Check out the Chessmen and a Contest!

It's time for another GZ update blog and I have more for you than just Chessmen. I have a preview for you too. First I want to show you brand new artwork for the Chessmen. For those who don't know, the Chessmen are a team of heroes from the world of Chyssia. They were forced to flee their home world with the infant princess in order to protect her life. The story has been called a space opera with super powers and you can get your hands on the first book of the series for just 99 cents HERE. Some of this art has only been seen in the email newsletters so far so don't hesitate to sign up for that at the end of this post or in the upper left of this blog page.

Here's Falconer and Sersi, the leaders of the team. Falconer is a powerful elemental capable of commanding any element or weather. He can reshape stone, convert it to water and back to stone, summon lightning, and create storms of any magnitude. Sersi is a mystical falcon with spell casting abilities. Watch out for her thunder dive, it can wreck a tank!

Next we have Helshred, the unlikely hero. Despite his fearsome appearance and odd behaviors, he is the most loyal member of the team and heroic to boot. He is an amnesiac due to the wound on his head and he can never remove those bladed gauntlets. Helshred desperately wants to regain the knowledge of his past and hopes that Falconer can one day help him do that. Helshred is agile and acrobatic, capable of short distance teleportation. Since the gauntlets are indestructible, he's practically a living weapon. They can slice through nearly anything. His tail is prehensile and can grasp a weapon or a person.

Reigndale is a soldier of Amnath and a highly experienced marksman. He knows military tactics and strategies. He is also  a solid hand to hand combatant. Reigndale is ashamed of his people because they are part of the coup that forces the Chessmen from their home. He turns his back on them to serve the princess. Reigndale has a secret that even he doesn't understand. Somewhere within him is another person.

That person is Daxeon the Vengor (vengeance) Angel. At certain times of need, Reigndale's body will disappear and be replaced with Daxeon who is so fearsome on sight, lesser beings flee. He fights with cosmic energies and a blue diamond sword. He can exist in the vacuum of space. Daxeon is super strong and can lift well over 100 tons. He fights in raging fury and when any threats are eliminated, he vanishes and brings back Reigndale.

Viro was an astronaut from the planet Ruwano. He was investigating energy readings from a small star when his ship was overcome by strange radiation. He was rescued by a race called the Cyborians but they had to seal his body in armor. Viro is always encompassed in a green gas within his armor. He can create viruses that can do nearly anything he imagines. He can heal, dissolve, strengthen, weaken, or alter the properties of nearly anything. His power is limited and he often has to rest and recharge. Viro lives in constant caution of anything that could break open his armor for he could destroy and entire world.

Halley is the guardian of the Halley's comet shield. The powerful artifact allows him to fly in space just like a blazing comet. With it's power he can smash through enemies and even the hull of starships. The shield also collects and stores energy from attacks that it protects Halley from. Once enough is stored, the shield can fired a powerful energy blast that can clear trees or knock a space craft out of the sky. Halley is the only human member of the team. He was abducted as a child to be studied, but found the shield and escaped into space.

Major Xeroh is a cumulative mimic. He can use the cumulative physical attributes (strength, speed, endurance,) and powers of any beings within about 50 yards. Even without other people to boost him, he can fly in space and has his own physical strength. The eye piece is a scanner that tells him what sort of powers people have at a distance before he gets close enough to register them with his power. He also uses it to scout long distances ahead for danger. Xeroh is boisterous and often comical without intending to be. Like Viro, he comes from Ruwano.

Messiah is quite possibly the most powerful member of the team. He carries the power of Faith. It is the only power that Xeroh cannot copy. He can use faith to heal or accomplish amazing feats. He can fly in space and boost the abilities of others to astronomical levels. He can be stronger or faster than nearly anything he faces. He has even used his power to stop the cannon blast of a starship from killing his friends before he knocked the ship out of the sky with a gesture. Even if it weren't for faith, Messiah is a master martial artist. His past is as much a mystery as Helshred, but only because he doesn't speak of it.

There you have them, the Chessmen! Now for that preview I promised. It's nothing less than the board for the next edition of the adventure board game! Check it out!

The new board is far more interactive in the game than the first one. There are spaces where a roll of the dice can force a card you want to come out of the event deck. Each location has built in dangers depending on what you draw for your turn. For example, the Bronx is the "Monster zone". Monsters revealed in this area cannot be evaded and have +2 to their attack for combat. But if you are looking for monsters, just hang around the cemeteries. You're bound to find them. Worried about distance across the board? Don't. Just land on one of the airplane spaces to instantly go to any other same space on the board and continue your move normally. The starbursts are starting zones for up to 6 players. Much more will be coming out on the game in the newsletter so be sure to sign up!



