Pandora Zwieback: Creating Blood Reign’s Cover, Part 2

Posted on June 15, 2015 by steven

Welcome back to the story behind the creative process that went into formulating and executing the cover art and design for my second Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Reign. As I explained last time, it began with my commissioning of artist Bob Larkin to paint the cover art, using as a template a Tomb of Dracula magazine cover he’d done for Marvel Comics in 1979. But since the version I had in mind was going to replace the victim with Pan and Dracula with Lady Kiyoshi Sasaki, leader of Blood Reign’s House Otoyo vampire clan, and I knew that Bob was unfamiliar with the fashion style Kiyoshi favors—called Elegant & Gothic Lolita—I brought in Eliseu “Zeu” Gouveia, artist of the Pandora Zwieback comics and the graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City, to design Kiyohi’s look.

Zeu’s first attempt (which I showed you in the previous post) was good, but not quite what I was looking for, considering both Pan and Kiyoshi were wearing black, which meant the potential existed for the characters to “bleed together” into one giant mass when seen at a distance. Something was needed to separate the two, and Zeu’s solution was to give Kiyoshi a white blouse. Problem solved! After he tightened the pencil art and inked the final illustration, I sent it over to Bob, who popped it into Photoshop to add the sort of cliff edge and lightning bolts found in his Dracula painting. The result was what you see up top (click to enlarge).

One change I asked Bob to make for the painting was to replace the heels on Pan’s boots with thick, flat soles, for three reasons: heels would be too impractical for all the adventuring (running, jumping, kicking, etc.) she’d be doing; thicker soles are her way of compensating for the fact she’s shorter than pretty much everyone around her; and Pan hasn’t mastered the art of walking on high heels—a scene in Blood Feud shows her wearing a pair of dressy pumps when she gets together with her friends, but spending most of her time wobbling around on them. She refuses to take them off because, well, she’s Pan. No stupid shoes are gonna show her who’s boss. But other than that, I told Bob, all systems were go for the painting. And, once again, when he delivered the final art he didn’t disappoint. (Of course, I knew he wouldn’t—that’s why I hired him.)

After that, it was just a matter of turning the art over to Mat Postawa, who’d set the tone for the series look with his design for the cover of the first Pan novel, Blood Feud. When all was said and done, the final cover came out as this:

Spiffy, right? Just as Blood Feud’s cover design had touches of red to complement the “river of blood” in Bob’s painting for that book, Blood Reign’s played off the blue tones in the stormy sky. Of special note is the “devil girl” symbol on Pan’s T-shirt—a manga-influenced version of the one on Blood Feud’s cover—only this one was whipped up by Pan’s original designer, Uriel Caton! I’d asked Uriel to contribute to the process in some way, and once I saw this design I not only wrote it into the novel (as a T that Pan’s boyfriend, Javi, gives her), but also decided that a running joke in the books (and covers) could be that folks are always giving Pan devil-girl shirts (the first, in Blood Feud, was a gift from Mom)—which she has to wonder is meant to be a comment on her personality.

So there you have it: the VH1 “Behind the Cover” story of Blood Reign. And what about the werewolf-centric Stalkers, the third cover that Bob painted so I’d have a complete convention banner? Well, that got bumped to book 4 in the series, replaced by Blood & Iron, which will wrap up the vampire war storyline of Blood Feud and Blood Reign—and whose cover was painted by an artist named Candra. We’ll get to the stories on each of those covers when the time comes.

Next: We’re not done with the cover analyses just yet! Tomorrow I’ll show you what went into the creation of the cover for the recently published IndyFest Magazine #85—an illustration by artist extraordinaire Zeu that depicts the first-ever meeting of Pan and StarWarp Concepts’ first lady of horror, the succubus called Lorelei!

Pandora Zwieback: Creating Blood Reign’s Cover, Part 1

Posted on June 12, 2015 by steven

Yesterday, I finished up the story behind the creation of the cover for the first Saga of Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud. It was fairly simple in construct: I did a sketch of what I was looking for, handed it off to painter Bob Larkin, and he took it from there. Once Bob had delivered the final art, it went to designer Mat Postawa, who crafted the final look of Blood Feud’s cover. For the second novel, Blood Reign, however, I wanted something a bit more storytelling in its imagery—something that would end up making it a two-artist situation.

