BookCon 2014 Report

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Interested in finding out what happened when the StarWarp Concepts crew and I attended New York’s first-ever BookCon this past Saturday? Then head on over to the StarWarp Concepts blog and read my convention report.

BookCon_Promoting Pan_2
BookCon 2015 is scheduled for May 30–31 (that’s right, it’ll be a two-day event next year), at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Next stop on the StarWarp Concepts 2014 convention tour: Eternal Con, June 14–15 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, in Garden City, Long Island. See you there!

Welcome, BookCon 2014 Attendees!

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pan_comic_0Thanks for stopping by the StarWarp Concepts booth today, and for your interest in my Goth adventuress, Pandora Zwieback. If you’re here because you spoke with me, then click on the cover you see to the left and download the Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 digital comic that I showed you. 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 young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series that I write. It’s the 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 critically acclaimed 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 Pan can learn more about what she can do, she 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.

“Blood Feud is far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels released in the last few years. Pan is exactly the kind of teen heroine that readers should be standing up and cheering for.”—Melissa Voelker, HorrorNews.net

 

“One of those fabulous books that manages to straddle the young adult/adult fiction divide, catering equally for teens and more, ahem, ‘mature’ readers alike with a light touch that makes it a joy to read.”—Kell Smurthwaite, BCF Book Reviews

 

blood_reign-coverPan’s debut adventure continues in the second novel, Blood Reign (on sale this July), 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! Blood Feud ended on such a shocking cliffhanger that Pan fans (I call them “Panatics”) have eagerly been looking forward to see how it gets resolved. Feel free to join their growing ranks—we love adding new members to Zwieback Nation.

 

 

pan_annualAlong with Blood Feud, on sale right now is The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, which features two brand-new adventures (written by me) of Pan and her friends that are separate from the novels: a full-color comic story drawn by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0), 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 her voice; and a short story that pits Pan, Annie, and Javier against a trio of Elegant Gothic Lolita vampires—in a shopping mall! An additional backup tale, “After Hours,” is provided by DC Comics writer Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo! Team-Up, Action Comics, Batman: The Brave and the Bold) and drawn by comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld).

Give the site a look-over—we’ve got plenty of free stuff you can download, and a gallery called “The 13 Days of Pan-demonium”: 13 unique drawings of Pan and Annie by a host of talented artists. And when you’re done, don’t forget to Like Pan’s Facebook page, so you can keep up-to-date with all the latest news.

(A special shout-out to teen readers and Pandora Zwieback fans who are budding authors, but who may think their work isn’t all that good and worth continuing: Check out this post from May 27, where I talk about my first published work—a science-fiction story I wrote when I was 16. Take a look at that and tell me you can’t do better! 😀 )

And 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 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.

Again, thanks for stopping by. Hopefully I’ll see you again on September 21, at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Then you can tell me in person how incredible Pan is.  😀  See you there!

BookCon 2014 is Tomorrow!

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BookCon-2014-MapThe first-ever BookCon is this Saturday, May 31, and StarWarp Concepts will be there! Run by ReedPOP (the folks responsible for New York Comic Con), this one-day show is a spinoff of Book Expo America, the publishing industry’s annual tradeshow, and is the first time the doors are being widely opened to the general public. Big-name guests include Stan “The Man” Lee, Holly Black, John Grisham, R. L. Stine, and…Grumpy Cat? Really? Jeez, they’ll give anybody a book deal these days…

Booth #3061 is where you’ll find me and Richard C. White—author of the dark fantasy superhero graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings and the digital pirate-fantasy comic The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special—promoting The ’Warp; as always, just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. We’re right between Penguin Group’s Book Country and Publishers Weekly booths, and directly across the aisle from the booth for a novel titled Waiting for the Bomb.

BookCon is being held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, located at 655 W 34th Street, on Manhattan’s West Side. Show-floor hours are 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. (That’s right, the con is only six hours long, so be sure to get there on time.) For more information, including how to order tickets, head over to the BookCon Web site.

My First Published Story

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At every comic book convention and book festival I attend, I meet young writers—some middle schoolers, but mostly teenagers—who want to hone their craft, but are either embarrassed by what they’ve written, or frustrated that the words aren’t coming fast enough. And they want to give up.

As writers, we all know about frustration. It’s sitting at your laptop or desktop computer, staring at the screen, trying to will the next words to form so you can get down to business—and they won’t show up. And sure, we all get embarrassed by stuff we’ve written—we see the mistakes and the clunky sentence structure and the stilted dialogue that everyone fails to notice while they’re telling us how brilliant the prose is.

But that, as the saying goes, is all part of the game. You accept the frustrations and the embarrassments and move on. There’s no reason to just give up.

Want an example?

