Lady Fight #1 is out today. Lady Fight has a story has been put together by the amazing Ben Ferrari and features my comic Shots Fired.
Pick is up HERE.
Book Sale – YAY!!! April 19, 2009
Yesterday, in one of my classes, a student asked if I was going to the Seattle Library Book Sale.
I quickly replied, “Now I am! Tell me of this… book sale.”
I had a picture in my head of the book sales I would go to at the Carbondale Public Library. The sales where I found the coveted Beast Master and The Last Starfighter soundtracks.
I told Shannon about it when I go home and of course, being the book geeks that we are, we headed over there this morning.
It was awesome! The Carbondale sale would have fit in one corner of the huge hanger that this thing took place in. I wish I would have written down some authors that I have been looking for, but I found a few gems. Three different Lansdale novels, including the best book I read last year – Sunsets and Sawdust.
Shannon has just started Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Pendegast novels, so we picked up a few of those.
There was no Lit.crit. section and the American History section was a joke. They had a huge Classic Lit. area that was stocked with… Atwood and Wolfe. Whatever! It was a joke, but the sale was great overall.
There were tons of people there. Most of them smelled bad and all of them had bags and boxes of books. I heard that Washington reads more books than the rest of the states combined and this sale made me almost believe it.
We left with 23 books for 23 bucks.
Half Price Books is having a huge warehouse sale next weekend and then we have a huge baby sale the weekend after that.
There’s a good chance that will have this baby on a warehouse floor.
New Comic Cover (Lady Fight: First Strike available soon) April 7, 2009
My classic comic Shots Fired: Drunk and Disorderly is going to be in the upcoming anthology Lady Fight: First Strike. Here’s the awesome cover by Cedric Nocon. My Shots Fired character, Bethany is the cop in the bottom right hand corner.
Redheads from Lansdale’s Sunset and Sawdust September 2, 2008
“This woman shot him,” Hillbilly said. “she wouldn’tbe a redhead, would she?’
“Hair don’t get no redder than hers,” Bill said. “How’d you know?”
“Just a guess,” Hillbilly said. “Redheads are known for shooting husbands.”
“I know a redhead that was known for other things,” Bill said.
Lansdale, Joe L. Sunset and Sawdust (37).
Recent Reading (Ellis and Card) August 25, 2008
Warren Ellis – Crooked Little Vein: I think I built this one up in my head a little too much. I’m a huge fan of Ellis’ comic work, but I am more of a Global Frequency and Orbiter guy than a Transmat. Ellis’ first novel had some interesting ideas, but it mostly spun a mildly interesting yarn in the pulp vein with tons of references to off kilter sexual practices and other weirdness. If your an Ellis fan, check it out. If you are just a fan of hard boiled pulp, move along to Hard Case Crime.
Orson Scott Card – Seventh Son: Most of your know that I’m an Orson Scott Card fan. I am actually using Ender’s Game in one of my classes this fall. So, you might be surprised to find out that I only now made it around to this series. Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’ve just had so much to read and a large series takes up time. Seventh Son is a killer book. An alternative history of the US that deals with magic, religion, and different ideas of faith. Everyone should check this book out. I’ve just started the second book in the series – Red Prophet and it looks to be just as good if not better.
Books of the Past Two Months August 4, 2008
Since I’ve moved, I haven’t had a chance to talk much about the books I’ve been reading, though I have been reading an awful lot now that I have a much coveted Sno-Isle Library Card.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Two that I read right before I left Illinois and (listened to) on the way out here are:
Dean Koontz – Odd Hours: Koontz threw me for a loop with the fourth book in his Odd Thomas series. I enjoyed the middle two, but felt that they were in every way inferior to a great first book. But, with Odd Hours, he delivers the best book since Odd Thomas, and though I wont say it is better, it is definitly a worthy sequel. Note: I picked up the graphic novel based on Kootnz series – In Odd We Trust. Don’t worry about it unless your just a die hard fan. The story is simplistic and boring at best.
and
Sebastian Faulks – Devil May Care: Faulks tries to capture the spirit of Ian Fleming with this brand new James Bond novel, but at every turn he falls just short. I found this one to be a fun read, but if you haven’t read Ian Fleming’s masterful library of Bond, you should start there and never look back.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
How about you, faithful reader, reading anything I should be checking out?
June 23, 2008
Mighty God King has a great breakdown of superhero alignments.
The Fobidden Planet Blog has a interview with the great Alan Moore.
John Byrne is writing a Farscape comic for Boom Studios.
Dean Koontz is working with Australian cartoonist Queenie Chan to bring us a manga style comic of Odd Thomas adventures called, In Odd We Trust.
Sleepbringer Page and News June 3, 2008
SleepBringer (the graphic novel that I’m working on with the good people at Earthbound Comics – JOIN OUR MESSAGE BOARD!) is coming along very well and will hopefully be out for sale by the end of the year.
Above is a colored page from the book. HERE is a link to a video showing how Nick (the amazing painter and artist who is also doing Jack & Rabbit with me does his his magic.
My first Comic May 19, 2008
While we are getting ready to make the big move I have been painfully parting with most of the millions of things I collected over the years. The biggest pile is comics. Though I know I will never read most of them again, I find it hard to send them on their merry way. I took a large number of them into the local store for trade, but I still have a ton (about 5 – 300 count long boxes. It is quite easy to accumulate a lot quickly).
In the middle of sending my comics off I saw that someone over on the Warren Ellis forum, Whitechapel asked people to talk about the first comic they ever read. I remember mine well and, in fact, I still have it out in the garage.
My seventh grade year of school was spent in the small town of Sumner, IL where all the seventh graders from the surrounding towns are bused and my nephew is about to start attending in the fall. Seventh grade was a lot of firsts for me, but the big one was that it was the first year I could leave school for lunch and not go home. My aunt worked at the local five and dime (which isn’t there anymore) and I quickly gravitated to a place that was new, yet filled with the familiar presence of family. I would blow what little cash I had on candy and chips, sit on a stool near the counter, and talk to whoever came through the door.
That was until two things happened: the store owner decided to put some arcade games in to help draw the students over from the school and I discovered the comic rack.
The arcade game was called Trojan. I’ll have to write another post on how addicted I was to it.
However, as much as I loved the arcade, I was struck dumbfounded by what I saw one day on the comic rack. A comic stared back at me with the harsh illustration of men, women, children, and wolves walking through the grueling heat of a desert.
This was Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest and I was in love at first sight. I started to collect 10 cent return bottles and save any money I could for the 75 cent fix every month. My aunt would keep the new issue behind the counter till I had the money to pay for it. There was probably no one else in the town that would have ever given it a second look sitting among the superhero titles, but I felt like the one copy that was brought into the store each month was mine alone.
From there the addiction went into full swing and I branched out into almost every genre of comic collecting. Now, I wait for trade paper back and I have most of the Elfquest series in nice bookshelf collections. I have my issues up for sale, but maybe I’ll keep #2. I need something to set within reach of my child when she gets old enough to take a look.
————————————————————————————–
To read the whole Elfquest series online, check out Elfquest.com
John Scalzi’s “How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story” May 9, 2008
Over at his blog, John Scalzi, author of the wonderful sci-fi series that starts with Old Man’s War (If you haven’t read this book, I couldn’t recommend one more highly!), has a a Shareware short story, “How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story.”
Be warned, it does contain hilarious alien sex.
John is taking donations for the story that are partially donated to The Lupus Foundation of America, so check it out and donate.
Also, check out the comments. It is hilarious how many grammar nazis there are in the crowd. It is just strange to me that someone would badger a published author about grammar in a story that was published (meaning it obviously made it past an editor).