Now that the heroine’s-first-issue cover approach had been taken care of by using it for Blood Feud, the idea this time around was to create a dramatic image that would catch the eye of potential book buyers and entice them to explore the novel behind the cover. Of course, Bob Larkin was going to paint this cover, too, so I knew the final results would be amazing—but what, exactly, was I looking for him to paint? And then I remembered a first-issue cover that Bob had painted for Marvel Comics’ Tomb of Dracula magazine, back in 1979.

Tomb_of_Dracula1

The composition was exactly what I wanted, so I did what any smart-thinking publisher would do: I asked Bob to knock off the Dracula painting for Blood Reign. 😀 Just substitute Dracula with Lady Kiyoshi Sasaki, leader of Blood Feud’s Japanese vampire clan, House Otoyo, and replace the damsel in distress with Pan. Bob was okay with that, and was prepared to start sketching, but then I realized something: Since Kiyoshi’s wardrobe, as well as that of her entire clan’s, was based on Elegant & Gothic Lolita fashion—think nineteenth-century clothing with a modern-day twist, popular with not just Japanese youth, but American cosplayers—I’d be asking Bob to try and figure out a clothing style he’d never heard of, and be accurate about it so the image wouldn’t annoy Goth Lolis (as they’re known). My solution? Get another artist to design Kiyoshi and her dress, and then have Bob use that for the painting.

Enter: Eliseu “Zeu” Gouveia, then-artist of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, the free comic that introduces readers to Pan’s world (and still available for download; just click the link to obtain your own copy). Being something of a manga and anime fan, Zeu immediately understood what I was looking for, and soon enough came up with a design for Kiyoshi that he incorporated into the sketch you see here (click to enlarge), based on Bob’s Tomb of Dracula cover. A good start, but I thought the top half of Kiyoshi’s outfit was too oversized—she kinda looks like she’s wearing football shoulder pads—and that her all-black clothes set against Pan’s all-black clothes would be hard to see at a distance. Also, I wanted her looking forward; having her head turned sideways just raises the question “What’s she supposed to be looking at?”

So Zeu went back to the literal drawing board for a second-round sketch…

Next: The exciting conclusion to this pulse-pounding tale of cover artists and Gothic Lolitas!

Pandora Zwieback: Creating Blood Feud’s Cover, Part 2

Posted on June 11, 2015 by steven

Back on June 1st I told you about the start of the creative process behind the cover art for Blood Feud, the first Pandora Zwieback novel: I commissioned painter Bob Larkin to bring Pan to four-color “life,” then sketched out what I was looking for, and not too long after Bob delivered a final sketch that I approved. And then I realized that the bloody smiley face image on Pan’s T-shirt would have to be redesigned, or potentially risk drawing the ire of a French company that’s owned the smiley face trademark since 1972. But what could replace that iconic image? Well…what about a brand-new image?

So I pulled out my drawin’ pencil again and started sketching. I wanted to retain some elements from Uriel Caton’s design, so the Band-Aid across the “nose,” the crosshatched bruise, and the stuck-out tongue stayed; now I just needed a face to put them on. Then the idea struck me: how about the head of a devil girl? Bright-red skin and horns, a pageboy hairstyle, and bright-green eyes would go really well with those “I just got in a fight, so what?” elements. In no time at all I had a design I liked, and e-mailed it to Bob for him to give it a professional finish. Thus was the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt born! (Which, by the way, you can purchase from the StarWarp Concepts webstore.)

Now it was on to the actual cover painting, and when Bob was finally able to clear his busy schedule he got right to work, and the result is what you see here. Nice, huh? I had just one problem with it: there was too much red in the background. The concept I’d handed to Bob was that the Hudson River behind Pan—we’re looking at Manhattan’s West Side from New Jersey, for those who were wondering—was supposed to be a river of blood; making the skyline just as red worked against it. Bob’s rationale was that sunlight reflecting off a bloody river would “paint” the buildings red, which I could understand, but still…no. I’d rather have the bloody Hudson made as unsubtle as possible.

So I turned to Mat Postawa, the series’ book designer (and part-time metal head), to ask what could be done. Like Bob, I’ve known Mat—and SWC’s other genius book designer, Mike Rivilis—for years, having worked with him in the trenches of publishing house ibooks, inc., when I was its editor-in-chief. As I explained to Mat, for the Pan series I wanted a distinctive look for the cover designs that would appeal to both teenagers and Goths, but would also draw the eye of a general book buyer curious about the novel’s content. “You’re already familiar with the kind of audience I’m trying to reach,” I told him. “So take your best shot. And, uh, can you do something about those red buildings in the background?”

