By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/4/2016
We sit down for a chat with Jason Shiga about his existential mindbender, DEMON, and reveal the cover to First Second's collected edition of the series.
By: Carolyn Napolitano,
on 4/21/2015
Whether they be songs about angels or demons, Heaven or Hell, the theme of the afterlife has inspired countless musicians of varying genres and has embedded itself into the lyrics of many popular hits. Though their styles may be different, artists show that our collective questions and musings about the afterlife provide us with a common thread across humanity. Here are some of the songs that best represent this wide range of emotions that many people have about what lies beyond.
The post Death and all of his tunes appeared first on OUPblog.
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By: Sara Burrier,
on 2/9/2015
Fairies are a sensitive, but intriguing subject. I come from a background of spell casting, fairy seeking, séances, horned gods/goddesses, priestess', and a mountain of metaphysics.
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| Crone |
One Christian belief held that fairies were a class of "demoted" angels.[25] One popular story described how, when the angels revolted, God ordered the gates of heaven shut: those still in heaven remained angels, those in hell became demons, and those caught in between became fairies.[26] Others suggested that the fairies, not being good enough, had been thrown out of heaven, but they were not evil enough for hell.[27] This may explain the tradition that they had to pay a "teind" or tithe to hell: as fallen angels, though not quite devils, they could be seen as subjects of the devil.[28] For a similar concept in Persian mythology, see Peri.
A third, related belief was the fairies were demons entirely.[29] This belief became much more popular with the growth of Puritanism.[30] The hobgoblin, once a friendly household spirit, became a wicked goblin.[31] Dealing with fairies was in some cases considered a form of witchcraft and punished as such in this era.[32] Disassociating himself from such evils may be why Oberon, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, carefully observed that neither he nor his court feared the church bells.[33]
The belief in their angelic nature was less common than that they were the dead, but still found popularity, especially in Theosophist circles.[34][35] Informants who described their nature sometimes held aspects of both the third and the fourth belief, or observed that the matter was disputed.[34]
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| Songs of Summer |
Evil spirits are like actors. They will take on any role that suits their cause or present climate. If people want angels, they will be angels. Departed loved ones? This is one of their best performances. Fairies? If that’s what people want, and if there are people out there who are seeking them out and want to communicate with them, they will be happy to wear the badge and play the part. The Bible tells us that even Satan himself "... masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14). However, a demon is a demon and will lie, deceive and lead people astray.
The end result is spiritual bondage and ruin. Demons, in their many guises, will lead you up a very slippery path of deceit and despair, wanting you to focus on them rather than God and the peace and salvation He gives through faith in Jesus Christ.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/21/2014
A lot of cartoonists—and many blogs, ahem—have taken to PAtreon as a means to finance the creation of comics. There are quite a few (a round up post is called for, maybe later this week) and Patreon doesn’t make it clear who makes the most, the way Kickstarter does, but Jason Shiga recently hit $1000 a month for his Ignatz winning webcomic Demon. Given his analytic background, there’s much of that in the post, but here’s an excerpt:
I know it’s an arbitrary number, but the $1000 mark is significant for a couple reasons. First, it amounts to the opportunity cost of not going with a larger publisher for this project. Second, someone could theoretically live on $1000. They’d have to be childless, live in a hovel in Detroit with 4 other dudes eating beans and rice 3 times a day. But man, if you were to describe that life to my 20 year old self, I’d tell you that sounds pretty nice. I know a lot of my readers here are cartoonists so maybe you can relate to that feeling of knowing so clearly in your bones that you were meant to do this one thing. But then there you are screwing in widgets all day, waiting for that whistle to blow so you can bike home and draw again. When I started out making comics, I didn’t want to be rich or famous. I just wanted to make more comics. I still do.
The lifestyle that $100 a month affords you is not a very appealing one, but, as he says, it makes the project officially a success. As he explains, he started out with usual business model of selling print editions, art and digital subs. This level of income for a regular webcomic would thrill many cartoonists, but given Shiga’s 15 year career, and the success of Meanwhile (which led me to coin the term The Shiga Index when analyzing sales charts.)
My own Patreon is nearing $700, which is a pretty good number all things considered. I’m very fortunate to have this level of success and appreciate each and every patron. Obviously it isn’t enough to live on, but it had taken care of paying for the backend, investing in the site more, and yes, paying some of those New York City bills. Patreon still doesn’t have the “excitement” level of Kickstarter, but it is beginning to afford a bunch of people at least some return on their work.
