The Saga of Beowulf - Odyssey Review

Kristen over at Odyssey Reviews has finally finished reading the copy of The Saga of Beowulf I sent out back on December 1st of last year, and has posted her review there. According to her bookshelf notes on Goodreads, she's been working on it for some time now, and I'd begun to fear she'd given up and couldn't force herself to finish it. But as it turns out, the delay was for an altogether different reason.

Kristen Payne, Odyssey Review
herodyssey.blogspot.com, April 23, 2009

I have now had this book FOREVER! And finally made it through all 600+ pages. Did it take me this long because it was slow or boring? Not at all! It took me that long because it was simply too big to fit in my purse.

Beowulf has long been one of my favorite stories of all time. In eighth grade we had to read the original poem in old English. Even though the language made me want to cry, I still loved the story. I have read and re-read various translations, and stylizations of the tale over the years. There is nothing more thrilling to me than following Beowulf and his men as they face the beast Grendel, then have to do battle with the Sea Witch and finally at the end of his life, to do battle with the Dragon. But in this book there is so much more to the story, so many little gaps filled in, more back story and so much more life to it.

This book, though huge and daunting to look at - is FANTASTIC. If you have ever wanted to read Beowulf, but hated the idea of ancient English verse - THIS is the book you need to read. Honest to the source material, and simple to read and comprehend without a translation key. Even if you love the tale in verse, you should still pick up a copy of this book and re-read it, the story and the character are given a whole new life. Beowulf becomes what we imagined he was between the lines of the old poem.

I have one complaint - and it should give you an idea of how much I love this book - The cover does not do it justice. This book should at least have a faux-leather cover, an epic tale like this deserves better then the 1980's Dungeons and Dragons looking cover it currently has. I highly recommend this book to everyone!

5 of 5 medallions.

Kristen is the one who mentioned to me in an earlier correspondence that she thought the cover art reminded her too much of the old D&D cartoons, and I can't argue with her there. I just happen to like that old D&D art. But I would also love to see it bound it leather, and can only hope one day it might achieve that lofty status. For now I'm more than satisfied with reviews like this, knowing there are readers who enjoy the story.

I should note that Kristen posted two other reviews as well, giving 4 stars to Homer's Iliad and only 3 to Neil Gaimon's Mirrormask. A personal note was also posted on my Goodread's page today, in which she said:

EXCELLENT job on the book - I loved it. Though I hate to do it, I donated it to a local school; I think it will get the reading it deserves there.

I'm grateful to Kristen for doing this, and hope it finds and inspires many young readers there.

Greenleaf Books Update

I had a nice chat with Matt from Greenleaf Book Group on Monday, after I had a chance to look through the promo packet he had sent me in a nice fat pdf. Greenleaf has positioned itself as a unique entity in the book industry, functioning in essence as an intermediary between small presses and independent publishers and the megalithic trade distribution network. They can take a book from inception to the retail shelves, or implement just a portion of those functions. The one thing they don't do, however, is P.R. marketing, leaving that entirely up to the author/publisher. Instead, they focus on marketing to the trades and retail outlets.

For my purposes, retail brick and mortar distribution was what I needed, since everything else is done already. As such, Greenleaf would function as a trade-focused promotion agency for my book, implementing a marketing campaign aimed at getting it into stores. They do offer a host of online promo options along with this, such as Amazon optimization and producing video trailers, but I've done most of that myself as well. They probably have a lot more know-how about things like refining a Google ad campaign than I do, but that's not a high priority for me. And, of course, they do book jacket art and layout design which would all be incorporated into an overall web presence, but again, that time has passed.

With Greenleaf the author remains an independent agent, retaining full ownership of the work, with an equivalent responsibility to promote it once it's out. They can get it into bookstores, but you still have to make it sell. In other words, you either have to act as your own P.R. agent, or hire someone else to set up your P.R. events. You would consequently be responsible for printing up your own promotional materials for said events, as well as any bookmarks, fliers, posters, and portfolios you might need or want. So essentially just where I am already, but with much more potential for sales.

However, as an independent author/publisher, you also have to produce your own books. That is, you can either utilize the print on demand mode in a manner like to what I've done, or you can pony up to get a batch of books printed and shipped to Greenleaf's warehouse, for the storage of which you pay five cents per book per month as long as they're housed there. Greenleaf claim to have good contacts in the printing industry so that they can negotiate good rates, but you still have to shovel up the funds yourself if you go that route.

