Chaz Interviewed by Marcie Turner

Recently, Chaz was featured over at Marcie Turner's To Read or Not to Read blog. The article covers writing, characters, illustration, comic books, and more. Marcie seems very open to showcasing new writers and doesn't just ask the same old set of questions to everyone - if you fancy, drop her a line. Sure she would love to hear from you.

You can read the whole Question & Answer feature here.

Freebies and Promotion: A Few Thoughts

So our recent experiments with Amazon Kindle's free promo service has come to an end - wherein we offered most of our Kindle novels and comic books for free for a limited time to see what kind of effect it would have on sales.

Boy, were we overwhelmed! - shifting over 700 copies in only a few days, and also securing our first ever 'sales' in foreign territories. In fact, we reached out to all of the Amazon European sister sites: .de, .es, .it and even .fr all accounted for a significant number, though it's fair to say that they were mostly our comic books, rather than the prose works - graphic works will always cross cultural boundaries better than the purely written word, although quite what they may make of the peculiarly British humour of Arf and Mo is anyone's guess...

It's been an interesting time, in which we saw our books briefly chart very high on the Amazon Free Kindle lists, with our comic books both reaching the top spots in all their categories. Seeing our books at the No. 1 ranking was quite a buzz. And as a 'loss leader', our free offer for Maranatha has already sparked some interest in the pay-for prequel, Venus in Saturn. It's also made Chaz think about the idea of producing something to be offered permanently for free on the Kindle store - perhaps a collection of shorter works, or a novella of some sort (he does, after all, have a good many ideas of all sorts floating around the place).

In short, it's been a fascinating experiment, and opens up a very interesting future for FWB and its products. You may recall a post on this very blog not all that long ago where Chaz basically discounted the whole idea of the Kindle book reader as having any real impact on the publishing world any time soon - well, he's more than happy to revise that view now, seeing how times have well and truly changed!

No doubt we'll continue to pick up the long-term effects of this promotional period for some time to come. Interesting times, as they say.

More Summer Freebies!

As part of the current Fenriswulf Books 'summer of Freebies' (i.e, testing the waters with Amazon's new promotional services), we're giving away - for nothing - the first issue of Arf and Mo in Kindle format. The promo lasts throughout 8th July and ends on the 10th at midnight Pacific Standard Time.

US readers can grab their copy right here.

You can also pick up, for a limited time only (throughout the 8th and 9th July), The Black Flag graphic novel for exactly £0.00! Don't delay - snatch one up today!

Over the last week or so we've given away hundreds of copies of 'Maranatha' and Episode 1 of 'Sundancer's Regret' - even managing to shift our very first foreign copies on Amazon.de! - so it's been a rather interesting exercise in getting our material out there.

Ring-a-Ding-Ding

Chaz may not have posted much here on the FWB blog lately but that doesn't mean he's been slacking. Quite the opposite. Not just being kept busy with ongoing client commissions, he's still been working away in his spare time on his new radical retelling of the epic Ring cycle. A recent rib injury his stifled output in the past week or so but he still managed to pull together some digital colouring over the weekend, using a mouse rather than his usual pen tablet.

So here's a rough colour mock-up of the proposed cover for the first book in the 'Ring' series of graphic fiction. The title is rubbish, as this work doesn't even have a proper title yet, but it gives a great idea of how the finished thing should look. This series will be seeing print as wellm as digital release, as all the interior artwork is in stark black and white only, so ought not to cost too much (even at Lulu.com's prices).

"Boys Don't Cry" by Ostragoth Publishing

Fenriswulf Books are always happy to help any fellow writers, creators and artists in the self-published and independent world of books and graphic novels. Herein Chaz is proud to present an offering from some fellow creators which he felt was deserving of a little extra publicity:



Teenage boys aren't known for sharing their fears and emotions, so if you're the father or sister of one, how do you know how he’s coping with his mum's death?

Fifteen year old Hunter isn't entirely sure himself, and even if he could put any of it into words, he no longer knows who to say it to.

"Boys Don't Cry" is the debut 80-page graphic novel from Ostragoth Publishing: Jacqueline Saville, Mark Pexton, Andrew Woods. Jacqueline is a sensitive writer, and Chaz has long been admirer of Mark Pexton's dark and beautifully detailed artworks on the Deviantart.com website. Andrew Woods is responsible for everything else, including layout and design, and has helped to bring together two fine creative talents in this (and other) projects. "Boys Don't Cry" is a well known song by the English goth/rock band The Cure, and the music of that band would make a fitting soundtrack.

Proof, if ever any was needed now, that 'comics', 'graphic novels' and 'illustrated fiction' are no longer the clearly defined genres that many believe them to be, "Boys Don't Cry" is something of a unique and beautifully emotive experience, laced with Mark's delicate yet incredibly naturalistic pencil lineart, and complimented by an exquisitely-wrought text. This is a low-key and intelligent work of art which is as unrelated to the worlds of vapid superheroes and other traditional comic-book trappings as is possible to find, and Chaz thoroughly recommends it to anyone who appreciates good art and writing. Even people who hate comic books.

