Jeff Strand's Blog, page 74

La vengeance à huit pattes

If you’ve ever thought, “Jeff’s stories are delightful fun, but they’d be way more delightful and fun if they were in French,” your thought has been acknowledged! My story “Eight-Legged Vengeance” is in the anthology Ténèbres 2014 where it now goes by the title “La vengeance à huit pattes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Order your copy from Dreampress right HERE.

 

What Madness Is This???

Why, it’s the cover to the German-language edition of Dead Clown Barbecue, to be published by the demented folks at Voodoo Press. It’s my first foreign language book to get the hardcover collector’s edition treatment, so even if you don’t speak German, head on over to the Voodoo Press page to order yourself a copy!

 

In Development: FANGBOY – The Comic Strip!

As a kid, I really wanted to be a cartoonist. I mean, REALLY wanted to be one. I drew non-stop. I was unbelievably passionate about it. I was so devoted to the idea of being a cartoonist that in the 8th grade one of my teachers brought in a professional to assess my abilities.

Her official evaluation was that 1) I wasn’t very good, and 2) I probably wouldn’t get any better.

At the time, I didn’t care what some crabby lady thought, and my enthusiasm was not impacted one iota. And she was right–I wasn’t very good. “He probably won’t get any better” was, admittedly, a pretty frickin’ horrible thing to say, but I suspect that this woman was told that she’d be gazing upon the astonishing work of a cartooning prodigy, and making a special trip to the school only to see my below-average work just put her in a bad mood.

In the 11th or 12th grade, like 75% of aspiring cartoonists, I wanted to do a Far Side clone. I wrote over 100 gags. I finished drawing exactly zero of them. For some reason, the writing part was a blast, but the drawing had become such a chore that it stopped being fun. I dropped the cartoonist idea, and focused entirely on writing.

Over the years, every once in a while the idea of “I wanna draw a comic strip!” would pop up, but I’m busy writing novels and stuff, so I never really got back into it. My one published cartoon was in the Chase Manhattan computer security awareness newsletter, and it took me FOREVER to draw.

A trio of decades after my art skills were deemed crap, I got a Facebook message from Austin May, who writes and draws the strip Air Force Toons, saying that he was a fan of my books. I messaged him back and told him that doing a comic strip was my dream job. He suggested a collaboration. I put “Come Up With Awesome Comic Strip Idea” on my To-Do list.

Time passed, because I am a slacker.

Then Austin suggested adapting one of my novels. I’d never even considered the idea of doing one of my books as a comic strip (as opposed to a comic book) before, but suddenly Fangboy seemed perfect! Not necessarily easy. We would, after all, be breaking a novel down into a long series of three-panel gags. It wasn’t as if I could just lift moments out of the book verbatim. But…this could work!

Austin sent me some fantastic character sketches, and I wrote scripts for the first six strips. He sent me the first two completed strips, and I realized that this was the key to fulfilling my childhood dream: let somebody else do the art.

Fangboy will be a weekly strip. Right now we’re working to build up a nice big backlog of strips, and there’s no official launch date. Lots of details remain to be worked out. But, hey, here’s a teaser:

 

 

Three Generic Questions With Austin May:

Q: How long have you been cartooning?

A: Short answer: Since I could hold a crayon. I’ve been drawing since before I can remember, and my mom still has the scribbles to prove it. As for cartoons and comics, I suppose you could say I got my start in junior high on the school newspaper. I think it was 7th grade – after that there was never a time when I wasn’t making comics and illustrations for a school paper. When I joined the Air Force in 2001, I did a lot of one-off comics making fun of the various jobs I did, and they made their way around via email and message boards, so I started doing more regular, routine strips. Eventually those became my comic strip Air Force Blues in 2007, which led to my weekly strip in Air Force Times, which began in 2009 and is still going strong today.

Q: What’s your process when you create a strip?

