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Mom, don’t read this.

Ah, the interwebs. Today I witnessed a lovely clash between twitter and google translate.

My french publisher (@BragelonneFR) twittered this:

@PVBrett fout le bazar : http://bit.ly/eYQ586 | Encore un petit bijou en perspective !

Now I know a little French. VERY little. I get the gist of what this says, but I decide to plug it into google translate anyway and see what it says. This is what GT spits back out:

@PVBrett fucks the bazaar http://bit.ly/eYQ586 | Another gem in perspective!

So I go and translate the whole page, just to see if the gag carries, and sure enough:

Peter V. Brett fucks Bazaar

In my defense, the bazaar was asking for it.

Still, the article is correct. I AM really excited to have those stories translated into French, and I will likely be using it as an excuse to visit France around the time they publish.

Also in the news, I am taking a few days to pick the winners of the Homemade Heroes contest. There are so many fantastic entries that I want to give this a lot of thought and recognize/reward as many people as possible. I am making a sizeable pile of goodies for runner-up prizes. All will ship before X-mas I hope.

And last but not least, this little gem arrived via e-mail yesterday:

Hey,

i thought i could share one of my paintings of what i imagined a fire demon to look like. Its not quite the description i suppose, but i thought i would share it nonetheless.

Thanks

-Luke Fielding
http://lukefielding.com

Posted on November 29, 2010 at 5:23 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Brayan's Gold, Contests, Events, Fan Art, Fans, France, Great Bazaar, Homemade Heroes, Life, Messenger, Musings, Sales, Warded Art, World Traveler
3 Comments »

This entry is so damn cool. Really, they all have been, and I am running out of expletives to describe them. Especially since a recent post netted this e-mail from my mom:

I cringe every time I see the “F” word or reference to it on your peephole.  Is that the kind of thing you want your fans to see?  As for the homemade heroes, these people must have a lot of time on their hands.  Some are absolutely mind blowing and you can see the amount of work that went into them.  Awesome.

Love, Mom

I get these e-mails every once in a while. It’s kind of sweet, and shows my mom wants to make sure everyone knows I was raised right. Still, while I try not to be gratuitous about it, I’m not going to stop cursing. Words are just that, and none of them are “bad”. I figure anyone who reads my books can handle an occasional F-bomb, especially given that I am a New Yorker and we use them like commas.

Anyway, back to the Homemade Heroes Contest. This entry is from Margherita in Ontario, and it is the last accepted entry. It is also a SERIOUS contender. I mean, holy crap. Check this out:

Hi Peat,

Firstly, I hope you and your family had a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving.

Second, I know submissions for the Homemade Heroes Contest were supposed to be in before Thanksgiving, but I’m going to go ahead and use the excuse that I’m Canadian and didn’t know when your Thanksgiving fell on the calendar (Ya, I know… you printed the date on the contest info page). I figured it out when a bunch of newly found family members in Brooklyn sent me text messages this morning assuming we shared the same Thanksgiving date.

Anyhoo… I really don’t mind sending these in late. I had a blast putting them together. I’ve been wishing and hoping and praying that I’ll wake up with artistic abilities to allow me to get some Demon Cycle fan art going, buuuutt I heard Santa doesn’t do the whole early gifting thing. So, I’m just grateful you gave us all this opportunity. Plus, it was kinda fun ignoring my boyfriend for a couple of days to play with dolls.

I’ve got Leesha Paper, Rojer Inn, Renna Tanner and Arlen Bales. Leesha was probably the easiest of the four. Stuck the pockets onto her apron with some double sided sponge tape (doesn’t work very well). Was even able to change her eye colour from brown to the beautiful blue we know Leesha to have. By the way, she has no feet… Stupid BRATZ doll had feet with the shoes painted on. Strappy high heels wouldn’t have worked very well.

Rojer’s in the lovely warded cloak Leesha had made for him (He isn’t wearing any clothes underneath. Shhhh…). I got his hair to that orange colour with marker… yes marker. Chopped off a few fingers and threw in his fiddle with strings and all.

Renna’s hair took forreevvvverrrr. I don’t know why I cared so much. She’s wearing her slit dress, but she doesn’t have her skin warded. Gave her the necklace Cobie Fisher gifted her and her father’s knife. Renna is also footless. Big pink sneakers are not sold at Hog’s general store.

Arlen, Arlen, Arlen. Skin warded from bottoms of his feet to crotch to palms to head. Took a good amount of time to get all of the hair snipped away from his head with toe nail clippers. Fun times. Has One Arm’s claw scars on his back too. He was so much fun to photograph!

(I thumbnailed these, but if you click on any one, you can enlarge and scroll through! -PVB)

And just so you know, I am so so sorry for all of the Arlen photos. I just couldn’t choose :s Oh ya, there’s an Arlen/Leesha pic too. 😉

Well, I hope you enjoy my makeshift Demon Cycle characters as much as I enjoyed making them. 🙂

P.S. howz about coming over to Hamilton, Ontario (I can deal with Toronto if I have to) and doing a book signing? I’ll bring your friends Leesha, Rojer, Renna and Arlen along.

Have an awesome weekend!

