Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Happy Launch Day

Today is the day. April 8th! All the pre-orders were bundled off to their owners and now, you too can buy Dwarves in Space and read it right this very second.

http://www.amazon.com/Dwarves-Space-S-E-Zbasnik/dp/1508400350/

If you need any more convincing or to visit the wacky world, you can type dwarvesinspace.com into that little ol' browser and see it.

Or you can click this link here. That might be easier.

Dwarves in Space!
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Saturday, April 4, 2015

Surprise!

So, April caught me a bit by surprise. I already knew Dwarves in Space would drop on the 8th. I've been watching that calendar like a fifth tier Batmam villain.

To tie in with all that promo stuff, a few weeks back I asked if I could do a guest post at Nerdy but Flirty (which I would have mentioned if I weren't trapped under the worst migraine I've ever suffered. My google searches from that day are: "head replacement" "do it yourself brain surgery" "play-doh as brain substitute").

The editor offered me a chance to write regularly for the site and I thought, what the hell. I'm full of rants and goofy stuff.

Consider this the official announcement that I'll be blogging on Nerdy by Flirty.

Because that isn't enough, it's April and I'm once again plugging away at CampNaNo. I'd thought about finishing Spanish Fog (which you can read the parts I have done here), but that's a very draining book that requires all my cylinders. Instead, I'm doing a prequel to Dwarves in Space. It's set two years before the first one and involves disturbances in the galaxy, a mysterious rogue who sneaks his way onto the ship, and fire monsters.

Oh, and I've agreed to write for my first ever game. It would take forever to explain so I'll just say Nugmance and leave it at that.

And that's why you won't hear a word from me for a month.

Toodles!
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Dragon Egg Tutorial

Over the weekend my mother in law brought a few of her older halloween magazines. I flipped through them, seeing a lot of stuff I already knew, but then a small picture of a cracked egg bursting with green light caught my eye.

Perfect Dragon Egg!

I've been wanting to make a dragon skull for awhile now (and I will once I figure out the rigging. It is happening.) and you can't have a half rotted skull without some hatching eggs around. The problem is that the tutorial began with "take a plastic egg and cut into it."

Yeah, not a lot of smooth, white, plastic eggs around. Except, it is easter.

I hunted through a bunch of stores looking for any large plastic eggs people decorated their lawns with and came up empty handed until Walgreens.

The matryoshka easter egg

It cost $8 and now I have a ton of smaller plastic eggs I have no idea what to do with.

The first step was yanking off the handle. With a sharpie I drew a crack in the top part, pulled out my dremel and probably cut a year off my life from the burning plastic smell.
I also cut a small section out of the bottom for the lights. Martha's tutorial called for using a mason jar to hold the lights (which makes some sense), but the only mason jar I had as a guide was holding skittle vodka.

Got your crack? Okay, now to do something about the fact the egg falls apart at the midsection.

Enter monster mud.

Monster mud is 5 parts joint compound to 1 part latex paint. I had some left over from my monster mudding last year but it was a bit dry so I added water, more joint compound and prayed it would work.
Monster mud gives a great rocky appearance, so if you want an egg that looks like the monster is part sediment or is petrified, really glob the mud on. Due to the age of my mud it got globbed on anyway, so I sanded parts down after.

It didn't stick perfectly to the plastic of the egg, which worked in my favor as it created hairline cracks all over the place.

Once the mud dried in about a day, I painted the egg in a layer of white latex paint. This was to help seal off the joint compound in case the egg gets wet and keep it all from peeling off.
After that, it was just using alternating tans and golds to make the egg whatever color I wanted. I thought about doing something crazy like red or green, but decided I wanted it to look more like the old dinosaur eggs.
Now just stick some lights in the bottom and turn her on.
The baby is in
 I'm going to try and find a string of red lights with a battery pack. It seems the easiest way to jam it all inside the egg for Halloween. I'll also try and make a nest out of sticks, but I might get another egg or two after Easter. Mama dragon's gonna have a clutch.

 That's how to make your own dragon or dinosaur egg.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Guest Post and a Rant

Originally, I was going to just announce that I have a Guest Post over on Indies Unlimited about how played out and exhausting The Chosen One trope is. Maybe include the first paragraph with the link to read more. But then I did what every arsehole who's ever clicked opened up Internet Explorer warned against and read the comments.

Read the article and a few comments if you'd like. I'll wait. This is a rage that's set on eternal simmer.

