Happy Book Lovers Day 2023!

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Steven

Hey, fans of reading! Today is Book Lovers Day, a worldwide event whose origin and first appearance on the calendar aren’t really known, but what is known is that it’s celebrated every August 9th to encourage reading, and any reason to help folks fall in love with books is always a good thing. And if you’re looking for the right book on this special day, StarWarp Concepts is the place for quality reading material!

Our ever-growing list of titles ranges from the young-adult thrills of supernatural heroine Pandora Zwieback and the Lovecraftian chills of the graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City to the nonfiction books Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination (perfect for writers and RPG game masters) and From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, and from the Illustrated Classics A Princess of Mars, Carmilla, and King Kong to the swashbuckling adventure of the fantasy novel Harbinger of Darkness.

And our titles are critically acclaimed, with overwhelmingly positive responses from reviewers:

“Far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels. Pan is exactly the kind of teen heroine that readers should be standing up and cheering for.”—HorrorNews.net on Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1

“This is without a doubt the essential, authoritative reference book for anything related to the Warren-era Vampirella… There are lots of books out there with good information, but none offers such a broad, all-encompassing look at the history of this character.”—Vampirella of Drakulon (news blog) on From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures

“A solid introduction to the subject of world building. The book succeeds in helping the aspiring writer in creating a skeletal framework on which to hang the moving parts required of a believable fictional setting.”—The Gaming Gang on Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination

“A satisfying romp and one that feels like it would have made an excellent seventies horror film (especially one made by Hammer)…. The story is funny at times, graphic at times, and horrific at others, and it’s always delivering its stuff at full volume.”—Strange Amusements on Lorelei: Sects and the City

“A visceral adventure through a world of magic with well-developed characters, dynamic dialogue and a good dose of two-handed sword fights.”—Experience Writing on Harbinger of Darkness

“With a cover that looks like it belongs on the paranormal romance shelf in a bookstore and half a dozen illustrations provided by Eliseu Gouveia, this edition stands a good chance of tempting some younger readers to pick up this classic vampire tale…. I wish I’d picked this book up in seventh grade instead of slogging through Dracula.”—The Gothic Library on Carmilla

With the exception of King Kong (a digital exclusive), all SWC titles are available in print and digital formats, so take a look at our backlist on the main page and check out all the books, comics, and graphic novels we offer. Happy reading!

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That Time Artist Bob Larkin Met The Meg

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Steven

Today is the theatrical debut of Meg 2: The Trench, the follow-up to the surprisingly popular 2018 giant-shark movie in which action star Jason Statham (The Fast and the Furious and Expendables franchises) fought two megalodons; this time, he’s got a whole aquarium full of giant underwater monsters to battle!

You know who else has had an encounter with a megalodon? Our friend Bob Larkin, who’s spent a four-decade career painting all manner of colossal beasts from beneath the sea—as well as from outer space!—in a host of covers and movie posters for just about every publishing house and film studio. 

Doc Savage, Dazzler, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, Piranha, Night of the Creeps, Humanoids from the Deep, and Godzilla are just some of the painted images you’re already familiar with, even if you didn’t know they were Larkin’s work. He’s been an inspiration to artists like Joe Jusko and Alex Ross. For us here at StarWarp Concepts, Bob was the cover artist of my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign. 

Bob’s connection to The Meg is that he was a cover artist for one of the printings of The Trench, author Steve Alten’s follow-up novel to his 1997 bestseller Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, and the basis for Statham’s Meg 2: The Trench—which means Bob got to paint a giant shark!

What you see here are the original painting and its final printed version. As to why the book has a reversed color scheme, Bob explained it this way to me:

“[The original painting] is what the art director and author wanted: an all-white shark with big teeth, in color. But then they decided to make the shark negative with the red eye; I couldn’t understand why. Scarier? They’re both scarier, to a degree.  I did the painting in 1999 and didn’t sign it, like a lot of my rush covers.”

Impressive, right? But like we always say around here, it’s not just his painting skills that are impressive—Bob’s also one hell of a pencil artist, as evidenced by his work in a couple of SWC projects. Cut the shameless plugs!

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really islittle that he hasn’t painted. 

