Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—author Steven A. Roman’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud—goes on sale February 2, 2015. And here’s another taste of what’s to come:
Category Archives: Publishing
Blood Reign: Teaser Snippet #1
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—author Steven A. Roman’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud—goes on sale Monday, February 2, 2015. And to whet your reading appetite, hot on the heels of yesterday’s reminder for you to download the special Blood Reign preview, here’s a little snippet of the other thrills you’ll find within its pages:
Blood Reign: Read the Sneak Preview
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2, the highly anticipated second part of Goth adventuress Pandora Zwieback’s debut adventure, is scheduled to make its debut on February 2, 2015. But why wait until then to learn how things turned out for Pan after the shocking cliffhanger ending of her first novel, Blood Feud?
Available right now for your reading pleasure is a special Blood Reign preview, which you can download for free from the website of Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts. If you thought Pan suffered a major setback at the end of Blood Feud…well, matters only worsen for her as she finds herself in a brand-new predicament. Then again, it wouldn’t be much of an adventure series if the threats to the protagonist didn’t get bigger along the way, now would it?
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 is written by me: Steven A. Roman, the bestselling author of the novels X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy (based on the mega-successful Marvel Comics franchise) and Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand (based on the popular horror film series). And when it comes to horror credentials, in addition to Blood Feud and Blood Reign I wrote the critically acclaimed Mature Readers graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City (about a succubus fighting a cult of Elder God worshippers), and contributed well-received short stories to the anthologies Best New Zombies Tales 2, The Dead Walk Again!, Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror, and The Almanac of Vampires. So, yes, I know horror. Besides, where do you think Pan got her love of the genre from (other than her fictional dad, David Zwieback, of course)?
Read the Blood Reign preview now, and then get ready for Ms. Zwieback’s triumphant return on February 2, 2015!
Blood Reign: And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—author Steven A. Roman’s highly anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud—goes on sale Monday, February 2, 2015. Don’t miss it!
“Pan is exactly the kind of teen heroine that readers should be standing up and cheering for.”—HorrorNews.net
“Roman has an incredible gift for running lateral plotlines that intersect with a glorious crash.”—Monster Librarian
“Roman’s writing is wonderfully crisp, drawing us into a hidden world that is great fun.”—Taliesin Meets the Vampires
“Pan is a smart and brave heroine who manages to stay positive and upbeat, despite the obstacles she must overcome.”—The Horror Zine
Taking Care of Business
Welcome, Panatics, to a New Year and a new publishing schedule! It’s been a while since you and I talked, and let me deeply apologize for that. But as you saw here from that teaser posted yesterday, there’s some good news that I’m sure you Panatics were greatly interested in… 😉
Yes, after many delays Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 is finally being published, on Monday, February 2nd, and let me thank all of you for your patience. I know I was a right SOB for leaving you where I did with that cliffhanger ending of Book 1, Blood Feud, but now at last you’ll be able to find out what adventures lie ahead for our resident happy Goth.
(By the way, if you can’t wait that long, you can always download the Blood Reign free sample chapter from the StarWarp Concepts website, and discover what happened to Pan directly following Blood Feud’s ending.)
If you head over to the StarWarp Concepts blog and read today’s post—I’ve been referring to it as the State of the StarWarp Concepts Union address—you’ll find out exactly what’s been going on over at Pan’s publisher, as well as what’s going to be happening this year to get things back on track.
As for this blog…well, I’ve got some exciting stuff coming up, as Blood Reign’s release date gets closer. Stay tuned!
Blood Reign: It Makes 2015 That Much Better!
DRM-Free Comics? Already Got ‘Em!
As you may have heard, at this week’s Comic Con International: San Diego, digital comics distributor Comixology announced that they are making titles from certain independent publishers—including Image, Dynamite Entertainment, and Top Shelf—available as Digital Rights Media–free (DRM-free) PDF and CBZ downloads. (Marvel and DC aren’t on board with this yet, but who knows what the future holds?) In other words, you can now own the digital copies of the comics you’ve paid for!
That’s a great innovation (I’ve already downloaded some of the comics from my own account), but I’ve got news for you digital comics fans: StarWarp Concepts’ comics and graphic novels have been that way since we began offering them through our webstore and DriveThru Comics. The teen Goth comics The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1; the supernatural superhero graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings; the mature readers miniseries Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa; the adult graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City; and the pirate fantasy one-shot The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special are all available for download, and are all DRM-free.
Visit each of the titles’ product pages for more information, including sales links and sample pages, and start shopping today, secure in the knowledge that the comics you buy from The ’Warp are actually yours to own!
