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Any one that signs up to be a beta demon before the actually beta-release of the books is e-printed.
Lots of people have put their names in various topics.
I will search through the forums and grab the emails of everyone that wants to be a beta demon.
I will then send them a confirmation email with a link to become a betademon. If they have changed their mind or are two busy, then they simply don’t follow the link. Nothing worse will happen to them than a case of boils that won’t ever go away.
I have reserved time with the editor starting July 1st. Assuming she stays on schedule, I’ll be sending her the semi-final book then.
So I am hoping for three weeks for beta. All major issues/changes should be resolved by then.
However, I still expect to get feedback on and off with people in July. If we discover late problems, we deal. We can deal up until publication deadline.
I just don’t want to change stuff that the editor has already edited if it can be avoided.
Technically, I can change the ebook at any time, but Dead Tree versions are what they are at the point someone buys them. So I don’t like changing what’s been published significantly (e.g. only ‘bugs’ should be fixed after publication)
The Second Edition is coming next week!
Main time constraint is the Dead Tree Format and Galley process….
Here is a sneak peak at the new cover
[img=http://www.astlan.net/Portals/9/DOA_ITA_2d_Ed_Preview_1.jpg]Into the Abyss, Second Edition[/img]
Image is by Jacob Atienza or [url=http://jubjubjedi.deviantart.com/]jubjubjedi[/url]
The image is set, the text and bar at top can be changed/rearranged if people have suggestions.
Here is a second version
[img=http://www.astlan.net/Portals/9/DOA_ITA_2d_Ed_Preview_2.jpg]Into the Abyss, Second Edition[/img]
Update 6/7 Here is a no bar at the top edition
[img=http://www.astlan.net/Portals/9/DOA_ITA_2d_Ed_Cover_Text_3_med.jpg]Into the Abyss, Second Edition[/img]
Hi,
So I am thinking to change the blurb on the back of the book/in the amazon store to update it for the 2nd edition.
A number of people have mentioned being hesitant about the description in various reviews.Not completely sure why, but in some cases I think it’s the ‘demon weed’ stuff. So thinking to somewhat deemphasize that.
Here is a revised blurb. I am open to new blurb suggestions from you guys if anyone wants to try writing one.
—————————————
[quote]
Tom Perkinje, High School Student, Gamer, Geek, Nerd, Fanboy, New Kid in Town.Tom and his mother were looking for a new start after his mother and stepfather divorced. Tom was determined to get a new reputation in school, to have friends for a change, to have a life outside of books, comics, video games; to leave the dice behind. Thus when Paul invited him to a party, he jumped at the chance to come and meet new people beyond his three new friends Paul, Jack and Reggie.
What he had not planned on doing was succumbing to peer pressure and trying pot; he was not about to become a stoner. But Paul convinced him to try some new stuff that Reggie had just gotten in Manhattan from a rather shady character in a back alley.
And was that stuff ever strong; too strong, too weird. Whatever the joint was, it wasn’t normal weed. It took only a few hits before Tom was having a crazy out of body experience involving colored lights and being able to see the rest of the party down a long tunnel.
Now that was strange and scary, but the crazy part was that he wasn’t alone! There were voices that were calling him, calling him to come to them.Long story short, the voices belonged to a group of myopic wizards who had mistaken him for a demon! They wanted to summon him; to bind him as their slave! Tom put up a fight, but they fought back even harder and succeeded in ripping him from his world into theirs; binding him as a demon slave to an egomaniac named Lenamare.
And why had these deranged wizards summoned him? Well it turns out they were about to go to war with another wizard, and they needed a secret weapon: Tom!Tom had always laughed at the idea that ‘the demon weed’ was a ‘gateway drug’ but whatever Reggie’s joints were, they were definitely a ‘gateway’ drug.
_________________________________Jenn was a journeyman Thaumaturge at Lenamare’s Academy of Wizardry. School was a living hell. Oh, she was learning a lot, thanks to Master Trisfelt, but the Head Master and Head Mistress were insufferable egomaniacs. Head Mistress Jehenna seemed bent on making Jenn miserable with her unrealistic demands and eviscerating criticism.
If this was not bad enough, the Head Master, Lenamare, had gone and got in a squabble with another wizard, Exador, and now Exador was marching his army on the school.
