Nethermore

You ever play a video game and say, “Man, I wish that I could get the soundtrack to that”?

Or have you found yourself whistling the tune from one of your favorite 8-bit Nintendo games?

I have. I love video game music. And for those of you who are with me, check out the following websites. I think you’ll like what you find. Plus, the downloads make for great writing music.

Overclocked Remixes

The Minibosses

The Minibosses will be in Mesa, AZ today. Check their website out for details. This might be an interesting show to catch.

It started sometime in February or March of 2005. Holly, Heather, Brandon and I went to dinner at Macaroni Grill and were waiting for our orders. We all pulled out the provided crayons and started doodling on the paper tablecloth. Holly and Heather were drawing trees with strange curlicues, Brandon sketched symbols from his then-forthcoming novel Elantris, and I roughed out a few faces like I normally do in my sketchbook.

Brandon looked over at what I was drawing and said, “Hey, those are nice. You want to do the maps for my next book?”

I read an early version of Mistborn: the Final Empire, made hundreds of sketches, and turned in the final versions of the maps, symbols, and tables sometime in December of 2005.

Today is the release date for Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Although I saw a copy of the finished book a few weeks ago, Saturday I was able to go to Brandon’s book signing and get one of my own.

The symbols throughout the book are representations of the different Allomantic Metals. I went through probably a thousand little doodles before striking onto the look I was seeking for what I began calling the “Steel Alphabet.” I drew inspiration from some reference photos of old, bent-up, rusty nails.

Most of the book takes place in the city of Luthadel, so the map of the city became the more complex and detailed of the maps. I chose to keep the world map relatively simple, leaving only the major landmarks and border delineations so the reader has a sense of direction and place. You wouldn’t be able to navigate by the world map, but I hope you’d be able to use the map of Luthadel to find your way to any of major Canton’s or to Kredik Shaw . . . if you were crazy enough to actually want to visit it.

I’ve updated the gallery with much of the artwork that is used in the book (and photographed in the pictures above). I’ll add more to the Mistborn Gallery as the year progresses. For now, I hope you will enjoy Mistborn Gallery #1.

I’ve focused a lot on the interior artwork in this post. Stripped of all the artwork altogether (and even of its beautiful cover by Jon Foster) Mistborn the Final Empire is one of the best books of fantasy I have ever read. If you love fantasy and haven’t checked this one out, go take a look. I think you’ll be surprised.

Thanks to Brandon and to Tor Books for allowing me to do something I’ve long dreamed of doing!

I’ve been preparing to get my artwork up and ready for the official release of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, so today’s post will be short.

People are enjoying Cloning Clyde. This guy has already posted some fan art for it in the form of a one-panel comic. Pretty cool.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a link to the first Mistborn gallery, which will include the interior artwork used in the book.

I riffed on this earlier in the week, but more reviews and interviews have come out for Cloning Clyde, and I can’t help but share the links.

XBox 360 Fanboy interviewed John Nielson earlier in the week and posted this review wherein me and the rest of the team are mentioned by name!

IGN has posted their review of Cloning Clyde, giving it a rating of 8.1 out of 10, which is pretty dang good. To see how it stacks up with other recent releases, you can check out this list of their recently reviewed media.

Cloning Clyde for XBox 360 Live Arcade was released today. This is the first console game that I’ve worked on, so I’m pretty excited to see how the gaming community receives it. So far the reviews have been positive.

The creator of the game, John Nielson, was interviewed over at IGN earlier in the week. He had some interesting things to say about the premise of the game.

Who is Clyde? He’s the dumbest person imaginable. That’s all I can say about him. Try to imagine the dumbest guy you can imagine, that’s Clyde. He’s this guy who very willingly, voluntarily accepts to be part of an experiment, where he gets cloned a bunch of times. It’s part of a huge company that is illegally cloning humans. The experiment goes bad and he ends up getting cloned hundreds of time. The company locks down the building and tries to hold him inside, and so now he and all his clones, which are just a little bit more dumb than him, need to escape. That’s the story behind the game.

In addition to being creative, John’s also a great guy to work with and made a great leader for the whole Cloning Clyde team.

Clyde’s also a very fun game to play, so if you’ve got an XBox 360, go to the Live Arcade and download it.

Well, I’m back into the writing after a three week hiatus. Part Two of Nethermore is outlined, and I started the actual writing of it last night. Rather than run myself into the ground by writing three and four thousand words a day, I’m going to keep my goal reasonable (1000 words a day) in order to maintain some kind of a balance in my life. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing more than that. It’s about an hour of work each evening. I think I can do that.

My friend Shawn Boyles has set up a blog over at blogspot. It’s called Spike the Surf Dog, and today he posted a picture of . . . well, Spike the Surf Dog. I love the story about how he came up with the name, and I love that dog’s Hawaiian shorts—gotta get me some of those.

When I was 19 my family took a vacation to Hawaii, and me and my Dad learned to surf from a guy who called himself Spike the Surf Dog. I had never heard somebody actually pray for Groovy waves before.

Well, that’s what I’ll be praying for as I continue to write this book. Groovy waves. Groovy waves for everyone.