PS: Demon is totally dope. It’s a cross between Unbreakable, Groundhog Day and Shiga’s own classic Fleep. READ IT.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/21/2014
A lot of cartoonists—and many blogs, ahem—have taken to PAtreon as a means to finance the creation of comics. There are quite a few (a round up post is called for, maybe later this week) and Patreon doesn’t make it clear who makes the most, the way Kickstarter does, but Jason Shiga recently hit $1000 a month for his Ignatz winning webcomic Demon. Given his analytic background, there’s much of that in the post, but here’s an excerpt:
Jason Shiga’s Patreon for Demon reaches $1000 a month was originally published on The Beat
By: baggelboy,
on 2/10/2012
By: Paula Becker,
on 12/20/2011
…And THIS came out. Hmmm… I’m not sure about posting this as it doesn’t fit into the over-all cutesy-ness of my posted work as of late, but c’est la vie. I was playing around with line and color and sort of just wanted to do a devil decorating a Christmas tree. Not so clever, I know. I didn’t work at this all that much so it is what it is: a/the devil decorating a pine tree. But while working on it, this question was in my head as far as a cartoon idea, and I will ask you all: What would Christmas in hell look like? Got a clever cartoon idea for that anyone…? Feel free to share!
By: Mayra Calvani,
on 12/9/2011
By: Mark Miller,
on 10/4/2011
Over the next several months, you are going to see me talking a lot about some other authors I am affiliated with through Trestle Press.
These authors come from many different genres, but they all have one thing in common: We want you to read and enjoy what you are reading!
I think what I'll do is give you a nice overview of several authors here. Then for the rest of the week, I will get in depth through some of my different social sites.
Without further ado:
Robert Ford is the author of The World of Hek, a supernatural series, and Curse of the Translucent Monster.
Wenona Hulsey offers paranormal YA with Burden of Blood.
Sam Lang, another horror author, has the Reprisal series and looks to be starting a zombie collaboration called Severed.
S. L. Schmitz breathes new life into Bram Stoker's Dracula with Mina's Daughter, a steampunk series.
These are the authors and that was only a sampling of what they offer. Watch for more posts and tidbits all week.
Little Hottie Pink & Cute Monster is a round 1″ in diameter glass ring with a white background. He is a cute hot pink monster with devil horns and a pointy tail. He is both adorable and a little bit mischievous.
The ring band is silver and it’s attached firmly to the base of the glass pendant. It’s sturdy, adjustable and can fit on small to medium sized fingers.
I make all of my jewelry by hand.
This ring is not waterproof. Please do not wear while swimming or taking a shower.
Comes in a cute little organza bag.
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Posted on 5/9/2007
I've recently rediscovered something amazing about myself: that I can be productive when I'm trapped upright in front of a computer for eight hours a day. My "enforced" captivity has led me to do a great deal of research in the last couple of weeks as well as interview a number of authors and industry people who work with the internet. Questions, I've found, are much easier to think up and type between phone calls than actual columns and I've gotten a chance to chat with a number of interesting people.
And Dorothy Thompson is one of those interesting people.
Ms. Thompson approached me about hosting interviews with three authors she's been working with: Shel Horowitz, whom you've already read about; and Sandi Kahn Shelton, who you'll read about on May 15th when she stops by to talk about her book, A Piece of Normal. I'd done a virtual tour before as part of the Dirty Sugar Cookies blog extravaganza, but I'd just filed the whole concept away in the back of my mind. It was in between email exchanges it occurred to me that Dorothy was capitalizing on the ever expanding power of the internet for writers, and it would be interesting to find out how she got into the field of virtual tours and how she goes about setting one up.
Bookseller Chick: Thanks for joining me here today. I want to know more about your company. How did you get started in the business of helping others market their books and how long have you been doing it?
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Dorothy Thompson: Thank you for having me! I’ve been learning how to promote books over the Internet for about six or seven years now, partly because I was interested in finding out ways to use the Internet to market my books, but also because I knew that online marketing was going to be the new age of promoting. Being a small press author, I was a little frustrated with how I was supposed to get my books into book stores, using consignment and practically begging to stock me. So, I took to the Internet and, so far, I’ve found out that you can market your book right from the comfort of your home and virtual book tours is only one way of doing it.
In my ebook, A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook, I show authors what I’ve found out to be the ultimate experience in online marketing and ways to get your book into top placements in the search engines. Don’t let the title fool you. This works for any kind of published author. For your marketing plan to work, it’s a combination of things you must do and virtual book tours are one of them.
I had heard about virtual book tours and wanted to try it out with my ebook, sort of as a guinea pig, and because I used the methods outlined in the ebook to promote the ebook, my virtual book tour was a success. It’s a lot of work, but it’ll pay off. The main thing you want to do before you even begin a virtual book tour is to zero in on your key search words and use them in every bit of promotional literature you send out. That’s the secret to getting your book into the first page of the search engines for your key search words. For instance, one of my set of key search words (and you should do this with as many groups of key search words as you can) was "promote your self-published ebook". Even today, it’s #1 out of 90,700 without the quotes and #1 out of 985 with the quotes. And anyone can do it.
It was then that I decided to start my own virtual book tours business and I call it Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Tours after my blog, Pump Up Your Online Book Promotion because I wanted to help others do what I did so that they can sell their books, too.
B.S. Chick: I hear you (or in this case, I read you), I’m a huge fan of notes and learning from experience. So tell me, what goes in to putting together a virtual book tour?
