SMOL Fair 2022 Is Coming!

Convention season is upon us, and starting Saturday, March 19, book lovers around the world will be virtually gathering for the second annual SMOL Fair, an online book festival that promotes indie publishing houses of all varieties. Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, is among the exhibitors setting up shop in the virtual dealers’ room, so what better reason do you need to check it out?  

(Smol, by the way, is Internet slang for something that’s small and cute—or so the site Know Your Meme tells me. Yes, I had to look it up, since I thought SMOL—as it’s listed all in caps on their website—was an acronym for something related to indie publishers. So, here it means this is a small book fair. Add it to your vocabulary!)

In addition to visiting the dealers’ room, you can watch panels and author readings, plus there’s a keynote address by Shirley Jackson Award–winning author Brian Evenson (Song for the Unraveling of the World) on March 18 that will kick things off. And it’s all free (although you have to register to “attend” the panels).

There will also be book giveaways—SWC, for instance, has supplied three copies each of our two most popular titles: the young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, by Steven A. Roman (that’s me); and Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination, Richard C. White’s how-to book for writers and RPG gamemasters that shows in detail how to create fully realized fantasy and science-fiction environments for your projects. 

SMOL Fair runs March 19–26. For more information on the show, its participating publishers, and its lineup of events, visit the SMOL Fair website.

Brooklyn Book Festival 2015 Coverage

This past Sunday, SWC author Richard C. White and I attended the tenth anniversary celebration of the Brooklyn Book Festival, which has become the place to go to in New York if you’re a book lover. So how’d it turn out for me and Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts? Well, if you head over to the SWC blog right now, you can check out my Brooklyn Book Festival 2015 report and read all about it!

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Welcome, Brooklyn Book Lovers!

Thanks for stopping by the StarWarp Concepts booth today, and for your interest in my Goth adventuress, Pandora Zwieback. If you’re here because you spoke with me, then click on the cover you see to the right and download the Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 digital comic that I showed you. Not only is it an introduction to Pan and her world, hosted by Pan herself, but it contains two sample chapters from her first novel, Blood Feud. Give it a read.

blood_feud_lg_cover_2013The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is the young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series that I write. It’s the story of a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets a shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, in the first critically acclaimed novel, Blood Feud, that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. But before Pan can learn more about what she can do, she and her parents are drawn into a conflict between warring vampire clans that are searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father.

Blood Feud is far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels released in the last few years. Pan is exactly the kind of teen heroine that readers should be standing up and cheering for.”—Melissa Voelker, HorrorNews.net

“One of those fabulous books that manages to straddle the young adult/adult fiction divide, catering equally for teens and more, ahem, ‘mature’ readers alike with a light touch that makes it a joy to read.”—Kell Smurthwaite, BCF Book Reviews

Blood-Reign-FinalCvrPan’s debut adventure continues in the second novel, Blood Reign, in which she and Annie face challenges from not just vampires but legions of monsters led by a fallen angel—who happens to be one of Annie’s ex-lovers! Blood Feud ended on such a shocking cliffhanger that Blood Reign picks up right where the previous novel left off and hits the ground running, in a story filled with danger, high-speed car chases, vampire hit squads, and a generous helping of romance—all while Pan tries to make sense of her increasingly weird life. Pan fans (I call them “Panatics”) can’t seem to get enough of StarWarp Concepts’ resident Goth girl, so feel free to join their growing ranks—we love adding new members to Zwieback Nation.

“If you thought the first book, Blood Feud, was high powered, you’ll love this book! To paraphrase movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s quote: Blood Reign starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax…. This was one fun read!”Dwight Jon Zimmerman, New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln’s Last Days

“If Blood Feud, the first volume, took some deliberate pacing steps to build Pandora’s character, this volume eschews that as it thunders along at breakneck speed, barely pausing for breath at any given time (and, I must say, the volume was devoured at speed as well)… I thoroughly enjoyed this volume.”—Andrew Boylan, Taliesin Meets the Vampires

pan_annual_coverAlong with Blood Feud and Blood Reign, on sale right now is The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1. A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special—with cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella)—finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features three original stories of what I’ve termed the “Paniverse”—tales that take place within the fictional universe of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback:

  • “Song of the Siren,” written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0) involves Pan and her boyfriend, Javi, attending one of his family’s picnics in Central Park, and running into an ex-girlfriend of Javi’s. An awkward situation, to be sure, made even worse by the realization that with her monstervision, Pan can see the girl is really a siren: a creature from Greek mythology that can hypnotize men with its voice!
  • “After Hours” is by writer Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up) and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld)
  • “Shopping Maul” is a short story written by me, with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (writer/artist of Charm School). Pan, Javi, and their friends stop by a Queens mall to do a bit of window-shopping—only to find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between Gothic Lolita vampires and Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Annie!

Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information, as well as sample pages. And then start celebrating!

(A special shout-out to teen readers and Pandora Zwieback fans who are budding authors, but who may think their work isn’t all that good and worth continuing: Check out this post from May 27, 2014, where I talk about my first published work—a science-fiction story I wrote when I was 16. Take a look at that and tell me you can’t do better! 😀 )

Speaking of short stories, there’s “Pandora Zwieback and the Bloggy Thing,” in which Pan is asked by a horror site to write a guest post for their blog, to promote her book series (yes, in this instance she’s aware that I write books based on her adventures). I originally wrote it as a real-life guest post for a site called Writing Belle, and Panatics enjoyed the meta aspect of it.

Give the site a look-over—we’ve got plenty of free stuff you can download, and a gallery called “The 13 Days of Pan-demonium”: 13 unique drawings of Pan and Annie by a host of talented artists. And when you’re done, don’t forget to Like Pan’s Facebook page, so you can keep up-to-date with all the latest news.

And please keep in mind that Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, is not just a YA fiction house. It also publishes illustrated classics (including J. Sheridan’s Le Fanu’s vampire romance Carmilla and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars); graphic novels for superhero fans and adult horror aficionados; digital and print comic books; and artist sketchbooks. Give them a visit and check out all they have to offer.

Brooklyn Book Festival 2015 is This Sunday!

The 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival is being held on Sunday, September 20, and StarWarp Concepts (and me, of course) will be there!

Booth 310 will our home for the day; as always, just look for the Pandora Zwieback banner. As you can see on the map, we’ll be in a new location at the south end of the plaza (we were closer to the north end, the past two years), but getting moved around by showrunners is to be expected when a successful convention expands—they have to make room for new exhibitors, after all. And BBF has been nothing if not successful.

Bklyn2015-Map

Manning the booth will be SWC head Steven A. Roman (hey, that’s me!), author of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback. And joining me will be bestselling fantasy author Richard C. White (Gauntlet: Dark Legacy: Paths of Evil), who’ll be promoting his own StarWarp Concepts projects: the supernatural-superheroes graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings; the pirate-fantasy digital comic The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special; and his upcoming release, the fantasy writers’ reference book, Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination.

On sale will be the Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign; the comics The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 and Lorelei Presents: House Macabre; the illustrated classics A Princess of Mars and Carmilla; the graphic novels Lorelei: Sects and the City and Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings; and the Official Pandora Zwieback T-shirt. (While supplies last, of course.) I’ll even be dragging some of my non-SWC works out of storage, so if you’ve ever wanted to purchase copies of my X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels, my young adult superhero graphic novel Sunn, or the anthology Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 2, then here’s the place to find them! (Also while supplies last, BTW.)

The Brooklyn Book Festival is open on Sunday, September 20, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and is located at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, 209 Joralemon Street. For more information, including travel directions, head over to the festival website.

Collingswood Book Festival 2015: Where to Find Us

The Collingswood Book Festival returns for its lucky 13th anniversary this October, to fill the streets of this quaint New Jersey town with book lovers, and StarWarp Concepts will be making its debut appearance there! Booth #24 will be our home for the day; as always, look for the distinctive Pandora Zwieback banner.

Collingswood2015-Map

Unfamiliar with the Collingswood Book Festival? Well, to quote the festival’s site:

The 13th Annual Collingswood Book Festival makes a triumphant return as bibliophiles converge in this historic South Jersey town to celebrate everything about the written word. The Collingswood Book Festival is a big literary event that exudes small-town, friendly ambience. Festival-goers will have an opportunity to stroll more than six blocks of Haddon Avenue filled with nationally recognized authors/speakers for adults and children, as well as booksellers, storytellers, poetry readings, workshops, exhibitors and performance stages. All events are free.

Collingswood Book Festival takes place—rain or shine—on Saturday, October 3, 2015, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information, including travel directions, visit the CBF website.

Hope to see you there!

Brooklyn Book Festival 2015: Where to Find Us

The 10th Anniversary Brooklyn Book Festival is less than a month away, and StarWarp Concepts will be there! We’ve just received our location notice for this hugely popular literary celebration, and booth 310 will be our home for the day; as always, just look for the distinctive Pandora Zwieback banner. And scheduled to join me this year is bestselling fantasy author Richard C. White, who’s the author of two SWC titles: the pirate-fantasy digital comic The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special; and Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings, a general readers’ graphic novel about a group of supernatural-superheroes-for-hire taking on their first case.