The sketchbook also features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!

And in From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), Bob provides a wonderful pencil-study frontispiece of the queen of comics’ bad girls. From the Stars is a nonfiction history of Vampirella that takes an extensive look at her early days, from the debut of her series in 1969 to the death of Warren Publishing in 1983. In addition to telling the tale of Hammer’s unproduced film adaptation that was to star Barbara Leigh and Peter Cushing, I provide an in-depth guide to all her Warren stories; a checklist of all her Warren appearances (plus the publications from Harris Comics and Dynamite Entertainment that reprinted her Warren adventures); an overview of the six novelizations by pulp sci-fi author Ron Goulart that were published in the 1970s by Warner Books; and a look at the awful 1996 direct-to-cable-TV movie that was made, starring Talisa Soto and Roger Daltrey. There’s also a peek at Mr. Cushing’s personal copy of the ’70s Vampirella screenplay; a foreword by Official Vampirella Historian Sean Fernald, and photographs from the personal archives of Forrest J Ackerman.

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook and From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures are available in print and digital formats. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information.

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SWC at 30: Convention Memories: Sun Con 1994

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Steven

It was road-trip time for StarWarp Concepts in the summer of 1994, and it took the form of my first (and only, to date) trip to Florida in August, to take part in Tampa’s one-day Sun Con, accompanied by Florida residents David C. Matthews (artist of Lorelei) and his charming wife, Janet.

If I remember correctly, I hopped a Greyhound bus at New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal on Friday for an overnight journey, arriving on Saturday morning in Tampa, where Dave and Janet picked me up at the bus stop.

The show was fine, and hanging out with Dave and Janet was fun, and since it was a small one-day gathering we got to feel like Big Time Comic Creators, given how prominently Lorelei and her logo appeared in the con flyer. (Dave had the bonus credit of having done work for AC Comics, the publisher of the superheroine-team series Femforce.)

Still, the show wasn’t a financial success for SWC (the costs of hotel and round-trip busfare outweighing sales), but I enjoyed myself, and Dave and I had made attendees aware of Lorelei—promotion-wise, that meant the show was a success. And when the con wrapped up, I got right back on the bus Sunday night for the return trip to NYC—so I could start making plans for the next convention!

Stay tuned for further Convention Memories!

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Conventioneering at Home: Not at SDCC 2023? Neither Are We!

Posted on July 20, 2023 by Steven
The author backing up West Coast Ghostbusters at SDCC 2004.

Today is the launch day for San Diego Comic-Con 2023, a show that over five deacdes has notoriously become known as less a comic book convention and more a shrine to pop-culture programming and Hollywood celebrities. Except not so much this year, as current strikes by both the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild have resulted in no stars to promote upcoming projects, and movie and TV studios cancelling plans to attend. The wry joke these days is that perhaps, just perhaps, this year’s event might actually turn out to be a for-real comic book convention…

StarWarp Concepts won’t be part of the festivities—in fact, we haven’t attended Comic-Con since 2005 (it’s just too expensive to exhibit there, what with cross-country travel and shipping, not to mention exhibitor and hotel fees)—but that doesn’t mean you can’t experience SWC’s sort of scaled-down version of the big show right here!

In 2020 we instituted “Comic Conventioneering at Home”—our way of providing some con-related content during the COVID-generated virtual editions of SDCC and New York Comic Con that ran that year and in 2021. Folks are always stopping by ’Warp Central but not everyone might have seen us conventioneering, so, I thought, why not just make it a regular thing here at the SWC blog in the summer and the fall to coincide with those shows?

So with that said, you want vendors? Our webstore is open 24/7, so at any time you can order our amazing titles that range from comics and graphic novels to fantasy and dark fantasy novels, and from Illustrated Classics to nonfiction books about gaming and comics history. Not to mention Pandora Zwieback T-shirts and art prints!

