Tag Archives: blood feud: the saga of pandora zwieback book 1

Guerrilla Marketing

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Usually letting people know about your book can be an expensive venture—advertising, mailing copies to reviewers, etc. Sometimes, though, it can be as easy and inexpensive as writing the title on a card in a public setting…

The main branch of the New York Public Library (the famous one with the stone lions out front) is currently posting, on the windows of its gift shop, the titles of books people are reading. It’s part of their latest literacy promotion, NYPL Reads 2013—just fill out a card and they’ll put it up for all to see.

So given the opportunity to let more folks know about Blood Feud, the first Pandora Zwieback novel, and considering it cost absolutely nothing to do it, how could I pass up such a chance for free advertising…? 😉

Nerd is the Word for Pandora Zwieback Fans

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I don’t know about you, but I never get tired of receiving positive reviews of Blood Feud, the first Pandora Zwieback novel—and here’s the latest! This time, the praise comes from Aida Jacobs, the Girly Geek of the comic news Web site Word of the Nerd:

 

“Roman continues to prove his skill with the English language all throughout the pages of this tome by painting vivid pictures with words that you normally would not put together…but once your eyes glance over them, you can’t stop yourself from imagining the image they create at length within your mind…”

Read the entire review by clicking on the logo above.

 

Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 E-book Now at Lower Price

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With Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 scheduled for release this May, we here at The ’Warp thought it would be the perfect time to make the first Pan novel available to a wider readership. Makes sense, right?

Therefore, we’ve lowered the price of all digital versions of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1—PDF, ePub, and .prc (Kindle compatible)—from $3.99 to just $2.99!

You can download the lower-priced Blood Feud from the Kindle store at Amazon.com, the NOOK Book Store at Barnes & Noble, Apple’s iBookstore, the Sony Reader Store, and Kobo, the SWC stores at Smashwords and DriveThru Fiction, or directly from the StarWarp Concepts webstore. Just visit the Blood Feud product page at StarWarp Concepts for all the links.

If you’ve been reluctant to pick up Pan’s first literary appearance, or know someone who’d love to meet our resident Goth adventuress, there’s no better time than right now to do so!

YA Wants More Zwieback

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The popularity of our favorite Goth adventuress continues to grow! Add yet another positive review of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 to the list, this time from Heather M. Riley and her review blog, Want My YA:

“From the first page I was hard pressed to put Blood Feud down…. My only complaint is that I don’t have book 2 in front of me so I can find out what happens next. I need to know!”

Read the entire review by going here.

It’s a Global Pan-demic!

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Chalk up another positive review of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, this one courtesy of newly minted Pan-atic Abby Flores and her review blog, Bookshelf Confessions:

“Blood Feud is packed with comedy, horror, romance, paranormal urban fantasy, gothic themes and lots of hunting adventure that would surely bury its story on your mind. One of the best books I’ve read in paranormal urban fantasy.”

Since Abby is based in the Philippines, this obviously means that the Power of Zwieback can now be felt clear across the world!  😉

Read the entire review by clicking on the Bookshelf Confessions logo.

Boston Comic Con is This Weekend!

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The 2012 Boston Comic Con is being held April 21–22 at the Hynes Convention Center, in the Back Bay area of Boston, Massachusetts. With a nurses convention, the Yankees playing the Red Sox, and the 100th anniversary celebration of the Red Sox’ baseball home, Fenway Park, all going on at the same time, it’s gonna be one insanely busy weekend in Beantown!

Regardless, you’ll find me in the BCC Artists’ Alley at Table 106 (AA106), manning the StarWarp Concepts post; just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. On sale will be copies of Blood Feud, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars, and The Bob Larkin Sketchbook, as well as the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt. I’ll also be handing out Pandora Zwieback bookmarks—while supplies last, of course.

Boston Comic Con runs from 10 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The Hynes Convention Center is located at 900 Boylston Street.

For more information, head over to the Boston Comic Con Web site. Just click on the logo up top. Hope to see you at the show!

New York Comic Book Marketplace Tomorrow

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The 2012 New York Comic Book Marketplace is being held this coming Saturday, March 31, at the Penn Plaza Pavilion at the Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan (across 7th Avenue from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden). Stan “The Man” Lee is the guest of honor—but more important, StarWarp Concepts will be there, too!

You’ll find us in Artists’Alley; just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. On sale will be copies of Blood Feud, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars, and The Bob Larkin Sketchbook, as well as the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt. I’ll also be handing out Pandora Zwieback bookmarks—while supplies last, of course.

The New York Comic Book Marketplace runs from 10 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on March 31, and admission is $10. The Hotel Pennsylvania is located at 401 Seventh Avenue, between 32nd and 33rd Streets.

For more information, head over to the NYCBM Web site.