After a few rounds of give-and-take, each one better than the last, this was the look we settled on:

You couldn’t ask for a better cover! Mat adjusted the buildings’ color; deepened the background and added a hint of blood splash to the edges to make Pan stand out brighter; and even hand-lettered the Blood Feud title. Having Pan on the spine was my idea—for any self-publishers out there, it’s always good to keep in mind that your book might show up spine-out on a store’s or library’s shelves, so an eye-catching graphic is essential. I also wrote the back cover copy, and thanks go out to Mike Rivilis, who, after looking at the first-pass design, remarked that I’d overwritten the copy—there were originally four paragraphs. And since Mike has a long history of designing covers for young adult novels (two examples being Daniel Parker’s Countdown and Francine Pascal’s Fearless series), I listened when he said there shouldn’t be more than three paragraphs on a YA cover. He was right—it makes for punchier text.

“Lock it in!” I told Mat. “This one’s a keeper!”

So, there you have it: the story of Blood Feud’s cover, from first sketch to final design—just as action-packed as you’d expected it to be, right? 😉

Next: Creating the cover for Blood Reign, the current novel in Pan’s saga.

Pandora Zwieback: Creating Blood Feud’s Cover, Part 1

Posted on June 1, 2015 by steven

Wow, talk about getting sidetracked! When I wrote the introductory post for this discussion of cover designs, back in March, I didn’t know I was going to about to get caught up in a ton of freelance assignments, mixed with a barrage of promotional work (interviews, mailing out press kits and review copies, etc.) to help get the word out on Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 (on sale now, of course). Let’s recap and pick up where I left off, okay?

In 2008, I’d decided to resurrect StarWarp Concepts after an absence of three years, and turn the company into a book-publishing house, rather than just a home for my comic projects. It also meant a switch in a company focus from the Mature Readers character Lorelei—a succubus I’d created in 1989, and the star of SWC’s first comic series—to something more inclusive of a wider readership. To do that, the first project for the revived SWC would be The Saga of Pandora Zwieback: a young-adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series I’d shopped around to major publishers for a couple of years, with no success. I still had plans for Lorelei, and for adding more titles to the budding release schedule, but Pan was going to be the new face of The ’Warp—and she was going to make her debut at the 2010 New York Comic Con, where I’d let the world know that StarWarp Concepts was back, better than ever.

There was just one thing, though: I needed a graphic to show off to the con-goers; I needed a banner to hang from the back of the booth. But in order to fashion that banner, I needed images to display—specifically Pandora Zwieback images. Which meant that first I’d have to commission cover art for books 1–3 in the series: Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and (originally) Stalkers. And there was only one artist I had to mind to tackle that assignment: Bob Larkin.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, by now you should be familiar with Bob Larkin—I’ve certainly written about him often enough! But if you’re still unfamiliar with his work, here’s a small sampling of what he’s painted:

LarkinArt02

Marvel Comics: covers for Dazzler, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws 2, Battlestar Galactica, Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, Tomb of Dracula, Haunt of Horror, Planet of the Apes, Crazy, and The Hulk!

Warren Publishing: covers for Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, The Rook, Warren Presents: Pantha the Panther Girl, and Vampirella

New World Pictures, Pathé, TriStar Pictures, Troma Studios, United Artists: movie posters for Heaven’s Gate, Humanoids From the Deep, Night of the Creeps, Piranha, Piranha II, Terror Train, The Toxic Avenger Part II, Troma’s War

So, y’know, the guy knows how to paint. And that doesn’t even count the hundreds of book covers he’s provided to numerous publishers, most notably his run of Doc Savage covers for Bantam Books (and for my own X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels, from BP Books/Simon & Schuster). So when I outlined my plans to Bob, he immediately jumped on board. All he needed was for me to show him what I was looking for.

