KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life

Today was a day filled with karate. I and another black belt went to a local summer camp and taught three classes of 10-18 kids depending, and taught them some basic karate stuff. Nothing as complex as what we do in the dojo, just some basics, and trying to have some fun with them. Three of the kids are already in our dojo, and maybe we'll get some new kids as a result of this.

After that, I came home, devoured a sopresatta sandwich, took a nap, and then went to the dojo to help teach two kids classes with a different black belt, then I took the 7.15 adult class, which was pretty well crowded -- six black belts (plus the one teaching the class) and seven color belts.

Tonight I put what I think are the finishing touches on my Kickstarter, which I hope will go live this weekend.......

.....here's a hint:

The Pleated Jeans blog put up this hilarious post showing the covers to famous books, but with one letter missing. So you've got Edgar Allan Poe's The Rave, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Ale, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Ears of Solitude, and probably my favorite, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dad, which puts a whole new spin on those two, lemme tell ya...

This got to thinking about some of my titles, like my Farscape novel House of Cads, my Spider-Man novel Down These Man Streets, my Supernatural novel Heat of the Dragon, my CSI: NY novel For Walls, and my Star Trek novels A Burning Hose, The Brave and the Bod, Demos of Air and Darkness, and A Time for War, a Time for Pace.

From 1994-2000, Byron Preiss & Boulevard Books co-published books based on Marvel's superheroes, including 45 novels and several anthologies. I was the editor in charge of that line -- basically, I was the Kevin Feige of prose in the nineties -- and on the 32nd episode of Dead Kitchen Radio: The Keith R.A. DeCandido Podcast, I talk about that wonderful experience, working with great folks like Peter David, Diane Duane, Kurt Busiek, Pierce Askegren, Greg Cox, Adam-Troy Castro, George Perez, John Romita Sr., Mike Zeck, Mark Bagley, Bruce Jensen, Luis Royo, and tons more.

Apologies for missing the month of June. When I cut the podcast back to monthly at the top of 2013, I really thought I'd be able to stick to it. That lasted five months. *sigh* I will endeavor mightily to be on schedule going forward.

You can subscribe to DKR via iTunes, either by itself or as part of The Chronic Rift Network, or you can get the podcast on the Rift web site or (for a while anyhow) on DKR's Mevio page. You can comment right here on the ol' blog, on DKR's Facebook page, on the Rift site, by e-mail to krad at whysper dot net, or by phone at 888-866-9010.

Because I want the Kickstarter specifically to run through to the 5th of August (the day after Shore Leave, where I'll be pushing the project aggressively), I'm going to officially launch it on Saturday, but it's been accepted by KS, so I can announce it with impunity (you can preview the Kickstarter here):

I would like to produce a Dragon Precinct graphic novel, telling a new adventure of Torin and Danthres and the rest of the Cliff's End Castle Guard in comic book form. I've lined up JK Woodward of Star Trek/Doctor Who: Assimilation2 fame (and with whom I've collaborated on my two Star Trek comic book projects with IDW) to provide the artwork and color (he also did the piece that's advertising the campaign), and the fine folks at Comic Mix to do the lettering, production, and distribution. I will, of course, be scripting it.

The story will be -- like the novels Dragon Precinct, Unicorn Precinct, Goblin Precinct, and the upcoming Gryphon Precinct, as well as the short stories that were collected in Tales from Dragon Precinct -- the usual blend of fantasy (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and wizards all living in a port town) and mystery (the main characters are detectives who solve crimes). This particular tale will involve a serial killer -- kind of -- with the usual fantastic twist.

Thing is -- in order to do this, I need to raise $40,000. That will enable me to get full bookstore and comic book store and online retailer distribution, and it will enable me to pay everyone involved with the project a proper wage for their work (not just JK and ComicMix's lettering and production staff, but also me for writing the script).

You can just contribute $5 -- which will get you an acknowledgment on this blog -- and I would be excessively grateful, but for higher amounts of monies, you can get all kinds of nifty rewards, ranging from the graphic novel in electronic, trade paperback, or limited-edition hardcover form, bits of artwork by JK, a character named after you in the story and/or in the upcoming Gryphon Precinct, a copy of Gryphon in trade or electronic form, a mailed thank-you note, an acknowledgment in the graphic novel, and lots more -- including a full-cast audio drama adaptation of the graphic novel starring and produced by the fine folks of the Parsec Award-winning audio drama HG World with music by Emmett Plant.



To preview the Kickstarter, which goes live on Saturday the 6th of July, click here.

I mistakenly identified DaVinci's Notebook as Canadian on this week's Monday music. I just assumed they were -- maybe because they toured with Moxy Früvous, maybe because I learned of them around the same time as I was introduced to not only Früvous, but the Arrogant Worms, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, and Great Big Sea, who are all Canadian, or maybe I was just confusing them with the Canadian procedural DaVinci's Inquest. Whatever, here's another one of theirs, the still-quite-timely-despite-being-composed-in-the-1990s "Internet Porn."