And to get these services you have to pay a one-time up-front fee of $2500 to get set up in their distribution network. After that they work for 10-15% of the total gross in sales. So even though they'll only work on marketing your book as long as necessary to get it into distribution (after all, why keep hounding Barnes & Noble about a book they already stock?), they keep raking in the profits just as long as you do. Of course, being an independent, you can sever your ties with them at any time, but since I haven't looked into their specific contract terms I can't say if it's really just that easy.

The $2500 is a one time fee, so you don't have to pay it again for subsequent books, but the 10-15% is ongoing; so in this respect they function somewhat like an agent who pimps your book to retail outlets instead of to the major trade publishers themselves. In other words, for me it would be very much like hiring a secretary to make my calls and send out proposals and inquiries. $2500 and 10% probably isn't a bad price for a good secretary, especially one who comes with a fat Rolodex and knows the ropes. But I don't have the money to hire one just now, or to pay for a major P.R. campaign, so Greenleaf is out of luck.

More Tolkien News

The Tolkien Library has announced the release of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, a previously unreleased work by author and Oxford Anglo-Saxon professor J. R. R. Tolkien, due out May 5th on Harper Collins.

Dating from the early 1930's, prior to the publication of The Hobbit, the work is "an extensive retelling in English narrative verse" of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the dragonslayer and the Fall of the Nibelungs, drawn both from the Old Norse Eddas and the Icelandic Völsunga Saga, being retold in Tolkien's own words rather than translated.

As with nearly all of Tolkien's posthumous publications, the book will be edited and introduced by Christopher Tolkien, and will also feature an essay on Norse literature taken from professor Tolkien's lectures. You can read the full text of Christopher Tolkien's introduction here, where you will also find a couple of promotional videos for the book's release. However, bear in mind that unlike 2007's release of The Children of Húrin, this is not an original story of Tolkien's, nor is it in prose. Rather, it will be much akin to reading Beowulf in direct translation, and so will likely appeal only to students of Norse mythology and literature, and true diehard Tolkien fans (since Tolkien drew much of his inspiration, and even many of his character names, from these Old Norse tales).

Unlike the discovery of Tolkien's Beowulf translation and commentaries (consisting of two thousand hand-written pages), this work seems to have been kept rather quiet until the preparation for its release was assured. For some undisclosed reason (which, try though I might, I cannot ascertain), the Tolkien Estate decided to shelve the Beowulf manuscript some two years after its release was announced back in 2003, much to my chagrin (which I'm certain bothered them not at all). During my campaign to foist my Beowulf screenplay on Hollywood around that time, I actually used the pending release of Tolkien's translation as a motivation to make my movie. Sadly, neither the film nor the translation were forthcoming.

The Hobbit Movie Update

Over at Empire online a new exclusive scoop has been posted this weekend, taken from the upcoming 20th anniversary edition, guest-edited by Steven Spielberg. It features a snippet from an interview with producer/directors Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro on the nature of the soon-to-be-filmed duo of movies for J.R.R. Tolkien's classic book The Hobbit, and reveals a change in direction for the content of the two films. Here is the post in full:

We’ve known for a while that Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro’s eagerly-awaited adaptation of the Lord Of The Rings prequel, The Hobbit, would comprise two movies, due in December 2011 and 2012. But the make-up of those two movies has been up for debate… until now.

We spoke exclusively to both Del Toro and Jackson for our birthday issue, and they told us the latest, which is…

“We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,” says Del Toro.

“We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie,” adds Jackson. “The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more [the] style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.”

So there you go. The second film will not, as had previously been suggested, [be] a film that will bridge the 60-year gap between The Hobbit and the start of Fellowship Of The Ring.

This means that the first part of the two Hobbit films, due out in two years, will end part-way through the book; probably, I would hazard to guess, around the captivity of the Dwarves in the Wood-elves' dungeon, a good spot for a cliffhanger if ever there was one. But if they now also incorporate the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur (where he gets the Lonely Mountain map and key from Thorin's father Thrain), as well as the meeting of the White Council and the subsequent first defeat of Sauron, it's difficult to say how this will change the pacing.

