C.D. Gallant King's Blog, page 30

George Cotronis Cover Art Giveaway

Published by Kraken Press, art by George Cotronis George Cotronis is currently running a competition to give away free covers on his website, and lemme tell you: Dude does awesome covers. You can see a gallery of his published works as well as premade covers currently for sale at his website www.cotronis.com. His work is weird, creepy, kinda abstract. He reminds me a little of Dave McKean,

Trick or Treat for Books (100th Post!)

Happy All-Hallow's-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve! Ah, Samhain is in the air. Smells like cheap kid's make-up, candy and rotting pumpkins. Well, that and winter. It definitely smells like Winter is Coming, but that's a story for another day. I love Halloween. As a kid I just liked dressing up, but as I've gotten older I've been drawn more and more into the spectacle and pageantry of it. I'm at an

Happy Turkey Murder Day, My Fellow Canadians!

This is going to sound like a bad 90s stand-up routine, but what's up with Canadian Thanksgiving anyway? In the US, Thanksgiving is a huge event, celebrated by massive football games (which are seemingly equivalent in pomp and circumstance to the overthrow of oppressive regimes in other countries) and murdering fellow citizens in cattle-like stampedes over cheap electronics. In Canada we

Made to Suffer: Season 2 Episode 1

On Friday night we launched a new RPG campaign, the first in a long time. This time around we're running "Zombie-World" by AJ Ferguson, a hack of Dungeon World, which itself is a variant of Apocalypse World. Anyway, the game system is not that important for our purposes here (I'm sure I'll talk more about that on Rule of the Dice in a couple of days). Right now what I want to concentrate on is

IWSG October: Wake Up, September's Over

So another month came and went. As you may have guessed, I DID NOT win the Nerdist Publishing contract. Several cools books did win, however, and you could do worse than to check them out. I ordered all of the top 5 myself, and I'm looking forward to checking them out when they drop in a couple of months. I started the month hot and heavy, still with a some shreds of hope my book my catch on.

Star Wars Composer John Williams's First Score Was a Newfoundland Film

I'm a proud Newfoundlander, born and raised. I'm also an unabashed Star Wars fan, a film which we all know would have been very different without the classic score by John Williams. So you can imagine my shock, wonder and merriment last week when I discovered that John Williams' first professional musical score was for a Newfoundland travelogue in the 1950s. The full details are here at an

St. Stephen's High MANIFESTO Issue 1 (November 12, 1996)

Last month I told a story about how I made my first money as a writer by ripping off my high school literary magazine. It was a low point in my academic and literary career, trust me. Thinking about the story made me go back and dig up my old copies of said magazine, which sent me hurtling on a trip down memory lane. Today, I'm going to take you along with me on that trip. Buckle in. First to

Interview with Jay Lockwood, Author of "A Beast Requires"

When conspiracies threaten to plunge Aurum into civil war, the city's only hope is Deputy Constable Albicon Pine. Unfortunately, it’s his first week on the job. You're heard it many times, but I'm currently taking part in a contest on Inkshares.com in an attempt to win a publishing deal for my book. You may be surprised that mine is not the only book in the contest (there's about 325 more, to

The Battle Rages On

Remember that Inkshares contest I'm signed up in, trying to get my book published? I think I've mentioned it a couple of times, right? Well, there's less than 2 weeks left, and I'm sitting at about 50th place out of 322 entries. So, far from the top 5 you need to be in to score the publishing deal, but still it could obviously be much worse. Of course, even if I don't win I have until

GUEST POST COVER REVEAL: Salem's Daughters by Stephen Tremp

Today we have a sneak peak at an upcoming book by author Stephen Tremp, and I gotta say it sounds intriguing. Read the Amazon page for the full blurb, but the main set-up: Salem witches reincarnated at cats terrorizing a New England bed & breakfast by murdering guests (!) sounds like something right up my alley. Stephen Tremp writes speculative fiction and his fourth novel, Salem’s