Great news for those unable to purchase a paper copy of Realms of Fantasy! The April 2010 issue, the one containing my novelette “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”, is now on sale as a downloadable PDF. The PDF version costs US$3.99, while the Kindle version is still available for US$5.99. The instructions for purchasing either version can be found here.
The first ever Elephant and Macaw Banner press release went out today in Brazil.
Douglas Cohen gave me this amazing quote for the release:
“Truly memorable characters within sword & sorcery literature are rare. As numerous authors have learned over the years, it is a Herculean task to step out of the shadows of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Perhaps a handful of others can be added to this list, no more. With Gerard van Oost and Oludara, Christopher Kastensmidt has given me reason to hope this exclusive club has just admitted its two latest members. This duo is fresh and different–as is the setting of a magical colonial Brazil–yet at same time their adventures hearken back to everything that makes me love this field. It is a merger of old and new, and I look forward to the next installment in this universe.”
It’s a quote that is impossible to live up to–but Douglas has read multiple stories from the series and I’m extremely appreciative of his continued support. Thanks, Doug!
For those who speak Portuguese, you can read the release in its entirety here:
2010_08_17 Press Release – Brasil Colonial Faz Sucesso nos EUA
Welcome to the fiftieth post here at The Elephant and Macaw Banner website! This post also marks six months since the official website launch.
For those interested, I’m going to use this post to give a rundown of those first six months, and talk a bit about what is coming for the future.
First off, I’ll share some numbers. There have been over 4000 page views since we’ve launched. That includes close to 1000 unique visitors from 67 countries. If you add in the Live Journal statistics, that adds a few hundred more unique visitors a couple thousand more hits. I don’t have data for Twitter and the RSS feeds, but I know those have been active as well. We’ve had two big peaks to date, one after Cory Doctorow tweeted about the story launch and one after M. G. Ellington interviewed me for Apex Book Company. Thanks again to both of you for your support!
And most important, thanks so much to everyone who has dropped by, especially those who have linked to or friended the site! EAMB also has over 70 followers on Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal.
I hope everyone has enjoyed the artwork so far, I know I have. I won’t be posting any more for a while, although some is waiting in the wings for the next story launch. I would like to take this chance to publicize the artists, all of whom do freelance work and all of whom are a pleasure to work with. If you enjoyed their artwork and have some potential jobs for them, please look them up on the “Links” page.
Coming up: For the “World” section, I still have one more set of posts to wrap up all the references from “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”. Specifically, I’ll be writing posts dealing with the final arc of the story: the encounter of Gerard and Saci-Pererê. After that, I hope to start putting up posts about the other stories. There is much, much more to come.
More stories are on their way, I promise, but the publishing world moves at its own pace. Even though publication takes time, I still hope to publish the stories through magazines. Not only do I want to expose as many readers as possible to the series, I also to want to make sure the stories are top quality by the time they are published. The editors do a great job of pushing me to make them the best possible before they go to press.
So thanks again! If you have any questions, just drop a comment or send me an e-mail. I’ll be around!
The marvelous M.G. Ellington, Marketing Director and Blog Editor of Apex Book Company, interviewed me today at the Apex Book Company blog. This is the first ever interview about The Elephant and Macaw Banner, and contains a lot of information about future directions for the series.
In her introduction, M.G. writes: “Christopher Kastensmidt’s ‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’ was my main reason for subscribing to Realms of Fantasy this year… Christopher gives his readers the best of both worlds. The story is a swift moving adventure, carefully constructed for a seamless flow of information that paints in the landscape and the period without bogging the reader down.”
All I can say is, “Wow, thanks!” Read the full interview here.