account (something I almost never do), and played with the search engine using keywords like “Warded Man” and “Desert Spear”, unwittingly opening myself up to a VAST treasure trove of warded riches heretofore unknown. I spent the next few hours in a joy-filled fugue as I looked at my characters, who are like family to me, coming to life before my very eyes. It was a heady and incredibly emotional morning, and to be honest, I am still dancing in the clouds of that natural high.

Collected in this post, by permission of the artists, are some of the images I found. I would like to note that I have ONLY posted images that I have gotten permission for. On rare occasions when I was overexcited and in a hurry I have posted fan art people have sent me without getting permission first, and the artists have never seemed to mind, but overall I try hard to practice good nettiquette and respect people’s rights to their art, even if it is fan based.

There is a war going on over the internet, with one army full of assholes eager to censor every little thing they can, and the other full of assholes determined to steal everything they can no matter who it hurts. Both sides are wrong, and their battle will go on eternally. But I don’t need to partake in it, and neither do you. We can just act civilized of our own accord. It’s not that hard to exercise the incredible power and freedom the internet gives us without being an asshole about it. We all have our missteps, and should be forgiving of one another when we can, but when people work hard on something, we should also be respectful and not say intentionally hurtful things for the purse sadistic thrill, or worse, just steal it.

There were a lot more images than what you will see below, more than I could have possibly had time to post in any event. Most of these are public on the artists’ respective DA sites sites. You can see an ongoing collection of thumbnails and links to the images in my DA favorites gallery: http://peatb.deviantart.com/favourites/.

If you like an artist’s work, give their pages some traffic. All of these artists have lots of other amazing images to peruse.

Here by permission:

This piece is by Grievere, an amazing rendition of Arlen’s first night out alone, surrounded by wood and rock and flame demons:

You can see more of Grievere’s work here: http://grievere.deviantart.com

Kite is a whole avalanche of of awesome. I pointed her out a few weeks ago on my twitter and facebook streams for her amazing Leesha portrait:

Since then, Kite has done three more incredible portraits, and has vowed to keep at it. Her bf, also a reader, is apparently jealous that one of their fav writers wrote to her, but dude, I’m the one who should be jealous. Check out her fabulous Arlen portrait:

Or her rendition of Inevera, so sexy it got flagged as naughty by some people’s work filters:

And just this morning, her portrait of Wonda Cutter. This may be Wonda’s first fan art appearance, and that makes me positively gleeful. I love Wonda.  When they put more hours in the day, I want to do a Wonda novella.

You can see more of Kite’s work here: http://kite-lupine-aquila.deviantart.com/

This next image is by Rainbow Sword, one of my first-ever German fans, and the first person to ever send me fan art. Her rainy-day gift a year or two ago was the inspiration for my first fan art competition. These are two images of hers, Jardir/Inevera and Bruna/Leesha, that I hadn’t even known about. They are great. Bruna is another character who could easily carry her own novella. Some day…

You can see more of Rainbow Sword here: http://rainbow-sword.deviantart.com/

Last but certainly not least is this fantastic Arlen and a rock demon by Ghost2:

You can see more of Ghost2 here: http://ghost2.deviantart.com/

One of my absolute favorites that I did not have permission to post at the time of this writing is this pic of Arlen clapping his hands to mock One Arm. Such a memorable scene, beautifully captured.
You can see it here.

Posted on January 16, 2011 at 2:45 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Warded Art, Writing
7 Comments »

Those of you following the most recent contest thread probably noticed Dani’s contest suggestion:

I think you should do a Demon Cycle limerick contest.
Here’s my entry:

There once was a Warder from Miln
Who warmed up his pants in a kiln
He heard it from Cob
Who had a cold nob
And it kept his John Thomas from chill’n

We both laughed our asses off about that, and Dani spent the rest of the night looking immensely pleased with her cleverness. Several others on the comment thread agreed that was a great idea for a contest.

Of course, it would seem like nepotism and insider trading if Dani were to win the mini-contest, so the contest to suggest the next contest is still ongoing. In the meantime, though, I keep thinking of funny limericks, and I’m willing to wager some of you are, too. It would bring such joy into my life to get to read them.

You can place your limericks in the comments section. I’ll pick a favorite or two and send signed Warded Man paperbacks to the authors with their limericks hand written above my signature. I may also write some of the funnier ones on the bookplates I send out to people. I am always trying to think of clever things to write on them.

Don’t fret too much about keeping your limericks clean. According to Wikipedia, Limericks are by their very nature obscene:

Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw^, describing the clean limerick as a periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity. From a folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function.

I’ll start:

There once was a girl from Cutter’s Hollow
Whose nethers had fallen quite fallow
She found a young man
She thought’d lend a hand
But it seemed he would much rather wallow

Posted on January 15, 2011 at 2:39 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Warded Art, Writing
77 Comments »

I need to get an assistant one of these days. I should be working on the finishing touches of my Red Sonja script, or my speech for ConFusion next week, or heck, even The Daylight War.

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!

Posted on January 13, 2011 at 5:18 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Australia, Brayan's Gold, Contests, Craft, Czech, Events, Fan Art, Fans, France, Germany, Messenger, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Red Sonja, Russia, Sales, Tech, The Daylight War, Warded Art, Writing
77 Comments »

Happy 2011, everyone!

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!

Posted on January 9, 2011 at 5:28 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Australia, Bookplate, Brayan's Gold, Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Events, Fan Art, Fans, Great Bazaar, Interviews, Life, Musings, Warded Art, Warded Man, World Traveler, Writing
1 Comment »