On the subject of the book, this is a perfect time to let you know about a wonderful opportunity.
Would you like a chance to win a signed copy of Xeno’s Arrow Book 1, or even more awesome prizes, by doing good?
We’re just going to infer the “Heck, yes!”, because that’s certainly what our reactions would be.
Patrick Rothfuss is a brilliant fantasy author with an abiding love of all things Joss Whedon and the beard of a young Alan Moore. He is, in other words, our kind of people. Stephen unreservedly recommends his marvelous debut novel, The Name of the Wind.
Among the many admirable things Patrick Rothfuss does, one stands out. Every year, he organizes a fundraiser called Worldbuilders to benefit the charity Heifer International.
As Patrick Rothfuss says, Heifer International “… helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry. They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.”
In other words, remember the old cliche about giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish? Heifer International blows that cliche apart. It gives fish to people living in poverty… and uses the fish to teach them to fish, both feeding them for a day a lifting them out of poverty for a lifetime.
There are not really enough words for how important, and how wonderful, this work is.
And, in the unlikely event that a good cause is not itself enough for our illustrious readers, there’s a bonus: By donating $10 (US) to Heifer International through Worldbuilders and Patrick Rothfuss’s Team Heifer, you enter into a draw to win really, really cool prizes. Donate $20, you enter the draw twice, and your odds of winning get better, and so on.
Your name goes in the hat once for every $10 you donate. So donate $120, and you not only have bought a family a goat, you’ve got a ridiculously good chance of winning one of those really, really cool prizes.
And the really, really cool prizes are… well, they’re just really, really cool.
Like signed copies of books — many donated by the authors themselves — by Paolo Bacigalupi, Peter Beagel, Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman Brandon Sanderson, Charless Stross, Tad Williams and dozens more.
Like a jersey signed by star quarterback Brett Favre.
Like amazing graphic novels, including a full set of Girl Genius signed by Phil and Kaja Foglio.
And (ahem!) like one of two copies of Xeno’s Arrow Book 1: The Intergalactic Zoo of Civilization, both signed, and with an original sketch by Greg.
Posts detailing all the contributions, as they arrive, are available at Patrick Rothfuss’s blog. And there are a lot of them — the examples above are just a taste.
By the way, as if organizing the Worldbuilders fundraising drive wasn’t enough, until December 13th, 2010, Patrick Rothfuss will, by himself, match 50% of every donation. Really, that’s above and beyond. This thing regularly raises six figures for Heifer International, and he’s going to match half of that.
For someone who would, we suspect, cheerfully describe himself as Most Uncouth, Patrick Rothfuss exemplies the Civil virtues of Duty, Progress and Etiquette. Even the Head Zookeeper would approve. We sure do.
More importantly, Heifer International is a very worthy, and it deserves your support.
We’re proud to be a part of the 2010 Worldbuilders fundraiser, and we hope that you’ll join us to do good in the world — and hey, as icing on the cake, you get a chance to win awesome prizes that will impress your friends (if your friends are as nerdy as we are, anyway).
Why not donate to Heifer International via Worldbuilders and Team Heifer today? Help end poverty and malnutrition. Have 50% of your donation matched by Patrick Rothfuss. And just maybe win yourself something awesome for your trouble.
You can make your donation, and enter the draw, right here.
Yep. You can buy it here.
Technically, there’s been a book for a while, although for the past year-and-a-bit, the only way to get it has been to buy it directly from one of us during our annual appearance at Toronto’s outdoor literary and literacy festival, the awesome Word On The Street.
Now, though, it’s time to make it just a little bit easier for those of you who don’t live in Toronto (or get down to Word On The Street on that particular one day out of the year) to get yourselves a copy of Xeno’s Arrow Book 1: The Intergalactic Zoo of Civilization.
The big image that you see above (at the time I’m posting this, anyway) is the cover of this volume, which collects the entire run of our ten-issue, self-published series — including the appendices, which included lots of fun background details on the Known Galaxy and the people and places in it, and which have never appeared online.
If time has marched on since this entry was posted, and we’ve got new content on the main page, here’s that cover again.
At 270 pages, including the comics, the appendices, and an introduction generously provided by the talented Jim Ottaviani, we think this is the Xeno’s Arrow book you’ve been waiting for. It’s certainly the one we’ve been waiting for!