Personally, this is welcome news. I, like many other Tolkien fans, have wondered how an entirely new third story could be concocted from the hints and snippets given concerning the events between the two published books. My guess is that the screenwriters were unable to do so, since there is really no cohesive story arc to this section, at least not with a compelling plot that could stand on its own as a feature film without wholesale invention beyond the scope of Tolkien's own writing. But incorporating some of those events into the plot of The Hobbit will make that story even stronger. To see the Dark Lord Sauron in his human form as he battles with the Wizards of the White Council, and Saruman before his fall while he was still their leader, and the babbling madness of Thrain as he hands the map to Gandalf...these are all elements that will give more force to Bilbo's expedition with the Dwarves, culminating in the wrath of Smaug and the Battle of Five Armies. I can hardly wait!

Little news has been forthcoming thus far this year concerning the fate of the two films since the MTV article back in January, where it was said the artistic visualization by John Howe and Alan Lee (among others at WETA) was "a good third" done. Last month actor Ralph Moeller said in an interview on the German site Presseportal (in German) that he had been approached to play a role in The Hobbit films as a "wolfman" (probably meaning Beorn), but had not signed yet.

And, in an interview with Total Film back in February, actor Viggo Mortensen addressed speculation as to whether he would reprise his role as Aragorn should the opportunity arise (the rumors at the time being that the second film would feature the search for Gollum by Aragorn and Gandalf after the events of The Hobbit proper in the first), in which he said he would certainly prefer to do the role himself, for the sake of continuity if nothing else, rather than see it given to someone else. But it was clear he had not yet been given such an offer. Del Toro has said himself that he would like to bring back as many of the original Lord of the Rings actors as he can, if there is an appropriate part for them. The casting of Bilbo, of course, is hotly anticipated, as actor Ian Holm is sadly too old to play the younger Baggins.

And, by the way, for those of you who do not know, there will be a film featuring the search for Gollum, regardless of whether Del Toro and Jackson do it as well (now highly unlikely), and that is The Hunt For Gollum, a 40-minute independent film due to be released May 3rd to the internet. The brand new second trailer for the project was just posted Thursday on their official site (which I recommend you visit), but you can watch it right here. Enjoy!


Trailer 2 - The Hunt For Gollum
by HuntForGollum

Radio Interview Cancelled

For those of you who tuned in to Storyheart's BlogTalkRadio program "A Book and a Chat" this morning, expecting to hear my latest interview, you might have been as surprised as I to find that someone else had usurped that role. For no apparent reason, and with no advance notice, the show's host simply scheduled someone else to take my place.

As you can see by the url (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Across-the-Pond/2009/04/18/A-BOOK-AND-A-CHAT-with-R-Scott-Johns) my name is still attached to this segment, even though another author is now listed and interviewed. I didn't bother to call in and interrupt, and will just write it off as yet another example of unprofessionalism in the industry we authors have to deal with.

In better news, however, I've been in contact with Matt Donnelley from Greenleaf Book Group, and things look quite promising on that front. He's scheduled a call for Monday to follow up and discuss the project, in which Greenleaf would act as a production/distribution intermediary to the retail market, while I retain ownership and control of the work itself, splitting retail roughly 10/35 in my favor (the remainder being the retailer's discount). 35% is a substantial profit margin, but of course I have many questions concerning costs, both up front and ongoing, as well as marketing methods and timelines. I'll keep you posted as events unfold.

As for my current project, I apologize for the lack of new material of late, but bear with me and you will be rewarded. I'm kind of winding down from the recent flurry of events, and doing a lot of prep work for the next book. Writing a book requires a lot of advance effort in terms of plot outlines and character development, little of which is interesting to read in itself. But I now have a host of notes and sketches that are slowly coming together into a cohesive form, and as soon as there's something worth reading be sure that I will post it here.

Unsolicited Publication Query

I received an interesting email today that I thought I would share with those of you who have followed along on this publication odyssey. It's an unsolicited inquiry from a publisher concerning the status of my novel, which I take to be an initial overture to further professional relations, should such prove beneficial to both parties. I present it here in its entirety:

Mr. Johns,

First off, congratulations on the book! It must be great to see it all come together. My name is Matthew Donnelley, and I work for Greenleaf Book Group here in Austin, TX (www.greenleafbookgroup.com). We are a book distributor and publisher, focusing on independent authors, and small presses. I came across your book online, and was curious how it has been going for you (hopefully well!). I see that you have the book for sale on Amazon.com, but have you had much success in getting the book to the major retailers? Is that something you are looking for?