Convention giveaways? Our Downloads page has a bunch of free stuff: Pandora Zwieback wallpapers for your smartphone and computer; book samples—and comic books: 

Heroines & Heroes is a collection of comic stories and pinups all drawn by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), dating back to my days in the early 1990s small-press movement—that age of dinosaurs in which creators like me used to make our comics by printing them out on photocopiers and then stapling them by hand. In H&H you’ll find mainstream heroes and small-press heroines, and even a couple of anthropomorphic bikers. Leading off is “V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N (in the Summertime),” a three-page Wonder Woman vs. Harley Quinn story that I wrote and drew in the late ’90s as a sample for a DC Comics editor who thought I’d be a good fit for their Batman: The Animated Series comic (it didn’t work out). The WW/Harley matchup is followed by an adventure of small-presser Jeff Wood’s rabbit-eared superspy, Snowbuni; three pages from the long-canceled indie comic Motorbike Puppies; and an adventure of the indie superheroine The Blonde Avenger.

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 is a full-color introduction to the young adult novel series of the same name, hosted by Pan herself. Pan is a 16-year-old New York City Goth who’s not only a horror fangirl but someone with the rare ability to see the for-real monsters that regular humans can’t (she calls it her “monstervision”), and with the help of a 400-year-old, shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, she’s learning how to protect her family, her friends, and the world from the supernatural dangers out there—and maybe even have some fun while doing it. This 16-page comic features a seven-page story written by me, with art and color by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars, Lorelei: Sects and the City), and includes two sample chapters from Blood Feud, the first Pan novel.

And then there’s Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa #1–3. Before she became Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin made her debut in this short-lived, 1990s Mature Readers series from Millennium Publications. A nefarious heavy metal band has arrived in New York City, and its lead singer is more than just a sex magnet for his female fans—he’s a soul-stealing incubus! Will Annie put an end to his plans for worldwide chaos, or fall prey to his supernatural charms? Written by me (of course), issue 1 is drawn by Pan and Annie co-creator Uriel Caton (JSA Annual) and inker Alan Larsen (Femforce), and colored by Dan Peters; issue 2 is penciled by Uriel, Holly Golightly (School Bites, Archie Comics), and David C. Matthews (Satin Steele), inked by Larsen, and colored by Zeea Adams; and issue 3 is penciled by Holly, with four pages of inks by “Chainsaw” Chuck Majewski (Harvey Kurtzman’s New Two-Fisted Tales).

As a special bonus, issue 3 includes a brief look at the never-published Heartstopper/Trollords, a crossover special that would have had Annie meet Harry, Larry, and Jerry, the Three Stooges–inspired trolls created by Scott Beaderstadt and Paul Fricke for their popular comic series of the 1980s. H/T was to be written by me with pencils by Holly and Scott and inks by Bill Lavin (Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings), but unfortunately it just never got past the starting gate.

(Warning: Heartstopperis designated a “Mature Readers” comic for violent scenes and some sexual innuendo, so younger Panatics should avoid it.)

Artists Alley? Our Gallery area—think of it as an online artists’ alley—features two sections, The 13 Days of Pan-demonium and Visions of Lorelei, both containing original renderings of our two best-known characters by a host of artists from indie and mainstream comics, including such notables as Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), Teri S. Wood (Wandering Star), Neil Vokes (Tom Holland’s Fright Night), Frank Thorne (Red Sonja), Louis Small Jr. (Vampirella), Dave Simon (Ghost Rider), Bill Ward (Torchy), and Joseph Michael Linsner (Red Sonja)!

So even though the StarWarp Concepts crew—and you, too, perhaps—can’t be in sunny San Diego, at least you can have a con-like experience in the meantime from the comforts of your home!

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DriveThru’s Christmas in July 2023 Ebook Sale Is On!

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Steven

Sleigh bells ring—are you listening?

No? Then obviously you haven’t paid a visit to the Hallmark Channel these days, otherwise you’d know we’re smack-dab in the middle of what’s become known as Christmas in July. (Not that we watch any of the bazillion yuletide romances HC is running, you understand—we’re merely pointing it out for research purposes…)

Anyway, if saccharine-sweet rom-coms aren’t your thing, but reading horror and dark fantasy and straight-up fantasy is, then you should head over to our e-book distributor DriveThru Fiction—and its sister site, DriveThru Comics—who’s definitely in the holiday mood with its annual Christmas in July Sale, during which you can purchase tons of digital books at special prices! It runs from now to July 31st—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion.

Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), and among the titles we’re offering at a sweet discount, you’ll find:

From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), is a nonfiction history of Vampirella that takes an extensive look at her early days, from the debut of her series in 1969 to the death of Warren Publishing in 1983. In addition to telling the tale of Hammer’s unproduced film adaptation that was to star Barbara Leigh and Peter Cushing, I provide an in-depth guide to all her Warren stories; a checklist of all her Warren appearances (plus the publications from Harris Comics and Dynamite Entertainment that reprinted her Warren adventures); an overview of the six novelizations by pulp sci-fi author Ron Goulart that were published in the 1970s by Warner Books; and a look at the awful 1996 direct-to-cable-TV movie that was made, starring Talisa Soto and Roger Daltrey. There’s also a peek at Mr. Cushing’s personal copy of the ’70s Vampirella screenplay; a foreword by Official Vampirella Historian Sean Fernald, a frontispiece by Warren artist Bob Larkin, and photographs from the personal archives of Forrest J Ackerman.

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 is a 56-page, full-color comic special that features cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella) and contains three original stories. In “Song of the Siren,” by writer Steven A. Roman and artist Eliseu Gouveia (Vengeance of the Mummy, Lady Death), the teenaged Goth adventuress matches wits with a man-stealing enchantress who’s set her sights on Pan’s boyfriend, Javier. It’s followed by “After Hours,” by writer Sholly Fisch (The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries), and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), in which a demon walks into a bar to unwind after a long day of scarifying. And rounding out the issue is “Shopping Maul,” a short story by Roman with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), in which Pan and Annie, along with Javier and Pan’s best friend, Sheena, run into a group of Gothic Lolita vampires out to do more than a little window shopping.

And Harbinger of Darkness is an original fantasy-adventure novel by Richard C. White (Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination) in which a thief named Perrin steals an extremely valuable—and magical—gem from the evil king ruling her home country. With thugs and fellow thieves and the king’s assassins hot on her trail, Perrin finds just staying alive is becoming a full-time occupation, which directly conflict with her secret life—and identity—as a humble bookseller’s daughter. It’s sword-swinging adventure at its finest!

Again, the Christmas in July Sale runs now through July 31st, so head over to the StarWarp Concepts publisher pages at DriveThru Fiction and DriveThru Comics, and start your summer-reading shopping!

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SWC at 30: Convention Memories: Pittsburgh Comic Book Convention 1994

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Steven

My one trip to Pittsburgh Comic Con took place at the start of 1994 where, as the “writer of Lorelli! [sic]” I met up with writing buddy Richard C. White, whose Troubleshooters, Incorporated I’d originally published as a digest-sized comic. For me, it was an hours-long trip on a Greyhound bus, to arrive in the city of three rivers on Friday afternoon.

When the show opened on Saturday, we shared a table in artists’ alley, and wound up being part of a panel discussion when some of the other announced guests couldn’t make it to Pittsburgh. I don’t remember what the topic was, I just remember introducing myself by saying I was filling the “who the hell is that guy?” slot at the table and then stayed pretty quiet the rest of the time—public speaking in front of a roomful of people is not one of my strong suits.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just some of the guests who were no-shows. Attendance was wayyy down on Saturday, because the local football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, was battling the Kansas City Chiefs (Rich’s favorite team) that day in a Wild Card playoff (the Chiefs won, 27–24, by the way). Things didn’t really improve the next day, if I remember correctly, because the city was now in mourning from the Steelers’ loss. Rich was in fine spirits, though!

Come Sunday, the show wrapped up and I headed to the Greyhound bus terminal for my trip back to New York. A decent enough convention, but I didn’t think a return appearance would be necessary, especially not in the dead of winter.

Stay tuned for further Convention Memories!

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SWC at 30: Down, But Not Dead Yet

Posted on July 12, 2023 by Steven

“StarWarp Concepts Re-enters Small Press: New Titles, Reprints Herald Company’s Return” declared publisher Joe Bagdon’s newszine Comic Book Publisher #5 in January 1998. It was a story also picked up that month by the eighth issue of the premiere magazine of the small-press movement, Tim Corrigan’s Small Press Creative Explosion (formerly known as Small Press Comics Explosion).