A: The process really depends on the strip and the idea behind it. In some cases, like with Fangboy, I already have the script, so I focus only on the artwork. With Air Force ‘Toons, I have to first come up with an idea before starting on the art. A lot of times I’ll scan headlines or Air Force message boards to see what topics are hot at the time and try to do a strip relating to one of those. That’s not always easy, so sometimes I have to just pull from everyday life in the USAF. I have, in the past, just started drawing with no clue what the strip will even be about. Although everything I do these days is digital, I still start with a rough sketch before building the art layer by layer in Photoshop. Even though it’s on a tablet computer, I draw everything by hand. Often, I just go into it with a vague idea and write the dialogue once I have the art done to see what fits. Once I have the words actually typed into the strip, I add the bubbles, adjust the paragraphs to fit and call it good.

Q: What are your favorite comic strips?

A: My favorite comic strip of all time is, like so many others, Calvin and Hobbes. Even though many of Bill Waterson’s jokes went right over my head when I started reading his comics as a child, the artwork was so brilliant I didn’t even care. After that, Bill Amend’s Fox Trot is a very close second. Get Fuzzy is another one I’ll read anytime I see it, and Gary Larson’s Far Side never fails to make me laugh. Online I like to read Penny Arcade - despite not being a gamer – because I love the art.

Stay tuned to this website for more updates on Fangboy: The Comic Strip!

KUMQUAT – Free and Early!

KUMQUAT

A romantic comedy about hot dogs, TV, death, and obscure fruit.

My new novel, Kumquat, will be out on July 1st, 2014. (The e-book edition, anyway; there’ll be a print version sometime in the unscheduled future.) But you can read it EARLY and FREE in an almost no-strings attached relationship. Here’s how it works:

1. You e-mail me.

2. I send you the book.

3. If you like it, you say something nice about it somewhere online.

Q: What is Kumquat about?

A: It’s about a non-spontaneous, introverted, 35-year-old guy named Todd who meets a girl named Amy at a really bad film festival. She has an inoperable brain aneurysm, which probably makes you think that the book isn’t a comedy, but it is. There’s an instant connection between them and they decide to go on a road trip together. Lots of stuff happens. It also has an angry guy with a hook for a hand, which probably makes you think that the book is a horror novel, but it’s not. And it’s got some property destruction.

Q: Okay, how exactly does this freebie e-book thing work?

A: Send an e-mail to gleefullymacabre@gmail.com with the subject line “KUMQUAT” and your format choice of PDF (Adobe Acrobat), MOBI (Kindle), or EPUB (most other e-readers). (If you don’t specify, you’ll get a PDF.) When the book comes out, you will receive exactly one (1) e-mail letting you know that it’s available, at which point if you actually read it and actually liked it it would be really sweet of you to help spread the word.

Q: Spread the word how?

A: However you want. An Amazon review. A Goodreads review. A Facebook post. A tweet. A blog. An Instagram photo of you squealing in delight while reading the book. It’s a pretty low-pressure commitment, really.

Q: What if I read the book and I’m all like, “Whoa, does this ever SUCK!”?

A: You must gaze into your own soul and choose your path. But nobody is asking you to write a five-star review of a book you didn’t like. You can always tell those are fake.

Q: You’ve written some young adult novels recently. Is this one of them?

A: No. If books were movies, this would be rated R. Please don’t read it out loud to the kids.

Q: When does this offer expire?

A: Sometime near the middle of June, probably. If you’re reading this on my website, the deal still stands.

Q: I want you to write another book like Pressure. Is this like Pressure?

A: No.

Q: Can I say stuff about Kumquat before July 1st? 

A: Hell yeah! There won’t be Amazon pre-orders, though, so you won’t be able to review it there until the official on-sale date.

Q: Can I share the the file with those I love?

A: Noooooooo! It’s free. Let them send their own e-mail.

Q: Is this the final version of the book?

A: Consider it an “uncorrected proof.” There may still be errors have yet to be eradicated. And the formatting looked fine when I tested it out, but this isn’t the exact formatting you’ll see in the actual book.

Q: Will I get my copy immediately?

