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Maalingutega Mees

Oh, my family just grows and grows. It is a pleasure to welcome each new child into the fold.

This time it’s Maalingutega Mees, which google translates from Estonian as “Paintings of Man”.

Close enough.

As you may have guessed, this is the Estonian translation of The Warded Man from publisher Varrak, which my agent just passed on to me. It is a beautiful hardcover book, with a translated map and the character avatars I drew.

The only thing more exciting than getting a new edition of one of my books is getting one with heretofore unseen cover art, especially when that art is awesome, as this is:

Any Estonians reading this blog? Holla!

Posted on February 10, 2011 at 1:57 pm by PeatB
Filed under Messenger, Warded Man, World Traveler, Writing
4 Comments »

RT Book Review Video Interviews

There was a lot of excitement last year, over NY ComicCon weekend. I was on an awesome Fantasy panel with Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, Naomi Novik, & Brandon Sanderson, as well as debut author Deborah Harkness. I did a rambling video interview for Suvudu, and got in a bar fight with Abercrombie.

I also did a bunch of other interviews, including Fictional Frontiers, RT (Romantic Times) Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Club, etc. I remember having a great time with those, because for once all the interviewers had read my work and asked really smart, pointed questions. Still, it was kind of a whirlwind that faded to a blur by the end of the weekend, especially since some of the interviews never seemed to materialize.

That is, until yesterday, when I got an e-mail from RT Book Reviews telling me that my series of interviews with Morgan Doremus were live on their site.

Morgan was a great interviewer. She was super-friendly, read the books, asked great questions, and really put me at ease despite my anxiety about interviews in general and video interviews in particular.

The interview was split into three parts, all up on YouTube, so I will embed them here, but if you like them, definitely check out the RT website, which has a lot of other great interviews, reviews, and articles.

The first interview is about The Warded Man and its themes/characters:

The second is about The Desert Spear:

The third is about Brayan’s Gold and my experiences as art director on that project:

Last but not least, Sohaib Awan, host of the Fictional Frontiers radio show, interviewed me that weekend as well, also having read my books and asking pointed questions about The Desert Spear and its Middle Eastern influences, something that resonated with him personally. It’s a great interview that starts at the 45 minute point of this episode: Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib (Episode 122)

Apparently the interview was posted in November, but I was out of the country and missed it. Glad I thought to do a search for it today.

Posted on February 1, 2011 at 1:22 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Brayan's Gold, Craft, Desert Spear, Interviews, The Daylight War, Warded Man, Writing
3 Comments »

Nerds in Training

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 »

Deviant Fan Art

***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 »

Demon Cycle Limericks

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 »