Silly Daddy Blasts Into Space with Star Chosen Sci-Fi Novel

Star Chosen: A Science Fiction Space Opera for the Whole Family.

It’s a 67,000 word science fiction novel called “Star Chosen.” The book took over five years to write and is a cross between Battlestar Galactica, Narnia, and of course, Silly Daddy. Star Chosen, the 126 page, softcover book retails for $10 US and is available now through Amazon. The book’s back cover description follows:

“Deleting history was just the beginning. Blast off with STAR CHOSEN, a space opera! After war, heartbreak, and the erasure of all history and culture, whose side will you fight on: the Proud… or the Chosen? In a time yet to come, the high-tech Faith War threatens to destroy all religions across the universe. One small yet bold group, known as ‘the Chosen,’ survives, but will they rebuild, or be torn to space dust across a cold universe?”

While the printed book is available through Amazon, the novel is also selling on Chiappetta’s website as an e-Book in all the major e-Reader formats: ePub, Mobi, PDF and even as a TXT file. Star Chosen, the e-Book, sells for $5, and is DRM-free. The book can be loaded onto multiple devices, and can be read on the Kindle, Sony E-Reader, iPhone, iPad, any computer, and any smartphone

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Digital Strips 191 – Review: Gastrophobia

We already knew that barbarians can leap into the fray, sword raised he and while wearing nothing more than an animal skin drive an entire army of their enemies before them to the sounds of the lamentation of their women. But in today’s comic, Gastrophobia, we learn whether or not a barbarian can love.

This week we look at Gastrophobia, by David McGuire. It’s the story of a hardworking single mother Phobia and her quest to raise her short dumpy son according to her values despite a world who doesn’t share them. She also stabs monsters in the back and bosses their slave around. But this is Ancient Greece where such activities were considered moral.

This is another Jason pick, will his streak of unpolishable turds continue, or have I opened my heart enough to allow other people’s tastes a place inside? Find out on this episode of Digital Strips.

Show Notes:
Skaadi
Skaadi review show
Realm of Atland
Realm of Atland review show
Lovecraft is Missing
Storming the Tower
Web Comics Ponies
Dawn of Time
Girly
Gun show
Hereville
Lackadaisy
Wonderella

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InterventionCon

Intervention: Your Online Life, In Person. A Convention with Webcomics, Videos, Music, and You – September 10-12 2010 at the Hilton Washington DC.

Intervention is a convention for the independent comics, art, and music creator. The con was started by webcomic creator Onezumi Hartstein and web developer James Harknell. This goal is to bring together different independent creators to party, educate, and appreciate the opportunities the Internet gives to all of us.

Intervention will have awesome geek-related programming and gaming all day and night from Friday through Sunday. There will be one dance party where the audience can assist the DJ in making live music and one NYC-style dance party. In addition to the Artist’s Alley/Vendor Room over 23 webcomic and New Media experts will attend. The con is still being planned. Discussion is being held on the Intervention forum.
If you need more information or you want to schedule an interview with the con chairs, please contact onezumi@onezumi.com.

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Digital Strips 190 – Review Marooned

People always ask what book/movie/cast member of Chuck you would want to have with you if you were stranded on a deserted island. They never ask this about Web comics, probably because if you had the internet you’d just send an email asking some one to come rescue you after you finished the archive of Sinfest.

Being stuck on another planet is an all together much more frightening proposition, and that forms the premise for this week’s comic Marooned. Captain John is stuck on Mars, and despite the fact that he lacks all skills, training and common sense, he’s doing his best to survive along with his angry robot Asimov and the many Martian races waiting beneath the surface. Is that hijinks that I smell about to ensue? It sure is.

This is actually the second time we’ve talked about Marooned. The first being almost two years ago when it was competing the Web Comics Idol competition. I’d tell you to go back and listen to that show, and you can if you want to, but I’m a better editor now, I’m almost embarrassed by the old episodes. I am still learning however and still trying new things with the mic.

Show Notes:
Not Invented Here
Pixton
Bill Barnes
Dinosaur comics
Real Life Comics
Wondermark
Dawn of Time
Order of the Stick
XKCD Sucks
PVP Makes me Sad
Bear and Tiger
Pajama Forest
Realm of Atland
Riceboy
Goodship chronicles
Jackie Rose

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Noir Et Blanc

With the turn of the decade this year marks the 5+ years that I have been reading webcomics. In that time my list of favorites has grown and shrunk with the amount of free time my life gives me. Although my recent eureka that if I stopped playing facebook games would give me more time I think the list will grow past 7 to 20. We can only hope. Anyways one of those lucky few I’ve kept up with is LICD, if only because Rayne is is secretly based off of my life. So I am forced to find out how the guys render my telepathic communications.

That’s why it is so exciting to hear about the release of the first 127 pages in print form. The book takes these strips done by Trevor completely redrawn by Lar. Starting Friday, March 19th at 12:00 AM EST the long awaited prequel remastered for a new age will be released as LICD: Noir et Blanc. The book itself will be shipping out in early April.

The book will be the same size as the normal LICD collections and be full of commentary. The real differences will be in the lack of color in the interior, a length of only 88 pages and, of course, half the cost. As is par for the course Lar and Ryan will be signing the first 1,000 books sold. So do not delay in ordering come Friday. And naturally, a pre-sale announcement wouldn’t be the same without a look at the cover.

Noir et Blanc: available for sale this Friday, March 19th at 12:00 AM EST.

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Digital Strips 189 – Zuda Watch March 2010

Remember last show when I said I was pissy because I’m hungry because I’m in a stupid weight loss competition? Well the competition, like my hunger, continues, so keep that in mind as you listen in. I’d recommend taking everything I say with a grain of salt, but that would get be thinking about food, so I won’t.