Finally it's time for that contest! How would you like to have you or someone else drawn as a super hero or villain? Well here's your chance! It's a coloring contest. All you have to do is color the picture and send it or a photo of it to Galaxyzento@gmail.com by April 30! Easy! Print it out or color online and send it to me! If you win, I will draw the person of your choice from a photo you provide! Have fun! And that's all for this edition!

SIGN UP!
 

Updates March! New covers and game art!

Greetings heroes! Today I have things to share and the first is a brand new cover for Chessmen: Opening Moves designed by Scarlett Rugers of the Book Design House. If you are even a budding author looking to take serious steps, you should consider her services. She is an award winning designer and a published author herself. So check out the link and visit her page. I just love what she did for Chessmen's first book as you can see here.

As if that weren't cool enough, for now you can get the kindle of the first book of the series for just 99 cents. Far out! Just hit the book links up on the right or HERE and grab it!

I recently finished the last image for game cards for the next installment of the board game series for Galaxy Zento. This game will come with a brand new board with more interactive spaces covering an entire map of New York City. It will have Cursed Artifacts and we are going to look at some of those right here!

This edition of the board game will be directly attached to the novel, Chaos Rising (you saw the new cover for that in my last entry).

The Hearse: The Hearse is a living artifact and a being filled with hate and murder. It's indestructible and will go around the board ramming into players and dealing some damage. If you're lucky and your dice rolls are hot, you can wind up controlling the Hearse which can lead toward victory. No spoilers for the novel so I won't tell you just how nasty Hearse is to deal with by the heroes.

Hourglass of Time: If you get a cursed artifact in the game, you cannot simply rid yourself of it and it limits what other objects or artifacts you can use. And you can't always avoid using them either. The hourglass forces you to use it every time you have a turn. When you do, you get to increase or decrease counters on other players cards by one. This could risk them winning the game, if you want to increase damage that they have taken. OR, it could keep them from winning by reducing their goal tokens. Either way, you risk carrying a bullseye as players come after you for this artifact.

Skull of Sphidra: This macabre helm make of giant spider skull will give you psychic abilities but turn you into a monster in 3 rounds. It will change your character card into the card for Sphidra herself. It will change you from good to evil. The only way to change this, will be for other players to destroy you. And they will have little choice since you can attack all of them at once regardless of board position.


This will be the biggest event deck to draw from yet and playable with other sets. And as always, you don't have to read the lore to enjoy the game, but it helps.

Soon I'll be drafting up the very first edition of the newsletter with even more content that you won't see anywhere else. So be sure to SIGN UP for the mailing list so you don't miss one awesome thing! That includes downloadable printable black and white color sheets for the kids (or yourself). Character spotlight origins! And even flash fiction stories just for readers who sign up!  On top of that, you get Chessmen Opening Moves free just for signing up. Awesome!

Till next time, heroes!

So I've started up the mailing list

That's what all the gurus say to do. Get a mailing list going in order to get more people interested and latched on to your brand. Well, there is one phrase that definitely does not work in this business;

If you build it, they will come....

Not so fast. You have to go find them and while I've had some fellow authors croon to me about how easy it was for them.. I have had no such luck.

It's literally the ''superhero age" in movies and books even though comics have suffered. I can't think of a time my brand could possibly be more relevant.  But in a world that wants Spider-mans and Captain Americas how does an Indy brand get noticed?

Well, I'm still struggling to follow guru advice, but I can tell you it is practically never as cut and dried as presented. I'm saying this to you, fellow Indy creator because we live in a tough market. So what am I doing about it now?

Well, opting onto my mailing list (upper left corner of my blog page) will net you a free book. But it won't stop at that. I'm going to make sure my mailing list gives cool updates, more freebies, new artwork, and whatever else I can think of to stuff into that package until it bursts. I want every email you get on my list to feel like you're opening a birthday present. I want fun in your inbox.  Maybe some puzzles or coloring pages you can print out for the kids? Or totally keep them to yourself, I won't mind.

I'm changing the cover of Chaos Rising today. It may take a couple of days for that change to go live, but it will and I will make sure people know about it. Eventually all the covers will be changed. Yeah, you're getting to see that cover right here as the header to this blog post.

And soon I think I'm going to offer a chance to have yourself drawn as a superhero or fantasy character straight from a photo you send me. More details on that if we can get this off the ground.

That's what I'm doing about it now. My next steps are more writing and art of course. I have to keep creating and keep things moving. Direction has always been hard for me. I can wind up with too many projects on the plate but that's easy to do as a one man band.

So that's the update for now. Off to do more creating.