Here, presented for the first time anywhere, are scans of my first published work, “Again: He Who Stalks”—a space-fantasy story I wrote in my junior year at Loyola School in NYC; I would’ve been 16 or so. (I’ve updated the title treatment so not everything about this thing is embarrassing.) Even though it wears its Star Wars influence not just on its sleeve but on the whole damn coat (I was a major SW fan back then), even though every moment I spent re-reading it for this post made me cringe—because no creator likes to examine their early works—it reinforces the adage I’m constantly telling young writers: Everybody’s Gotta Start Somewhere. You just have to keep at it.

Looking at “Stalks” today…yeah, it’s pretty embarrassing—to me, at least. The clunky sentence structure and stilted dialogue? They’re all there—and more. I mean, nerdy author notes within the story explaining sci-fi terms I’d made up? Really? I even provided the sad illustration on page 4. Even worse, it was meant to tie-in to an 8mm sci-fi movie I’d tried my hand at writing and directing (Star Knights? Seriously? Ugh.), but never got past the first couple of days of shooting—before the brand-new camera broke. (That’s what I get for attempting double exposures on film by taping over one of the gears inside the camera housing—damn you for your bad advice, Cinemagic magazine!)

And yet, warts and all, this little gem won The Loyola Magazine!’s contest for Best Short Story—which came as a complete surprise to me. It also led to the teacher who oversaw the magazine asking me the next year if I’d like to become the fiction editor (thanks again, Mr. Moylan!); I said yes. So, maybe “Stalks” was better than I thought…at the time. And maybe if I hadn’t written it I wouldn’t have started down the path that has me entertaining you today with the adventures of a teenaged Goth named Pandora Zwieback.

Everybody’s Gotta Start Somewhere. So keep writing!

“Again: He Who Stalks” copyright © 1979, 2014 Steven A. Roman. All rights reserved.

StarWarp Concepts Signs with Comic Blender

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Happy Memorial Day! It might be a national holiday (at least here in the U.S.), but we here at ’Warp Central still have work to do. And today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve joined the growing number of publishers whose comic books and graphic novels are available through new digital distributor Comic Blender.

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Right now we’re in the process of preparing our files for our newest distribution partner, but soon enough you’ll be able to purchase the comic book adventures of Pandora Zwieback, Lorelei, Troubleshooters, Incorporated, and the crew of the pirate ship Sea Dragon. Watch this space for further developments!

Comic Blender is the latest distributor of SWC graphic titles, joining DriveThru Fiction, which sells e-book editions of our novels and illustrated classics as well. We’re also getting ready to submit our comics and graphic novels to comiXology and ComicsFix, and will let you know when those deals go through.

Pandora Zwieback: Blood Feud On Sale at Oyster Books

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blood_feud_largeFollowing the recent deal between e-book distributor Smashwords and online subscription library Scribd, comes exciting news that my young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is available at yet another digital subscription library: Oyster Books! To quote their Web site:

Oyster offers unlimited access to over 500,000 books for $9.95 a month, with new titles added all the time.

We created Oyster to evolve the way people read and to create more of the special moments that only books can offer. From anywhere a mobile device can go—a bustling subway car, a quiet coffee shop, or lost at sea with a Bengal tiger—our mission is to build the best reading experience, one that is both communal and personal, anytime, anywhere.

Smashwords has further distribution deals in the works, most recently with German e-book retailer TXTR and with Overdrive, the world’s largest library e-book platform—and Zwieback Nation will use them to expand our world domination of dark-fantasy publishing. 😉

You’ll find Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 here at Oyster. Start your subscription today!

Pandora Zwieback: Blood Feud On Sale at Scribd

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blood_feud_largeThanks to a recent deal negotiated by e-book distributor Smashwords, my young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is now available at digital subscription library Scribd! To quote their Web site:

Scribd is your personal digital library, where you have unlimited access to the world’s largest collection of e-books and written works. Our premium subscription service offers over 300,000 books from over 900 publishers, including New York Times bestsellers, literary classics, groundbreaking non-fiction, and reader favorites in every genre.

For those unfamiliar with this critically acclaimed novel, here’s the synopsis:

Pandora Zwieback is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s just discovered that her New York City hometown is the stalking ground for every creature of the night out to raise a little hell (literally!). Problem is, she thinks she’s the only one who can see them, which means she can’t tell her friends or family about the dangers around them—not unless she wants to spend the rest of her life locked up in a psychiatric ward.

But before Pan has a chance to make sense of her increasingly weird life, she finds herself in the middle of a war among rival vampire clans. Elegant Gothic Lolitas from Japan on one side, silk-suited Euro-vamps on the other, leather-clad hunters from Eastern Europe in the middle, and all after the same prize: a mysterious crate recently delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s dad. What is its terrifying secret—and will Pan survive long enough to find out?

And here’s what critics have had to say about it:

“Far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels released in the last few years.”—HorrorNews.net

“A fun and very much recommended read that shouldn’t be overlooked.”—Midwest Book Reviews

“Blood Feud is a roller-coaster read; the action never lets up. Author Steven A. Roman has an incredible gift for running lateral plotlines that intersect with a glorious crash…. Highly recommended for ages 15 and up for complexity of plot, and violence.”
—Monster Librarian

You’ll find Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 here at Scribd. Get started reading today!

