Tag Archives: Schlock Mercenary

Journal

Hullmetal from JayPig

I got some artwork from a fan last fall, and I was too busy to blog about it at the time. One thing led to another, and now it is spring, which means I’m a horrible person for not having said anything sooner. Here’s the piece:

KitesfearFromJayPig

It’s a chunk of aluminum made to look like a piece of the Kitesfear’s hull. I kind of love it, and it holds a prominent place in my office.

If you’d like to have something like this for your own mantle, the artist, JayPig, has a store for just that sort of commerce. If I’m reading things correctly, you can get something like this for as little as $20. At that price I may commission a chunk of a Planet Mercenary delivery box…

Announcements, Journal

February’s Projects

I’ve got a full plate this month. Aside from wrapping up the climactic bits of Schlock Mercenary: Delegates and Delegation (the current story online) I need to tackle the bonus story, the cover, and the marginalia for Force Multiplication so that we can send it to print.

Then there’s the substantial task list for the upcoming Schlock Mercenary role-playing game, designed by Alan Bahr, with lots of input from me. The core game stuff is done, and once we’ve got some art to show off we’ll start building a Kickstarter page. That campaign will likely go live sometime in mid-March, and will support the production of a very nice, fully-illustrated rule book, and some odds and ends that will make some of our peculiar (maybe even unique) game mechanics fast, intuitive, and hilarious.

I say “we” with regard to the art. I’ll be doing a few, goofy comic-type things in the book, but most of the artwork will be the sort of thing that you’d expect to see in a wonder-invoking, far-future, science-fiction RPG book. Full-color, fully rendered characters, weapons that look like they’d actually work, and vehicles that are more interesting than the things I dash off with a straight-edge and a circle template.  Think of it this way: Schlock Mercenary, the comic strip, is the canonical story, but the comic’s artwork is mere caricature. The RPG book will show you that universe more clearly, and give you and your players much better starting points for your flights of fanciful shared storytelling.

Back to the task list: I’m also featured pretty heavily in the programming of LTUE, the SF&F symposium here in Utah on February 12th, 13th, and 14th (Thurs-Sat.) and at the end of February I’m flying to Chicago to record more Writing Excuses Master Class sessions.

You might get a movie review or two this month. I’ve seen Strange Magic and Into The Woods, and I’ll be seeing Jupiter Ascending, but the real time sink is actually writing them up.

And speaking of writing, I’ve got a bunch of prose fiction on my plate as well, so I should finish writing this, and start in on some actual work.

Announcements

Sketches, Shopping, Shared Nightmares, and Schlock

I finished the last of the internationally-bound sketch editions early Sunday morning, and then took Sunday off. Today Sandra and Keliana will be shipping all the international packages, which means that unless there are postal issues in the destination nation, they’ll be arriving in time to be Christmas gifts.

Meanwhile, our store is still open, and there’s plenty of time for the delivery of gifts to folks in the United States. Pins, coins, and patches make great stocking stuffers, and for folks with office walls that need decoration, the 2015 Schlock Mercenary Monthly Calendar is kind of perfect. We still have the Munition Canister slipcases that hold the first five and the second six books for folks who own books, and want a handsome way to keep them upright without book-ends. (Note: the slipcases sell fast, and we can’t stock huge numbers of them because they take up a lot of space in our warehouse.)

If you’re considering taking the plunge for the first time, going all-in, as it were, we have an eleven-book bundle!

Since it’s not unlikely that you’ll be doing some shopping elsewhere for gifts this week (and by “elsewhere” I mean “Amazon“), you might consider starting your trip with this link. A portion of the proceeds from your purchase will help pay the bills here at Chez Tayler. It’s a small thing, but it adds up quickly on our end, and has gone a long way toward paying the bills in January and Februrary in past years.

Oh, hey! If you’re out at Amazon anyway, check out the SHARED NIGHTMARES anthology! It’s just $2.99, and features really bad dreams from a Hugo nominee, a couple of Campbell nominees, a Prometheus winner, and a New York Times best-seller. It’s also available here on Smashwords.

Me? I’ll be spending Cyber Monday scripting comics and sketching in books. It may be Schlock, but it still doesn’t draw itself.

Announcements

Shipping Update

The trucks* full of Massively Parallel and Munitions Canister 1 & 2 slipcases will arrive on Monday, and we’ve got the volunteers we need. Meanwhile, the calendars have already arrived, and the ones that can be sketched and shipped without books are queued up for me to work on. They’ll get packaged Saturday, and will go out the door on Monday. We’re still basically on track with this schedule I posted.

I’ve finished one week of comics this week, and need to finish a second before Saturday night. Today’s schedule: Blog (almost done!), pencil five rows of strips, take a ten minute break, then sketch 50 calendars. That gets me to about 1pm. From there, the schedule looks a lot like draw comics, breathe, sketch calendars, breathe, repeat. Maaaybe I’ll leave the house for treat food, but it’s far more likely that Sandra will forbid such distraction (she can’t get HER work done until I’ve finished MINE), and simply drop something delicious and paper-wrapped in front of me. Along with napkins, so I don’t get food on anybody’s calendars.

I’ll probably post a running count of completed sketches on Twitter. The next time THIS page gets updated it’ll probably have pictures of giant stacks of merchandise.

(*Note: Yes, more than one truck.)