A: My servants have been recently executed for mouthing off, so it’s just me sending these out. It might take a few hours, depending on when you send the e-mail.

Q: W00-hoo! Free sneak preview of Kumquat! What was that address again?

A: Gleefullymacabre@gmail.com.

Welcome to Gleefully Macabre!

Welcome to my website! Whether you were brought here by interest in my work or a Google search gone terribly wrong, I encourage you to hang around and start clicking away!

My new young adult comedy, I Have A Bad Feeling About This, is now available at the brick-and-mortar bookstore or online retailer of your choice! Being a young adult is not a requirement to read the book.

My second short story collection, Dead Clown Barbecue, is now available! Twenty-nine stories! 90,000 words of material! Get the Kindle edition for $2.99 or the paperback/deluxe hardcover editions from Dark Regions Press.

My novella Kutter is now available for your Kindle or Kindle app. Enjoy the delightful tale of a serial killer and his Boston terrier from Amazon.

My novella, Stalking You Nowis available from DarkFuse. Grab yourself a copy from Amazon.

My young adult comedy, A Bad Day For Voodoo, is now available at a bookstore near you from Sourcebooks, or online in e-book and paperback editions!

And my novels Pressure and Dweller have both returned in shiny new digital editions, for a scant $2.99 each!

Finally, all four novels in the Andrew Mayhem series are available in a $7.99 digital box set, with a brand-new foreword by James A. Moore!

(P.S.: People who leave reviews on Amazon deserve great big hugs!)

Friend me on Facebook ! Follow me on Twitter ! Like my Facebook Fan Page! Friend me on Goodreads!

FANGBOY

The Kindle edition of Fangboy, my dark comedy fairy tale, is back! (You probably didn’t notice it was gone. That’s okay.) 

It’s among my personal favorites of my books, and this strange little novel is now only $2.99! Cover by Zach McCain. 

Order your copy RIGHT HERE. 

Seton Hill University – In Your Write Mind Workshop

June 26 – 29 I’ll be the featured author at Seton Hill University’s In Your Write Mind Workshop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. I’ll be giving the keynote speech, participating in the agents’ panel discussion (as a representative of authors everywhere), critiquing query letters and pitches, and various other things. There will also be an open-to-the-public mass book signing on Friday the 27th, so if you’re anywhere in, let’s say, the upper right quadrant of the United States, you should be there!

(The website link above hasn’t been updated to include me yet, but I promise it’s true.)

(I have to say that because I’m still scarred from back in 1995, in the early days of the Internet, when I became the moderator for the online bulletin board for the Horror Writers Association. I posted this information elsewhere, and when I got into the top-secret moderators-only section, I discovered that somebody had posted “Hey, I just wanted to let people know that Jeff Strand is telling people that he’s a moderator for the HWA board.” He thought I was making it up! How pathetic and desperate for attention would somebody have to be to lie about something like that? A lie that would fall apart as soon as any participating member of the HWA board said, “Uh, no, you’re not.” I mean, seriously!)

(Sorry for the digression. See you in Pennsylvania.)

Dread Media on WHC

It’s always jarring returning to reality after a great convention, and this time was far more jarring than usual (R.I.P. Pandora the cat). So I haven’t had the chance to write about my World Horror Convention experience yet, but fortunately, you can get two-and-a-half hours of WHC goodness in the latest episode of the Dread Media podcast featuring interviews galore, including one with me while I was still reasonably coherent, and one with me in my delirious post-Stokers banquet exhaustion. 

Check it out RIGHT HERE!

Bram Stoker Awards Live Webcast!

On Saturday, May 10th, at approximately 7:30 PM PST, the Bram Stoker Awards will be held! Once again I will be Master of Ceremonies and wearing a snazzy tux. Obviously, the best way to experience this extravaganza is to be there in person, but if that’s not possible, it will be streaming LIVE online! For details, head over to:

http://www.horror.org/stokers2014/stokerpres.html

Coming October 2014…