So, loath as I am (not to mention embarrassed) to sketch out things for artists who are far better draftsmen than I, I picked up a pencil and started laying out my idea for Blood Feud. After a couple of days of trial and error, what you see here was the final result; click it to see it in its full horrifying glory. Still, it wasn’t too bad, I thought. The background is an obvious paste-up job, using a photo of NYC’s skyline as the background, but it got across the NY setting and “river of blood” element I wanted for the Hudson River—there were going to be vampires in the book, after all. And Pan stands in the foreground in what comic book fans would recognize as a traditional first-issue, here’s-the-star-of-the-series cover pose. Not the most action-packed image, but I wasn’t going for action so much as establishing Pan’s attitude. And it was still better than most mainstream publishers’ bland, extreme-close-up cover photos. So I sent it on to Bob, who, like most commercial artists, is appreciative of clients who know what they want—it spares the artist the teeth-grinding frustration of playing “I’ll know it when I see it” with clients who ask for multiple versions of a project before, more often than not, deciding that the first version was the right one all along.

A few days later Bob e-mailed me his more realistic interpretation of my cartoony sketch (yes, you can click on this one, too). Sold! He’d subtly changed Pan’s body language and given her head more of a slight attitudinal tilt, and it was all perfect. I gave him the green light to take the sketch to the painting stage, and now all that was left was waiting for him to deliver the final art…

Except I suddenly realized I had a big problem in the making. See the design on Pan’s T-shirt—the bloody smiley face? That’s the look that Pan’s co-creator, Uriel Caton, came up with when he drew the first character sketches in 1998, and I thought it looked great—a T-shirt that had as much attitude as the girl wearing it. And so it remained for the next decade…until the first trailer for Warner Bros.’ movie adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novel Watchmen was released in 2008, and the studio got hit with a notice from a French corporation called The Smiley Company.

A little history, courtesy of Smithsonian.com: It turns out that, although the creation of the Smiley Face is attributed to American graphic artist Harvey Ross Ball, who designed it in 1963 for an advertising client, both parties never filed for a copyright or trademark and it dropped into public domain usage. Enter French journalist Franklin Loufrani, who in 1972 trademarked the image for his Smiley Company—which currently takes in more than $130 million a year for licensing rights.

Apparently no one at the studio had checked to see if an image that had become so identified with Watchmen, and so necessary to its plot—thanks to writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons—might have rights issues attached that needed clearing before the movie could be released. Oops. Nevertheless, an agreement was quickly reached that included the Smiley Company’s trademark language appearing in the film’s closing credits.

Well…good for Warner Bros., but bad for me, because Pan’s T-shirt needed to be redesigned immediately. Why get hassled by major corporations when I could take the easy way out? And so I set to work on finding a solution…

Next: Making with the cover design magic for the Blood Feud final cover.

Happy World Goth Day!

Posted on May 22, 2015 by steven

world-goth-poster Now celebrating its sixth anniversary, World Goth Day (always held on May 22) puts a spotlight on Goth culture and all its perks (it’s not all about black clothes and clichéd dour attitudes, you know). To quote the official website:

Goth Day is exactly what it says on the wrapper—a day where the Goth scene gets to celebrate its own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world. It all started off as “Goth Day” just in the UK back in 2009—originating as a musical subculture weekend on the BBC 6 music station which focused on punk, Brit-pop and Goth (the Goth feature was on May 22)—but the following year we decided to push the idea across the globe.

For more information on World Goth Day, including links to the many events being held to celebrate the occasion, visit the WGD website.

Hoover_Pandora And who better to celebrate World Goth Day than our resident Goth adventuress, Pandora Zwieback? Generally a happy Goth (yes, they exist) and major horror fangirl who likes to paint and write and hang out with her friends and her new boyfriend, Javier Maldonado, Pan also has her hands full these days battling monsters in her novel series The Saga of Pandora Zwieback—written by yours truly. And you can check out her adventures in these titles:

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that serves as an introduction to both Pan—with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia—and her first novel, Blood Feud (via a pair of preview chapters).

“Pandora Zwieback and the Bloggy Thing”: A 1,300-word mini-adventure at the site Writing Belle that involves Pan racking her brains to find something to write about herself for the fictional horror site The Society of Classic Monsters—the major problem being she’s never written a guest post before. Coming to her aid is her best friend, Sheena McCarthy, who has an idea or two about how the Goth adventuress can promote the books. Think of it as a sequel to The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0.

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 her friends, 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 faces even greater challenges as the 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 Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover!

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features stories by me and Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up), art by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0), comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), and cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella).

Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and the Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual are available in both print and e-book formats. Visit each of the titles’ product pages for more information, including sales links and sample pages and chapters.

Pandora Zwieback Mini-Story at Writing Belle

Posted on May 19, 2015 by steven

Blood-Reign-FinalCvr The promotional tour for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 continues today at author Summer Lane’s site Writing Belle, where as part of her Spring Author Program, you’ll find a guest blog post from author Steven A. Roman (that’s me) in the form of a (very) short story about Pan being asked to write a guest post for a horror site’s blog, to promote the book series about her. How meta can you get?!

“Pandora Zwieback and the Bloggy Thing” is a 1,300-word mini-adventure that involves Pan racking her brains to find something to write about herself for the fictional horror site The Society of Classic Monsters—the major problem being she’s never written a guest post before (like her creator!). Coming to her aid is her best friend, Sheena McCarthy, who has an idea or two about how the Goth adventuress can promote the books. Think of it as a sequel to the non-canonical The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, the free digital comic in which Pan introduces herself to the reader and shills for the first novel, Blood Feud. In this marketing “splinter universe,” Pan is very much aware that I’m writing books about her—because StarWarp Concepts is paying her royalties for her monster-fighting life story! So head over to Writing Belle and check out her latest effort to help spread the word.

Speaking of promos for The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, over at my Goodreads author page I’ve activated the “Ask the Author” function. So if you’re a Goodreads member and you’ve got a question about Pan’s saga, Lorelei: Sects and the City, X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy, Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand, or any of the other projects I’ve written over the years, head over there now and ask away!

Taliesin Meets the Goth Loli Vampires for Blood Reign Review

Posted on April 13, 2015 by steven

Blood-Reign-FinalCvr The first review has come in for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—and naturally it’s a positive one! Over at the vampire-centric site Taliesin Meets the Vampires, reviewer and site owner Andrew Boylan—who also gave a glowing review to Blood Feud, the first novel in the series—shares his opinion of Pan’s latest adventure:

“If the first volume took some deliberate pacing steps to build Pandora’s character, this volume eschews that as it thunders along at breakneck speed, barely pausing for breath at any given time (and, I must say, the volume was devoured at speed as well). The book doesn’t suffer for this…I thoroughly enjoyed this volume.”

You can read the entire review here.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this project (and if you are, how did you wind up at this site? 😀 ), The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is my young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series, starring 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 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.

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents, and her friends, 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:

Visit each of the titles’ product pages for more information, including sales links and sample chapters.

Blood Reign: Author Steven A. Roman Returns to Sci-Fi Saturday Night

Posted on April 6, 2015 by steven

Blood-Reign-FinalCvr The promotional tour for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 continues to take shape, now that I’ve been booked to make a return appearance to the popular podcast series Sci-Fi Saturday Night; my episode will air Saturday, April 18. Showrunner “The Dome”—who fell in love with Pan after reading her debut in the first novel, Blood Feud—and the rest of his crew of pop-culture enthusiasts will be chatting me up about Pan’s latest adventure, and probably cover a few other topics, as well.

In case you’re interested in hearing my previous appearance, which took place back in December 2011 to promote Blood Feud, you can check it out by visiting the Sci-Fi Saturday Night website and downloading it from right here. I come in along the thirty-minute mark. And then be sure to tune in on April 18, 2015 for my triumphant return!

And in case you hadn’t heard the news, over at my Goodreads author page I’ve activated the “Ask the Author” function. So if you’re a Goodreads member and you’ve got questions of your own about The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Lorelei: Sects and the City, or any of the other projects I’ve written over the years, head over there now and ask away!

Blood Reign: Queens Gazette Interviews Author Steven A. Roman

Posted on April 2, 2015 by steven

Blood-Reign-FinalCvr Stop the presses! The promotional tour for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 continues this week in print and digital forms at the newspaper Queens Gazette, with an interview with author and Queens resident Steven A. Roman (that’s me). If you’re in the borough and pick up a copy of the paper (free at many outlets), you’ll find it in the column “Local-Express.” If you’re not a Queens resident, you can find the online version right here at the Gazette’s website.