And to top it off, during what was supposed to be a routine classroom demonstration on demon summoning, Lenamare and the class had stumbled upon what they had thought was a minor demon and tried to bind it.
Unfortunately, it was definitely NOT a minor demon. It was a Greater Demon, something so powerful and Evil that they were almost never conjured onto the Planes of Man. Naturally being Lenamare, Lenamare insisted on trying to bind it to his will so he could use it to destroy Exador and his army.
So the question was: Would Exador’s army ravage and kill her, or would the school’s newest defense consume her immortal soul? [/quote]
I reread a lot, some books probably 10 times, when I was young and broke and writers weren’t writing fast enough there was no choice.
But the trip down memory lane was also part of the way I decided what to reread. actually that was often what spurred the trips, looking for something that needed a refresh.
Unfortunately, today my motto has become: If you have time to read, you have time to write…so stop reading, start writing!
So I very seldom reread any more. I don’t have enough time to even get through my first read queue.
The manner of Golems living together in a manor…that’s on this site only, in the library correct?
I am not finding anything on Golems in the book 1 appendices (I never remember what is where).
2nd Edition is basically just awaiting a cover from the artist. I need to kick him into gear…
I am getting there on book 2, I keep saying one more week…but stuff has kept coming up…but not too far off now.
Thanks for the corrections on the site it’s very helpful!
The Jötnar ones are actually new, freshly written live yesterday based on back story for book 2. So that’s what I’d call a “live” error.
Most of the other errors you might see on the site are things that have been around for quite some while and have been migrated multiple times to various formats and are things I’ve read so many times, I am no longer even capable of seeing the errors.
A lot of the library was in Ami Pro, then Lotus Word Pro, then in html on the original http://www.astlan.COM site (that I failed to renew fast enough and it got stolen by squatters that want multiple kilodollars to get it back) which was a FrontPage website and from there it went to Word DOC and then Word DOCX and now into DNN.
No you misread what I was answering.
You were talking about video games of 60’s and 70’s, and computer RPG’s. My point was, RPG computer games started with text and ascci, these are the beginning of the logic engines and game AI’s. Nothing to do with art. Art at that time was pong and block graphics. By the advent of the Apple II and VIC 20 you started to see actual computer video games worthy of the name, and the first real ones with the Comodore 64. Atari, Apple II+, IIe and PC’s in the early to mid 80’s. Circa Ultima I. Artistic quality came much later with better video cards.
We also get back to the same question of quality. Many of these early to mid 80’s games had poor video quality and were clunky do to limitations of the day, but they had some seriously good storylines and game play. Much better than the sort of video game schlock you were complaining about. So for example, yeah, they looked crappy by today’s standards, but were really cool at the time, and a lot of their stories were excellent. We hadn’t gotten to the point yet, where “almost anyone with some bucks” could create one of these games and churn out bad stuff.
Not to say there weren’t bad ones, there were, by the late 80’s there were a lot, but not quite to the scale we have today.
By all means submit cover art suggestions!
If I end up with multiple options I will be requesting feedback from beta users as to what to use.
If the cover ends up being used on the book there will be compensation.
I’d also love to have multiple options for displaying on this site and for advertising the book on Tumblr and Facebook.
It gets boring showing the same cover in every ad/post for the book. And for Facebook and Tumblr different artwork will attract different people.
One of my goals in fact is to make Astlan.net something of a community center. As momentum for the books picks up, I want a place to showcase Fan Art and Fan Fiction should people be interested in writing it.
In fact, a lot of what the library is for is to provide background information for people to write their own stories in the localverse (Astlan and nearby planes with the same Laws of Magic) or maybe inspire artwork…
FYI Everyone in the beta program, and anyone submitting artwork before/during beta (before publication) will get credit in the front matter of the book.
Exactly!
I remember back in the old days, when a) I read faster than I could actually buy books and b) books were rectangular 3 dimensional objects that you had to physically place on shelves and they occupied space…
I would sometime sit in front of my book cases and take a trip down memory lane by pulling a book out and using the cover (and back cover) to pull back my memories of the book and the story to sort of watch a ‘memory trailer’ of the book to remind me of the story and why I liked it, or didn’t like it.