Dorothy: The first thing I do when someone is interested in becoming a part of my tours is to send them an application which will have all their vital information so that I can get familiar with their platform and determine where I can place them. For example, there’s the basic stuff like the name of their book, etc., but what I also look for are things like do they have a print book to send to these hosts because in order to get on the high profile blogs, it’s a must. Another thing I do is ask them if there are any particular literary blogs they’d like to appear just in case one of them comes back at me and says, “Well, so-and-so appeared on such-and-such blog; why didn’t I?” There are a lot of factors involved in why some books appear on more high profile blogs and the key factor is whether they have a supply of books to send to these high profile blog hosts. However, I do try to give them the best service I can. Some of my clients have ebooks only, and that’s fine, so we start finding blogs that will take them, but concentrate on ones that are active and ones in which would give my clients some exposure.
The next thing I do is set up a tour page for them here. This is not only for them to see where their tour is taking them, but also as a guide for the blog hosts to refer to in case they want to grab the cover or the author’s picture, or just to find out more of what their books are about.
And, then we get to work.
As each contact is made, I cc the author so that the author, blog host and I stay on the same page. Some of these are interviews, some are guest blogs and some are reviews. It all depends on what the blog host wants. We’re all very flexible.
When a client signs up with me, I go beyond just the tour. I help them set up their blog so that it’s SEO-friendly, teach them about tags and get them to learn about google alerts so that they’ll see how well they are doing as their tour evolves. It’s more of a science to see what happens…we do this, then this happens. It’s fun, though. The authors are real excited and are such a pleasure to work with. I try to answer whatever questions they might have so that it’s a pleasurable experience for everyone.
B.S. Chick: Do you specialize each one to the book involved?
Dorothy: Yes, I do specialize each tour. Someone asked me that the other day. If an author writes inspirational, for example, I aim for bloggers who write the same thing. I like diversity and try not to use the same blogger in a month's time. I have four authors going out next month, and have tried not to double up on any of my bloggers, but sometimes it can't be helped. But, I do try for diversity.
B.S. Chick: You've approached me about working with a self published title and a big house title, does this represent your spread of clients?
Dorothy: Yes, I work with any author who has a published book. That's the difference between me and those other guys. I used to hate it when a high-trafficked blog would turn me down because I wasn't with a big house. I guess it's my pet peeve. It doesn't matter who you are published with. An author is an author.
B.S. Chick: Why do a virtual tour? How can this affect the success of an author's book?
Dorothy: Why do a virtual book tour? Many reasons, actually. When you do a tour in a bricks and mortar house, how many books do you sell? Let's say you've sold maybe ten. Well, that's not bad, but look at what you have to go through? There's gas, there's getting ready, there's tension. Over the Internet, you can do the same thing and the only one going through all the tension is me, lol. There's a lot involved when you have four authors going out in one month, especially since this is really the first real month that's going to test me as to whether I can do it or not. I've had blog hosts turn me down; I've had blog hosts think it's the neatest thing since Cheez Whiz.
The successes, though, are the things that really keep me going. I am so excited when I get to email an author and tell her/him that I've got them on so-and-so blog. And, the strange truth of the matter is, most of these authors wouldn't have been able to do it themselves for one reason or another. It's really strange that if you go through a third party like myself, people respond faster. But, wouldn't you? If an author emailed you, you might do it, but if a publicist emailed you, your subconscious figures that this author must be really serious if they've hired outside help, you know? And I love playing publicist. I've worn the author's shoes and I know what they feel like, so this really helps me to help other authors. I know their frustrations. I know their fears of losing a publisher if the sales aren't there. If I can make a difference, then that's all that matters to me anyway.
I do want to mention another reason for going on a virtual book tour. If you are touring bookstores, you're there maybe a couple of hours. When you do tours online, what happens is that whatever blog you are on, it doesn't matter where or with who, your tour will be archived indefinitely in the search engines as long as the blog host keeps it in their archives. This builds up your online presence which is going to work in your favor. Let's say you appear on 20 blogs for this. Well, that's 20 more links you'll have in the search engines, which raises your presence there. I've done studies on SEO and I tested it out with a couple of free ebooks that my writing group and I wrote and I managed to get the last two we did in the number one spot in the search engines in one day for our particular key search words. It's actually fun watching it happen. It doesn't happen miraculously. It takes a lot of hard work, but the end result is what is going to sell books. ;o)
http://www.patreon.com/dumbingofage–currently $2.5k/month
http://www.patreon.com/erikamoen–Currently just under $1k a comic, which publishes every week.
http://www.patreon.com/jephjacques–currently $9.7k/month
I mean, I’m happy for him and all, but it’s hardly groundbreaking.
And of course I managed to break all those links.
http://www.patreon.com/dumbingofage
http://www.patreon.com/erikamoen
http://www.patreon.com/jephjacques
Tom Siddell makes $5k a month
http://www.patreon.com/gunnerkrigg
Aaron Diaz is making $3.6K
http://www.patreon.com/dresdencodak
And Michelle Czajkowski is about to make about $2k a month if a few more people sign up.
http://www.patreon.com/avasdemon
Still congrats to Jason Shiga!
Found a typo: “The lifestyle that $100 a month affords you…”
Interesting stuff.