Being interviewed by a Queens newspaper makes perfect sense: The ’Warp’s office (okay, our PO box) is located in Dave Zwieback’s Sunnyside neighborhood, close to the White Castle burger joint where Pan and her fellow Fiend Club members hang out; Dave’s museum, Renfield’s House of Horrors and Mystical Antiquities, is based in Long Island City, within steps of the UA Kaufman movie theater, Kaufman-Astoria Studios, and the Museum of the Moving Image (not to mention it’s just a few blocks from the offices of the Queens Gazette); and the car-chase scene in Blood Reign starts at the museum and ends up at an abandoned airfield in another neighborhood, College Point. For a dark-urban-fantasy adventure about Goth chicks, shape-shifting monster hunters, and vampire-clan shoot-outs, you can’t get more Queens-centric than that!

And in case you weren’t aware, over at my Goodreads author page I’ve activated the “Ask the Author” function. So if you’re a Goodreads member and you’ve got your own questions about The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Lorelei: Sects and the City, or any of the other projects I’ve written over the years, head over there now and ask away!

Blood Reign: Talking With Author Steven A. Roman

Posted on March 30, 2015 by steven

In case you hadn’t heard (and seriously, how could you have not, at this point, on this website?), Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—the highly anticipated follow-up to Blood Feud, the critically acclaimed first novel starring the teen Goth monster hunter—was recently published by StarWarp Concepts. (Yes, we also mentioned it quite a bit over there, too.)

SRoman_Photo So with that in mind, it only seemed natural to have SWC editorial director (and Blood Reign editor) K. C. Winters sit down with Saga of Pandora Zwieback author Steven A. Roman to discuss his latest work and a few other topics….

KC: Okay, let’s get started. What’s your latest book about?

SR: Well, in general, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is about a 16-year-old “Goth” girl coming to terms with her parents’ divorce and some strange supernatural powers she’s been exhibiting, all while trying to survive a possible war between the monster realm and humanity that’s been initiated by a fallen angel. Pan’s story started in the novel Blood Feud, and it continues in the new book, Blood Reign, which takes place about five minutes after the cliffhanger ending of Blood Feud.

KC: Five minutes after?

SR: I got the idea from that James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. Its opening scene takes place, like, five minutes after Casino Royale. I thought doing the same thing with Pan in Blood Reign made sense, to get the cliffhanger resolved and keep the story moving. I’m not gonna say what that cliffhanger was; if anyone reading this hasn’t checked out Blood Feud already, I’m not gonna spoil it for them. So go and buy it, already!

KC: They should. And I did notice a sort of cinematic quality in the way you describe settings and action sequences. So, what’s your favorite movie?

SR: Geez, I’ve got a few favorite movies. The Blues Brothers, Phantom of the Paradise, Army of Darkness… I guess the original Star Wars would be my number one, because it came out when I was fifteen—the perfect age to go see a movie about another teen who dreamed of doing bigger things…even though I thought Han Solo was the cooler character. (You know it’s true.) It’s also the movie that was one of my inspirations as a young writer—in fact, a Star Wars-y short story that I wrote for my high school’s magazine won me the “Best Fiction” award that year; I think the prize was $20. [Note: That story, “Again: He Who Stalks,” was the subject of a 2014 post on this very site, and can be found here.]

KC: What’s the last movie you saw?

SR: The Yards, from 2000. It’s a crime drama set in Queens, about corruption in the Metropolitan Transit system; the “yards” are the Sunnyside train yards. The cast was pretty impressive: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, James Caan, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Bursten, and Charlize Theron, and Steve Lawrence as the borough president. It’s a really slow movie, but very character driven. The ending’s a little too convenient, but otherwise it’s not a bad film. I checked it out because I’m always curious about how Queens is depicted in movies. It’s a hometown thing.

KC: So not everything you’re involved in has to do with horror or comics.

SR: Well, especially as a writer you can’t be locked into reading or watching just one category—it can’t be horror all the time, or comics all the time. That can limit the kind of stories you want to tell. I read Doctor Who novels, too, and the occasional mystery, and books about baseball and other things. The one thing I can’t get into is fantasy—Game of Thrones and that kind of stuff. It’s just never appealed to me.

KC: Which characters in Blood Reign did you find most challenging to work with, and what was it like to write with them? Conversely, do you have any characters that came particularly easily to you?

