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Today’s entry in the Warding Contest comes from Blake in Alaska, with the help of his lovely fiancée, Jordan. If you’ve got demon troubles, it’s the next best thing to sunlight:

Hi peter! Its your biggest fan ever! in Alaska haha Had my future wife help me with this one she’s reading the desert spear and is loving it so far =]

I put a few pics in you don’t have to put them all up just what ever ones you like best i guess.

Ok so here are my entries hope you like them I put some quality time in em =].

So warding on wrinkled paper sucks hard core ( haha said core) I wanted it to be more like a defensive lantern, one that shined wards on the surroundings, maybe even demons themselves. I also put 2 pressure wards on each side so if they happen to get past the weak ward net they wouldn’t without feeling some pressure! haha hope everyone likes it, I also made a portable ward circle for it just incase they tried to pull a fast one while I sleep haha.

-Blake

Remember, the contest ends July 1, so if you’re planning to enter, the clock is ticking!

Posted on June 19, 2010 at 1:39 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Warded Art
Comments Off on Warded Lantern

As I’ve said, we all have our priorities. Based on her wonderful entries to the Warding Contest, JoAnna from Springfield apparently puts her copy of The Desert Spear first, and her children second. But so long as she’s keeping them warded, it still put her ahead of all you other parents out there, who obviously do not love your children enough to keep them safe from corelings:

Greetings Mr. Brett and Ms. Cannon,

I was inspired for my entry by Arlen warding the library. For surely knowledge is, next to our loved ones, the most important thing we can endeavor to protect. I had planned to ward my bookshelves, however, I could not devise a way to beautifully ward these particular shelves, which just happen to be rather homely. So on to plan ‘B.’ I decided to make a cloth dust jacket.

I used my copy of The Desert Spear to get the measurements and then proceeded to ward the fabric. It is made of a heavy twill, an almost canvas-like material. I would have liked to make it in some different colors perhaps; but one must work with the materials one has.

As I was making this, I thought about protecting our loved ones as well. So, I warded my baby! And then I warded my five-year old! The design on the infant’s shirt was my first attempt, and as thus, is not my favorite. I much prefer my second attempt and plan to make one for the baby to match his brother’s. A shirt for the hubby and myself are on the to-do list, as well.

Thank you, Mr. Brett and Ms. Cannon. You are both true artists.

Most sincerely,

JoAnna

Posted on June 18, 2010 at 3:14 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Warded Art
3 Comments »

Lots of stuff going on as I try to prepare for my first real vacation in years. Sometimes I struggle to come up with stuff to post on the blog, but not these days. I have about seven half-written entries, not to mention a growing pile of simply amazing entries in the Warding Contest, and lots of amazing art from European publishers.

Take Fabryka Slow (Word Factory) in Poland, for example. The Polish are the first international publishers to release a translated edition of The Desert Spear, and proud of it. Apparently there are others in Poland who share this pride, as well.

The first installment of Pustynna Wlócznia hits bookstores tomorrow, Friday June 18, and is approximately 600 pages of warded, demony goodness. The second half (another 600 pages) will be out in August.

The Polish translations are one of my favorite foreign editions, because unlike most publishers, they include amazing illustrations. Back in late 2008 I shared some of the illustrations from Malowany Czloweik (The Painted Man) on the Peephole, and all agreed they were fabulous. Pustynna Wlócznia is no different, with a whole new slate of illustrations by the great Dominik Broniek. Fabryka Slow has kindly given me permission to repost a dozen of them here. I have yet to receive my samples of the new book to check placement, but let’s see if I can figure it out anyway, without giving out any serious spoilers:

Obviously the Mimic & Mind Demons, plucked right from page 1 of the book. No spoilers there, just pure, pure awesomeness:

The smaller demon here is clearly a flame demon, as you can tell from its burning eyes. I’m guessing the other one is a field demon, common to Rizon and parts of Angiers. On open ground, there’s nothing on 4 legs faster than a field demon:

Flames demons + snow = fog:

Arlen, bad ass and haunted by the call of the Core:

This is clearly from the scene where One Arm… er, forget it. Spoiler. But awesome!

