A Warm Fuzzy Feeling Inside!

No, Chaz hasn't been eating Vindaloo curry or drinking ginger wine again. But he did check his bank statement recently and found that he had been paid a small amount of money from a cheque he took to his bank last month...

A rather special cheque, as it happens, as this was his first ever royalty cheque, courtesy of Lulu.com! The sum was a princely $20 US and serves to illustrate how little a creator makes at Lulu if they wish to have any hope of keeping a sensible pricing structure on their books and other products.

The problem was, he couldn't pay it straight into his business account - the bank charges for that would have been more than the cheque was worth! - but by some jiggery-pokery arranged by the very helpful staff in his local branch, he managed to pay it into his personal account and only got hit for £7-odd charges for cashing a cheque in a foreign currency. But 50% of a cheque is better than -10% and besides, it's the symbolism of the thing which counts.

Ironically it's also likely to be his last cheque from Lulu too, having parted company with them for print completely, and only keeping on the fully-illustrated editions of The Wish and the Will, which at present are too big and colourful to be accommodated on Amazon's kindle platform.

Maybe in a few years' time he can expect to find a royalty cheque in the post from Kindle, too...

The Wish & the Will: An Illustrated Excerpt

Presenting a recent illustration for the epic fantasy series, episode 3 of which is due out soon...a Karityldian warrior chief of the tribe of people to whom one of the heroes, Captain Ssorg, belongs. The Karityldians are native to the mountains and jungles of Garuda, and their story is not unlike that of the Zulu nation at the hands of the British in the 19th C. The following excerpt is from a field guide published after one of the earliest expeditions to the Karityldian homeland...



Karityldians: A singular and quite abominable reptilian race to be found in the jungles of the North-Eastern Outlands, sufficiently far enough from the hub of our great civilisation to prevent offence to our refined sensibilities. Their primitive hunter/gatherer society could benefit from several thousand seasons' worth of contact with our own infinitely superior culture. Central to their society is the ludicrous belief that they are somehow superior to other races by virtue of their great antiquity and adherence to absurdly primitive spiritual beliefs which refer to unknowable, unseen beings referred to as “gods”. In short: I humbly propose to their Daemonlordships that an expedition be launched to exterminate these monstrosities and claim their mountainous jungle lands in the name of Middengarth's Geological and Surveying Society.

-From Notes on the Peculiarities of Diverse Races of Middengarth, And Why Gnoems are Better than All of Them by Grath Galladon, Gnoem first generation explorer

Text and art (c) Chaz Wood, 2011. All rights reserverd.

Writing For Fun, Profit and Other Reasons...

Another guest post from Chaz - this time, over at Natasha Larry's Paranormal Wire page.

This was a little piece discussing the relative merits (and otherwise) of commercial writing, writing for personal pleasure, and whither the twin may met.

Read the full article here!

Thanks to Natasha for having me. Check out her page and her friends while you're over there!

To Illustrate...or Not to Illustrate?

Chaz has a new guest blog article, 'A Problem in Promotion' over at Rainy Dark's writers' and bloggers' page. In it, he addressed the nature of illustrated fiction, and the preconceptions surrounding it, an issue which is very pertinent to Fenriswulf Books at the moment. The Wish & the Will series is being produced both in text-only and fully-illustrated e-book editions, while Maranatha has just seen its second revised edition, without the original illustrations.

The article ought to be of interest to any writer who is considering illustrations for their works, or anyone with a passing interest in the concept of illustrated fiction, as distinct from the more common 'graphic novels'.


Read the full post here.


Left: illustrated page from Episode 1 of The Wish & the Will: Sundancer's Regret

Labels, Genres, and Pigeonholes...

Chaz recently contributed an article on the use and value of labels, genres and pigeonholes in promoting and publicising fiction to a friend's blog. The post addresses general issues of promotion, and also deals with his current progress in determining exactly how to promote the 'Wish & the Will' fantasy series - specifically, how far one should go in making use of sub-genres and categories to reach one's target audience.

Read the full article here and show Julieanne some support on her page while you're there!

Book Reviews: Chaz's Views

Chaz just got another guest article featured over at Erin o'Riordan's 'Pagan Spirits' blog - all about the value of reviews for writers (with just a hint of personal experience thrown in).

Read the whole post here.

We hope you find something there of interest. Be sure to check out the rest of Erin's pages while you're there!