It’s Zuda Watch time again. This month the great comic battle was not as overwhelming impressive as it was last month. Lots of great potential was had, but not focused into tight, well told eight page stories. But, as is the case every month, there were several entries that just stood out and made us take notice.

Was your favorite among those we deem awesome? Or are you going to have to step up and make a case for it in the comments section? The only way to know for sure is to listen in and represent.

Three side notes. First, I lost my record of which comics we mentioned in this episode. I’ll listen again and get that added as soon as I can, but in the mean time, no show notes. Two, I’m still messing with some recording settings, so this show’s level’s aren’t the best, I hope you don’t notice but let me know if you do, especially if you know how to get it better. Finally, in this episode I made the throat-punch worthy mistake or referring to David Gallaher as David Gallager. I hope he can find it in his half werewolf heart to forgive me.

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Guest Artists, Bioware, DRMs, and Winners

For some reason I just don’t like guest artists. Maybe if I explain myself this might make a little more sense. I love webcomics, especially those driven by story arcs, because they allow characters to grow with me as I read through the archives or catch the updates. But it completely destroys my train of thought to have fan pages thrown in the mix that have no input into the comic. There are countless webcomics I have stopped reading because their guest strips ran too long and I had obvious way to skip them.

What spanned this little thought was a forum post that got alerted to me. J Gray of Mysteries of the Arcana is putting out a call for submissions to help promote other comics for two weeks. It is very nice that he’s taking the time to help others and with very little restrictions to what you can send him. I can only hope that he doesn’t through these into the main story line if I go back and try to read through the archives. I say put them on the front page but leave them in their own gallery.

How do you make a grown man squeal like a little child? You have BioWare create their own webcomic and publish through Dark Horse. I don’t know how many others of you out there are like me but anything BioWare is instantly bought by me. Ever since the original KotoR I have been an acolyte and never been disappointed. I can only hope that continues with DragonAge. That being said it also appears there is another webcomic I was unaware of it and it’s time to let my fingers do some research.

I have a vague memory of having seen something from Mr. Colbow before. It was probably for older post similar to what Google decided to alert me on but it looks like he’s created a bit of a stir on the problem with DRMs. For some reason he decided to torture himself and attempted to view DRM protected media at his library and finds out that although everything is free it takes forever to find out that you have no idea how to get it to work.

Yay! The Escapist has announced the winners to their contest. Going through 350 comics, how in the world did they manage to get that many submissions, they narrowed down the field to 18 finalist. Finally the infamous panel of judges duked it out with foam bats until they all got tired, fell to the ground, and peacefully discussed how the winner should be. After an era of minutes passed them by they concluded the winner was Out of Tens. Congrats Decoy Doctorpus!

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Molebash, XKCD, Contests, and Surveys

For the entire month of March at Schlegel’s Coffee Shop in downtown Chillicothe, OH is displaying the artwork of Wes Molebash.  The entire run of Max vs. Max strips (from the beginning of the series through February) will be on display. On Saturday, March 13, the Chillicothe Art League hosts a Gallery Stroll through the downtown.  Wes will be there from 6 PM until 9-ish so those who happen to be stalking him will no where to find him.

Would it be possible to comb through the entire archives of XKCD? A couple of years ago I managed to accomplish this but that was without the past 2 years of updates on top. At this point it would take more than a week. That doesn’t stop some people from saying they have read all of them and know which are the best ones. It’s your turn to read through and find out if he got it right.

The Escapist took submissions for a huge contest. Apparently it was so big they secured help from webcomic industry veterans Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, Brian Clevinger, founder of 8-Bit Theater and Shamus Young, the man behind Stolen Pixels to be judges for the event. The contest submissions were due no later than noon EST on February 28th. Due to the great response, winners will be chosen and posted this week.

Has anyone taken this survey?

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Imagine This Invades Your Phone ~WITH~ The Clovis App!

Back from blogging purgatory (working on two comics along with a real, honest-to-goodness social life is tough work!) to drop the news of a phone app based on one of our favorite webcomics! Lucas Turnbloom’s Imagine THIS is now available in handy, portable format for all of you who love reading comics on your smartphone/mobile device of choice (not this guy, no sir).

The official word from the bird himself:

Can’t get enough “Imagine THIS”? Yes, I know. It’s truly hard to live without the mediocrity.

Well, now you can take the mediocrity with you — on your phone!!

Just point your mobile device’s browser to: gocomics.com/imaginethis and, BAM!!!

Can’t pass up that fun, now can you? Let me know when I can view this on my brand spankin’ new iPad and we can talk more seriously. And yes, it is great to be such a delusional fool.

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Digital Strips 188 – Horizons Watch Retail and Not Invented Here

On this episode of Digital Strips we force our listeners to walk a mile in our shoes and get to know us better by reading comics that describe our past and a present places of work. This was totally unplanned and yet really find of fun.

We take a look at two new comics on the Internet scene. Jason picked Retail by Norm Feuti which offers an indepth look at the hardships endured by the faithful retail army of the First World. I, on the other hand, chose Not Invented Here which shows the true trials face by people who sit at desks and think about Star Trek all day.

We hit a couple of big comicy topics this show. Like art, pacing and go back and forth on the issue of can a Web comic read like a Newspaper comic. I also learn a big lesson in podcasting etiquette that I’ll try to keep in mid for future shows. Come along and learn with me.

Show Notes

Diesel Sweeties
Legend of Bill
Legend of Bill show
Bear and Tiger
Ugly Hill
Unshelved
Monsterplex
Imagine This

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