Margherita

FYI, Margherita, I will probably be in Toronto again soon. I was there last year to visit the Resident Evil: Afterlife set, and I think there’s a Worldcon or a World Fantasy con coming up there in the next year or two.

Posted on November 28, 2010 at 1:49 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art, Warded Man
7 Comments »

This entry is from Arthur, who kicked serious ass in the Warding Contest, and who I had the pleasure of meeting (along with his lovely girlfriend Lauren) when I was in LA last summer. Once again, he has created a thing of brilliance.

I kind of want this for Cassie. Imagine if One Arm became her favorite crib toy? Oh, the joy that would bring me…

Hey Peat,

When you announced the idea of the contest way back when, I was hoping you’d open it to plushes because that’s the first thing that came to mind. Having never done one, little did I know what I was getting into!

Originally I planned to do One Arm, a fire demon, and Arlen. Not so much, but here’s what I did get done after about 40-50 hours of fumbling around without a pattern. This version of One Arm is probably more appropriate for your daughter’s desk than yours, but I hope you enjoy it.

-Arthur

Posted on November 27, 2010 at 10:23 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art, Warded Man
2 Comments »

So I checked my e-mail around 2am last night just to make sure there were no final entries before the 12:01 deadline. Nothing. So I went to bed thinking the contest was over and I knew who the winners were.

But then this morning, I sleepily checked the e-mail on my phone as part of my “I’m still too sleepy to get out of bed but my brain is awake” morning ritual. There were not one, not two, but THREE fantastic new entries, all of which came around 2:30am, and all of which came with technicalities. You see, I never specified EST in my deadline…

But really, it’s not like I was going to disqualify someone for being a few hours late anyway, especially after they put in a ton of work. I think rules help keep us from chaos, but that doesn’t mean I’m a dick about it.

So without further ado, I will post the last three entries, and then take a few days to debate the winners with my braintrust. I have secured some GREAT runner up prizes!

The first comes from Liz in the UK (click pix to enlarge):

Dear Peat,

I know this is last minute. I took you very seriously when you said until 12:01. It is now 2:55 am here in Hull (UK), and I am embracing the fact that that makes me a geek. I have also just realised I have got black acrylic paint on my favourite jumper. All in the name of art… 😛

I decided to make Leesha, the herb gatherer, because I think she is ace. I had wanted to make Twilight Dancer as well, but I’m afraid I didn’t have time. Well, here’s my entry anyway (sorry for the poor picture quality):

She’s made from air-drying clay….

…painted with acrylic paint. The outfit is made from white muslin (skirt includes herb pouch, though it’s not very clear here.) and an old Etam t-shirt.

The cloak is made from white muslin, blanket stitched (by hand) all round the outside, painted black and then warded.

Oh, and I mugged a pound shop Barbie for the boots, repainted them and laced them up where the cheap, nasty plastic split. I also stole the barbie’s hair, though it was blonde so I had to paint it black. Apparently cheap barbies only come in blonde.

This project took longer than I anticipated, and didn’t come out as well as I’d have liked. The hair has gone a bit wiry and painting her face was very difficult.

But anyway, I hope you like what I came up with. It was tremendous fun to do, so thank you for giving me something to be creative with.

And finally, what became of ‘Joanna’……

A Coreling victim perhaps??

My housemate came in to offer me a cup of tea and saw this decapitated Barbie… there were raised eyebrows.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving for yesterday, still technically today for you. Thank you for wonderful books and a wonderful contest.

Liz x

(nari-journal.blogspot.com)

Posted on November 26, 2010 at 4:34 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art, Warded Man
1 Comment »

It is almost Thanksgiving, which means there is just over 24 hours left to submit your entries to the Homemade Heroes Contest. Just when I was starting to worry that there weren’t many entries, the floodgates opened, and now every day there is more awesomeness. I have much to be thankful for this year, but at the top of the list is having such amazing readers. Every time I have one of these contests, I am stunned at the results.

It seems Yelie, who entered with her husband earlier this week, making homemade heroes out of Legos and Barbies, is looking to stack the deck further in her family’s favor, especially after the great entries of the last few days. Check out this SWEEEEET new entry. Twilight Dancer!

Peat,

I think that it may be a good thing that this contest is ending soon because I am dreaming in wards!  Me and my husband had so much fun doing the other entry, when we saw this horse in the store we knew we had to turn him into Twilight Dancer!!  He just screamed “will kick demon ass!”.  So we barded him and warded the crap out of him and let him go to town on our rock demon 🙂

Arlen must have been away on a potty break or something but when that rock demon came up to his nice warded circle he couldn’t help but hop out and kick his head clean off.

Anyways thanks so much for this contest!  I really loved seeing everyone’s entries and it was awesome working with my hubby on something creative from a book we both love!

Yelie

In addition to the sheer demon ass-kickingness of TD, I also really love the portable warding circle in the camp diorama, which I assume was made in the same sandbox as the Lego Jardir and Arlen scene. Ah, sandboxes! They are like a magic carpet that can take you anywhere.

Interesting aside, Twilight Dancer was also the name of the protagonist’s horse from the unpublished fantasy series I wrote before working on The Warded Man. I loved the name and cannibalized it for Arlen’s horse. If I ever publish that old series, I will probably need to rename the horse…

Posted on November 24, 2010 at 8:53 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art
5 Comments »