Yes, after my adventures in full-size comic publishing, and my near miss with writing a young adult book series for the company responsible for Goosebumps, I’d returned to my small-press roots. As corny as it sounds, comic creating is in my blood—I just couldn’t walk away from it entirely without doing something with this company I’d spent so much time constructing. (I’ve also referred to it as being “too stupid to give up,” but such is the publishing life!)

Among the titles I announced for this go-round were Heroines and Heroes, a collection of superhero and superheroine pinups and comic stories I’d written and drawn (and which you can currently download for free as a digital comic), and a reprint of the canceled miniseries Heartstopper: Sorrow About to Fall—which is now the free, retitled, digital-comic trilogy Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa.

Sales were definitely lower than those during the full-size days—after all, SWC was out of comic shop distribution and back to mail-order sales (e.g., send us $4 and two postage stamps for a digest comic)—but I was happy enough just to be doing comics. And it was nice to be so enthusiastically welcomed back to small-press publishing.

And yet, just like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I wanted more…and started making plans…

(By the way, Joe Bagdon recently returned to publishing his own small-press projects after an absence of many years. Out right now is Micro Adventures, a series of trading-card-size minicomics sold in packs of three—think of it as the small-press equivalent of Topps baseball cards, only without the slab of stale pink bubblegum to stain the paper! You can order them by writing to Joe at BantamHouseComics@gmail.com.)

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Happy Birthday, Bob Larkin!

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Steven

If you’re a fan of comic books, or movies, or pulp fiction heroes, Bob Larkin is a painter whose work you recognize immediately; he’s provided covers and movie posters for just about every publishing house and film studio for more than four decades. 

Doc Savage, Dazzler, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, Piranha, Night of the Creeps, and The Toxic Avenger II are just some of the painted images you’re already familiar with, even if you didn’t know they were Larkin’s work. He’s been an inspiration to artists like Joe Jusko and Alex Ross. If you’re a Panatic, then you know him as the cover artist of the Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign. 

And today is his birthday!

I’ve known Bob since 1998 when, as an editor for Byron Preiss Visual Publications (of which I’ve told many a story) I commissioned him to provide the cover painting for X-Men: Law of the Jungle, a novel by Dave Smeds involving Marvel’s mutant team traveling to the Savage Land to fight Stegron, the Dinosaur Man, and then a couple years later he provided the cover art for all three of my own X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels. But I was a fan of Bob’s long before that, always eager to pick up a Marvel comic or comic magazine that sported one of his paintings—Tomb of Dracula, issues of Marvel Preview (Satana the Devil’s Daughter; the original Star-Lord), the adaptations of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Empire Strikes Back; even Jaws 2!

It’s not just his painting skills that are impressive, though—Bob’s also one hell of a pencil artist, as evidenced by his work in a couple of SWC projects. Cue the sales plug!

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really islittle that he hasn’t painted.

The sketchbook also features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!

And in From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), Bob provides a wonderful pencil-study frontispiece of the queen of comics’ bad girls. From the Starsis a nonfiction history of Vampirella that takes an extensive look at her early days, from the debut of her series in 1969 to the death of Warren Publishing in 1983. In addition to telling the tale of Hammer’s unproduced film adaptation that was to star Barbara Leigh and Peter Cushing, I provide an in-depth guide to all her Warren stories; a checklist of all her Warren appearances (plus the publications from Harris Comics and Dynamite Entertainment that reprinted her Warren adventures); an overview of the six novelizations by pulp sci-fi author Ron Goulart that were published in the 1970s by Warner Books; and a look at the awful 1996 direct-to-cable-TV movie that was made, starring Talisa Soto and Roger Daltrey. There’s also a peek at Mr. Cushing’s personal copy of the ’70s Vampirella screenplay; a foreword by Official Vampirella Historian Sean Fernald, and photographs from the personal archives of Forrest J Ackerman.

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook and From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures are available in print and digital formats. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information.

And to see more of Bob’s stunning work, pay a visit to his art blog, Bob Larkin: The Illustrated Man.

Happy birthday, Bob!