Changing covers

Yes it's time for me to make some changes. I've been rehashing how I'm trying to sell my books and I've gathered some tips. Fact is, even if you are a respected or reputable artist, you need to know a few things about how layouts are done. You also need your cover to accurately convey your story. It also helps if it doesn't look like a child drew it. I've come to the decision that the critics I recently spoke to must be right. So it's time to make changes and recirculate. On top of that I will be adding quite a bit of extra advice like setting up a mail list. I have some ideas for it and I will be looking to make getting my email a fun thing to do.

As for the covers, well, let's take a look at the first novel of the GZ series, Chessmen.

I've realized that the problems are almost too many to list. My book isn't about Chess rather a royal guard of a distant planet. They come to be called "Chessmen".  They are heroes. That's what I do. Heroes. I wanted a near comic book appeal for the story while accenting the planet they are from. Well, I should have sought more advice at someplace like KBoards.com a long time ago. Still I will with this new cover.

Well, what do you think of it? I'm hoping that showing two actual characters from the book will make it clearer what they reader is getting into. I'm quoting a reader in a blurb at the bottom. I think that should be okay. It has the comic appeal I'm going for and simplifies. I'll be looking for what people think of it. Do you like it? Is it appealing? Tell me your thoughts in comments.

Do I have any characters with autism? Yes I do.

Thank you for the question, Simon Passant. Yes I do have two characters with autism and both of them will be revealed in my next novel. But I will tell you right here and right now who they are. But first I want to explain something about  diversity in GZ.

I am far far less interested in making brownie points with any one certain group or classification of people and more in making a complete and believable universe. Look around at the world we live in. GZ is a modern day universe and therefore it makes sense to have modern day people in it. I want it to be rich and diverse in every possible way. It isn't easy to fit all that together in rich character profiles with deep backgrounds.

We live in an age were people point and yell "SJW" at the drop of a hat and that label carries some terrible stigma, especially online. Marvel is constantly getting lambasted for being too "sjw" in their recent story arcs. See here:

I don't want that for GZ. Every person and what makes them up are details in a massive painting of a universe. Without those aspects of those people, it just wouldn't be complete. So just who are these characters with ASD in my universe. Well, if you've been reading and you're all caught up on the story so far, you already know one of them.

Blacktide with the Parahuman Activity Commission (PAC) has Aspergers. His real name is Larry Peters and when he was just a young boy his powers manifested and killed both his parents. It can be hard to separate the trauma he has endured in life with his Aspergers but it's there. When it's revealed in the novel that I'm working on now, it won't be a big thing for him, rather a passing note. He knows what he has, but frankly has bigger fish to fry and it doesn't define him.

Next:

This is Spaz and yes he likes being called that. Spaz works with the Crazy Harry Detective Agency. He is an inventive savant meaning that he can invent bizarre contraptions out of ordinary items. Spaz has messed up eyes and never seems to be looking at anyone he's talking to, but he is a genius in a number of ways. He is also ridiculously rich. That allows him to do just about anything he wants and he seldom takes no for an answer. Sometimes unfeeling people call him retarded and he sets them straight in ways readers will love.

This is where I point out that neither of these characters are representative of all persons with autism. Autism is a spectrum disorder/condition that has broad combinations of effects that are different for each person. Only a few factors of autism are common enough to keep all the combinations on the spectrum. My son and I both have Asperger's and even for the two of us the effects are different in many ways. We have the social difficulties and sensory issues, they are just different for both of us.

So there you have it, two ASD characters getting some spotlight time along with several other distinct characters coming soon. Do you have a question about GZ? Post in comments. And if you enjoyed this post, please share it.

How many Dwarves in Galaxy Zento?

My wife works for a radio station and sometimes I go and have lunch with her. Recently during one of our lunches she asked me how many Dwarf characters I have in my universe. I realized this is a very good question. One worthy of answering right here. I even address this in one of my new short stories currently in the works.

In my universe there are two kinds of Dwarfish people. There are the racial fantasy Dwarves also called Celestials and those with actual Dwarfism.

The two communities don't like being mistaken for each other and this causes some friction between them. One side will say they aren't medical freaks and that will anger the other of course. Those of the medical side will say they aren't a bunch of barbarians to poke at the racial side.

I have more than a couple of active characters from either side of that fence and it can get slightly confusing as to who is who. The short story I'm working on has a character named, Ultrasonic. He is a man with Dwarfism who is deaf and mute. He has the power to amplify and control sound waves. He's also a telepath and an advocate for education on Dwarfish issues particularly where parahuman powers are involved.

In the GZ universe there is a connection of increase of people with powers who also have certain medical conditions, like Dwarfism. It's a matter under study and of intense interest in the society.  It's discovered that a person with Dwarfism is up to 5x more likely to have some sort of power.

