Me and Stan Lee

Look – I’m back! Not really back, but back enough. I really just wanted to pop in and say hey.

So, hey.

Also, I took a quick gander up to “FANDOMFEST” in Louisville over the past weekend. A three day event that celebrates nerdy things. 

It was a far cry from comic-con, but it was a much bigger event than I expected. I'd only been there for an hour or so when I bumped into Jason Momoa (Stargate Atlantis, Game of Thrones, Conan) and he happened to be looking at the comic art that was on display. I'd been thumbing through the stuff because the artists were there signing things and I was thinking of buying something.  We didn’t talk because, honestly, I’m not sure I have anything to say to the man, except maybe, “Dude, you’re taller than I expected.” So I let it go.*

Here is Stan - pic courtesy of my step-son

Anyway, I saw William Shatner, Stan Lee… I think the cast from The Walking Dead was there. Firefly, a few other shows. I dunno, it was cool.

But what made me lose my crap was when I saw Neal Adams sitting around signing things. Of course, I probably didn’t realize it before, but the point of celebs and artists coming to cons like this one are for the opportunity to make money. So they tend to charge for signatures.

But still, it was Neal Adams. I knew him from his work with DC, I was much more of a Marvel guy as a kid, but I remember he drew a few pages of JLA # 200 (I think)** and as a child I stared at those pages for hours on end, marveling at the work of the artist. And there he was. Probably the earliest guy I can think of whose art in a comic blew me away.

So I turned to the guy beside him and purchased some of his signed work instead. In retrospect, not sure what my logic was there. Except that what I bought was awesome. He’s the guy that’s been doing recent covers for The Walking Dead.

Beautiful Walking Dead Cover Art!

Anyway, that isn’t what I was going to talk about, what I thought was pertinent for this post was that they had isles of folks selling their novels. There was a literary track at the con, full of panels and such, but I had heard of NOBODY on any of the panels, never heard of the authors, never heard of their books. So I ended up not going to any of those panels.

Instead, I wandered about the showroom and found the authors all clustered together in about 6 or 7 booths (some were 4 or 5 per booth) and selling their wares.

I think it’s safe to say that they were all either small press or self-pubbed authors. What was cool was that all of the authors had their books there for sale (at $10-$15 per book), but many had the QR Barcodes that linked directly to their story’s amazon page right there at their table – so I was able to talk to them for a few minutes, see what their novel was about, then download a copy (or sample) from Amazon as we spoke.  

Pretty cool stuff… I heard there were something in the neighborhood of 35k folks that showed up on Saturday (don’t know about Fri or Sun), so many that they had to start turning folks away. I get the idea that there was a lot of foot traffic at the event.

I came away from the event a little like I used to feel when I would go to the circus as a kid. As great as a show it might be, I still felt horrible for the animals. Something about seeing folks (the small authors) yelling at me as I walked by to PLEASE check out their book… I don’t know. It felt a little bit awkward.

Still, I did purchase a couple of items, a book from a small publisher about the craft of writing, and a self-pubbed comic about a zombie hunter, and I picked up tons and tons of bookmarks, business cards, flyers and such.

I can see why so many people attend these types of things all the time.

*Hard to tell in that environment… I’m guessing he’s 11 feet tall…  Too bad I couldn’t just look something like that up on the internet.

** Again, only if there were some way for me to look things up! Actually, I did look it up. I was right! Click this link to see a few panels of his brilliance!

Look! I'm Not Dead*

FUNNY HOW taking a day off can quickly turn into a week, or month, or whatever. To dispense with any sort of drama right away, I plan on being much more sparse over the summer. Posting only when I feel the overwhelming urge... in the meantime I'll try to wrap up work on the story I've been just about ready to publish for the past year.... or two.

It's my first longer piece that I intend on self-pubbing and I've been lost in edits and rewrites for so long I'm not sure if setting a completion date is even possible. This must be what it's like to be George R.R. Martin, minus any anticipation that people might feel for his works.

Still, I need to buckle down and finish up. So that's my focus for the foreseeable future.

 IN OTHER NEWS, thanks to everyone who picked up a copy of my short story, Going Home, last month. I didn't quite move enough copies to pay off Ben Wolverton's entire medical bill, but after not exactly taking the internet by storm with my short story, I transferred my earned royalties directly to the 'help Ben' fund.

If anyone feels like that isn't transparent enough, I'll be more than happy to share sales data and my contribution details privately. Just let me know.

AND FINALLY, I like to have three things when I do these types of posts. And this is that third thing. I've learned that when I show up at Home Depot, I will be asked repeatedly by other customers where 'we' keep assorted items, how much they cost, or if I can help them load their vehicles. It doesn't matter that I wear gym shorts and a BLUE T-Shirt, or that I have a shopping buggy and a small dog with me. Apparently, something about me just screams 'Home Depot Employee' to fellow shoppers.

Weird.

*Yet

News, A New Story, and Ben!

Hey all, after taking some time off to recoup from the A-Z thing, I might be back.

