With this past Saturday having been the seventh annual celebration of Take Your Child to the Library Day, I was reminded of a conversation I once had with Richard C. White, author of SWC’s supernatural graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings, pirate-fantasy digital comic The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special, the fantasy-adventure titles For a Few Gold Pieces More and Harbinger of Darkness, and the popular how-to book for writers, Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination.
Rich had been a guest at a science fiction convention and had spoken with some school librarians who were interested in adding Terra Incognito to their lists of e-book titles. But how, they asked, would they be able to obtain it? As librarians, they’re required to order books from distributors, not from publishers; that applies to e-books as well.
Well, it just so happens that one of The ’Warp’s digital distributors, Smashwords, makes our titles available to libraries through Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 and OverDrive e-book programs. To quote from Smashword’s arrangement with the programs:
“Library patrons are able to check out only one copy at a time. The books are wrapped in DRM so they time out after a specific period of time. The library can purchase multiple copies if they decide demand warrants multiple simultaneous checkouts. Otherwise, the library purchases a single copy and allows only one copy at a time to be lent out. If a library patron wishes to obtain a book that’s already checked out, the patron is sometimes given the option to purchase a copy through a retailer.”
In the case of OverDrive, “If a library patron wishes to obtain a book that’s already checked out, the patron is sometimes given the option to purchase a copy direct through OverDrive (for libraries that utilize OverDrive’s ‘Buy it Now’ feature).”
Via Smashwords, the following titles can be ordered through Axis360 and OverDrive:
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, Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings) takes you through the step-by-step process of constructing a world for your characters, from societies and governments to currency and religion. Included is an 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.
For a Few Gold Pieces More collects Richard C. White’s fantasy short stories about a Rogue With No Name who travels a world of epic-fantasy adventure, looking for treasure—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). It’s “entertaining, old-school sword and sorcery, in the tradition of [Fritz Lieber’s] Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser,” according to author Jim C. Hines of the Magic ex Libris book series, and we at SWC couldn’t agree more!
Harbinger of Darkness is Rich’s third title, and his first original novel for SWC. In it, 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!
You can also obtain our Saga of Pandora Zwieback young adult novels, Blood Feud and Blood Reign—written by yours truly, Steven A. Roman. You know how popular young adult books are these days, don’t you? Well, here’s another series your patrons might be interested in!
Pan is 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 an immortal monster hunter named Annie 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. You’ll find Pan battling her own brand of evil dead in the following titles:
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, 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. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:
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!
So if you’re a librarian interested in adding those titles to your digital bookshelves, head over to Axis360 or OverDrive and place your order today!
With the 2018 edition of Women in Horror Month under way, I thought now would be a good time to remind you of a feminist horror classic in the Horror Bites series.
With February being Women in Horror Month, it’s the perfect time for you to head over to the site Comics for Sinners, where you’ll find my overview of Skywald Publishing’s 1972 answer to Vampirella, the supernatural femme fatale 
Today is the seventh annual celebration of 
Women in Horror Month
There’s also the Illustrated Classic 
So, remember that superhero comic 
On January 11, 2017, I saluted the 
The Night Stalker received the highest ratings of any TV movie at the time, and led to its network, ABC-TV, immediately green-lighting a sequel: 
Beyond the change in location it’s practically a remake of The Night Stalker—an intentional approach as producer/director Dan Curtis explains in “Directing the Night Strangler,” a featurette on the Night Stalker/Night Strangler MGM Double Feature DVD, released in 2004. “And I said, ‘What we gotta do, Dick, is it’s gotta be, y’know, a sequel, but at the same time it’s gotta be, like, the same movie. We gotta get that same feeling.’”
Still, McGavin carries the movie through his powerful, take-no-bullshit performance as Kolchak—a performance matched only by Oakland, whose Vincenzo is the only person on the planet strong enough to match the volume of his agita-inducing reporter in the many shouting matches they have. Seeing them go at it is reason enough to watch the picture, but as an added bonus, this time we even get a talking monster. In The Night Stalker, the only thing that vampire Janos Skorzeny did was hiss and growl; here, Anderson’s Dr. Malcolm is a soft-spoken, highly educated villain—utterly insane, yes, but at least he can hold a conversation. And despite the numerous murders Malcolm has racked up, Anderson even manages to make the viewer feel some pity for him when Kolchak literally shatters his plans to go on living.
While it didn’t do quite as well in the ratings as its predecessor, The Night Strangler drew in enough viewers that the executives at ABC-TV first considered a third film—The Night Killers, by Matheson and William F. Nolan, about politicians being replaced with android duplicates by alien invaders—but then decided to commit to a TV series instead: Kolchak: The Night Stalker. A good thing, too, because McGavin, who’d become extremely protective of how Kolchak was handled, hated the Killers script—his 
Hey, ape fans! In case you didn’t know it, last Wednesday comics publisher BOOM! Studios released 
Comic book and graphic novels
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