Category Archives: Events

Collingswood Book Festival 2014 Is Tomorrow!

Posted on by

Sorry, Dark Shadows fans, Collingswood isn’t the fictional mansion where vampire Barnabas Collins hung his cloak in the classic TV series (and that terrible Tim Burton movie)—that would be Collinwood—but rather a town in southern New Jersey, close to the Pennsylvania border. It’s also the location of one of the northeast’s most popular, and continually growing, book festivals—so of course The ’Warp has to be on hand for it. But don’t worry—we’ll have enough vampire fiction on sale to sate the reading appetites of any Barnabas fans who stop by.

Collingswood-2014-Map

The 2014 Collingswood Book Festival is being held tomorrow, Saturday, October 11, and StarWarp Concepts will be making its debut appearance at Booth #18; as always, just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. On sale will be the Pandora Zwieback novel Blood Feud; the comic The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1; the illustrated classics A Princess of Mars and Carmilla; the graphic novels Lorelei: Sects and the City and Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings; and the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt. I’ll even be selling copies of my non-SWC projects—the X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels, the Untold Tales of Spider-Man anthology, and the young adult superhero graphic novel, Sunn—so get ’em while supplies last.

The Collingswood Book Festival is open on Saturday, October 11, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The event is free, but for more information—including the festival’s alternate setting of Collingswood High School, in case rain forces it indoors—head over to the festival website.

Bob Larkin at New York Comic Con 2014

Posted on by

SWC_Larkin_SketchbookNew York Comic Con 2014 starts today, October 9th, and runs through Sunday, October 12th. And although the StarWarp Concepts crew won’t be attending (we’ll be at the Collingswood Book Festival on Saturday), Bob Larkin—cover painter of my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novel Blood Feud, and featured artist of his own Bob Larkin Sketchbook—will be tucked behind Table C4 in Artists Alley, signing autographs, taking commissions, and selling prints of his well-known cover paintings for Marvel Comics, Bantam Books, and other publishers. If you can’t remember the number, you’ll probably have to look no farther than the growing line of Doc Savage and Dazzler fans at his table.

New York Comic Con is being held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, on Manhattan’s West Side. For more information, head over to the NYCC site.

By the way, have you purchased a copy of The Bob Larkin Sketchbook yet? If not, you’re missing out on spectacular pencil drawings of Doc Savage, Spider-Man, Batman, the X-Men, and other subjects, and features a special, full-color cover drawing of a certain Goth adventuress. It’s 24 pages of artistic goodness, available exclusively from the StarWarp Concepts webstore. Visit the Bob Larkin Sketchbook product page at StarWarp Concepts for all the ordering information, as well as sample pages.

Collingswood Book Festival 2014 is This Saturday!

Posted on by

Collingswood-2014-logoThe 2014 Collingswood Book Festival is being held on Saturday, October 11, and StarWarp Concepts (and me, of course) will be making its debut appearance! Never heard of CBF? Well, to quote the festival’s site:

The 12th Annual Collingswood Book Festival makes a triumphant return as bibliophiles converge in this historic South Jersey town to celebrate everything about the written word. The Collingswood Book Festival is a big literary event that exudes small-town, friendly ambience. A week of activities will culminate on Saturday, October 11, 2014 from 10am to 4pm. Festival-goers will have an opportunity to stroll more than six blocks of Haddon Avenue filled with nationally recognized authors/speakers for adults and children, as well as booksellers, storytellers, poetry readings, workshops, exhibitors and performance stages. All events are free.

Booth #18 is where you’ll find me hawking The ’Warp’s goods; as always, just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. For more information, including travel directions, head over to the festival website.

StarWarp Concepts to Attend NY Horror Show 2015

Posted on by

NY-Horror-Show

The first-ever NY Horror Show hits Long Island, NY, on January 16–18, 2015, and StarWarp Concepts will be there! A collaboration between the folks behind Eternal Con—Long Island’s acclaimed pop-culture show—and TwitchTwitch Productions, the NY Horror Show kicks off with a red-carpet opening of the Macabre Faire Film Festival on Friday night, January 16th, and then expands into a full-blown horror convention for the next two days. Hope you ’Warp fans will turn out for it—given the fact that no one holds horror cons in NYC anymore, this show can use all the support it can get!