Irene Gallo, Art Director at Tor/Forge, has posted some guidelines for aspiring illustrators.

Having worked in animation/video games for the past four years, I can second her advice as being sound. I’ve watched demo reels whose packaging was better than the actual content on the reel. The company almost never hires from these. Spend your time on the content of the reel/portfolio, not the presentation of it. If you’re good enough at what you do, the reel could be marked with a Sharpie and could arrive in a beat-up paper bag and you’ll still get the job.

Having said that, spending time on professional presentation should be your second-highest concern, next to working on the quality of the actual artwork.

Some of you may remember the post I wrote about Ctrl Zed a few weeks ago, complete with album covers. Last night I received this press release about the new album.

The Wait Is Almost Over

(AP/Reuters)

Sources claim that pre-production/rehearsals have indeed begun on the highly-anticipated third album from the critically acclaimed, Grammy winning, chart topping and multi-platinum selling group, CTRL ZED.

Rumor has it the new album will be professionally recorded live in a real studio this time with actual audio engineers and also the possibility of some of the classics from their previous efforts being re-recorded in order to take advantage of this studio quality. Details are sketchy at this point but the release date is rumored to be sometime Fall 2006.

Unconfirmed early spy reports from sources in attendance of the first rehearsal claim “Locomotive”, “Batwing Pegasus”, “Food!”, “Now Hiring Idiots”, “The Ballad Of George Lucas”, “18 Charisma”, “All I Smell Is Snot”, “Miracle Poo”,”Sidekick Secretary” and “Too Evil For The Basement” to be among the new song titles, however the final track listing is unknown at this time. The album is expected to be among the band’s most evil work to date.

Fans will remember the days of substance abuse, failed marriages, rehab, litigation and multiple lawsuits over royalties that plagued the band for many years, delaying and complicating further releases of the band’s work.

It is also rumored that among other extravagent demands, the band has asked the record company for bowls of strictly red M&M’s with the letters REMOVED and even chairs made of only blue Lego.

Phone calls to the agents of CTRL ZED were not returned.

The weekends are getting busier around here. Normally I haven’t been able to get much writing done during them because of outside projects that I’ve been trying to get finishined. Fortunately, I’m getting close to the end of them, and after that, I’ll only be taking on a project here and there instead of en masse.

One of the projects I’ve been working on is taking some of the artwork that I did for the upcoming Mistborn: the Final Empire fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson and turn them into t-shirt designs. Here’s the first shot at converting one of the chapter heading symbols into t-shirt artwork.

In writing news, I’m one scene away from finishing Part One of Nethermore. It’s been harder for me to concentrate on writing at home lately, so this week I’m headed back to the University in the evenings so I can keep myself focused during the time I’ve set aside to work on the book.

This week will have nethermore.com’s usually assortment of writing discussion and weirdness. A reader sent in a review for the movie Nacho Libre that I will be posting tomorrow. He signed the email simply “Chalupo.”

In other news, Ctrl Zed has been practicing on Saturdays for our next album. We’ve nailed down five or six songs already and will be getting the others down in the next few weeks prior to recording them. We’re looking forward to another multiple-platinum record here, so stay tuned.

I bet you’re all dying to know what I’m eating for lunch today. I’m dying to eat it anyway.

I haven’t had a lot of time to make my own food because I’ve been filling most of my free time with writing. So lately I’ve become a connoisseur of fine frozen dinners.

Most of the time I’m eating frozen dinners that cost anywhere from $.75 to $1.50. I’ve found that Michelina’s fine frozen food does the job for this.

Some of my favorites (the following links just show pictures and descriptions; I’m not advertising nor am I getting paid for talking about their food—I’m just doing this because I think frozen dinners are cool. Plus, I would probably die of starvation if they had never been invented) :

Salisbury Steak
Lasagna Alfredo
Lasagna with Meat Sauce

But today I’m eating my absolute favorite frozen dinner ever (so far). Amy’s kitchen makes fine frozen (organic!) dinners. Not that I really care about it being organic (most “organic” food is a coverup for buying foreign produce), but man is this stuff good, and I love feeling like I’m eating somewhere near healthy.

Indian Mattar Paneer

Tender organic peas and Indian cheese in an authentic delicately spiced sauce. Golden carrots, onions and cumin add flavor and color to the organic basmati rice. Curried chana masala made with organic garbanzo beans and sweet tomatoes round out this delicious meal.

I bought it at Wal-Mart earlier today.

I also did my normal tour of their book section. Of course, with the new X-Men movie out, there were a lot of books on the shelf trying to ride the wave of the movie’s success. One of these novels, by Pocket Books in association with Paramount entertainment, had a picture of Wolverine on the cover . . . and Worf from Star Trek: the Next Generation.

I did a double take. Sure, comic books have been doing crossovers for a while. Even movies have gotten into it, like Alien vs. Predator, which I never saw—for good reason.

But X-Men and Star Trek? That just seems weird to me.

Personally, I’m waiting for the Conan / Carebears crossover, which I hear is in production.

—”Stewart!”