Ordering for Sketched Editions is now closed Friday, September 5th, 2008 By Sandra Tayler It is past 8 am mountain time and we’ve topped over the 1000 sketched books mark. I need to do some math to figure out exactly how many we’ve got spoken for, but the number will be right around 1000 books. You Schlockers really know how to hit a target. Regular editions of The Teraport Wars are still available. All books mailed directly from us are signed. And don’t forget all that other cool stuff in our store. The popular warning-sign magnets mousemats, Tagon logo pins, Rule 37 shirts, and Rule 1 shirts. If there are impressionable children in your life, grab a copy of Hold On To Your Horses, the children’s book by Sandra Tayler and illustrated by Angela Call. Filed under Books, Site News, Merchandise, clothing | 5 Comments »

One more day for sketch editions! Thursday, September 4th, 2008 Just a reminder: Sketch Edition pre-orders close Friday at 8:00am Mountain (10:00am Eastern, GMT 3:00pm.) It looks like we’ll hit the 1,000 mark pretty close to then, but even if we haven’t you won’t have much time afterwards. [Link removed because ordering is now closed] UPDATE: with just 24 hours (and ten minutes) to go we show 804 sketch editions sold and spoken for. Remember — anything we sell beyond 1000 before Friday at 8:00am (my time) is fine. I’ll up the count. But after Friday at 8:00am the count is fixed… Filed under Uncategorized, Books, Site News, Merchandise | 17 Comments »

Teraport Wars Pre-Orders are Open! Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars is now available for pre-order. This book fits between The Tub of Happiness and Under New Management, and with it you can now own the first 1000 strips in a complete print collection. The book is $25.00, plus shipping and handling. If you want a numbered customer choice sketch edition it’s $35.00+s&h, but those are only available until 8:00am on Friday (GMT-7). This 228-page volume is in full color on glossy paper, and contains all the strips and footnotes from November 12th of 2001 through March 8th of 2003. It also features some new footnotes, commentary, guest art, eleven pages of all-new bonus story, and an introduction by Brandon Sanderson. Customers pre-ordering the book will be treated to a page full of desktop wallpapers featuring the full, wrap-around cover art at multiple resolutions and aspect ratios. Sketch editions will only be available through Friday morning at 8:00am Mountain time, or until we’ve sold 1,000 of them… whichever comes SECOND. Over 150 have already been spoken for by Comic-Con and WorldCon attendees, so don’t delay! (UPDATE! We up to 450, and it’s still Tuesday. If you want one, order it now!) If past experience is any indicator, we’ll probably end up selling around 1100 of these by Friday morning, and then they’re gone. (In the unlikely event that we don’t hit 1,000 by Friday, we’ll keep the item available until we do.) We expect to take delivery of 5,000 books around September 25th, at which point I’ll start signing and sketching. We plan to start shipping books out on October 9th, which gives me two full weeks to finish up those sketches (resting my hand a bit more than I have in the past.) In the exceedingly unlikely event that you folks buy more than 5,000 books during the pre-order period, there will be a slight shipping delay as we throw more money at our printer and demand a second run. Know, however, that this is just the sort of problem I’d love to have. And now, the FAQ: Q: Can I buy other stuff from the store, and have you ship it all at once? A: Absolutely. We have the popular warning-sign magnets back in stock, as well as mousemats, Tagon logo pins, Rule 37 shirts, and Rule 1 shirts. If there are impressionable children in your life, grab a copy of Hold On To Your Horses, the children’s book by Sandra Tayler and illustrated by Angela Call. Q: Where do you ship? A: Everywhere. Q: What does the desktop background look like? A: This. Q: What if my order gets damaged, or I’m just not happy with it? A: We’ll make it right at no additional expense to you. Ask anybody who has shopped with us before — if your book is damaged, or you’re otherwise displeased with your purchase, we’ll fix it. Usually it means sending out a replacement. We’ve upgraded our shipping materials so that there are fewer damaged packages, but it still happens. Q: I don’t like credit cards or Paypal. Can I pay with a cheque? A: It’s slower, but yes. The instructions for that are on the store. Q: I’ve got a question that is not on this list. Why can’t you read my mind? A: I actually can read your mind. I ran out of steam typing the list in. Email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with your question and we’ll answer it for you. Filed under Books, Merchandise | 59 Comments »

Teraport Wars Pre-orders Opening Tuesday Monday, September 1st, 2008 We will open worldwide pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars on Tuesday, September 2nd at 8:00am Mountain Time. The book is $25.00, plus shipping and handling. If you want a numbered, customer-choice sketch edition, it’s $35.00+s&h. Sketch editions will be available until at least Friday morning at 8:00am, so you have three full days to order one of those. If we haven’t hit 1,000 by then, we’ll keep sketch editions available until we do. If you crazy people order more than 1,000 between Tuesday morning and Friday morning, well… Sandra will have to let me draw in all of them because that is much less complicated than refunding money would be. Let’s show her who’s boss. We ship just about anywhere in the world, including APO addresses. We’ve shipped product to all seven continents and to at least 40 countries. It should go without saying that we’ve shipped to all 50 United States, but I just counted to make sure. Yup. We’ve only shipped to eight out of ten Canadian provinces, though, so those of you hailing from Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland & Labrador need to get with the program. I’m not sure how the system tracks U.S. or Canadian Territories, but I suspect those of you in the Mariana Islands and Nunavut also remain unrepresented. We plan to ship these books in six weeks, beginning on October 9th. If you pre-ordered your book at Comic-Con, and I told you that you had an “advance copy,” your book will go into the mail on Saturday. I’m sorry it’s not in the mail yet! I still need to create the uber-cool Customer Choice Sketch Edition stamp, and until I know the exact number of books I’ll be sketching, I can’t. But I’ll have a number come Friday. Filed under Site News, Merchandise | 14 Comments »

Fastest Convention Appearance Yet Saturday, August 30th, 2008 On Friday I delivered the 2:00pm keynote at the Utah Open Source Convention (UTOSC) at Salt Lake Community College. It would have been nice to attend the whole show, but it has been a full, busy week, and this weekend is the family reunion up in Pocatello, Idaho. So Sandra and I packed all the reunion stuff into the van, loaded the kids, and drove to SLCC. She dropped me off at 1:00pm and took the kids to lunch and to a park. I met some folks, delivered the keynote, and then jumped in the van and headed north at 2:45pm. It was kind of a drive-by keynote. By 5:45pm I was lounging in the hot-tub at the Best Western watching my kids splash in the pool. I’d tell you that this is the cartoonist’s life, but mostly it’s just THIS cartoonist’s life. Gotta go. The breakfast buffet has a waffle-maker… Filed under Uncategorized, Conventions | 9 Comments »