Our distribution muscle is on par with the major houses, and I would love to talk with you about your book. At first glance, based on your website and the small bit I've read electronically, your book seems very interesting (though we would need to review an actual copy of the book to make sure it fits in with our line). My e-mail and
phone number are below. I look forward to talking with you!

Best,
-Matthew Donnelley

Knowing nothing about this publisher I did a little footwork. As mentioned, Greenleaf specializes in the development of independent authors and the growth of small presses. They are one of the fastest growing companies in the United States (named to the Inc. 500 in 2006) and have represented (published or distributed) more than 700 titles since 1997, including three titles that reached the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists in the past 18 months. They are best known for their "selectivity, innovative business model, distribution power (bookstores, airports, grocery stores, and beyond) and award-winning designs," including three of the five books they entered in 2008's Gold Ink Awards, for which they've taken top honors two years running.

According to their website, only 3% of manuscript submissions are accepted, which makes their extended invitation all the more promising. It may, of course, result in nothing, but given my recent blurb on the nature of fate, I'm hesitant to pass up the opportunity. The fact that it's an author-centric company makes it all the more appealing, for as much as authors want the validation provided by the major names in the trade, this one would much prefer the more respectful hands-on treatment afforded by the independents. Ultimately, what I'd really like is to see my novel reach the brick-and-mortar stores, and the opportunity to go out and promote it with a signing tour. The rest is up to the reading public.

Regardless of what comes of this, it's nice to have a publisher come to me rather than the other way around. And much like fishing, where patience and persistence reap the best reward, it gives me more incentive to keep trying.

Works In Progress

Having finally completed the upgrade and configuration of my computer work station, it was time to get back to working seriously on this digital art project I've proposed. And the next step after installing all the necessary programs was to load in all the 3D models I've acquired.

Over the past few weeks I've purchased a host of sets and props from Content Paradise and Renderosity, as well as downloading a bunch of stuff that's offered free on sites like ShareCG, in an attempt to build up enough materials to get started: things like trees and rocks, for example, as well as more specific bits to fit my Viking theme, like the ship and costumes I posted images of before. This render is a bower set for the Geat Queen Hæreth, with late-Viking period Urnes-style interweaving art motifs throughout. Although historically much later than the early pre-Viking period that Beowulf is actually set in, it makes a lush and royal residence such as befits a Viking Queen.

I wanted her chamber to be vastly different from the rustic hovel Beowulf lives in, which is more like what I've pictured in this image at the right, although this is just a rough test render of a temp layout. The walls used in the first image, by the way, are actually the ceiling textures, but I liked them far more than the walls provided in the model, which is called Guinevere's Bower, an expansion pack for The King's Chamber, available from DAZ-3D. Likewise, I used the floorboards from that set as the walls in Beowulf's room, although I'll change these later when I find something better suited to the purpose.

I suppose I should mention here that after careful consideration based on several factors I've decided to work for the next month or so on creating several characters and scenes for an illustrated edition of The Saga of Beowulf, whether I end up following through on that project or not. How that goes and what I come up with will determine to a great degree where I go with it from there.

But I should also say that one of those factors is the status of my day job, which comes to an end in four weeks as I only work during the school year, and consequently will have no income for the subsequent three months, save the meager and sporadic income my book sales have been bringing in. Given the current state of the economy I've been unable to save up enough to get me through until the Fall when my job begins again. What I do about the intervening span will have some impact on what I'm able to do on the creative front. But that will depend in great part on how much income I can bring in during the next four weeks, since I work entirely on commission selling books to teachers, and if I can find a summer job in this depressed market. I may be living in a tent for all I know.

Home Sweet Home

After a long week away it's always good to be home. Over the past few weeks I've spent the better part of what little free time I could find rebuilding and configuring my two computers (not counting my laptop or pocket pc), beefing up my RAM and installing some new hardware.