Son of Summer Reading Suggestions
A couple of years ago I made a few suggestions for books that Panatics might be interested in checking out: Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot, Cycle of the Werewolf, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon; Charles Portis’s True Grit; Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes; Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange; and Giorman Berchard’s The Second Greatest Story Ever Told. You can read my mini-reviews here.
Well, with summer 2014 officially starting tomorrow, what better time for a new list of books you might want to consider? This one’s a little shorter, but they’re still good choices (in my humble opinion).
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham: First published in 1951, it’s a fast-paced, enjoyable science fiction adventure that would seem to have been an influence on the quasi-zombie apocalypse film 28 Days Later (a patient in a hospital wakes up to find himself apparently the only unaffected person in a ravaged London). Except instead of zombies, you have carnivorous plants hunting a human population that’s been mostly stricken blind by the light of a passing comet. But as the lead characters quickly learn, it’s not the Triffids that pose the greatest threat, but the other unaffected humans…
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin: The 1968 Mia Farrow–starring film adaptation is a horror masterpiece, and Zoe (Guardians of the Galaxy) Saldana starred in a 2014 television miniseries remake that was well received, but Ira Levin’s 1967 source novel is a brisk, entertaining masterpiece of its own. Rosemary and Guy Woodward move into an NYC apartment building with a long history of witchcraft and devil worship—and the current residents have plans for Rosemary… Apart from cultural references that firmly set the story in 1960s New York, the story remains as enjoyably horrific and humorously macabre as it did almost fifty years ago.
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers: This 1895 short story collection influenced not only writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Grant Morrison, and Stephen King, but also served as a major plot point in the first season of HBO’s acclaimed series True Detective, starring Matthew McConaghey and Woody Harrelson. The conceit is that The King in Yellow, a fictitious two-act play, drives people mad when they read the second act (which is never reproduced in the book). The first four stories in the collection are linked to the play. Download The King in Yellow e-book for free from ManyBooks.net.
And of course…
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: What, I shouldn’t plug my first Pan novel—on the very site dedicated to the series it’s part of? 😉 With its sequel, Blood Reign, soon to make its long-awaited appearance, this is the perfect time to catch up on the start of Pan’s debut adventure (if you or your book-loving friends haven’t already read it, that is). Warring vampire clans! Fallen angels! Monster hunters! Romance! Danger! Pick up a copy and find out why HorrorNews.net called Blood Feud “far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels released in the last few years.”
So get to reading—and have a great summer!
Angels and Monster Hunters
Hey, there, lovers of genre television! You may be aware that tonight is the broadcast debut of Dominion on the SyFy Channel. A sequel of sorts to the 2010 Paul Bettany–starring film Legion, the series stars Christopher Egan and Anthony Stewart Head and takes place 25 years into an ongoing war between humanity and God’s army of angels. Well, if angels—either arch or fallen—are your thing, then perhaps we here at ’Warp Central can interest you in a tale of our own that involves those heavenly—and not so heavenly—messengers…
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is the first novel in a series of adventures starring a teenaged Goth who has the power to see past the human disguises worn by the ever-growing community of monsters (vampires, werewolves, sirens, etc.) that exist in her world, and especially in her New York City hometown. Blood Feud sees Pan, along with her family and friends, get drawn into a war among rival vampire clans for possession of a rare antiquity: the remains of Zaqiel, a fallen angel who once tried to take over the world!
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 (on sale later this summer) is the second part of Pan’s epic adventure. Zaqiel is back among the living, badder than ever, and it’s up to Pan and her small band of angel busters—which includes her boyfriend, her best friend, and Zaqiel’s ex-lover, the immortal monster hunter Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin—to stop the fallen angel from leading his armies of horrors in an all-out assault on humanity.
Visit the Blood Feud and Blood Reign product pages for more information, including sales links and sample chapters.
Blood Reign Preview Available for Download
Don’t worry, Panatics, the wait is almost over! The highly anticipated Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—the second part of Pan’s debut literary adventure that began in the novel Blood Feud—is on its way (and I deeply apologize for the lengthy delay between books), but in the meantime you can download a free chapter of Blood Reign!
Dying to learn Pan’s fate after Blood Feud’s shocking climax? Well, of course you are! Then get ahold of the preview today and discover how the terror that Pan experienced at the end of Blood Feud is only the beginning of her saga…
Just go to the Blood Reign product page at StarWarp Concepts, scroll down to the free preview, download the PDF, and start reading!