OMG, Corey Haim is dead?
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/corey-haim-actor-has-died/?hp
Much love, Corey. Thanks for making so many awesome movies, and sorry your adult life was so rough – you deserved better.
Rex Mundi and a bunch of other comics not available on Amazon
The comics "available from these sellers" include titles from Marvel and Dark Horse, at the very least. WTF? Was there some kind of cock-up with Diamond?
Does Diamond even distribute trade paperbacks to Amazon? I really ought to know things like this...
Errr ... ?
The Red Queen
There's a saying in German: "Better to be burned out twice than to move once". I hope I never find out if that's true, but moving definitely sucks. Robyn and I just schlepped all our stuff from Queens, New York, to our new home in Northampton, Massachusetts. I owe my Dear Old Dad and my friend Kenny a huge debt for helping us pack the truck so artfully, like a gigantic 3D Tetris puzzle.
Queen Sonja #6 front cover
And a Red Sonja miniseries by moi debuts this month: Queen Sonja: The Red Queen. It's – believe it or not – a love story. We wanted to explore some of the deeper parts of Sonja's character; yes, she's the "She-Devil with a Sword", but she's also a very complex human being, and deeply wounded. A big part of love, for me, anyway, is about being vulnerable. So you're going to see some things Sonja usually keeps buried deep down bubble to the surface.
But the story's totally bad-ass and Sonja-licious, too. At least I hope so – a Sonja story in which people sit around and talk about their feelings all the time is, let's face it, a weak Sonja story.
It's five issues, Queen Sonja #6 to #10. First installment drops March 31st! There's a little interview with me on the series up at Newsarama.
Rex Mundi Turns Black
from Rex Mundi Book 2, chapter 1
It only took ten years, but Rex Mundi is finally turning a profit – today, I got my first royalty check from Dark Horse. Thanks, Dark Horse!
Specifically: thanks, Lance! Lance Kreiter is the chap at "The Horse" who handles foreign licensing. Because of him, Rex has been published in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and even Portuguese. Without the ducats from those deals, Rex would still be tens of thousands of dollars in the red.
The check actually was a lot bigger than I expected, and you know what? I'm going to give it all away, probably to Doctors Without Borders; they do amazing things in Haiti, all over the world.
And I'm not bragging about it, because it's not really my money I'm giving away. Every time someone forks over their hard-earned cash for a volume of Rex Mundi, they're directly supporting me in my little Crusade Against Reality.
So thank you, Dear Reader. Without you, Rex Mundi would have withered up and died a long time ago. Consider the donation a gift from all of us to the rest of the world.
The Real Cimmerians
click for a bigger version
So I'm working on a fantasy novel, based on my love of Norse and Celtic mythology. And heavy metal. It's called "Therial's Song".
I'm reading a book right now, by Barry Cunliffe, one of the big academic mucky-mucks when it comes to the Celts. And guess what? It turns out the Cimmerians were a real people!
Most people know the Cimmerians from Robert E. Howard; everyone's favorite barbarian, Conan, was a "Cimmerian", a vaguely Germanic/Celtic people living of the periphery of the great civilizations of Hyboria.
The real Cimmerians inhabited the Pontic Steppe, the huge expanse of plains on the northern fringe of the Black Sea. Apparently, in the dim mists of antiquity, the Scythians chased them out of their homeland, into the Danube River basin, where the mingled with the indigenous "Urnfield" culture, transmitting their advanced knowledge of horsemanship, contributing to the rise of the Halstatt culture...
...and as we all know, the Hallstatt people were the proto-Celts! In other words, the real-life Cimmerians may have contributed to the culture of the real-world Celts!
Reading about the ancient Celts is totally fascinating. Cunliffe's book is a little dry, and I wish he'd included more pictures of the stuff he discusses, but it's still a worthy read.
