'The Sword and the Ring' - Book One

The culmination of over 20 years of scribbling, sketching and writing, the first volume in 'The Sword and the Ring' series has just been released in its first print edition. Some of the finished artwork was first conceived while I was still at high school, and the idea of a full-length illustrated fantasy inspired by old Norse myths has been around for longer.

The first volume, 'Of Gods and Gold', is roughly equivalent to the 'Rheingold' prelude to Wagner's Ring Cycle - a short-ish overture to the epic drama which will follow. Characters of my own creation rub shoulders with gods and heroes of legend, while the familiar core plotline remains recognisable and intact. Darkly humorous, and maintaining the usual FWB sense of quirkiness, a Kindle edition may follow if I can figure out how to keep the rather intricate formatting.

"Since the dawn of the Nine Worlds, the gods of Asgard, led by all-wise Wotan, have enjoyed prosperity and power. Wotan's noble house of Aesir rules the heavens and all Middengaard, the realm of men and monsters; yet on this peaceful stage will be wrought curses, war, treachery and ultimately, disaster. The two-faced trickster Loki, once a blood-brother of Wotan, seeks to spawn an unholy dynasty to rival the Aesir, while gold stolen from the River Rhein sets in motion a tide of torment that will drown all who come into contact with it. Sensing doom, one-eyed Wotan broods and begins to gather warriors of Middengaard to serve as his private army, while struggling to repair the growing cracks in his marriage to Fricke, and his relationship with his thirteen unruly daughters, the Valkyren..."

A New Look for Fenris...?

For a while I've been considering changing the FWB logo and coming up with a different illustration of the old Viking wolf-god for our visual identity. Not necessarily because I think the old one is lousy - I still really like it after all these years - but the FWB catalogue has branched out a lot since it was first created.

Recently, as part of work I'm doing on my epic Old Norse graphic novel/fantasy cycle, I came up with the following illustration - the goddess Hel and her two brothers, the serpent Jormungand and of course, Fenris (here depicted as a goofy cub who still has a lot of growing up left to do).

I thought about perhaps adapting the portrait of Fen here as a new look corporate ID. What do you folks think?



-Posted by Chaz

Guest Post: “Wolf Bites” by Erin O’Riordan

Introducing a brand new guest blogger this week, Erin has compiled a collection of lupine links for fans of wolfish writings, in tune with this very blog's own mascot...



'Fenriswulf is the perfect name for a publisher of quirky, eerie, dark fiction. The Norse myth of the terrifying son of Loki who is unleashed at the twilight of the gods, after his fellow wolves have devoured the sun and moon, fascinates and terrifies. Fenris even appears in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The wolves in my writing tend to be less horrifying and more sensual, but they also refuse to be leashed or tamed. In honor of fiction’s nocturnal, howling canines, I present these short bites of some of my favorite wolf tales.

“The Bella Coola Indians believed that someone once tried to change all the animals into men but succeeded in making human only the eyes of the wolf.”
-- Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men

“I noticed her when I went to the bar to refresh my Manhattan. She stared at me. Her eyes were piercing. They were green, I think. If not green, then yellow. Lupine…She wore a silvery gray dress with black spots. It must have been an animal print, because I could not (indeed, still cannot) shake the impression that she was covered in a silvery gray fur.”
-- “Animal Appetites” by Erin O’Riordan, Encounters Magazine Fall 2009

“Thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous.”
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“Badhu shook her head. ‘Hairy, with eyes the color of honey. His teeth are too large for his mouth, and sharp. He bites, and he makes wild noises. He’s one of those men who shifts between the worlds of humans and of animals. In the land where I was born, we know of men who live in the village as men, and in the forest as elephants. He is one of them, Raven. Only not an elephant, but a wolf.’ Raven snorted. ‘You sound like a Polish peasant woman, talking about werewolves. There’s no such thing. He’s just a fisherman, one who happens to like to bite.’”
-- “Fall of the Estrela” by Erin O’Riordan, Midnight Times Summer 2008

“Quand on parle du loup, on en voit la queue.” -- “Speak of the wolf and you see his tail,” French proverbial equivalent of the English “Speak of the devil”

“The most curious legend about my nautical ancestress, however, regards her third child, a boy named William, also called Guillermo after the Spanish fashion. William was born later in Rachel’s life, when she was in her forties. Family legend has it that while raiding a Portuguese slave vessel, Rachel took as her prisoner a crew member who spoke no Portuguese. His name was Milos, and he was impressed by the Portuguese from the Adriatic isle of Vis, now part of Croatia. The Croatians recognize Vis for two things: its superior fisherman, and the strange legend that claims the inhabitants of Vis are werewolves.”
-- “Olivia Going Native” by Erin O’Riordan (unpublished)

