Author: fjsalazar

The Temple of Beauty on Amazon

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ToB-cover-smallWild Puma’s first foray into ebooks is out there – The Temple of Beauty (and other stories), five unique tales of SF and fantasy, all for the bargain price of $0.99. It’s plain to me this volume is already in contention for many major awards, such as:

 

      • Sesquipedalian Award for longest character name!
      • Andrew Zimmer Award for most grotesque cuisine.
      • Roses-are-red-and-violets-stink Award for worst poetry in an epic fantasy … the competition was heavy on this one, folks!

One of the most fun parts of bringing ToB together was the cover. Based on a suggestion from an fellow FB group member, I went to 99 Designs, a kind of crowd-sourcing/contest-based site for many types of design, from logos to tatoos and, of course, book covers. AT 99 Designs I declared a contest for designing the ToB cover. The title of the contest was: 70s style cool fantasy book cover . The description was:

A book cover for ebook publication, conforming to Amazon standard size, etc. The book is a comic fantasy, entitled “The Temple of Beauty”; subtitle is “And other stories”. The concept for the cover is to show a stunningly beautiful red-haired woman, dressed mostly in green as an adventurer-sorceress, sitting astride a giant, white-furred, sabre-toothed rabbit. Both the woman and the rabbit should look dangerous but not evil. The setting is an isolated mountain pass.

I would like a retro look, reminiscent of the Andre Norton book covers of 60s and 70s.

The contest ran 11 days overall and in that time I got 24 submissions from 11 artists! Here are some of the best:

ToB-other-covers

More later on the production of Temple of Beauty, and other titles forthcoming from Wild Puma. Till then …

Puma prepares to publish

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Both myself and Kim have been working for some time now on publishing the different things we create. For Kim that means things pertaining to fiber arts like embroidery and knitting as she presents on her blog String-or-Nothing. For me it means that ultimate time-wasting, mind-wearing, confusing, confounding and contrapting of pursuits: Science Fiction and Fantasy. I guess for the public at large that means at least the knitters and embroiderers of the world will have something to celebrate.

Now, blogs and social postings are all very well and good, but what we really want to make are books, and those need to be things onto themselves. We do want to attract a big audience – and maybe even break-even money-wise – and ebook platforms are a way to reach far more people than our blogs ever could. Enter, Wild Puma Media, our alter-ego in the world of publishing. We’re pretty close to our first offerings, both of which will be freebies. First will be The Temple of Beauty (and other stories) a somewhat eclectic collection of my SF and Fantasy.  Soon after we’ll release Ensamplario Atlantio, Kim’s compilation of historical patterns. Along the way Kim and myself will post commentary here about the process and experience of turning this stuff out.

So watch this space in the coming weeks for the first Wild Puma productions.  Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a short scene from The Temple of Beauty, as our heroes Pomfret and Jaerlic start out on their quest:

The march northwards from Bäsīnùõr had been mostly uneventful. On the second day they encountered a wandering peddler, who was accompanied by a dog of medium size. The peddler had no goods of interest, but as he stopped and shared a midday meal with Pomfret and Jaerlic – Pomfret tossing the dog a few scraps – he was able to allay their fears about bandits.

“The season is perfect for travelling,” he explained. “For the En’rany bandits, it is too hot; they withdraw to their lairs in cool caves, there to be fanned by slave-women of various sorts.”

“A civilized form of banditry,” Pomfret remarked.

“Then you see,” the peddler added, “for the Holoran bandits it is too cold. They retire to the high plateau, where the sun is unimpeded. Their own slaves are made to knit warming garments of coarse wool. For this reason, women of the region tend to travel in the colder months, that they may be enslaved by the En’rany, fanning being adjudged a less tedious fate than knitting.”

I promise, after this, I’ll leave the knitting commentary to Kim.

 

Fernando Salazar, May 17 2016
© 2016 Fernando Salazar

Greetings

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Wild Puma Media is in the works of … works.  High-quality self-published works, both fiction and non.  Watch this space for our debut.  Until then, don’t walk too close to the trees.  Things drop down from them.