Tizzy and I are about the same age…
You will find out in book ii, he is more than 5,000 years old (or at least so he will claim)
On Exador:
It wasn’t a huge contingent (about 15-20%), but nobody but Lenamare and his school saw it.
However it wouldn’t necessarily be foul unless there were undead. It would be unsavory, and would tell you a lot about the guy’s morals, but if you look at what he did in Abancia….or rather his ancestor did…that question was already answered.
Orcs are legitimate members of society, humans tend to consider them barbarians, brigands, thieves and rogues, but they are more often nomadic tribes doing there things and a lot of them are sell swords/mercenaries. They are just more likely to take unsavory jobs. The Dok Sidhe—this sort of depends on which Dok Sidhe, but there is no law against being a drow, you will probably get in a lot of bar fights. And while nobody really sees them much in human cities, unless they are making trouble or have an army they have as much right to be there as anyone else; they aren’t really “monsters” like say a dragon or a manticore or a gorgon. (some sub-races are though)
We will encounter more non humans, but most are still somewhat anthropomorphic if they are people we talk to, e.g. satyrs, centaurs, dryads, nymphs, elves, gnomes, there are some true non-humans that will show up and are named characters, not sure how much of their society I can get to. Not sure if the Denubians will show up by the end, or if that’s book iii. They are definitely non-human.
Trust the ancient one in the room.
They made a LOT of crappy stuff in the old days. In particular before my time, there were tons of really amazingly bad science fiction movies.
See MST3K if you doubt this. (yes even that is old now days) Same for Horror.
I think the important thing to keep in mind is that SF/Fantasy stuff goes in waves. It was really huge in the post world war II, pre-Vietnam era as people looked to the future optimistically and fearfully thanks to the bomb. And they made a ton of stuff. Most of it horrible. It was also done on the cheap.
During the 70’s and 80’s they did far less, but what they did, they did better. But there were still plenty of crappers. Logan’s Run, great story so so show. Then lots of bad sequels etc. (Star Trek: The Search for God–or whatever it was called)
And now days, they do more than ever before, both due to huge box office and huge gaming audiences, but also due to Netflix and Amazon, you can get movies out their cheap. Same with game distribution on the Internet vs a software store.
The problem is there are only so many good stories, good writers, good directors to go around. With time you can cultivate more and train them, but in the meantime you have a mad rush to cash in on something that’s popular and you get a lot of mediocrity.
This applies to big box office and to independent things. I don’t think budget is so much the issue other than too big or too small. Too big a budget and there get to be too many Chef’s in the kitchen, too small a budget and you can’t pull off the vision or hire good people to do it.
Anyway, I am losing track of my theme. The reason that there is so much “crappy stuff” today is that there is just so much more of it than there had been for the 70’s 80’s and 90’s. But go back before that and there was massive amounts of schlock.
The talent pool for good stuff is only so big at a time, if demand exceeds the size of the talent pool, lesser qualified people get involved, and this may very well be at the higher levels who over manage/destroy talented people at the lower levels.
OK, back.
Actually Rosver, there is much much more discussion of Armies of Evil in Book II. it’s actually very important to the story line.
It’s just that Exador’s army was more of an Army of Evil Lite. He had his regiments of unsavory, but it was mostly human. Exador being an arch demon basically can only have “Armies of Evil” by definition, however, he’s masquerading as a human so he’s gotta take it easy. Plus he’s been building up “conventional forces” for centuries.
Also an Army of Evil is the focal point of another book I am working on, set in an Astlan like world (same multiverse), tentatively called the “Dying of the Light” it’s sort of a Glenn Cook style thing but with a different focus.
It was a table RPG–like Dungeons and Dragons etc—this was pre MMPORG and pre-Doom. We are talking Shadowrun, Ultima I,II,II.., Final Fantasy 1, 2, maybe 3….for computer RPG’s
What’s funny though is that even in that day, when most RPG’s had limited black and white crappy art (pre WarHammer) we knew that we needed art, more than most, so the guy I was writing with started soliciting all sorts of art from students at the local art school. It was mostly b&w art because we assumed b&w printing of the books with a glossy color cover/back. Then WarHammer came along a took game art to the next level beyond what we could afford to do.
I have written some simple video games, but I’m actually a boring programmer in that I mainly write business applications for companies and do data driven websites.