The computer on the left is my writing station, where I wrote most of The Saga of Beowulf. This system is a Compaq Presario, the older of the two, but features a new Sony dual-layer DVD burner, a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound processing interface and a full suite of professional sound editing software, such as AcidPro, Cakewalk, CoolEdit, Cubasis and FruityLoops, among others (I'm also a musician, although I no longer perform professionally, or even practice regularly).

This system also houses a secondary 500 gig hard drive nearly full with nothing but MP3 files: well over 100,000 tracks and counting. I listen to music constantly, from the moment I get up, and this computer is also the headquarters for dual 5.1 speaker systems, one in the computer room, and one in the living room, both linked together to run either from the pc or the entertainment system in the other room. I used to have one upstairs in the bedroom as well, but disconnected it as it was a bit of overkill. You can hear it just fine, as I rarely have the volume at less than 50%. The main drive in this system is 200 gb, and a third drive of 160 gigs holds my library of ebooks and texts of virtually every classic work of literature throughout the eons, as well as an extensive collection of reference texts, and, of course, my own notes and writings. I use the Microsoft Office suite for all my business and word processing needs, but Adobe Pro (Photoshop and Acrobat Professional particularly) for graphic design and layout.

The computer on the right is a Dell Dimension 3000 (with a 2.8 GHz processor), which I just beefed up with 4 gigs of RAM and installed a smoking new graphics card with another gig of onboard RAM. It also houses three separate hard drives, one for system programs, one for graphics, and one for backup archives. This system also features a Sony dual-layer DVD burner, and is now my video and graphics processing powerhouse, with Poser, DAZ, Bryce, Maya, Manga Studio, Corel Painter, and the full Macromedia and Adobe suites. It also hosts my scanner and a Bamboo pen tablet. This computer has been a project in the making for many months now, and only now has finally reached its full potential, so I'm excited to take it for a spin and see what it can do. I've been doing my graphics work (website design, video production, and book layout) on the Compaq, but with its moderately wimpy 1.5 gHz processing speed it sometimes tended to balk at the heavy load I forced upon it.

Both systems are fully wireless, and are networked together, and to three HP printers: one inkjet and two laserjets (a color and a black & white). You can't see it in the photo, but the wall on the left holds four cork boards and a bookshelf filled with notebooks for my research and outlines. The odd-looking white rectangle down in the lower right-hand corner is my lightbox sitting at the end of my art desk, which completes the U-shaped desk layout around my office: three walls of desk and one of bookshelves. Here is where I spend my time, turning dreams into reality. Or at least into works of fiction. Here is where The Jester's Quest will soon begin. Where it will lead or end I cannot say.

So What Have You Been Up To Lately?

I keep running across old friends and neighbors lately, often in the oddest places where you never expect to see someone you once knew, like halfway across the state in some little town that only hosts a couple hundred residents, where you both just happen to be passing through on the same day, and crossing the same street at the exact same time. And it makes you wonder what if the light had not turned red just then, or you were looking in the opposite direction? How often does it happen but you just don't notice?

Everyone, I'm sure, experiences these seemingly strange coincidences, or so the stories of my friends and relatives attest. But having just written a novel in which "fate" plays a fairly major role (or does it?), the subject has been on my mind quite a bit of late.

What we commonly think of as fate tends to be a situation in which a destined outcome occurs through what might otherwise appear a random meeting or event. Two people meet and fall in love, for example, or a chance encounter leads to someone's success or failure. However it might happen, the idea is that a seemingly innocuous occurrence results in a significant outcome, an effect whose cause was somehow pre-ordained. It is, in fact, the importance of the end result which later renders its inception significant, to the extent that it appears some greater force must have been in play, so great does the coincidence seem otherwise.

But what of all these chance encounters that amount to nothing, as so many (if not most) seem to do? Have we not yet witnessed the miraculous event now destined to result, or are the greater events that shape our lives as random as the ones we soon forget? Do we shape our fate, or does our fate shape us? Is fate just what we like to call those sequences of cause and effect that lead from little into much, however unpredictable the case may be?

