Saturday, August 11, 2012

Protectors Update

A quickie update on life in the Protectors universe. The first Damson Dragon Diary novel, "What is a Hero?" is out as a print book and Kindle e-book . 50 Advanced Reader Copies of "The Protectors," the anthology of superhero stories all set in the same world as Damson Dragon, have been printed, and most of them distributed to the contributors and to folks interested in writing us a review. If you have a review blog or website and would like to review "The Protectors" let me know, and I'll send you a digital copy, or mail you one of the few ARCs left.

Several folks have expressed interest in writing for a second book in the shared Protectors world. So, it looks like this thing is going to take off into a shared world series. "The Alliance" is the next book planned.

I'm sorry I've been so pokey slow with Damson Dragon updates. I promise there's a lot more to come, but getting the new books ready has been eating up most of my writing time.

On the plus side, I will be a panel participant at Fencon next month in Dallas. Guest of Honor is the amazing CJ Cherryh!! If you're in the area, don't miss it! Fingers crossed. I'm hoping to have copies of both "What is a Hero?" and "The Protectors" to sign and read and generally show off.

And on the ridiculously awesome side, I just got some preliminary roughs of cover art for "The Protectors." Denis Loubet seriously rocks the art. He's been doing covers for video and tabletop games for a lot of years. His cover of Ultima Ascension is stunning.

Here's some of the thumbnail roughs he sent me.

  

That's Tesla Girl on the left, one of my characters, and Avenger Girl on the right, Marshall Maresca's character. Avenger Girl is a protege of Liberty, also Marshall's creation, who will be familiar to D Dragon readers.

I think I know which one I like best. What do you guys think? Which one would you pick?

Paige

2 comments:

  1. Wow. OK, I really like the Tesla Girl one more. However, a large part of that is because I look at the Avenger Girl one and ask, "WHERE ARE HER PANTS?" Plus "Why is she Caucasian?" Sorry. It is very good art, but...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Marshall,

    I let Denis have some freedom on the art, to make great art, rather than stick strictly to the stories. I suggested a few scenes from the book and he took it from there. AG's missing her skirt, but she is black. She's just not as dark as the mutant monster.

    I think we're going to go with the Tesla Girl one in any case. It gives me more of a superhero vibe, while the other one sort of makes me think of monster movies.

    Denis did say he might throw in the Avenger Girl image as well, as soft faded art behind the cover blurbs for the back cover.

    ReplyDelete