Star Wars.com added ‘Hunting the Hunters’ to their webcomic collection.  It covers events that occur between season one and season two of The Clone Wars.  Read it onlin here.

The reader  is a little tricky to use.  There is a fit to screen option that makes the text a little bit bigger but I still needed to zoom in to read some of the text… either a sign of my age or because I was on my laptop.  The other problem is that this story starts on page 170 so you have to flip through to the desired page waiting for all of the earlier pages to load slowing down the load time.

I wished they would have just followed other webcomic successes like Looking for Group and made each page a full page.  The reading of the comic would be a more enjoyable experience and I don’t mean like so enjoyable that one might not buy the comic when it is published but more enjoyable so that someone on the fence about Star Wars would stick around long enough to actually read the story.  Also by following that model they could have increased the load time since each page is by it’s self and Star Wars.com would have been able to get more add revenue from comic readers as we would have had adds showing up for each page we read.

Though the delivery could use improvement the 5 page read is still interesting.

(via Club Jade)

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An Americanized manga, Sorcerers & Secretaries hooked me with the name. I was expecting a evil-fighting admin assistant with a pen that dissolves evil and a stapler that will fend off the most intimidating magical creature. What I found was something completely different.

Nicole is a receptionist and college student who lives her life in a dream world that she spins through writing sword and sorcery tales. We can all relate to her immediately with issues such as, an annoying mom, annoying job and coworkers, wanting to write instead of work, and everyone in her life putting down her interests by saying “that childish fantasy stuff you like”. This tale started slow for me, but won me over with its cute book references and speculative fiction inside jokes that only we understand. Although the art is very American (circa 1980’s Sunday morning newspaper comics), the drawings of the bookstore are great and had me pause for a few minutes to read the titles. One cover I especially got a chuckle from was “LARP for Beginners”. A new twist in this tale is that the cute hottie at the bookstore actually likes the geeky, book-loving, allergy girl.

The author is definitely in our demographic and should be supported for that alone. However, this is not a tale I would recommend for its excellent fantasy story. This book is not so much a fantasy story as a romance where the lead is in love with the lead character in her fantasy novel. Like Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the girl is wrapped up in a fantasy tale so completely that she cannot see a real guy who wants to date her. Still, an amusing, quick read and one that despite its cover warning 13+, is safe for all readers. Sorcerers and Secretaries is a great gift for your teenage cousins who are into the fantasy/romance genre.

If you enjoy this manga, you can read more about the series and download desktop images from this site: Sorcerers And Secretaries

Get your copy here from amazon and hlep support the project:

• Sorcerers & Secretaries, Volume 1
• Sorcerers & Secretaries, Volume 2

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Bride of the Water God is a must-own, simply because of it’s elaborate artwork. The fact that it also has an excellent story, is a plus.

The premise of the story is: A village in draught conditions decides to offer up one of it’s girls as a bride to appease the water god so that he will allow it to rain.  Soah, the bride girl is then sent out into the ocean in a boat. She seems to crash and drown, ending up in the land of Suguk, a magical place where the gods live.

Suguk has a large fish-shaped metal airship that floats above, maneuvering through the sky where rocks with waterfalls are suspended. When Soah meets the water god, Habaek, she finds he is just a boy.

There are interesting characters living in the world of Suguk such as the fire god, a witch with a cool tattoo over her eye, and a doctor who seems to want to steal Soah away. As the story progresses, we find that the water god can change into a gorgeous man at night. We also meet his mother, who everyone is scared of because she is the goddess of punishment, torture, and disease.
The scariest part of this book is when Soah goes into the forest and sees a dog. She reaches out to him because, like her, he is also a creature out of place in the magical world. Unfortunately, when she reaches out to him he turns into a monster with horrible teeth like an alligator. The gods call him Che, the tiger, ox-tailed monster who barks like a dog and eats humans.

I could go on all day about how much I love this manhwa. I could tell you about the masked messenger Banwang who poses as a dog with wings. I could awe you with descriptions of elaborate formal dress costumes and fanciful architecture, but it’s better you see for yourself by purchasing or previewing these books at Amazon.com.