"Boys Don't Cry" can be downloaded for free here - available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, where the print version is also available for £6.99. Their latest comic, 'Moon of Endine', can also be purchased from that page.

The free download is also available free from the Ostragoth Wordpress site, right here.

There's also an author's blog post about the book, right here.

The Wish & the Will Continues

Due mainly to the long-term holdup with Lulu's ISBNs, Chaz got cracking on with the steampunk fantasy serial...and has rather forgotten how to stop. Episode 3 is now well under way, with a good number of illustrations for that, and the fourth and final episode now in the bag. The entirety of Book 1: Sundancer's Regret will, at this rate, be completed inside the next couple of months. In truth, Chaz is enjoying working on this project immensely, and we hope this shows in the final product. Episode 1 is due out on Kindle in the near future, inspired by recent sales of Maranatha and The Black Flag (the latter which was seen to be sitting at #82 in the top #100 for Graphic Novels in the sci-fi and fantasy categories last week!)

However, due to the limitations of that platform, it has had to be shorn of all the full-colour illustration work which has become such an integral part of the stories - however, the complete, unexpurgated versions are always available from this very website, in PDF format. Just click on the WatW banners on the left.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the sneak preview image from the fourth episode of Sundancer's Regret. There'll be many more to come soon...

'The Black Flag' Flies on Amazon Kindle

Chaz originally submitted his first full-length graphic novel to Amazon's Kindle program back in December, then promptly forgot all about it during that period of the lousiest weather ever, becoming officially self-employed, and doing lots and lots of commission works while stuck in the house.

In the meantime, 'The Black Flag' has shifted a respectable number of copies both on the UK and the US Amazon sites - something Chaz was very pleased and surprised to discover tonight. Now that the Kindle project appears to be bearing some fruit, this is definitely a medium into which Fenriswulf Books will be planning more releases in the future (despite some of Chaz's earlier dismissive comments regarding the future of the e-book reader...well, times do change!)

Channeling the likes of 2000 AD's Slaine through the mythical Irish background of the Morrigan and the Battle of Magh Tuireadh, 'The Black Flag' pushes the notion of a Celtic revolutionary underground through a darkly futuristic vision of the British Isles. Anti-heroine Georgina Buadach Macdubhgaill invokes the myths of the good gods of ancient Ireland to bring blood and battle to the streets of London...and in the process, draws another cycle of history to a brutal conclusion.

Here's the link for UK Kindle shoppers.

And for US Kindle shoppers.

The Wish & the Will Comes Alive on Facebook

While the silence in the Lulu.com corner continues to be deafening, Chaz is continuing work on the surreal fantasy digital e-book series, 'The Wish & the Will' (which at least doesn't require ISBNs to get out there). The series has already attracted some interest and sold a few downloads, so Chaz is understandably keen to keep the momentum going.

As such, he has recently decided to set up a fully interactive and in-character Facebook group for readers and interested parties:

The Facebook Group is here.

Currently the principal five characters are in the process of bickering among themselves as they struggle to get acquainted with the wonders of social networking, and take each other to task both on matters related to events in the books, and elsewhere. If time allows, Chaz hopes to expand the cast of Facebook personalities to include 'bad guy' individuals and even some of the strange and sinister Daemonlords who rule the fantasy world of Middengarth.

The Sword of Lochglen continues...

Chaz & Frang's surreal Scottish satire sees the release of Issue 2, both in print and in downloadable digital format. Wherein our hero William Stanley MacFaddyen realises he has fallen hopelessly in love with his tutor, Dr. Jeanette Mackenzie, and finds a finds a serious obstruction to his romantic ambitions in the form of her stoic and snobbish husband, Gregor.

Deciding to use the grim facts of his life as fuel for his fantasy fiction, MacFaddyen casts those around him as the heroes and villains in his epic novel, 'The Sword of Lochglen'. As reality begins to blur, life begins to get very complicated indeed...

You can pick up a copy of Issue 1 or 2, or read more, at the Lochglen homepage.

Of Swords, and Other Tools of Mayhem...

The second issue of 'The Sword of Lochglen' comic series is now just about to be released! The cover is a true collaboration between Chaz and Frang, with Frang pencilling the whole thing and doing much of the inking and colouring. As a result, 'Lochglen' now has its own dedicated webpage, located here. Currently we're only awaiting the arrival of the first set of proof issues from Lulu.com (which with the current weather could take us into 2011...though I seriously hope not!). Once the proofs have been approved, then the direct link to buy a download, or a print copy will become active on the Lochglen homepage.

Speaking of which, it appears that Lulu are current working on some new APIs to improve the digital commerce side of their services - out of all the new improvements, the addition of a 'shopping cart' for creators to place on their websites looks like the most useful so far.

In other news, Fenriswulf has now made it onto Facebook. The profile page is here, where we're looking forward to meeting lots of interesting people, and sharing opinions on comics, books and other things.