I think a development like this makes my universe more believable. It gives depth and identity. As for who those Dwarves are:

Monolith's human form is a man with Dwarfism. His teammate, the Serpent is a racial Dwarf. One of my top villains, The Maker, is a racial Dwarf. I even have a reptilian Dwarf called JoJo.

So that's the answer basically. I have several Dwarves in my universe and you can read about many of them anytime!

Meme Funny: Who are you?

You know, some memes like this one are just hilarious to consider. I don't know who put together this mish mash but he must have loved July. I mean, really, this couldn't get much more lopsided that it is now. Since my birth month is July I decided to do a fun write up on just how fast Dr. Manhattan rules over this no matter who his enemy is in this case. And I don't even have to kill them all. I can make them my collection of people in little jars if I want to. So here is the meme and I am, Dr. Manhattan.

I'll start from August and go around:

VS Deadpool: Bullets and swords mean precisely jack to me. Not only is he not going to touch me, I think I'll cure him of being a living cancer at a molecular level. He's going to have to go through the hell of getting his powers all over again just to keep his job. I'm way beyond his reach.

VS Hulk:  He comes up as my actual nemesis according to this meme. I laughed. I don't eve have to think about what to do. I'll just separate the gamma radiation from his cells and send the cured Dr. Banner on his way. He never has to be the Hulk again.

VS Tall Man: This is the guy from the horror franchise, Phantasm. What the hell is he even doing on this list? Not only is he critically out of place, but he won't be invading my dimension today. I don't care how many places he can be in at once, I can be in more. He depends on weird cross dimensional technology that I'll turn to dust before he can think of a single syllable word. That includes his cute little spheres that won't get anywhere near me. Might just turn them right back on him and see how he likes it.

VS Spawn: Ah, just about the only near worthy opponent on this list. Spawn has taken on some big baddies to include Malbolgia (the equivalent of Mephisto in Marvel). But that isn't going to save him. At my level I can figure out what his magic is made of and put an end to it. No matter what he does, I have the power to just say NO. And it doesn't happen. It's likely I can even shunt him to another dimension to go after someone he'll have more fun with. Hey, Tall Man, you're about to have company.

VS Super Saiyan: If I spelled it right, ha ha. I don't care. It's bad enough it will take three weeks for him to throw one punch but while he's building power, I'm draining it. He will never get the chance to throw that punch because he won't have any kinetic energy to move with. And I can do that forever. Perpetual stasis? No problemo. I don't care what power levels he has, he can't use them if he can't activate them. And there is no speed he can move at that my cosmic intellect can't see. Like many of these, this is a non fight.

VS Superman: Oh let's see. Create the light of a red sun, generate a cage of pure green kryptonite, or just drain all the yellow sun radiation from his body. Doesn't really matter, Supes isn't fighting me today. Even his super speed doesn't matter, I'll see him coming from a mile away. I won't let him within a foot of me, much less ten. That's the level of awareness that Dr. Manhattan possesses.

VS Batman: No. Just no. Remember Ozymandias? Smartest guy in the universe and he totally failed to decimate me. For all his logic he had zero actual chance of affecting me in the first place. Same goes for Batman. Not everything in this universe can be plotted out by Batman. I don't care how much he researches moving a planet with his pinky finger, it's not going to happen. I, on the other hand, can move the planet by casual thought. It's a simple reality. Some things are just not reachable for some people. That is the case in this with Batman. I am the unreachable for him.

VS Mystique: Oh boy a shape changer. That's cute. No matter what she does to alter herself against me, my command of molecules can change her right back. In fact, I may change her into a few fun things just to annoy. Like a Smurf maybe. Yep, I turn her into a Smurf. Perfect.

VS Darth Vader: Let's face it. If Darth had anywhere near the ability to affect me in the slightest, his own universe would be totally under his control. Unfortunately for him, he requires permanent life support that I erase without even looking at him. Yep, in this case, I would actually kill Darth Vader who can't use the force well enough to sustain his own body.

VS Wolverine: Once again it's blades and claws. Those mean nothing to me. I am beyond even caring about such a flea. But since I must, I'll remove his adamantium even better than Magneto did. It just won't exist any more. I can disassemble him to molecules or just send him home. Doesn't matter much here.

VS Venom: I  separate the symbiote from the host and seal it away forever. No one will ever find it. That equals no powers for the host. That puts Brock or any other Venom beneath my notice but then that brings me to my final point.

You might think that all together they have a chance against me. But they don't. Because I did all of these things at the same fraction of a moment in time affecting them all simultaneously. I did it so fast that none of them could actually register what happened to them. Now they can get off my moon and leave me alone as my contemplations are beyond their microscopic ability to see. None of them any greater in scale than a germ to me and I am not affected by germs.

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Have fun in comments. Hope you got a half chuckle.