The book is available through the online printing service Lulu.com. We researched a range of options, and decided to go with Lulu — partly for technical reasons we won’t bore you with, but mainly because of the incredible print quality. When we printed ourselves a test copy of the book, we were amazed and delighted by how good it looked. And the turnaround time is reasonable, especially considering that your book is being printed to order. We have nothing but good things to say about Lulu.
That being said, we want to make it as easy and convenient as possible to get Xeno’s Arrow Book 1 into your hands. If you have a preferred online service provider, let us know and we’ll give them serious consideration.
Of course, one option that online print-on-demand service providers don’t allow for is for you to get a personalized copy of the book. That’s something else that we’ll take a look at if there seems to be interest in it, so please let us know.
In the mean time, you can buy a copy — of excellent quality and for a price comparable to what we’d charge in person at a convention — at Lulu. As we mentioned in an earlier post, sales of the book will be a good indication if, and how quickly, we should move forward with new Xeno’s Arrow stories.
That was a hint, young sentients.
Welcome to the newly-overhauled Xeno’s Arrow website. As you can see, we aren’t quite finished the process of renovations — but we felt that, ready or not, it would be only Civil to invite you in and offer you a cup of tea or perhaps a refreshing glass of lemonade*.
Wagon wheels? Never heard of 'em.
Now that it’s up and running again, our plan is for this site to be our online hub — the spoke of our wagon wheel, to use an image that we, obviously, like a lot.
This is where we’ll be posting news and updates, where you can read Xeno’s Arrow as a webcomic, and where you can find links to buy the collected Xeno’s Arrow, and to our other projects.
To answer the question that those of you who’ve been following us for a while are probably shouting at your monitors: While we do plan to add new content here, that isn’t going to include continuning the story, at least not for a while.
There’s really no way to be delicate about this, so let’s embrace indelicacy: The chances that there will be new Xeno’s Arrow material will be vastly improved if we can see, via sales of the book and eventually other stuff, that there’s enough demand, and enough of a revenue stream, to make creating the next chapter of Xeno’s Arrow a realistic, sustainable, non-poorhouse-inducing option.
Until then, Xeno’s Arrow is free to read right here, and we’ll be adding never-before-seen content** to add to the fun. Thanks for joining us!
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* Metaphorically speaking. There is no actual tea or lemonade contained within this website, so we do not advise licking your monitor.
** And some “seen-before-but-by-very-few-people content” and a bit of “seen-by-quite-a-few-people-but-not-in-some-time content”.
As Xeno’s Arrow starts to emerge from a well-earned, but let’s be honest, long-ish nap, you may be wondering what we’ve been up to in the invervening time.
A detailed answer, for either of us, would be both long and skew excessively towards disclosure. But that would also probably be a rather more literal interpretation of your question than the context warranted. What you really meant, and are doubtless thinking right now, is, “Cute rhetorical devices, smart guy. But has either of you done any more comics or anything like that?”
Happily, the answer to that question has a much simpler and less painfully qualified answer: Yes. Yes, indeed.
While Xeno’s Arrow has been lying fallow, Stephen teamed up with his old friend, artist Patrick Heinicke to create Cold Iron Badge.
Cold Iron Badge is a webcomic, with new updates every Monday. It’s an urban fantasy/police procedural that tells the story of the men and women of the Borderland Guard — the cops who patrol the boundary between our world and Fairyland. It’s a fairy tale… but nobody lives happily ever after.
Stuff like this happens ALL THE TIME in Cold Iron Badge
(Cold Iron Badge is, you’ve probably already inferred, rather different in tone from Xeno’s Arrow It’s harder-edged, more violent, and it’s definitely not suitable for all ages. )
And if you’re thinking, “That’s all very well, Stephen, but what about Greg? I always thought he was the talented/cool/cute one, no offence,” then you can rest assured that Greg has not been idle either. When he’s ready to unveil his brilliant/hip/adorable new projects to the world, you’ll be able to read all about them here.
Hello, and welcome back. The database problem that had our site down and out has been resolved (thanks, Greg!), but as you can see, we’re still rebuilding. We’ll be rolling out all sorts of new features over the next few weeks — and until then, you can always read the (almost) complete Xeno’s Arrow here.