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SWC at 30: Convention Memories: The 1994 Legends in the Making Tour

Posted on July 7, 2023 by Steven

If there was one thing you could say about StarWarp Concepts just a year after we launched as a full-size-comic company, it was that we weren’t shy about our plans to make an impression in publishing!

What you see here is an in-house ad that ran on the back cover of Lorelei, Vol. 1 #3, released in spring of that year. The Legends in the Making Tour, I called it, and matched it with an illustration that “borrowed” heavily from the cover photo of the album Family Style, by blues-and-rock guitarist siblings Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughan (I’m a fan of SRV).

Unfortunately, most of the shows I wasn’t able to attend for some reason or other: Ramapo Comic Con, the Small Press Expo (and it was its debut year, too!), Comicfest, Uticon, Dallas Fantasy Fair, and the Southwest Comic Fest. More than likely the cancellations were due to a conflict with the schedule of my day job and not having enough vacation days. But I did make it to the Great Eastern con (as reported here), SunCon, and Mid-Ohio-Con. And prior to these, I’d appeared at the two-day Pittsburgh Comic Book Convention, in January.

(Funnily enough, my memories are hazy about Mid-Ohio—I remember the round-trip bus excursion, and that it had snowed the day before in Columbus, but not the particulars of the event.)

However, I did make it to the Dallas Fantasy Fair, eventually, in 1995.

Stay tuned for further Convention Memories!

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Smashwords’ 2023 Summer/Winter E-book Sale Is On!

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Steven

Hey, book lovers! Today’s the day when e-book distributor Smashwords launches its 15th annual Summer/Winter Sale, during which you can purchase thousands of digital books at special prices! It runs from July 1 to July 31—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion. 

As for why Smashwords gives this event such an unusual name: “Because Smashwords serves a global readership where it’s summer in the Northern hemisphere and winter in the Southern hemisphere. So whether you’re looking for a great beach read, or you want to curl up in front of a warm fireplace with a great read, we’ve got you covered!”

Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), which means you can get the following digital titles at 25% off:

Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination is our popular how-to book for writers and gamers in which bestselling fantasy author Richard C. White (Gauntlet: Dark Legacy: Paths of Evil, The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special) takes you through the step-by-step process of constructing a world for your characters, from societies and governments to currency and religion. A bonus feature is an exclusive interview with New York Times bestselling author Tracy Hickman (Dragonlance) that discusses his methods of world building, as well as his creative experiences during his time as a designer for gaming company TSR, the original home of Dungeons & Dragons.

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is my young adult novel that’s perfect for lovers of dark urban fantasy. It introduces readers to Pandora Zwieback, a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets professional monster hunter Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. In Blood Feud, Pan, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father.

In Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2, Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover! But Pan isn’t about to let some ancient monster win the day, not when the lives of her parents and friends—along with those of every human on the planet—are at stake, so she leads a charge of her own. But whose side is going to emerge the victor remains to be seen…

For a Few Gold Pieces More is Rich White’s collection of linked fantasy short stories about a Rogue With No Name who travels a world of epic-fantasy adventure, looking for treasure, romance—and revenge against the woman who sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (but she did). Think Lord of the Rings meets the “spaghetti Westerns” of director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).

Harbinger of Darkness is Rich’s original fantasy-adventure novel in which a thief named Perrin steals an extremely valuable—and magical—gem from the evil king ruling her home country. With thugs and fellow thieves and the king’s assassins hot on her trail, Perrin finds just staying alive is becoming a full-time occupation, which directly conflict with her secret life—and identity—as a humble bookseller’s daughter. It’s sword-swinging adventure at its finest!

And Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase is Rich’s collection of fantasy-noir, pulp-detective tales starring a private eye working the supernatural beat in the city of Calasia. From a sexy chanteuse who literally turns into a beast when the moon is full to a string of pearls that kills its owners, and from the ghost of a dead woman seeking justice to the Grim Reaper’s little girl seeking her stolen chicken, Theron Chase certainly has his hands full—of danger, death, and dames!

Again, the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale runs July 1 to July 31, so head over to the StarWarp Concepts publisher page at Smashwords and start your summer (or winter) shopping!

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