Manhwa

A little bit about manhwa: It is the Korean version of manga. How do you know you’re reading a manhwa versus a manga? Well, as long as you enjoy the story, it really doesn’t matter, but for you sticklers out there, here are some differences:

• Manhwa’s are Korean-based, not Japanese.
• In the United States they are generally published in the bigger quality paperback size.
• Manhwa’s are read in the same direction as US text (not backwards like Japanese mangas).
• The art in most of the manhwa’s I’ve seen is traditional with beautifully elaborate drawings- the kind you would see on a fan or in one of my favorite books as a child, Tikki Tikki Tembo. By the way, although I know there is criticism about Tikki because of its over exaggeration of Chinese names, it is still close to my heart because it is the first time that I, as a little white girl living in a predominately white community, got to see another culture close up.
• Most of these manhwa feature a few pages in the front or back that are glossy color photos you just want to rip out and hang on your wall.

Bride of the Water God 1

Bride of the Water God 2

Bride Of The Water God 3

Bride Of The Water God 4 (preorder)

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Dead High Yearbook is a hardcover comic book about a pair of dead teens who create a high school year book by matching live photos with dead photos of teens that have passed on. Each dead photo goes with a story and during this yearbook class, you learn about teens, their obsessions, and how they died. A great concept and one that could go further given the proper imaginative writers to work with. As it stands, the art is well done, but I just didn’t find any of the stories that exciting.

Probably the most interesting story is the one titled “Fear Pressure”.  A fat chick and a wimpy boy like each other. They go to a herbal remedy shop where they are promised their bodies will change to their liking. Soon the chick is losing weight and the dude becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both of them are excited and love their new bodies, but then the remedy goes overboard. The muscle man explodes from the pain of his muscles expanding and the skinny chick dissolves into just an eyeball with a tail. In the end, they are together in separate jars, nothing but alien-looking blobs.

Horror fans may dig this book just for the cover. It looks like a real yearbook with a bloody handprint on the front. Who doesn’t want something cool like this to display in their personal library next to their flesh-like Evil Dead journal and vampire coffin kit? As for story, I might pick up later books to see if the stories get better, but this one is plain eye candy with mildly amusing tales.
If you would like to check this book out, they have a preview at Amazon.com here:
Dead High Yearbook

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Victoria found this interesting Fact about giving away a free eBook of your novel.

… a doctoral student, John Hilton, is collecting data on the sales impact of ebook giveaways…

…While four of the five Random House books Hilton identified showed an uptick in sales post-e-version, 20 of 24 Tor titles showed a decrease. Why the difference? “One possible explanation is that by making the free books available for only one week a different dynamic was present [for Tor] than when the books were made permanently available [by Random House],” Hilton says. “The opportunity for word-of-mouth to spread about the free book may have been significantly diminished in the model used by Tor (Writer Beware Blogs!).”

Permanently Free= Word of Mouth

The study is finished but the difference between permanently giving away a free eBook increases sales while a limited time free eBook didn’t.  The trick to building any audience or community is word of mouth.  My question is, how much do you giveaway?  I am not talking about whether or not to give away the whole book or just a sample, I am more interested in when is a good time to start giving away the book.

Writing in public

I have been toying around with the idea of writing a book in public.  I am in the process of developing a new novel, and I have been thinking about making the development and the writing public.  The question for me is how.  I can see a couple options:

1. Set up a free blog and allow anyone to read and comment on the ideas, outlines and drafts.
2. Set up a paid blog and allow anyone who preorders the book to read and comment on the ideas, outlines and drafts.

I like the second model best because it would weed out people who do not like my work at all, and it would allow my fans to be a part of the the writing process.  I do not usually release hardcovers, so maybe I could make a signed hard cover the preorder book.  Maybe I could even set up a gold membership that would offer an exclusive copy of the prewriting in print too.

What do you think?

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This Saturday is the discussion of Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind.  I am really excited about this, and I hope the live features work.

The show will be recorded live at 2:00 PM (EDT) [18:00 UTC] on Talkshoe.  Feel free to call in using their Voice client or here:

Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 53080

You will not have to subscribe to this shows RSS, the recorded episode will come out on the regular feed for The Confessed.