I say might, because life has a way of sucking up more of my time than the internet does. I did spend the weekend in sunny Florida on a spur of the moment decision to get away for a few days with the family. It was frustrating, wonderful, and eventually disastrous. But I suppose every trip can't be perfect.

So, moving on...

A reminder that I've promised that every dime I make in book sales this month goes towards helping young Ben Wolverton, the teenage child of Author David Wolverton that had a skateboarding accident that left him with about $1,000,000 in medical bills.

Since sales have been slow, I decided to put a short story up for people to purchase to help out during the month of May. Going Home is a tale of one of the last human soldiers left after an alien invasion. So please read, again, for the rest of the month - anything purchased will see whatever I get in royalties go to Ben's fund.

Click here to purchase.

Let's All Help Ben!

Brian Pagel recently caught wind of the plight of Ben Wolverton, the son of Author David Wolverton (who also writes under the pen name, David Farland).

Ben had an accident while skateboarding. That accident left him in a coma and in need of some serious medical attention. To the tune of around $1,000,000.

And there is no health insurance to cover these costs. Since the father works as an author in a place where you can only get affordable health coverage through your employer, he’s stuck with the bill.

I’ve gone without insurance for long periods of my life. And one of the main reasons I have the job I do now is for the health benefits. Ironically, they were amazing benefits to have a decade ago, now they’ve become so expensive and with so much less actual benefits, that we’ve been forced to drop my employer’s offered plan and go with my wife’s, which I used to think were horrible.

Anyhow, I have a son about the same age as Ben, and he has, at various stages of his youth, decided to be a skateboarder (watch an episode of Ridiculousness and see how horrid those accidents can be), a parkour practitioner (again, watch Ridiculousness), and a football star (um, watch a football game to get a view of the violence).

At any given time, my son is nursing any of a host of injuries, bruised ribs, sprained wrists, pulled hamstrings,  sore back… and those aren’t just during the season, offseason workouts, spring practice, it’s a yearlong thing nowadays. I’ve seen broken bones, noses, torn ligaments, and even one life threatening injury in the past couple of years since my son has been playing.

Risky behavior just seems to be a part of being a young man. When I read the story about young Ben my thoughts immediately went to my own son, and how devastated I’d be if something similar happened to him. Add to that a million dollar medical bill and I’m not sure what I’d do.

I bought a copy of David's recently released enhanced novel (for tablets only, I believe) as soon as I read about the incident. It’s only $10 and was told that this is probably the best way to help him outside of a direct contribution (which can be done as well).

Since Brian Pagel got word of Ben, he immediately begin throwing around some ideas to help. As of now, he's asking for authors to contribute proceeds for May sales to help Ben. I signed up right away. So, for the month of May, any story of mine that earns any amount of royalties earned will be donated to a fund for Ben Wolverton.

If anyone else is willing to commit, please let Briane know… Click here to join the cause. Or see all the info below:

 CLICK THIS LINK IF YOU WANT TO JUST GIVE SOME MONEY.  

But if you'd like to get something in return and still help out, you can buy a T-shirt for Ben.  The shirt is $20, and has this design on it:

AND IF YOU CLICK THIS LINK IT'LL GO DIRECTLY TO THE SITE SO YOU CAN BUY THE SHIRT AND HELP BEN OUT.

Ben's dad is an author, too, and if you buy his book, it'll help him directly and you'll get a great book to boot.  There are two books, in fact: Nightingale, a speculative fiction book about a young man raised in foster care who learns he can sing and affect evil, andMillion Dollar Outlines, a nonfiction book to help writers learn to write better outlines.  The books start at $6.99 in pretty much every format.

IF YOU LIKE TO READ AND WANT TO HELP BEN JUST BY READING OR WRITING, CLICK THIS LINK.

Other authors are joining, too.  Author J. Leigh Bralick, author of "The Lost Road Chronicles", is donating all the sales proceeds from her book for the month of May to help Ben.

You can read her post about why she's doing it, here, or you can go to her page at Amazon and buy one -- heck, buy ALL-- the books she's got.  (The "Lost Road" Chronicles begin with "Down a Lost Road," in which a 16-year old uncovers family secrets and gets swept into Earth's mystical past.)

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF J. LEIGH BRALICK'S BOOKS ON AMAZON.








I couldn't just sit and watch others do something.  When Mr F was going in for surgery, I reached out over Twitter and my blog to ask people to pray for him, and people's words of encouragment helped me over the roughest time I've ever had.  I can imagine how much worse it is for Ben and his family.  So I'm pitching in to help out by creating

INDIE 

AUTHORS 

FOR 

BEN WOLVERTON!

...Here's how it works:

1. Be an author.  Indie or not, we'll take you.
2. Pledge to donate all profits from sales of your books for the month of May to Ben Wolverton.
3. Spread the word, frequently and with enthusiasm.
4. Post a post encouraging people to visit Ben's site, and to buy all the books from all the authors who are participating.

So I'm in.  If you want to join, leave a comment and I'll add you to the list.  I intend to update frequently across all my blogs -- I won't promise daily, I've got a trial coming up and that takes some time -- and Tweet about this.

