And the Winner Is...

Well, the votes are in on the T-shirt design and the fins-down winner is the shirt featuring Bradfast (the fish) pictured above. I did receive a bunch of suggestions that I put the Fish Wielder title on the back or sleeve of the shirt, which I'm working on now. Once I've gotten an acceptable proof from the T-shirt guys, I'll probably print a bunch of these.

The runners up (because two designs tied with 15 votes each) were the ones featuring Thoral and Brad side by side and the one featuring the full artwork from the book cover. Because many of the people that voted for these ones seemed to like them a whole lot, I may actually print up a few.

Thanks to everyone who participated! I'll keep you posted when the shirts are available for give-aways!

T Shirt Designs!

So, I've been working up some T Shirt designs for a promotional T shirt and these are the four front runners at the moment. I'm very interested in hearing your opinion about which of these shirts you like better. Your vote matters! Help me pick the Fish Wielder shirt!

 

 

BAM! Tagline Two Takes the Lead

BAM! After dozens of people weighed in on Facebook about which tagline they preferred for Fish Wielder, the clear audience favorite is tagline two:

"Fish Wielder is an epically silly epic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings set in Narnia if it had been written by the Monty Python troupe working with the band They Might Be Giants."

So, that will be the one I recommend to my publisher, Fiery Seas. Thanks to everyone who weighed in with their thoughts! 

In other news, I'm beginning to make plans for how I'm going to go about promoting the book over the course of the next year while it is being readied for publication. A year seems like an awfully long time to get people engaged and keep them interested in a book that's not even available to pre-order yet, but that's exactly what I've got to do. Once I get a plan figured out, I may post parts of it here. And of course, if you have any suggestions or ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks,

Jim 

The Quest for the Perfect Tagline

So, I'm trying to figure out the perfect tagline for Fish Wielder, and I could use your help. I've had a little experience writing taglines before for movies, TV shows and even comic books, but I hadn't realized I needed one for my book until the awesome folks at Fiery Seas Publishing sent me their production package which asked for my tagline.

Since I hadn't already picked one out, and trying to respond as promptly as possible to their request, I quickly sent them two options. For the first one, I tried to be descriptive of the things that happen in the story:

"The Brotherhood of the Bad Religion is trying to resurrect the Dark Lord Mauron… again, and only the barbarian warrior Thoral Mighty Fist and his talking goldfish, Brad, can stop them from finding the ancient chocolate Pudding of Power and enslaving the magic land of Grome."  In the second one, I tried to be more suggestive of the flavor of the story--the tone and feel:

"Fish Wielder is a bit like Lord of the Rings set in Narnia if it had been written by the Monty Python troupe working with the band They Might be Giants."

Since then, I've modified the second one slightly to read:

"Fish Wielder is a ridiculously epic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings set in Narnia if it had been written by the Monty Python troupe working with the band They Might be Giants."

And at that point, I put them both up on the Fish Wielder Facebook page in order to ask the people there which they liked better. So far, #2 is winning by a large margin (large margin always makes me think of Large Marge from Pee Wee's Big Adventure).  

While the votes are still coming in, I did get a suggestion from someone who has read the book that I should alter #2 again to read:

"Fish Wielder is an epically silly epic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings set in Narnia if it had been written by the Monty Python troupe working with the band They Might Be Giants."

So, that's where things stand at the moment. I'm working on my tag-line and I'd appreciate your feedback. Please let me know what you think in the comments, or by putting in your two cents on the Facebook page.

Thanks,

Jim

The Start of a new Blog

Well! Here I am starting up a new blog, just on time to announce that my fantasy novel, Fish Wielder, has been picked up by Fiery Seas Publishing for release in August of 2016.

Fish Wielder is a ridiculously epic fantasy, kind of like Lord of the Rings set in Narnia if it had been written by the Monty Python troupe working with the band They Might Be Giants. It's got hulking barbarian warriors, talking fish, calculating elf maidens, necromancers, giant snakes, two-headed wolves, evil cults that worship Cthulhu, a Dark Lord in need of resurrecting and an ancient chocolate pudding so powerful that it could destroy the world.

There's still a lot of work to be done to get the book ready for release, and August of 2016 is still a long way off, but I hope you'll follow along as I document my progress in this blog--and I've got my fingers crossed that you'll pick up a copy when it's finally available and have as much fun reading it as I've had writing it.

OK! Guess that's all for now! Thanks for stopping by, and please follow the blog and leave me some comments.

Yours,

Jim