“Darling it is no joke, this is lycanthropy
The moon’s awake now with eyes wide open
My body’s craving, so feed the hungry…”
-- Shakira, “She Wolf” lyrics

" ‘I’m never too tired to cook for your kind,’ Oliver said. ‘Werewolves are my favorite customers. Do you know why?’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Because you’re omnivores. You have the sophisticated palates of modern human beings, and the raw instinctual thirst for blood of ancient predators. No ingredient is off the list. It brings out my…’ He paused, looking Natalie up and down. ‘…Creativity.’”
-- “Oliver’s Famous Clam Chowder” by Erin O’Riordan. Love Bites, Torquere Press, 2008

Video trailer for “Oliver’s Good Night Kiss:”

Guest blogger biography: An adolescence of staying up late on Fridays nights, eating junk food and watching films such as Satan’s Cheerleaders has influenced Erin O’Riordan. She reads obsessively and writes compulsively. Her favorite lycanthrope is Werewolf Flanders. Erin says, "Howl at ya girl at www.aeess.com, preferably at midnight while the moon is full." '

Many thanks for that, Erin. It was great to see something new and different.

Be sure to drop by Erin's places online, or contact her, via the following:

Visit her Pagan Spirits blog
Find Erin on Facebook
and on Twitter

Of Books, and More

Taking a break from commissions and artwork for a moment (okay, for a whole day...), Mr. Chaz decided to get back to basics and get some more Wolfish "product" out there. The old Cafepress.com shop has had a new batch of stock added, including greetings cards featuring lowbrow comic characters Arf and Mo in their first piece of merchandise their debut small-press comic of 2001 (at the Fenriswulf shop, here). This is but the beginning of what Chaz is intending to be Arf and Mo's renaissance year, with the duo's comic strips repackaged and rebound for a whole new audience (insofar as there was ever an old audience...). Art prints and other items featuring one-off characters and concepts are also up for sale there, and more will be added in months to come. The limitation of the free cafepress store is that we can only produce one design of any particular item. If sales allow, we will consider looking at a premium package but at the moment, overheads need to be kept to a minimum. I'm a bit bummed that cafepress don't have lower prices, but I'm still shopping around for the best long-term deals.

This month we notched up another couple of US sales of "Maranatha", not long before entering that same book in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel Award, a contest for unpublished and self-published works. It may not make the grade as all the supporting material for the entry was written and thrown together the night before the closing date, finding out about it only by chance while cleaning out my spam email folder. Still, never having previously considered entering any such competitions in the past, it gave me the idea of actively looking for more in future.

In other news, Mr. Frang, Fenriswulf artist and contributor to the "Surfeit of Mandrake" anthology, has joined Chaz on his commercial commision adventures due to the arrival of an unexpected, but rather welcome, deadline. So everyone has been busy with artwork of late, and the end of March may see a little relaxation and the commencement of some serious work on the Arf & Mo volume for production.

Round-Up of the Year

The recent and very unexpected failure of Borders has, of course, left its mark on Fenriswulf's current production schedule. Gone (but not forgotten) is the ashcan project - small freebie (or low-priced) paperback samples of our catalogue to date, designed to sit by tills in similar locations in-store. Once we find another bricks-and-mortar outlet for books again, this project will return. (It is in fact complete, and good to go straight to the printers - but as with all print-on-demand, I will get them printed when there is actually some possibility of demand...)

Mr. Chaz has been happily busy with drawing and illustration commissions since the Spring of this year which is why not much has been happening on the new books front, and this looks likely to continue well into next year too. Fenriswulf in general is not so much on the backburner, but rather branching out. There's a possibility of new personnel appearing on the scene before too long also, so watch this space.

A new comic strip, originally conceived as a traditional 3-panel webcomic, is also due to make an appearance somewhere in the very near future. A couple of publishing collaborations may also be on the cards in the New Year, but with nothing definite as yet, we can't say too much at this juncture. More info, of course, will be revealed as and when we have it, however, with Fenriswulf becoming at least as art-oriented now as book-oriented, we're in the process of considering some projects based on visual art - such as those listed in the experimental Cafe Press store - for example, a series of T-shirts, greetings cards, or calendars (which is looking like the most likely option so far).

In the meantime, have a good holiday and we'll see you all in the New Year for what we hope to be a busy and productive 2010.