The NY Horror Show is being held at the Upsky Long Island Hotel, located at 110 Motor Parkway, in Happauge. Show-floor hours are 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM on Saturday, and 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Sunday. For more information, including how to order tickets, head over to the NY Horror Show website.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Posted on by

Banned_Books_2014

Yes, it’s that time of year again when a spotlight is shone on the problem of censorship in United States libraries and bookstores. (In other words, books banned by prudes who are out to “protect the children.”) To quote the Banned Books Week Web site:

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982. According to the American Library Association, there were 307 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2013, and many more go unreported.

The ten most challenged books of 2013 include Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy (sex and violence), Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants (the new #1 banned book!), and Jeff Smith’s fantasy graphic novel series Bone (violence and…racism? Are you kidding me?!) For more information on this annual event, just click on Captain Underpants up there.

Banned Books Week 2014 is happening right now, September 21–27. How are you celebrating it?

It’s Cover Painter Bob Larkin’s Birthday!

Posted on by

LarkinArt04

If you’re a fan of comic books, or movies, or The Saga of Pandora Zwieback (and how could you not be?), 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. And if you head on over to the StarWarp Concepts blog, you can read a little write-up I did about this amazing artist and his equally amazing career, in honor of his 65th birthday.

Go check it out now!

Eternal Con 2014: The Aftermathening

Posted on by

This past weekend, StarWarp Concepts (and me, naturally) attended the second annual Eternal Con in Long Island, New York. Interested in finding out what happened? Then head on over to the StarWarp Concepts blog and read my show wrap-up!

SWC-Fans

Next stop on the StarWarp Concepts 2014 convention tour: the Brooklyn Book Festival, September 21 at Borough Hall Plaza, in Brooklyn, NY. See you there!

Welcome, Eternal Con 2014 Attendees!

Posted on by

Thanks for stopping by the StarWarp Concepts booth this weekend, and for your interest in my Goth adventuress, Pandora Zwieback. If you’re here because you spoke with me, then go ahead and download the Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 digital comic that I showed you; just click on the cover in the right-hand sidebar and save it as a PDF. Not only is it an introduction to Pan and her world, hosted by Pan herself, but it contains two sample chapters from her first novel, Blood Feud. Give it a read.

blood_feudThe Saga of Pandora Zwieback is the critically acclaimed story of 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 a shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, in the first novel, Blood Feud, 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. But before Annie can explain further, Pan and her parents are drawn into a conflict between warring vampire clans that are 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.

Pan’s adventure continues in the upcoming second novel, Blood Reign, in which she and Annie face challenges from not just vampires but legions of monsters led by a fallen angel—who happens to be one of Annie’s ex-lovers!

Also on sale right now is The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, which features two brand-new adventures of Pan and her friends that are separate from the novels: a full-color comic story, in which Pan and her boyfriend, Javier, run into one of his ex-girlfriends…whom Pan can see is really a mythological siren that can enrapture men with its voice; and a short story that pits Pan, Annie, and Javier against a trio of Elegant Gothic Lolita vampires—in a shopping mall!

Carmilla_CoverAnd please keep in mind that Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, is not just a YA fiction house. It also publishes illustrated classics (including J. Sheridan’s Le Fanu’s vampire romance Carmilla, the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars); graphic novels for superhero fans and adult horror aficionados; digital and print comic books; and artist sketchbooks. Give them a visit and check out all they have to offer.

Hopefully I’ll see you again on September 21, at the Brooklyn Book Festival. See you there!

Eternal Con 2014 is This Saturday

Posted on by

eternal-con-2014-logo

The second annual Eternal Con starts on June 14, and StarWarp Concepts will be there! Artists alley is where you’ll find me promoting The ’Warp; as always, just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. Also scheduled to appear, at his own table, is art legend Bob Larkin, cover painter of my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels and spotlight artist of The Bob Larkin Sketchbook.

Eternal Con is being held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, located on Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, in Garden City, Long Island. Show-floor hours are:

Saturday: 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM

Sunday: 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

For more information, including directions and how to order tickets, head over to the Eternal Con Web site.