StarWarp Concepts’ 2012 Convention Season Starts This Weekend

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The annual gathering of the Institute of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction—hosted by Blood Moon Rising magazine—is being held this coming Saturday, March 24, at the main branch of the Queens Public Library, in Flushing (just a few blocks from Main Street—the final stop on the #7 train—and smack in the middle of the borough’s own Chinatown). Not only will I be manning the StarWarp Concepts table, but I’ll be doing my first public reading of Blood Feud. (Now that’s terrifying!)

On sale will be copies of Blood Feud, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars, and The Bob Larkin Sketchbook, as well as the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt. I’ll also be handing out Pandora Zwieback bookmarks—while supplies last, of course. The print version of the free Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 introductory comic won’t be available, unfortunately—I’ve burned through its 3,000-copy run (so where are the sales?!). At the moment, I’m still debating whether or not to go back to press (three thousand 16-page, full-color freebies don’t come cheap, after all).

After this weekend, on March 31st The ’Warp will be appearing at the New York Comic Book Marketplace—more details on that next week—and then in April we’ll be heading back to Beantown for the Boston Comic Con. For us, the 2012 convention season has officially begun! Check out the Events listing for all our upcoming appearances and come out and see us, if you get the chance.

The Institute of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction runs from noon to 5:00 p.m. on March 24, and admission is free. The Queens Library is located at 41-17 Main Street, in Flushing.

For more information, head over to the Blood Moon Rising Web site.

Writing: Musical Influences: “Fiend Club”

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So, picking up where we left off in the February 27th post, we’ve been discussing influences on the writing of the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud. Last time I talked about how the Horrorpops song “MissFit” became Pan’s anthem. Now we get to the introduction of her gothy friends.

There’s a scene in chapter 21 in which Pan and her friends do a little song-and-dance number for videographer Tim Merrick (whose day job is working as an assistant to David Zwieback, owner of the storefront museum Renfield’s House of Horrors and Mystical Antiquities). When I started writing that scene, the first horror-related tune that popped into my head was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” A classic 1980s pop hit, with a good beat and lyrics, and Vincent Price rapping—what better song for Pan to launch into?

Yeah, okay, it was too easy a musical choice, and way too mainstream a tune for Goths, but I was trying to find a way to make a transition between a scene in Renfield’s, during which Pan has lovingly bullied her father into retrieving her makeup kit from his car, and the dance number on the museum’s basement steps. As originally written, it went like this:

The door swung shut behind him, and Pan turned to face Tim. He looked highly amused. “What?”

Tim shrugged. “Just couldn’t help noticing you got him trained well.”

“Of course.” Pan flashed a wicked grin. “And now, Timothy,” she intoned in her deepest, most ominous voice, “at last you know the true power of being Daddy’s Little Girl…”

*          *          *

“ ’Cause this is Thrillllerrrrr!” Pan wailed, head thrown back, as she and the crew sang along with Michael Jackson and danced on the steps leading to the museum’s basement floor.

In movie terminology, I saw the transition as a smash cut: an abrupt jump from one scene to the next—in this case, everyday Pan giving her best sinister smile instantly changing into glammed-up Pan singing her heart out as the “camera” pulls back to show her and her friends on the stairs. (If you’ve been following these posts, you already know how I tend to “see” the scenes I write in cinematic angles.)

But then one night I downloaded the latest episode of Rue Morgue Radio (a great online, F-bomb-loaded radio-style show that stopped broadcasting in January 2012 after seven years, but you should definitely check out their archives). One of the first songs that the host, Tomb Dragomir, played was a track from the Misfits’ 1999 album Famous Monsters: “Fiend Club”—and I suddenly realized that Pan & Co. had a much better song to perform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5TgEU4f_eY

We won’t pretend that this is the end
We’re not losers all of the time
We march and we fall
We’re one and for all
It’s just evil all of the time
All the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

You dress so messed up
Your hair is too long
But I’m changing it all of the time
We march and we fall
We’re one and for all
It’s just evil all of the time
All the time
Evil all the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

Evil all the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

We are the fiend club

Not exactly a song you can choreograph a dance number to—well, not unless it includes a lot of violent head banging—but I thought, what a great anthem that would make for Pan and her friends: united in their weirdness, and proud of it. So, out went the King of Pop and in came a far more appropriate band (who are horror fans themselves).

FYI: The actual Fiend Club is the Misfits’ fan club. You can find it here.

Blood Feud E-Sales: The Post-Mortem

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So, how did StarWarp Concepts do with their $1.00 Blood Feud e-book sale over at Smashwords, during the Read an E-Book Week promotion? Head on over to the SWC blog and read the outcome.

Then come back here later this week, as we get back to discussing the inspirations behind the writing of Pan’s first adventure. It’ll be fiend-tastic!