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Throughout one’s life there arises nuisances that annoy and antagonize us like a fly at the dinner table.  The instinct is to swat that annoyance, rid it from our lives and return to whatever it is we are working on.  Though that is our instinct and the most immediate satisfying action, are there times when we should bear the annoyance and not swat the fly?

I love the scene in the book Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind when Richard and Kahlen are faced with the temptation to swat the Blood flies that were annoying them.  In this instance the annoyance was not only buzzing about them but they were even stinging and biting them.  The real danger they were in was if they attacked the small annoyance they would have gained the attention of a very dangerous and lethal predator a long tail Gar.

This scene is a great metaphor for our own lives and gives us the answer to the question: are there times when we should bear the annoyance and not swat the fly?  The lesson here is it’s sometimes wiser to tolerate the small annoyances because attacking the small stuff can make a situation much worse then it already is.  In other words as I’m told often “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

There are many real life examples of when people should not have swatted at their small annoyances and because they did they ended up in much bigger trouble.  Watch politics for a moment and the examples flow.  Take for example the young couple on a date who couldn’t leave the fly alone and ended up spilling their drink over their plate and nice outfit, not to mention the embarrassment.   For me, recently, I lost an afternoon because I could not leave the small plumbing annoyance alone and because I messed with it I made a situation that was ignorable into a bigger situation that had to be fixed.

The next time you are faced with an annoyance, endure for at least a moment and seek the truth behind the situation.  Discern and ask yourself if I go after that small annoyance will it make the situation worse.  If not then swat away but heed the Seeker’s warning for if you swing at the wrong one a long tail Gar might just be waiting for you.

Get your copy of Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind here and enjoy.

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For the summer, we are going to turn The Confessed podcast into a book club!

In the wake of the glorious first season of Legend of the Seeker, we will read Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind with the same eye on story we gave to the show, and the long silenced comparison between the show and the book.

Here is the schedule for the podcast.  We will put up a post for your comments on the post date, and record the podcast live on TalkShoe on the Podcast date.  The live show will be a round table where we will be taking your calls, and adding many regular contributors to the round table.

*We will be traveling to Maryland to this episode will be prerecorded.

** We will be at Shore Leave so this episode with be Prerecorded

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In Orange Crows, a young witch performs a forbidden magic, blows up a research center, injures her best friend, and is exiled to a barren wasteland with witch devouring fairies all in the first two pages! Five years later, a group of witches come to take her to trial and see if she is able to return to society. Her old best friend, Natty, just happens to be the head of the ragtag group called the Special Witch and Warlock Squadron (S.W.S) that comes to collect her.

All the witches in this tale have mini wings that come out of their hips and wear talking hats. Each of these hats has a different attitude and style. One of the hats, named Grim, is a plumper version of the sorting hat from Harry Potter and always wants to sleep. The fashion styling of this manga is really unique. Think Halloween Town meets club kid, meets Delirium from the Sandman comics. The post apocalyptic-like clothes are funky and always interesting.

My favorite character is Bianka, a member for the S.W.S. and in charge of teaching us readers what everything is about in their world. Each chapter has a full page lesson called “Queen Bianka’s Crash Course” where she tells us the details of certain witch practices such as sweeping, which is riding a broom like a hover board. Bianka is like a pint sized Tank Girl and has the same irreverent manner. She has plans to build teapot tank which she calls “1,000 pounds of porcelain death on wheels” and a talking cat that says, “Off with her head! Meow.”

The S.W.S. take on perhaps the scariest monsters I have seen in a while. I think the picture below will cause you to agree. I’d hate to meet these guys in a deserted alley.

To find out more about Orange Crows, visit Amazon.com
Orange Crows Volume 1

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Dark Horse Comics is launching a new iPhone app, and is offering the four-volume The Terminator: Death Valley comic (originally published in 1998) as iPhone downloads for 99 cents per issue.

I like the idea of Dark Horse branching out, looking into new mediums for delivering comics.  I’m not that excited about a Terminator comic but if this works and looks good we could be looking at a new method for delivering comics.  Imagine getting a subscription app that would allow the comic reader to receive new issues downloaded directly to them and in a portable format.  I hope that Dark Horse will explore making it available for other devices in addition to the iPhone.

(via SFScope)

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