 

StarWarp Concepts to Attend BookCon 2014

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For years, friends in the book industry have been telling me: “If you want to be a successful publisher, you have to exhibit at BookExpo America.” BEA is the Super Bowl of book festivals; the literary equivalent of New York Comic Con. For book people, it’s the place to be.

Problem is, exhibiting at BEA is insanely expensive—an average 10×10 booth can cost up to $4,000! And recouping that fee onsite is out of the question: publishers are there to tout their books and try to convince librarians and booksellers to order them, not to physically sell copies to them at the expo. And the general public is excluded from attending because it’s a trade show. So without a chance to make money at the expo, I saw no reason to put StarWarp Concepts in one of those sky-high-rent booths.

BookCon_logoBut then came the recent announcement of BookCon.

According to industry magazine Publishers Weekly:

“Reed Exhibitions [which also runs New York Comic Con] has made no secret about its interest in drawing more consumers to BookExpo America. Today the company released new details about its plans for the consumer-focused third day of the trade show, unveiling an event called BookCon that it is describes as a ‘show within a show.’”

Bottom line? Unlike its parent convention, BookExpo America, BookCon is open to the general public. Also unlike BEA, BookCon publishers are allowed to sell their books, and the booths for this one-day event cost less than the same 10×10 space at either BEA or NYCC. So now StarWarp Concepts has a reason to be there.  😉

BookCon takes place on the last day of BEA: Saturday, May 31. Show hours are 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. It’s being held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 34th Street and 11th Avenue, in Manhattan. Adult tickets are priced at $30; tickets for kids 6–12 are $5. Go here to order.

Question is, Will you be there to greet us? If so, you’ll find us at Booth 3061, right between the booths for Publishers Weekly and Penguin’s online imprint, Book Country.

For more information, visit the BookCon site.

Pan Gets Travoltified!

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In the spirit of this past Sunday’s Academy Awards, Pan gets to find out what it’s like to be singer Idina Menzel and have superstar actor John Travolta mangle her name! You can do it too at the brand-new Travoltariffic name generator at Salon.com.

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Introducing Troubleshooters, Incorporated

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A little bit of StarWarp Concepts cross-promotion, if you don’t mind.

If you’re a reader of this blog, or the Pandora Zwieback Facebook page, you may have noticed I often refer to a thing I like to call “the Paniverse.” Basically, it’s the fictional universe in which The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is set; a universe shared by other characters that fit within Pan’s horror and dark fantasy parameters.

The mature readers graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City takes place there, as do the Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa digital comics (which are a sort of 1990s, mature readers prequel to Pan’s adventures since they star her mentor, Sebastienne Mazarin). J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s nineteenth-century novella Carmilla is part of it, too, since House Karnstein, one of the vampire clans appearing in the first two Pan novels, is named after her. (For that matter, Bram Stoker’s Dracula also counts as a Paniverse title since both Vlad and his clan appear in those same Pan books.)

It’s a very comic book thing, like Spider-Man teaming up with the Fantastic Four to fight Doctor Doom—same city, same universe. Superheroes do it all the time, but it’s not limited to comics. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series ties into a majority of his novels and short stories (in fact, the Dark Tower is the nexus of all his literary dimensions), and the “Secret History of the World” in F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack books is outlined in quite a few novels and story collections. Hell, H. P. Lovecraft actively encouraged writers like Robert E. Howard and Robert Bloch to expand his C’thulu Mythos in their own works. Shared universes can be awesome.

Speaking of comics, that brings us to the latest addition to the Paniverse…

SWC_Troubleshooters_CvrTroubleshooters, Incorporated is the world’s first supernatural superhero team-for-hire…at least on Pan’s Earth. The group consists of a wizard named Silver Oak, a Romani sorceress named Yolanda, a female ninja named Shadowmist, an armored rock-n-roll-stage-light designer named Lightshow, and a werewolf named Night Stalker. Like the Ghostbusters, they’re the experts you call when you’re threatened by supernatural forces—as long as you can afford TSI’s substantial fee, of course.

Troubleshooters Incorporated: Night Stalkings is a trade paperback collection of TSI’s first three-part adventure, originally published by Nightwolf Graphics in 1995. It’s a tale of demons and superheroics written by bestselling author Richard C. White (Gauntlet: Dark Legacy: Paths of Evil and Star Trek, S.C.E.: Echoes of Coventry) and his wife, Joni M. White, with art by penciler Reggie Golden and inkers Bill Lavin and Randy Zimmerman. Bonus pinups are provided by Jeff Parker (Batman ’66), Steve Lieber (Hawkeye), and Gary Thomas Washington (Speed Racer).

The print version of Troubleshooters, Incorporated is on sale right now at comic shops with incredible taste, and is available for order from the StarWarp Concepts webstore, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble. Visit the TSI product page for all the sales links, including TSI’s digital edition, which is available from the StarWarp Concepts webstore, as well as from DriveThru Comics.