The point of all this rambling nonsense isn't an attempt to make any sense of it at all, but rather came by way of saying to a lot of people lately something on the lines of "So what have you been up to lately?" And being asked the same of me. How do you sum up half a life in half a dozen sentences? For some, half a dozen words is quite sufficient. "I'm a financial services administrator," they might say, as if that tells me all I need to know about their life (or anything at all). "I work in the labor trade," an old friend said, which could apply to every job I've ever had, except that I recalled he was a contractor when last we spoke. As it turns out he now tears down dumpy slums he once helped build. But it's difficult to sum up several decades at a corner crosswalk when your fries are getting cold.

"I just wrote a novel," I would say, and hand the random passerby a bookmark, shaking hands as we once more returned to our own lives.

Book Review: The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

I've been spending a lot of time on the road lately, and consequently holed up in motels with little to do but read (which I hardly mind). This past week it's been The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. Published in 2003, this was Pearl's debut novel, a fictional tale filled with historical characters and revolving around an actual event, just the sort of book I tend to like.

That event, the first translation of Dante's Divine Comedy into English for an American audience, begun in 1865 and published two years later in 1867, provides the impetus for a fictional series of gruesome murders based on the eternal punishments meted out to sinners in the nine circles of hell in the Inferno.

Foremost among the historical characters are the Fireside Poets: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell (as well as several others), of whom Longfellow is our chief translator. The translation itself is historical, while the murders most certainly are not. But it is intriguing and inventive to see how this seemingly innocent event might well have caused such an uproar from Harvard intellectuals intent on protecting the purity of the "true classics" from the "vulgar" work of Dante (a work he wrote in exile) to grimy thugs and cutthroats who could hardly make out English, let alone Dante's medieval Italian.

Now, I've never read Longfellow's translation, but I know my Dante well enough, and although not critical, a reasonable familiarity with The Inferno would prove useful to readers of Pearl's mystery, not so much to understand the particulars of the various crimes - which are detailed quite clearly enough for vivid comprehension - but rather to appreciate more fully the complexities of the rationale behind these murders. As with most historical novels, knowing to some degree the period and subject matter goes a long way towards enjoyment of the work at hand.

The Dante Club is quite fascinating in this regard, although it tends to drag at some points where the author seems to feel it necessary to detail elements which in themselves are not terribly riveting, such as the haughty socio-political posturing of Harvard's elite. But bearing with the story yields its fruits, beginning roughly halfway though when the Fireside Poets take it on themselves - quite out of necessity - to solve the murders. The story takes on shades of Sherlock Holmes as the search winds through the seedy underside of Cambridge and Boston, while our poets try to puzzle out the clues before their "Lucifer" strikes again.

The culmination of this bizarre literary mystery felt slightly anticlimactic, if only because half of the final chapter is spent explaining and providing information necessary to have figured out the villain's purpose earlier. But all in all it was an entertaining read, both socially and psychologically insightful, and I recommend it to aficionados of historical mysteries and early medieval classics, of which The Divine Comedy is among the very finest of human creations.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Girl

This is the hot new chick that DAZ just released. Simply dubbed "The Girl," she's a highly detailed 3D model with incredibly realistic skin-tone texture - and, to say the least, a vivacious bod, with the sort of curves we fans of fantasy tend to find appealing.

The basic figure was offered free for just a few days (it's now on sale for $1.99 until the 13th, and after that for $29.95, except for members of the Content Paradise club who always get the sale price), and comes with all the standard morphs, as well as a limited set of poses and facial expressions, and a half a dozen colors for her hair.

There are, of course, a seemingly infinite number of "add-ons" to compliment and clothe the figure, such as this sultry outfit called "Moroccan Dreams," which was also offered free for download at the time - and so, of course, I obliged, needing something to dress the nearly naked waif in until such time as I might find something better suited to my needs. I have to say, though, she makes a rather alluring addition to my harem.

I doubt I'll use her in the Saga of Beowulf graphic novel, but you never know. She'd make a great fairy princess or and elfin waif in The Jester's Quest though, which will have a more fantasy aspect to it than does Beowulf, which, although containing its fair share of fantastic elements and overblown heroic types, is ultimately based in a real world setting with characters resembling actual living beings than those found in a fairy tale.

I haven't yet made up my mind as to whether I'll actually undertake a fully illustrated edition of The Saga of Beowulf just yet, but I'm leaning toward it. At the very least I want to do a few of the major scenes for my own benefit, to assuage my curiosity, and of course when I do I'll be sure to share them here.