Jardir’s first taste of ward feedback with the Spear of Kaji:

Uber sexy Inevera… wait, “uber” is German. This is a Polish blog…

*Consults Google Translate*

Wspaniala Seksowna Inevera in her diaphanous robes. Dangerous. No wonder the Krasians tend to keep their women covered up. She could start a war like that.

Kickass picture of Twilight Dancer. A half-wild Angierian mustang with warded hooves might not be able to outrun a field demon, but it can trample the fuck out of one:

Mind Demon Snackie Snack:

Arlen & Jardir, flip sides of the same spear:

Not sure where these guys are busting into, but I’m glad the sun is out and I’m somewhere else:

Qasha throwing the alagai hora:

Posted on June 17, 2010 at 12:35 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Desert Spear, Pimpage, Poland, Sales, Warded Art, Writing
20 Comments »

My French publisher, Bragelonne, is awesome. I am on their Milady imprint, which is where they put their best books. Don’t believe me? Check out this list.

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)

Posted on June 16, 2010 at 11:35 am by PeatB
Filed under Desert Spear, France, Warded Art, World Traveler, Writing
8 Comments »

I know what you’re thinking. “Two blog posts in one day? Oh, no he din’t!”

But yeah, I did. Even after whining in my last post about how I needed to limit my blogging, I was writing an e-mail to someone and it got me on a rant.

Been using the iPad a lot lately for a variety of things. Most of my web surfing, e-mail, and .pdf viewing has migrated to the iPad/couch rather than my desk, which has been a big benefit at making the desk a place of work, which in turn trains me like a dog into being productive in this space.

I’ve also been reading my first eBook, Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold. Reading prose on the iPad is, ironically, the hardest thing for me to get used to. Again like Pavlov’s dog, I am trained to think of electronic text as work. It seems impossible to take pleasure in such a thing. I miss the feel of a book in my hands, the feel of the paper. I expect I will push past it and it will get easier with time, but right now, it is weird.

On the other hand, the iPad is just plain perfect for comics in every way. If all the comics being produced today were available for the iPad with an easy on-easy off subscription service, I would never buy another floppy again and not miss it one bit. I hate fucking bagging those things. It’s why I switched to TPB’s, but with TPB’s, you have to wait at least 6 months between installments.

I’ve generally been growing more accustomed to the iPad’s Mac interface, as well. The organization is a totally different mindset from Windows, and gives you a lot less control. There are no confirmations that this file saved properly or that file reached its destination intact. You kind of have to trust that the computer knows what it’s doing and won’t fuck up. It’s like driving automatic for the first time after spending your whole life driving stick.

For the most part, I’m finding I miss the control less and less. It came with a ton of needless maintenance. The iPad has yet to fuck anything up, and it’s been a couple of weeks. The only serious glitch I’ve had was when I tried to load like 500 MB of .pdf files into Stanza at once and the iPad crashed. I expect this is Stanza’s problem and not Apple’s, but even so, I held down the power and home keys for 5 seconds and the whole thing rebooted in like a minute. The whole episode probably took about 5 minutes out of my life.

But I’ll admit, it was a looooooong five minutes. Five minutes where I was convinced I had broken My Precious, and broke out in a cold panicked junkie sweat.

Because that’s the thing. It seems like Macs work seamlessly and invisibly, but when they break, the whole thing just shuts down. There are no warnings. No troubleshooting options. One minute your iPod’s working fine, and then suddenly you have a little picture of a sad face on your screen, adding insult to injury while you book an appointment at the Apple Genius bar. It’s like trading death by a thousand cuts for the Sword of Damocles.

The Apple approach is more accessible, and the smarter move for capturing market share. I don’t even think I’ll miss fixing my own computer, if all I have to do is carry my light-ass iPad to the store and let someone else fix (or replace) it for me.

But I do think Apple would be wise to bend a little and also include some concessions to analytical folk like me, like a hierarchical filing interface that lets you keep your shit organized and better synching. I’m never going to be able to cut the umbilical to Windows/my desktop computer without that.

Posted on June 12, 2010 at 4:20 pm by PeatB
Filed under Musings, My Reviews, Tech, Writing
1 Comment »