Bklyn2015-Map

The Brooklyn Book Festival takes place on September 20, 2015, and is located at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, 209 Joralemon Street. For more information, including travel directions and lists of the exhibitors and authors who’ll be appearing, head over to the festival website.

Book Expo America 2015: The Goth Takeover

Yesterday I attended Book Expo America—North America’s annual get-together of book industry insiders, held this year at New York’s Javits Convention Center—to wander the aisles and check to see the placement of my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels, Blood Feud and Blood Reign, at the booth run by the IBPA: the International Book Publishers Association—a worldwide organization that StarWarp Concepts belongs to, dedicated to spreading the good word about indie publishing companies large and small.

So what were my impressions of BEA 2015? Find out by heading over to the StarWarp Concepts blog for my book festival report, and reading all about it!

BEA2015-PanBooks

The next three stops on the StarWarp Concepts 2015 convention tour are the Brooklyn Book Festival (September 20), the Collingswood Book Festival (October 3), and the “holy crap, it’s full’a zombies!” Walker Stalker Con (December 4–6). Hope to see you there!

StarWarp Concepts to Attend Capital City Book Fair

The inaugural edition of the Capital City Book Fair is coming to downtown Trenton, New Jersey’s state capital (thus the event’s name), in May, and StarWarp Concepts will be there!

Organized by Classics Used and Rare Books and the Trenton Downtown Association, it’s a two-day event that’s planned to include live events, musicians, food vendors and, of course, lots of books. And with my latest novel, Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2, now on sale, it sounds like the perfect venue to introduce New Jersey book lovers to the adventures of The ’Warp’s resident Goth chick—not to mention the wonders of SWC’s other titles!

The Capital City Book Fair takes place on Friday, May 1, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and on Saturday, May 2, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. We’ll be there only on Saturday; as always, look for the distinctive Pandora Zwieback banner.

For more information, including directions to the show, visit the Capital City Book Fair website. I won’t know the location of the SWC booth until we get closer to the event, but you’ll be the first to know after I find out.

Hope to see you there!

StarWarp Concepts to Attend Brooklyn Book Festival 2015

brooklyn_logoIt’s official: Brooklyn Book Festival will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this September, and StarWarp Concepts will definitely be there to join in the festivities! It’s a show I’ve come to look forward to—a major shift in attitude from when The ’Warp made its first appearance there a few years back, and I kept rolling my eyes hard every time I heard authors referred to as the “literati” (a god-awful, pretentious term if ever I’ve heard one). The ’Warp missed out on last year’s show due to circumstances beyond our control, so we’re doubly excited to greet readers new and old at this year’s festival!

Brooklyn Book Festival takes place—rain or shine—at Brooklyn Borough Hall Plaza, on Sunday, September 20, 2015, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. For more information, including travel directions, visit the BBF website. I won’t know the location of the SWC booth until later in the year—usually they don’t announce booth numbers until August, after the festival committee has finalized the plaza layout—but I’ll be sure to post the map here when I get it.

Hope to see you there!

StarWarp Concepts to Attend Collingswood Book Festival 2015

Collingswood-logoNo, it’s not the house where vampire Barnabas Collins of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows lives—that would be Collinwood—but you’ll definitely find some spooky deals there! The Collingswood Book Festival returns for its lucky 13th anniversary this October, to fill the streets of this quaint New Jersey town with book lovers, and StarWarp Concepts will be making its debut appearance there! Unfamiliar with the Collingswood Book Festival? Well, to quote the festival’s site:

The 13th Annual Collingswood Book Festival makes a triumphant return as bibliophiles converge in this historic South Jersey town to celebrate everything about the written word. The Collingswood Book Festival is a big literary event that exudes small-town, friendly ambience. A week of activities will culminate on Saturday, October 3. Festival-goers will have an opportunity to stroll more than six blocks of Haddon Avenue filled with nationally recognized authors/speakers for adults and children, as well as booksellers, storytellers, poetry readings, workshops, exhibitors and performance stages. All events are free.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to cancel our appearance at last year’s show, so this gives us a brand-new chance to introduce readers to the adventures of Pandora Zwieback, Lorelei, Troubleshooters Incorporated, Carmilla, John Carter of Mars, and all the rest. And what better time for a dark-fantasy publisher to show up than for the festival’s thirteenth year?

Collingswood Book Festival takes place—rain or shine—on Saturday, October 3, 2015, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information, including travel directions, visit the CBF website. I won’t know the location of the SWC booth until they finalize their plans in September, but once I get that information I’ll be sure to pass it along.

Hope to see you there!