SR: Well, Pan was always a challenge, right from the start, because I’d never written a teenage girl before and I wasn’t even sure I could do it. It took some trial and error to get her personality right, but a major hurdle was cleared way back in 1998, when my creative partner, a comic artist named Uriel Caton, came up with Pan’s design. (Back then we’d been trying to pitch an early version of Pan to Parachute Press, the company owned by R. L. Stein, of Goosebumps fame.) Having that visual helped me get a handle on who Pan is, and once I’d gotten comfortable with her, the writing became increasingly faster. By the time I was done with the first book, Blood Feud, she’d become the easiest character to write, and that continued into Blood Reign.

The bad guy in Blood Reign, a fallen angel named Zaqiel, is a little harder, because I keep trying to avoid having him fall into stereotypical villain tropes—you know, the maniacal laugh, referring to himself in the third person, that kind of stuff—but every now and then it slips in. I guess that’s my comic book upbringing as a reader—you can’t help but pick up those sorts of elements along the way. I try to balance it out by exploring the relationship that Zaqiel had with Pan’s mentor, Annie.

KC: That’s the monster hunter Pan met in the first book, Blood Feud.

SR: Sebastienne Mazarin, yeah. Annie’s this 400-year-old shape-shifter who hunts monsters, and two hundred years ago she and Zaqiel were an item. But after he made plans to conquer the world and raised an army of monsters, she killed him and cut off his head. He’s a little pissed off about that. And he and Annie have some scenes together in Blood Reign where he gets to…express that displeasure.

KC: Vocally, or physically?

SR: A little of both—I mean, it is an adventure story—but Annie gives as good as she gets. She’s not the type who takes crap from monsters or psychotic ex-boyfriends, and she keeps promising Zaqiel that, one way or another, she’s gonna see him dead. Again.

KC: And will she make good on that promise?

SR: What, like I’m gonna tell you? (laughs) You’ll have to wait for the next book, Blood & Iron, to find out. That’s when the whole “vampire war” storyline comes to a close—including what happens between Annie and Zaqiel.

KC: All right. Now, you mentioned your “comic book upbringing.” What first inspired you to become a writer? Was it comic books?

SR: Absolutely. Stan Lee was my first writing influence, especially his Spider-Man stories. I never really got into Batman or Superman when I started reading comics, but Spider-Man…I don’t know. I could just understand Peter Parker better than the guy who could move planets with his bare hands! Maybe because Peter was a nerdy teen and I was a nerdy kid, or maybe because we’re both from Queens and I liked that connection. But yeah, Stan was the one who inspired me to get into writing, and when I stumble into using villain tropes…well, I learned from the master!

KC: Is there a favorite place you have to write?

SR: There’s a reading room at the main branch of the New York Public Library, in Manhattan. I go there whenever I either start a writing project, or get stuck with trying to find the right words to write. Or I’ll wander over to Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City, down by the East River, and sit under a tree with my notebook.

KC: What’s your cure for writer’s block?

SR: Other than just getting up and walking away from the computer? That’s really my cure. I grab my notebook and go somewhere to write longhand—usually to that room in the public library. Or go and wash dishes, or take a walk—whatever it takes to get my mind off the writing for a while.

KC: What’s your cure for procrastination?

SR: God, I wish I knew of one; I haven’t found it yet. I mean, I’ve been meaning to look, but I always seem to keep putting it off…

KC: Funny. What one project do you daydream about accomplishing as a writer—your magnum opus?

SR: I think I’m already writing it, with The Saga of Pandora Zwieback. Pan is probably the most three-dimensional character I’ve ever written, and I really enjoy working on her stories. And based on the reactions I’ve gotten from readers, they’re enjoying my work, too. I’m grateful there are folks out there who like reading about this attitudinal Queens Goth chick who’s dealing with all these monsters, but who’s really more concerned about untangling all the complications in her life.

And I think they’ll be pleased with the direction Pan’s story is taking in Blood Reign—there’s even more depth to her character, and the challenges she faces this time really push her to the limits, both physically and emotionally. For all the “big budget” set pieces and action scenes and supernatural overtones, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is really all about this teenaged girl trying to figure out her place in the world. Hopefully her fans will continue to come along for the ride!

Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 is now on sale and can be ordered in print and digital formats from brick-and-mortar and online retailers. Visit the Blood Reign product page at the StarWarp Concepts website for sales links and a downloadable free sample chapter.

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is still available and also can be ordered in print and digital formats from brick-and-mortar and online retailers. Visit the Blood Feud product page at the StarWarp Concepts website for sales links and a downloadable free sample chapter.

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