Digital Graphics Tests

These are just a couple of quick render tests to see how my system handles the relatively heavy burden of converting initial preview art into fully 3d objects with light and texture. Here I've added some reddish-orange light to simulate a fire source to the right for what will eventually be a scene during Beowulf's battle with the dragon.

These are just some basic Viking props and costume bits I bought on the DAZ Content Paradise website, and I haven't done anything but pose and tweak them to fit a basic figure for this test which will be replaced and altered greatly before the end. I plan to paint most of my own textures and design some custom costumes to use, as well as building many of the sets and landscapes using Bryce and Blender, which I've only started toying with.

Here, however, is a figure I've been playing with for several days to beef him up and make him look more like a traditional Nordic warrior hero. I've morphed his face all over the place to get his age and skin tone close to where I want it, with an overall look that I kind of like. I'm not sure if this will end up being the figure I use for Beowulf, but it's a start.

If so, I might pump him up even more to something along the lines of Schwarzenegger size, although I'm hesitant to make him appear abnormal, since I want Grendel to tower over him as he does over his own men, so I need to find a happy medium. Already the guy above looks like a wimp in comparison to this brawny Geat. But I'll only be able to determine the right approach once I get a rough cast of characters together, and that might take some time. I still haven't made up my mind if I'll even pursue this project right away, if ever. The poll results are mixed so far, but it's only been a day so I'll wait a bit before finalizing my decision.

Click for bigger images!

Reader Poll

Now that my virtual book tour for March is over and a new month upon us, it's time for this author to get back to work on another project. As many of you know I have several things in mind, some of them already in a state of preparation. I've kind of got my mind set on what I want to do next, but I thought I'd give you all a chance to chime in. So, here are the options:

A) The Saga of Beowulf - Illustrated Edition - sort of like a graphic novel, but not
B) The Complete Study Guide To Beowulf - an academic reference for the poem
C) The Jester's Quest - A new adult fantasy novel, intended to be heavily illustrated
D) The Saga of Beowulf - movie film script rewrite
E) All of the above
F) None of the above

The "Illustrated Edition" of The Saga of Beowulf will be a shortened version of the novel with mostly just the action scenes comprising both art and text on every page. I'll probably use this format for The Jester's Quest as well, but as I haven't written that one yet, it would be much faster to do the Beowulf one first, while my mind is still wrapped around that story. But I'm also anxious to get on with another one and start some new creative writing.

Post your thoughts here or send me a line via the Contact page at my publisher website, and I'll take your views into consideration. Also, feel free to offer any of your own ideas for any of these projects. I'm not short on ideas, I just like to hear from readers. Either way, I plan to start this soon, so don't delay, post today!

ADDENDUM: MONDAY, APRIL 6

Someone reminded me that I forgot to add the rewrite of my screenplay for The Saga of Beowulf as an option, which I guess gives it one vote. So far there's no clear concensus, but I'm leaning toward a rewrite of the script which I will then use to base the graphic novel on.

Free eBooks

No, it's not my April Fools joke for 2009! Yes, you can now download the entire text of The Saga of Beowulf for free via the links at the left or on the Fantasy Castle Books website, in any of the digital formats listed. Just right-click on the image to save, or click to open. This may not last for long, so get them now while I'm feeling generous!

My reasoning behind this, for anyone who might be interested, is simply to stimulate some word of mouth. My hope is that this will get readers talking about the book and bring in additional traffic to the site. The only digital edition that people seem to buy in decent quantities is the Kindle, so I'm not really losing out on any eBook sales by doing this, and it doesn't cost me anything, although how this will affect the print edition I can only guess.

Since the vast majority of people still prefer to read a printed book I doubt this will detract from those sales, but if it does I'll simply delete the downloads. Of course, my ultimate goal is to increase my readership, so even if this first book suffers as a result at least it will help to make my name more widely known so when the next one comes out more readers might be interested. As much as I'd like to sell a ton of books, I really just want as many people to enjoy reading it as possible, and giving out free ebooks is one way to accomplish that.

ADDENDUM: SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2009

This offer is no longer valid. Sorry. As much as I want everyone to read my book, I felt that giving it away for free was simply devaluing its worth.