I'll even help you out: the remainder of this post can be cut-and-pasted and put directly on your blog. No muss, no fuss.  Just add your own details at the end.  Here we go!

INDIE 
AUTHORS 
FOR 
BEN WOLVERTON!




Help young Ben Wolverton recover from a bad skateboarding accident by buying books from these authors, who have pledged that all profits from their sales in May, 2013, will go to Ben's recovery fund:

Nightingale, (sci-fi) by David Farland.  David is Ben's dad, with two books to buy.  Nightingale, a speculative fiction book about a young man raised in foster care who learns he can sing and affect evil, and Million Dollar Outlines, a nonfiction book to help writers learn to write better outlines.  The books start at $6.99 in pretty much every format.

To buy either of these books, CLICK THIS LINK.

The Lost Road Chronicles 
(ya/speculative fiction) by J. Leigh Bralick, The "Lost Road" Chronicles begin with "Down a Lost Road," in which a 16-year old uncovers family secrets and gets swept into Earth's mystical past.)

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF J. LEIGH BRALICK'S BOOKS ON AMAZON.





Books by Briane Pagel.  Pagel is the indie author of books like

Eclipse, a harrowing sci-fi story about an astronaut who wanted nothing more than to reach the stars, and did so -- but it took murder to get there.  Or did it?

the After: Saoirse's life didn't begin until she died in a plane crash. But with everything perfect in the After, why is she so unhappy? With the help of a possibly-unfriendly William Howard Taft, Saoirse looks for, in her afterlife, the meaning she never had in her life.

The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imagine: short horror stories that will leave you lying awake at night wishing you'd stuck with something lighter.  Try "The Grave-Robbers," in which New Sam learns that there have been a lot of prior Sams born to Mom and Dad.  And they're all down in the catacombs...

All these books and more, just $0.99 on your Kindle.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF BRIANE'S BOOKS FROM AMAZON.

BOOKS BY RUSTY CARL:

Rusty is a master artist and the author of several books:

A Dead God's Wrath (spec fic/novella): A mysterious stranger shows up to help avenge a brutal murder, unlocking magic of the best, and worst, kind in a sleepy 1895 western town.

War Angel: Like your romance with a bit of adventure and history? In this story, a young man learns of his grandmother's remarkable escape from Nazi Germany with the help of a dashing stranger.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF RUSTY'S BOOKS FROM AMAZON.

A to Z Reflections Post

It’s reflection time. How did a month of daily posts change me as a person? How did it make me grow?

Well, like last year, I spent all my prep time not doing prep work, and instead was doing work daily in order to post. Anytime something came up at home and I couldn't make time to sit down and do a picture then that day just got pushed back.

At one point I was posting my L or M when everyone else was posting Q or R… it was a real struggle to keep up the pace.

But I wasn’t willing to skip a letter, so I ended up double posting on some days, and in one glorious day of insanity, I would work on my image, post my progress, then get back to work, post again a few hours later… I managed to get four posts done that day.

It was all a bunch of stressful fun, the sort that I was freaked out about in the middle of it all, but really enjoyed in retrospect.

There was however, a down side. The purpose of the challenge isn’t just to post, but to go out and meet other bloggers. There were thousands of people participating and I probably didn’t get to 50 of them over the course of the month – too caught up in my own drama to pay attention to anyone else. So in that sense, I didn’t do what I wanted with my time.

Lesson learned for next year. I will NOT be doing an art related project if I can’t have some posts ‘in the bank’ before I begin. A lot of posts, ‘in the bank.’ Next year, it’s all about visiting others.

Blither Me This... An IWSG Post

Once, in the early days of internetonia, Alex J Cavanaugh created the Insecure Writer's Support Group, the one day out of the month that I can whine and complain about whatever writing related issues I have without fear of judgement.

This month, it's time management that gets me riled up. I've whined about this one before, but it does cause me great concern. I simply can't function as a father/husband and do all the peripheral things that would-be authors are expected to do. Especially when my job decided that I needed way more work to do on a daily basis.

Instead of acknowledging these things and having a plan. I half-ass all of them and hope no one calls me on it. It's burnt me on more than one occasion.

So what to do? I have no idea. I want to do it all, and have been reluctant to cull back on my commitments in some vague hope that I'll just 'figure something out' and not have to give up anything. But the first step in solving a problem is admitting one exists. Wish me luck.

Z is for... Zoinks! I'm Done!

The very last of the A-Z Challenge posts for 2013. What a journey.

This month took me from concept to completion of a cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming, soon to be mega-hit, Shadow Spinner. A novel he's been releasing in serial format for many months, but will soon see itself all in one novel length edition... hopefully with a cover much like what you'll see below.

In case you don't recall, here is what we saw on day one:

I spent two weeks trying all sorts of different things before I finally came back around to that concept and eventually produced this:

And for those of you that might be interested in what the front cover alone might look like:

Thank you one and all for stopping by throughout the month. Everyone's input has been a huge help!