First, I figure I need to lay down some back story. My hatred of the chosen one wasn't born in a bubble. I didn't dig a stick in the ground just to stir up controversy for book shit. (Though if you really think I'm wrong and also a super Hitler for my opinion but want to buy my book, I won't stop you.) It began, oddly enough, this past January under a plethora of ads for a movie that fast became my arch-nemesis: The Seventh Son.

It's alright if you don't remember it. That piece of shit deserves to rot in an unmarked grave. It was everything I railed against in the article. Chosen one. Mentor who can easily save the world but won't because vague reasons. Woman who's just there for love interest and eye candy. The same shit over and over and over again. You can seem like a psychic by predicting how these movies will go without having to pay one cent to see them.

But because I dared to question a trope, rattled against the mythical ivory tower, I must be wrong. After all, Harry Potter!

Let's look at Harry Potter, especially that ending. An ending that makes even the most fanatic Muggle lightly shake her head and change the subject. It's established that someone is prophesied to take down old Moldy Voldy, but not stated who. In fact, two options are presented - our titular hero who's basically good at lucking the shit out - and Neville - character that was treated at first as laughable and a joke, but who grew and strove and found his place.

And who winds up being the chosen one? Not Neville. That would have been interesting, the character who clawed his way up from nothing instead of having it handed to him like every other chosen one. That would have been new. That would have freaked people the shit out.

People just want the same shit over and over again because it's a familiar, boring blanket they can while away their years in. Oddly, I turn to the wisest quote ever to come from Fry on Futurama:
 

It's why people throw a colossal shit fit about something new, why publishers cranked out thousands of Harry Potter and then Twilight clones. People say they think outside the box, but when you open the door for them they glare at the outside world and curl up in their safe haven. The same is comfort, it's safety, it's boring as shit and that's why they like it.

But this isn't just about people who like tropes but can't admit it. There's something else at play that's like rubbing a cheese grater against my nerves, then dousing it all in lemon juice.

You probably noticed, despite keeping my name androgynous I had to use an author photo revealing my gender and also the gender of the first commenter who had to say I was wrong, then restate the same shit I already did.

Yup.

It doesn't matter what evidence I provide, what examples I hold up, how well I form an argument, Johnny cum Dickhole only needs to trounce his way into the argument and, by dint of his dick, have his words given a gravitas a woman's can't.

This is such a well documented phenomenon that I shouldn't have to prove it, but I know, I'm a silly girl and you can't really believe me. How about starting here? That'll lead you to a dozen articles you can claim ownership of as you insist all the authors are wrong.

Believe me, women are used to it. There a damn good reason Cassandra - who can predict the future but no one believes - is female. All women feel like Cassandra at one point in their lives.

Women are taught their word is nothing. Any man, no matter how ignorant of the subject or life in general, is looked to as a beacon of expertise. The woman holding a doctorate in the subject is thought to be acting "hysterical" and "overreacting" for correcting him.

I'm so fucking sick of it. Sick of being talked down to, talked over, treated like I have the mind of a child when I just ran mental laps around the mouth attached to a dick.

I have no idea what the solution is. Boys are still taught from the day they hit the ground that girls are lesser, female things aren't as good as male, that a woman's word means nothing next to a man's. This is epidemic to the point people can't even see the problem, don't want to see it, and certainly won't come out of their cozy bubble to try and fix it.

Anyway, my point is Chosen One tropes are fucking stupid and no one should use them.
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Monday, March 23, 2015

Free Book Promo Sites!

One of the big pieces of advice for book marketing is to regularly have deep discounts or give your book away for free.

Amazon makes that pretty easy (provided you jump through their monopoly hoops) with their Kindle Countdowns and Selects, but how many people will take you up on your deals? How can you get it out there that this book is super free for a day?

Like everything in the book world, you can pay people to advertise you're giving something away for free. There is a huge list of sites here, many of which charge anywhere from $10 - $100s.

Because I'm still trying to keep as cost effective as possible, I went through that never ending list and found sites that are totally free to submit to. It doesn't mean all will be accepted, but you don't have to pay anything up front to list it.

Free Books - Only works for books that are totally free:

Discounted Books - Usually from $1.99 - $0.99 are accepted

Most take free as well

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NO8SB1K
I haven't trolled the massive list of facebook groups yet because my book just went free today. If you want some twisted fairy tales for free, you can download And They Lived right now.

This is my trial run before I jump fully into Dwarves in Space promos, though there will be one coming up for The King's Blood in a month.

It takes awhile to fill out every single promo site (I spend a long Sunday afternoon wishing I was doing anything else) and you'll have to sign up for every stupid newsletter out there, but hopefully it'll help spread the word about free books a bit better than just a single twitter link.


Go forth and promo that book until you're sick of looking at it!
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